February 27, 2020 - My First Million with special guest Julia Cheek

Sam Parr

We're good we're here welcome back thank you

Shaan Puri

how was the big stage you went to new york

Sam Parr

Yeah, so what I did was I went to New York. I originally went to meet with some advertisers of ours and to be on...

Shaan Puri

winin' and dinein' or what

Sam Parr

Yeah, we... yeah, kind of. I'll tell you about it. Then I went to be on the Gary Vaynerchuk podcast, and then I went to be on... is his name Pomp?

Shaan Puri

yeah everyone knows him as pomp pomp yeah and anthony papillano or something

Sam Parr

His podcast was cool. I did Gary Vaynerchuk's podcast first thing in the morning at 8, 9, or 10 AM. When I got there, I was a little groggy from my flight because I took some medicine when I flew. It went okay; we'll see what happens, Gary.

Shaan Puri

hold on so you walk in what what happens

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I walked in. He has two offices in New York: one in Hudson Yards, which I've been to before—it's buzzing. This one was a studio; it's a little quieter but still pretty badass. It's in Brooklyn, Long Island City, which I don't know if that's Brooklyn or not, but it was awesome, man.

Shaan Puri

and you guys know each other you don't know each other so this is like the first time

Sam Parr

But we had... he knew who I was, and obviously, I definitely know who he is. He knew who our company was. He was totally nice and really low-key at first. He wasn't like "Cocaine Gary."

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

he was like you

Shaan Puri

guys do a little chitchat small talk beforehand or you just got into

Sam Parr

It barely... so here's what happened. We sat down, and there was an audience of about 5 or 10 people. It was me and Adam on our side, and then he had an entourage. We sit down, and he goes, "Alright, go." He looks at me, and I was like... I looked at Adam and said, "Gary, I think you're interviewing me." He goes, "Oh, I am." I was like, "Right, Adam, is that right?" Adam looked at me and said, "Yeah, that's what we set up."

Shaan Puri

adam the safety blanket

Sam Parr

Yeah, and Gary was like, "Oh, okay, so tell me about who you are." It was good. It was great.

Shaan Puri

oh so he's a nice guy that's good to know

Sam Parr

yeah you know he's an easy target because he's so loud

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I believe the screen went off there. I believe that he is totally legitimate and a really good business person. I think his company, Vayner, is really, really hard to run. He said that he was currently the COO and CEO, but he's a great business person. I mean, good business, and he's totally legitimate. He's like, because you can... like what?

Shaan Puri

what makes you say that salinas well you could

Sam Parr

put him in like the donald trump category of a guy who talks a lot and you're like I don't know this guy's the real deal

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

he's totally the real deal he just talks a lot

Shaan Puri

But what were the little tidbits that gave you that impression? Right? Because I believe that I don't... I'm not saying you're lying.

Sam Parr

So, whenever I go to the office, I ask them, "How do you like working here?" I always ask employees. I ask the front desk, "What’s your experience?" You can kind of tell if they actually like it. He has 800 employees, and the office space was really expensive real estate. There was really nice furniture, and everything was set up professionally. It's a real business, right? You could tell what's legitimate and what isn't once you go in there. This Hudson Yards office had VaynerMedia bottled water. The office was buzzing; everyone had nice computers. It’s not a startup.

Shaan Puri

right felt like a legit operation

Sam Parr

Totally, for sure, 100%. And kudos to him, man. He's talented.

Shaan Puri

and you did the podcast you know rate your performance

Sam Parr

I gave myself a C+. Okay? And then, because I hadn't done any reps that day, like I did a podcast later that day and I had a rep in.

Shaan Puri

firing

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I was like, "Alright, I'm on it." It just fell a little flat. But Adam and his people said it was one of their favorite ones they've ever done.

Shaan Puri

Do you have a little prep routine you do before you get on stage or before an interview? How do you switch the light?

Sam Parr

On, well, I typically will... you know how it is. Like, when we're doing this thing, I was in a piss. I was in a shitty mood a minute ago, and then these lights turned on. You're like, "Alright, I gotta snap out of it." What I do is I talk to the receptionist or I'll talk to the Uber driver just to start.

Shaan Puri

getting get out of your head

Sam Parr

yeah get my words going and get in a better happier mood

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

and that's usually what I do

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

is that what you do

Shaan Puri

No, like everything I try to study and come up with a framework for how to do it and a technique. So, I picked up two things. I picked up one from Conor McGregor; I was watching this documentary about him.

Sam Parr

talk with a pencil in your mouth

Shaan Puri

Pen in your mouth... Yeah, so this, I tried it and it actually works fantastic. Basically, you take a pencil or a pen, hold it sort of horizontal, sideways, and bite on it so it's in your mouth, you know, sort of going out past your cheeks. Then you just talk for one minute. What happens is, because the pencil's there and your mouth's in this awkward position, your tongue has to really work to flick over and under this thing to get to the spots it usually goes to. So you end up enunciating way better. I don't know if it's placebo; I don't know if it really is like an actual warm-up for your tongue, but this works. I've recorded myself before and after, and I could tell the difference. I had other people listen to it and I said, "Tell me which one of these sounds better." I don't know whether it's placebo or not, but that one works for me. The other thing is like a quick physical change, so...

Sam Parr

like push ups or something

Shaan Puri

Push-ups, a wind sprint, a jumping jack, a scream, music... whatever! I am a big believer that the fastest way to change the way you feel is through changing your body rapidly.

Sam Parr

the change works that's like

Shaan Puri

A Tony Robbins ism: Tony Robbins has this great YouTube video. If you just search for "Young Tony Robbins," you'll find it. It's the same guy, 25 years ago, in a tank top, giving a speech. He talks about how, before he gets on stage, people always ask him, "Okay, you're a public speaker. You do a really great job. How do you do it?" He explains that he doesn't make the mistakes most people do. Most people are sitting in a low-energy shell; their body posture sucks. Then they just get up on stage without warming up. He compares this to an athlete, saying, "An athlete would never do that." He treats himself like an athlete. He gets himself into a mental and physical state. The second thing he does is that he doesn't try to memorize what he's supposed to say. He believes that when you try to memorize your speech, you're preparing, but your mind ends up editing. It's comparing what you're saying to what you kind of remember you were supposed to say. This creates a whole other thing going on in your head that takes you away from the moment. The third thing, and this is the last one, is that before he goes up there, he convinces himself that the audience has to hear this information as if their lives depend on it. He feels that he is there to help. He thinks about how someone out there might be commuting, struggling with an idea they haven't taken action on, or beating themselves up about it. They might look around at the five people they hang out with the most and think, "These people are not like me." Then, when they hear him, they realize, "Oh, there are people like me out there." He wants them to feel that they should take action and have some energy that day. He convinces himself that they have to hear this, and that he is there to serve them. And I was like, "Okay, yeah."

Sam Parr

just hearing that

Shaan Puri

so I do that

Sam Parr

just hearing that has made me feel better

Shaan Puri

there you go

Sam Parr

Another thing that I did while I was out there is, on Sunday night, I tweeted out that when I fly, I take a lot of Xanax. It's the only drug I do; I don't do any alcohol. Sometimes, the night before, I'll take it a little bit as well because I really hate flying. So, on Sunday night, I tweeted that I rented this Airbnb, which I did, and I'm going to host a meetup. I got 200 replies saying, "Let's meet up," right? I couldn't do that, so I only let 20 Trend subscribers come.

Shaan Puri

and so the trend subscribers are also not

Sam Parr

100% of listeners are subscribers, but not all subscribers are listeners. So, I met, I think, 30 of them, and it was *fucking awesome*. It was so...

Shaan Puri

cool

Sam Parr

This one, it was **fucking awesome**. It was so cool! This one kid flew up from South Carolina or something. I tweeted this on the meetup, which was Monday night. I tweeted this on...

Shaan Puri

sunday night

Sam Parr

Like, there was no preparation. All we did—Adam and I—was land on Monday morning, go to the Mexican place next door, and say, "Hey, can you bring over enough tacos for 20 people? Here's $200 or $300, and go buy some beer. We'll pay you more money." And that's all we did. It was awesome! Yeah, these people are *fucking fanatical*. It's crazy. It's nuts. It's really odd.

Shaan Puri

who was the most interesting person

Sam Parr

So many interesting people! There was this one guy—I forget his name; maybe he's listening. He was the eldest guy there, which is not old, but in his forties or fifties. He built custom electric cars and, through the trends group, sold 50 cars to another company.

Shaan Puri

custom electric cars

Sam Parr

yeah like he like he was making like they took a

Shaan Puri

they take a prius or a

Sam Parr

They took four... no, they took, yeah, they took some type of pickup truck and made it an electric delivery van.

Shaan Puri

oh wow

Sam Parr

For a cannabis company in LA, because who else did I meet? I mean, I met all types of people. One guy who sells fake boobs for a living, so he sells his...

Shaan Puri

name sell me more

Sam Parr

fairchild did this guy ever talk to you on twitter

Shaan Puri

no his name's fairchild hunter fairchild yeah yeah I see this guy on my twitter all the time

Sam Parr

yeah he his boss

Shaan Puri

he sells fake boobs really

Sam Parr

yeah his his boss invented like a better

Shaan Puri

dude what's in his bio because I've looked at this guy's bio and he's not advertising this so let's no

Sam Parr

It was awesome! We'll put Hunter on blast. Me and this girl, Aditi, were just sitting down when Hunter came over. We were shooting the shit and we asked him, "Hunter, what do you do?" Aditi, who's nice and someone I've met before, was there too. Hunter replied, "Well, I sell breast implants." We were like, "What?" Then we just started talking. I asked him, "So, do you have a woman who comes with you and shows the buyers? Do you need sales brochures? How do you show that your implants are the best?" He walked us through this whole process. It was crazy! I had never heard of such a thing. Yeah, it was crazy!

Shaan Puri

had never heard of such a thing yeah me neither

Sam Parr

but of course he came up from virginia for this

Shaan Puri

that's great alright cool so you can do more

Sam Parr

of that or what well you and I need to

Shaan Puri

do more so what we can do is

Sam Parr

new york that we could get I easily we could have gotten 200 people

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

So, we can do one in New York. I think Acast, or whatever we use, tells us where people are.

Shaan Puri

Right, we gotta go to Canada. We gotta go to Utah. When we shouted out Utah that time, I know I still get more. Dude, the number of these friendly-ass Utah citizens, whatever they're called, Utahns, reach out all the time like, "Hey, when you guys are here, I got you."

Sam Parr

so maybe like

Shaan Puri

and it feels good to be taken care of like that

Sam Parr

it does

Shaan Puri

it feels great maybe great hospitality

Sam Parr

what's what month is it february

Shaan Puri

yeah when you end of february

Sam Parr

we we should do a thing where we could try to hit up like 3 cities in 5 days

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

or maybe maybe a

Shaan Puri

I got into this thing... I don't know if I told you about this... this thing called reality. Have you heard of this? No? So basically, you know how Jewish people have Birthright?

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

and I don't know exactly how the mechanics of birthright work but from what I understand

Sam Parr

about it

Shaan Puri

if you're jewish you get to go it's paid by the sort of wealthy jewish people around the

Sam Parr

World Christian fundamentalists are Christians who believe that Israel is the land for Jews.

Shaan Puri

oh wow okay didn't know that so basically that's a cool thing for jewish people

Sam Parr

you're shaking your head are you jewish henry no but you know about it

Shaan Puri

You're just stunned. Yeah, I've never been more jealous than when my friends go on Birthright and then come back. It's like this mini study abroad.

Sam Parr

yeah it's great

Shaan Puri

And so then I was like, "Alright, what is this? How do we get more of this?" They have this program called **Reality 2020**. If you want to look it up, it's basically a program where you can be in different groups. You can be in entertainment, technology, or whatever social impact. You apply to get in, and if you get in... I applied. I applied before and got rejected a few years ago. This time, I applied and I got in. It's a small group, I don't know, 30 or 40 people that get accepted and get to go. It's not all expenses paid, but it's like most expenses paid. So yeah, anyways, I've been going on this trip in late May now, and I'm going to see what this is all about in Israel.

Sam Parr

I've heard of the siva does is it a is it a jewish thing

Shaan Puri

I don't think it you don't have to be jewish this one's not like birthright

Sam Parr

it's like a

Shaan Puri

A thing for, like, you know, Israel's right? You know, sort of got it—startup and kind of thought leadership. Young people, that sort of thing. Like future leaders.

Sam Parr

I mean, it's like a... not in a bad way. It's a propaganda thing. It's like to get you into Israel, yeah.

Shaan Puri

it's like a program yeah

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

so I'm doing that but my question to you

Sam Parr

when are you going

Shaan Puri

It's late in May, so I'm first scared of coronavirus. I may not go; I was supposed to.

Sam Parr

to go in germany in

Shaan Puri

So, we should talk about coronavirus in a second. But secondly, why do Jews have all the good things? Why don't other people do this? This seems like a great birthright. It seems great.

Sam Parr

jews and mormons

Shaan Puri

yeah mormons okay

Sam Parr

they're like the same thing but mormons might be better now because they don't drink

Shaan Puri

do mormons have these perks like that like birthright or something

Sam Parr

They all have all types of skills, dude. They're all really good at basketball, and Jewish people love basketball too. I mean, dude, they're all quite similar; they're a very similar group of people.

Shaan Puri

Well, the thing I like is the sort of "pay it forward" concept. I think Silicon Valley has this a lot, where many people who move here hesitate to reach out to others because they're like, "Well, why would this person want to help me? I have nothing to offer." But that is the culture of Silicon Valley: to pay it forward and to help the next person who doesn't know anything. I feel like Jews have this in their culture, and I feel like Mormons have this in their culture as well. You know, I'm Indian, and I don't feel like there's the same emphasis on this. It's not as strong for Indian people to try to help out the next person. I think part of it is because there's such a big population; you can't afford to do it. There's like...

Sam Parr

dogs have

Shaan Puri

6,000,000 Jewish people on Earth or something crazy, and they run the world. So I think, you know, with a small number of people, you can offer this much more high-touch help each other model.

Sam Parr

I agree. Let me make one quick announcement before we get into it. I wanted to make this at the top of this... maybe we...

Shaan Puri

might chop it up

Sam Parr

Maybe our editor can chop it up, but what I want to do is test something I've heard about. These people say "subscribe, unsubscribe, subscribe again." Alright, so last time we asked our viewers for more reviews, and we now have 550. Maybe we got 5,400 reviews in just a couple of days! You guys are really active, and they all sent me messages. I tried to reply to everyone. Did you?

Shaan Puri

I did now yeah I went and picked it up

Sam Parr

so here's what I want

Shaan Puri

got a reply I thought you did get a reply

Sam Parr

So, here's what I want people to do. The reason I want to do this is because I think people like seeing us succeed, and they like seeing the journey.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

So, you're going to help us succeed. Here’s what you do: If you have an iPhone, you're going to go to the menu where you can turn your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off and all that. There’s a button on the bottom right where you hit "Record." Okay, record that. That’s going to re-record your screen. Then, go to the Podcast app, go to "My First Million," click "Subscribe," and then unsubscribe. After that, subscribe again. Send us a video of that happening. If you do, also send us a question that you want answered, and we’ll answer your question.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we'll bake a Q and A, and this will tell us the truth, right? Because we need to run the experiment. We need to know, does this actually work, or is this just like a myth?

Sam Parr

and if you send us your question ideally send it via twitter

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

So, everyone could see and comment. In that way, it's easy. Just record yourself subscribing, unsubscribing, and then resubscribing. Do it a bunch of times. Record yourself, post that on Twitter, and tag one of us or both of us. Then, on that same thread, ask your question.

Shaan Puri

And if you don't have a question, that's fine too. Then we're going to look at the charts and see what this does to the chart movement. I think it's going to actually boost the chart movement if the theory is correct. You know, I believe this is why podcasters ask people to do this: because this actually works.

Sam Parr

And if it does, here's what we'll do. If this works and people keep doing this, what we'll do is, with only the people who do that, we'll take a screenshot of our analytics and send it to them.

Shaan Puri

yeah we'll share the data yeah no problem

Sam Parr

okay do you wanna get into some stuff you wanna talk about coronavirus or you wanna yeah

Shaan Puri

**Coronavirus.** Okay, so I'm terrified of coronavirus. You know, generically, I'm terrified. I was terrified without information, and then I started looking into it a little bit more.

Sam Parr

so there's even know about it can you explain

Shaan Puri

what the coronavirus is yeah so basically there's a couple of these viruses they're influenza strains and so the flu the flu yeah so basically a few years ago you probably heard you know sars or swine flu and so you know the very first time I think sars happened there was you know a kid got this flu goes to the doctor's office they're like okay this is the flu and kid dies within like a very short amount of time they're like well that was odd that doesn't usually happen so they took a sample and sent it to like the cdc or whoever right like they sent it to some lab to say you know what do you see here there was this was a very unusual case the health deteriorated so quick that's not typical to the flu and what they realized was hey this is a new strain called I think it was like h one n five at the time and it was like this is only ever found in animals this is the first time it's crossed over from animal to human and so that was bird flu when that happened and then so there's been these different sort of very very deadly viruses sars which are which was very very popular mers which happened in the middle east respiratory syndrome is what's kinda what these middle east respiratory I think syndrome is the what mers stands for and sars is sort of the same thing and so the thing with these was that you know although there's a lot of hoopla around sars and bird flu like sars killed less than a 1000 people less than a 1000 total fatalities not a big drop in the bucket as far as the death bucket goes on earth yeah coronavirus already killed like 3,000 + people so already much bigger than that the reason it's scary though is actually and and for a while people were like oh don't worry the fatality rate is low fatality rate's like I don't know 3% for this whereas for sars it was like super high I don't know I I don't know the exact number but it's like majority of people who have it die whereas with this 3% means you get it but you have a good chance of living but the big problem with that and the article that I read was called why you're probably why we probably can't contain coronavirus why you probably are gonna end up getting coronavirus is because this virus is extremely contagious but has these simp has these trademarks that are very problematic so it takes a while for your symptoms to show up so you have it and you carry it for like you know 14 days without showing symptoms so you'll be spreading this around and not even realizing you have it then once you have it you don't just like deteriorate and like your health doesn't go to shit where they you know you're in the hospital they quarantine you it's like you know it starts innocent and it gets worse over time so the infectious.

Shaan Puri

Is so much longer that there's basically no way to quarantine this thing. There's no way for us to contain this. So what the article was saying was, ironically, because it is not as fatal and is not as bad for you right away, this thing is going to be unstoppable, most likely. The second thing with that was, I guess there are four typical strains of the flu, which is why you can get your flu shot and still catch the flu every year. It's because there are these four different strains, and the vaccine doesn't cover all the different variations. This guy's case was that most likely this is now just a fifth annual strain that we're going to have to live with, and it's just going to suck. It's a very, very downer. Also, I'm sure the bio nerds out there are going to be like, "No, there are 15,000,000 strains."

Sam Parr

that's alright

Shaan Puri

but like that's the summary that I took away and if you wanna just get the. That's the.

Sam Parr

And so what you have up here is D to C stuff. I looked at my portfolio yesterday and I was like, "Fuck, I lost money yesterday off the stock market."

Shaan Puri

So, crazy stuff is happening all around. In the stock market, you know, people get paranoid. They flee to bonds, and as a result, the stock goes down. There are other funny things happening too. For example, the stock ticker for Zoom, the conferencing software, goes up 50% today.

Sam Parr

wait shit it's up 50% today

Shaan Puri

But wait, there's more! It's the stock ticker **Z O O M** (Zoom), but that's not Zoom's actual handle. Zoom's actual handle is **Z M**. So, people are buying the wrong stock because they think people are going to be working from home and teleconferencing in. They're buying Zoom, which does something else altogether. It's a very small-cap stock. I don't know, Henry, check what the stock for Zoom actually does. God bless tiny stocks! It jumped 50% today. You can actually predict this because this happened also at the IPO. Whoever bought Zoom, the other thing, got a huge pop at Zoom's IPO because of this.

Sam Parr

I love that

Shaan Puri

and so we could have predicted this one

Sam Parr

I love when that happens

Shaan Puri

But all kinds of messed up things... Some of my smart friends are basically saying, "Hey, if you need my smart friends, you know, people who actually read the real information and understand how the world works." They were like, "Hey, if you need prescription drugs, you should start stockpiling because most of it’s coming from China and the supply chain globally is messed up." And like, the world doesn't have... I said.

Sam Parr

that

Shaan Puri

like friend friend of a friend basically

Sam Parr

but how the fuck do you stockpile prescription meds

Shaan Puri

Basically, buy up bio refills. There's no global plan B for what happens if China gets sick or slows down. We don't have another supply chain, and so all kinds of things are suffering.

Sam Parr

have friends that have b to c companies that buy their ships to china and they're saying shit

Shaan Puri

Yeah, months... months backed up. I was talking to a supplier yesterday, and he was like, "Even if we come back to work, there's all the other factories that we depend on: the printing factory, the packaging guys, and they're not coming back." The workers are just not returning because, in most factories in China, the workers don't actually live in that city permanently. So, for Chinese New Year—which is when this happened—Chinese New Year is a month-long holiday.

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, we have a Chinese intern. He told us all about it. He goes, "It's the largest travel day in the world."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

because every chinese person goes home

Shaan Puri

They go home, and when they go home, they return to very rural areas. Already, there's this problem where they often don't come back. They don't want to be living in some other city working in a factory. With this, people are just not coming back, and so there's no replacements. It's a very dire situation.

Sam Parr

well

Shaan Puri

and like obviously at a human level also incredibly dire situation

Sam Parr

So, to turn shit into gold, where's the opportunity here? I mean, what's going to happen? Do you think that this is going to have a long-term impact with China? China making stuff and you have to go elsewhere?

Shaan Puri

I don't know, so there's a question of like... two theories. One is for stuff like this: the people who are going to do really well, they didn't start now. They started something two years ago, like a blog on being a prepper or whatever. And today's your day, you know? Like, this is your month. So, I don't think the... I don't know how much I am interested in the sort of "today opportunity." It also just feels kind of messed up.

Sam Parr

we talked about judy the other day

Shaan Puri

right the judy sort of survival kits or bags

Sam Parr

I, my friend Joe Speiser, bought something from survivorkit.com. He got an email from them saying, "We have a 100 times our normal volume. We apologize, but we're gonna make it happen."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

so those the judy thing that which the respiratory masks long time

Shaan Puri

Those are not in the Judy bag, but the respiratory masks are just out of stock. You can't get them, and that's the thing you need to protect your nose and mouth.

Sam Parr

Long gone. No one can pounce on that. But we covered this guy who launched a company called Jude. Is it Judy?

Shaan Puri

judy yeah

Sam Parr

judy it's a emergency kit

Shaan Puri

yep an orange like emergency backpack ready

Sam Parr

My wife texted me today and said, "Let's go and buy a bunch of stuff."

Shaan Puri

I feel the same way. More people are doing this. Have you ever been in an emergency situation? By the way, have you ever been in a city when a flood happens or anything like that? It's really bizarre how it feels. No, I was in Hawaii for our honeymoon. There was a hurricane in Hawaii.

Sam Parr

oh I thought that was really when I was there

Shaan Puri

And so, we went to the grocery store. At first, we went to the hotel and they were like, "Hey, we have early check-in available." We were like, "Well, that's cool, thanks, because we're on our honeymoon." They said, "No, we just have a lot of open rooms."

Sam Parr

oh it's there

Shaan Puri

I was like, "What's going on?" They're like, "Well, have you seen the weather report? There's a hurricane this week." Of course, I don't check the weather, so I booked my honeymoon during a hurricane week. So we go to the grocery store, and it's like a zombie attack has happened. All the water bottles are gone, the shelves are empty, and people are just checking out with four carts worth. It's really an odd, eerie feeling when that happens.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this thing... my issue, here's an opportunity if someone wants to go for it. Do you know how to poll? Is it... there's a political check? Is that what it's called? Politico fact?

Shaan Puri

you mean like the fact checking thing

Sam Parr

yeah I don't know

Shaan Puri

what it's called but you

Sam Parr

So, what you do is, like, "Did Bloomberg really say this?" Right? And it goes, "That's what I want for coronavirus right now." I don't know what to do and what isn't.

Shaan Puri

So, there's a blog called, I believe it's called **ThePrepared.com**. It is exactly what you want. It’s plain English. It's like, "Here are the facts, not the overreactions." And by the way, we'll tell you about the overreactions and why it's an overreaction, but here are the facts. What's...

Sam Parr

it called

Shaan Puri

Presented in a calm, calm way, the site is beautiful. It works great on your phone. I tweeted at the guy who started it. I was like, "Thank you for making this!" This is exactly what I need in this situation.

Sam Parr

it autofilled nicely a bunch bunch of people must be going to

Shaan Puri

I feel like it's

Sam Parr

Oh, he's selling kits! He's selling kits. Oh God, this guy's awesome! Cool, I'm into this.

Shaan Puri

so scary situation yeah scary all around

Sam Parr

best

Shaan Puri

of luck to everybody yes

Sam Parr

for sure okay you wanna move on or

Shaan Puri

yeah let's move on

Sam Parr

Okay, I have a few interesting things that happened and cool companies that we can talk about. The first thing is something that has made a huge impact on me, and I think more people need to take advantage of it, which is **transparent numbers**. So basically, there's a group of people out there who believe that transparency is good. They share all of their revenue and every metric about their business, as deep as everyone's salary, their bank balance, churn, how much it costs to acquire a customer, and how long a customer stays on. Some are a little bit less transparent; they'll share how many customers they have, how much revenue they generate, and what their bank balance is. More people should follow these businesses. I, for one, am totally against that. I don't think you should ever reveal that, but I'm happy they do.

Shaan Puri

so some examples so throw them out

Sam Parr

So, first of all, my friend Encore... What's Encore's last name? He runs Teachable.

Shaan Puri

I don't remember his last name

Sam Parr

If you Google, can you tell me Encore's last name? Founder of Teachable. Okay, so he reveals on Twitter the valuation of every round.

Shaan Puri

what's it nagpal

Sam Parr

Yes, Nat. Say it: Nagpal. Nagpal reveals the valuation of every right.

Shaan Puri

every time they they just raised like $20,000,000 at whatever

Sam Parr

200 something really good. He reveals how much revenue they have and how many customers they have. It's awesome.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

I love that the other guy is Sahil. Sahil from Gumroad. Shitty business, but he seems like an awesome guy. He reveals every single month all the... You could Google "Gumroad founder Sahil."

Shaan Puri

it's on his twitter if you he just he doesn't have a tweet land so you don't have to you don't even have to dive into the books it's like yeah

Sam Parr

Here's some information about 40 characters. Joel from Buffer does this. They actually just switched, so if you go to Baremetrics.com or Google Baremetrics, they have like 18 different companies that do this. It's pretty cool. Joel from Buffer used to be on there. They're a $22,000,000 a year company, so pretty valuable. They would reveal everything, everything.

Shaan Puri

Employee salaries, like name, salary, equity, you know, level... everything. Everything.

Sam Parr

and you know what they're changing they're showing less and less because

Shaan Puri

have you talked to them do you know why

Sam Parr

it becomes problematic when you add more people

Shaan Puri

Yeah, duh! It's like, you know, a guy creates... you know, turns his kitchen into a man cave. Instead, he gets a girlfriend and he's like, "Oh, she doesn't like it." It's like, "Yeah, no shit, man! I could've told you this when you bought the plasma and put it on the fridge."

Sam Parr

grow up joel

Shaan Puri

people don't like their salary being public what

Sam Parr

so they still do salary they still do equity

Shaan Puri

people get upset when they see their coworker who slacks off and works from home 2 days a week and they see his salary

Sam Parr

because people don't understand that like different people have different situations it's not like

Shaan Puri

So, they did it in a smart way. They basically used it as customer acquisition.

Sam Parr

yeah it's part of their story because they got their ass kicked by hubspot

Shaan Puri

and so they like

Sam Parr

sorry hootsuite

Shaan Puri

You know, this has become a bit of a playbook for small business-to-business (B2B) SaaS companies. Acquisition of customers is hard. If my customer is a small business owner, what would bring a small business owner to me? What content could I put out there that would attract a small business owner? Instead of saying "7 tips to have more effective meetings," they were like, "Here's our P&L for this month." Sure enough, a lot of people wanted to see that. Many discovered their product through this approach. So, maybe this lines up totally with their values, and that's why they did it. But I just think it was definitely a great way for people to discover their business. I didn't use Buffer, but I read all their content. If anybody ever needed a solution like Buffer, I would say, "Oh, you should use Buffer." Why? Because otherwise, I wouldn't have even known about them. This was a pretty counterintuitive thing that they did, and they were the only ones doing it. You always get paid when you're the only one doing it... if it's juicy.

Sam Parr

yeah and so and one more person who's doing it and the his business is way better than buffer apps

Shaan Puri

I love this guy's business

Sam Parr

So, it's my friend Nathan Barry. I met Nathan a while ago, and Nathan has this company called ConvertKit. They do close to $2,000,000 in monthly recurring revenue, which amounts to about $24,000,000 annually. It's probably a $100 to $200 million company. It's really valuable because once customers are locked in, it's basically a Mailchimp competitor. It's an email service.

Shaan Puri

that seems high 22,000,000 a month you said

Sam Parr

2,000,000 that's for sure that's how much they do

Shaan Puri

So, they're doing $2,000,000... no, no, that part. So, $24,000,000 a year. So, $24,000,000. You think they're worth what? 10 times? 10 times, okay.

Sam Parr

maybe growing like a weed

Shaan Puri

maybe

Sam Parr

people don't switch from their email platform

Shaan Puri

yeah it all depend on the retention so can you pull up actually can you open open up their their metrics so just

Sam Parr

just says high

Shaan Puri

Just Google "Baremetrics dashboard" or something. I forgot what the URL is, but it's like something.baremetrics.com. It's their whole company. It's like, "Here's how many new customers we got. Here's how many people churned this month." It's all their graphs, and you can use it for your company.

Sam Parr

he even showed how much profit they make

Shaan Puri

I think it's like convertkit it's it's like con yeah here it is

Sam Parr

you gotta zoom in there you go so this

Shaan Puri

I don't know if this is their business or if this is just an example, but it's like monthly recurring revenue, net revenue, and fees.

Sam Parr

yeah that's not it

Shaan Puri

this is somebody else's business example

Sam Parr

you gotta do convertkit

Shaan Puri

yeah do convertkit baremetrics

Sam Parr

type in convertkit revenue maybe if you can't can't spell

Shaan Puri

I also use ConvertKit. I actually pay for a subscription because I'm like, "This product is so powerful!" I don't have many sequences set up. I have a sequence of one email right now, which is not really a sequence; it's just an email. But I think it's a great product.

Sam Parr

I love ConvertKit. I love Nathan. Nathan's a great guy. Nathan's only 26 or 27 years old.

Shaan Puri

We talked about the idea of doing a drip sequence to build a newsletter for women going through pregnancy, like week by week. I had a random listener reach out on Twitter. He was like, "I'm doing this. Here's my kind of unique asset I have to go about this. How should I set this up?" I sent him to ConvertKit. I was like, "Dude, your problem is gonna be solved in like, you know, the next 90 minutes."

Sam Parr

what are people leaving bearmetrics why can't you find it

Shaan Puri

here you go 1,700,000

Sam Parr

oh is that it is what's the url convertkit dot oh okay

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so **$1,700,000** in monthly recurring revenue. You could just look at the churn. So, the annual run rate is doing **$20,000,000** in a year, which is up **1.7%**. That's gotta be how much this month's revenue churn is: **5.1%** per month.

Sam Parr

that's not bad it's not great either well it's because it's a small to medium business

Shaan Puri

If you're churning 5% a month, what's the net growth? So, 5% a month is the churn. What's the new business every month? One.

Sam Parr

and a

Shaan Puri

half%

Sam Parr

it's low

Shaan Puri

1 a half% yeah so he's net negative then per month

Sam Parr

No, I think that that churn, that growth, that growth number takes into account churn.

Shaan Puri

I see okay gotcha oh okay that's the net

Sam Parr

But this is because it's the average revenue. It kind of even says so. They make, on average, $60 a month per user.

Shaan Puri

right and the the thing on the right

Sam Parr

medium business could have a it's gonna have higher churn compared to other saas but dude if you're

Shaan Puri

If you're a real sicko, you can just look at the live stream on the right and see every minute when somebody pays them. It'll say, like, right now it says "$29 paid by... you know, anonymous company." Dude, he's got a lot of failed payments here. Get on that, Nathan! What's going on? You can't be failing. It's 3 out of the 12 payments here that are failed.

Sam Parr

he has a chart that says which ones failed so these these companies are are badass I

Shaan Puri

so you wouldn't do it

Sam Parr

no I think it's

Shaan Puri

what about a part of what you do the email list size the revenue

Sam Parr

I don't want to share anything publicly. Well, I'll say like **8 figures** or...

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

something no I just don't think it brings a lot of good either

Shaan Puri

You know, when a company is trying to raise funds or sell their business, like two months before, all these articles will come out, just handing over information. Yeah, why is that happening? Because they want to raise the ground or they want to sell their company within the next six months. I don't... can you go?

Sam Parr

To the next... go back to the Google Doc. No, I'm not a fan of it. One time, when I did my first conference when I was younger, it made like $60 in profit. I told everyone in the blog post, and I hated the attention. So, I'm never going to do it again. Okay, so let's talk about Pipe.com. You know Pipe.com?

Shaan Puri

I saw this and I was like, "Dude, this is awesome!" I came to our little scratch pad to write it down, and you already had it written down.

Sam Parr

Okay, so here's what I want to set the stage for. When you have a subscription business—I'm talking about software subscriptions, but maybe it could work for all types of services—what happens is you do one of two things. The first is you say, "Alright, you sign this deal and you owe us $200 a month." So that is a $2,400 a year subscription service, and the company that is your customer will pay you $200 a month. What a lot of companies prefer to do, but this is actually a lot harder, is they say, "Alright, you signed up for one year upfront right now." Now, here's the balance: do you want—or this is what people think—they can either get more customers and allow them to pay monthly.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Or they can get fewer customers but allow them to pay annually and get all of that cash flow upfront. And what's it called? Pipe? What do they do?

Shaan Puri

is dotcom

Sam Parr

If you have a business like ConvertKit and they have a history of 3 years, it says, "Look, every month our churn rate historically is 5%." So, a person can go, "Okay, you have all these customers paying you each month." Let's just say, I don't know how they discount it, but they probably discounted a lot to derisk it. Then, this will say, "Well, let's just assume that you're going to have a 20% monthly churn."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

We're just gonna give you all that money up front, and you owe us as the money comes in with a little bit of interest, right? Awesome.

Shaan Puri

Awesome business! So, I have so many thoughts. Alright, a couple of things. First, the **financial infrastructure**—what's really going on here? The financial infrastructure for software companies and tech businesses is being rebuilt. We already had investors, right? Angel investors, seed investors, Series A investors, blah blah blah. But then you have a bank for startups: **Mercury**, started by some successful founders from **Hayzap**. They designed Mercury to be a bank specifically for startups. Then you have things like **Brex** or **Ramp**, which we talked about. These are business credit cards designed for startups because the legacy institutions don't understand how to value these companies, how to assess risk, or how to fund and finance them. Next, you have marketplaces where you can buy and sell online businesses, like **Quiet Light Brokerage**. There are also due diligence firms that pop up, specializing in software businesses, like **Centurica**. Then you have guys like **Pipe**, which basically say, "Great! You have a cash flow problem, but you have a predictable book of business. We will give you the cash up front, and we'll take a big cut off the top." I think these are all really smart businesses, each one at a different part of the financial stack for software technology companies. **FastPay** is another example.

Sam Parr

We use... it's pipe, but for media and publishers. Pipe has raised $70,000,000 in funding. They're kind of stupid because we use them, and we have $1,000,000 in credit from them. We won't leave them because it's a wonderful service. But the reason why they're kind of stupid is because the market's a lot smaller.

Julia Cheek

right

Sam Parr

Than software, and the numbers are a lot smaller, right? I think Pipe will be a multibillion-dollar company.

Shaan Puri

yeah or or the one problem

Sam Parr

with these is or or that

Shaan Puri

There’s a lot of competition. I think the aggregate will be significant. For example, this is also happening on the customer side. Companies like Affirm, Sezzle, or Afterpay are all part of this trend. They are trying to provide different financial instruments that traditional financial companies, the current incumbents, aren't really figuring out. They are looking for ways to help e-commerce companies and merchants turn their products into monthly payments for their customers. Affirm came out and did it. Afterpay, for instance, is like an $8 billion company in Australia. Affirm is a multibillion-dollar company here in the U.S., doing the exact same thing, and they are all fighting over these merchants.

Sam Parr

I love this shit, man. I'd say, **fuck the big banks**. I **fucking hate** them. Yeah, I hate them so much. I hate having to talk to our rep. They don't understand me, right? They don't understand what we're doing.

Shaan Puri

So, Ishan, our producer and editor for the podcast, had an idea. I asked him one day, because I have him as sort of my right-hand man. Sometimes, I just ping him with random questions. I said, "What's the biggest idea in your head right now? What's the biggest startup idea you have?" You know, he's 20, 21 years old—I don't know exactly how old he is, but he's a young guy. He goes, "Well, I've been a freelancer and contractor for you and many other people for the last few years. Why doesn't a sort of fast pay or pipe exist for contractors? Like, I have my invoice; just give me the money now, and then you wait until the company pays you. You take it and just take 5%."

Sam Parr

big idea

Shaan Puri

I've actually heard this idea a few times before. You know, my wife was a consultant, and she always got paid on a 30 or 60-day cycle. She would have, you know, $20 sitting in outstanding payments. If she could just get the $20 headache-free, she would take $19.50. She would take $19,000 out of that just to get the money now and not have to keep following up via email to be like, "Hey, have you paid it yet?" and all that stuff. So the problem seems real, and this is more of a question to the audience: What am I wrong about? What don't I get about this idea? It seems like a great idea on the surface. What's the problem with it? I've heard it bandied around a few times over the years. It's not a super niche idea; I think a lot of people could have this idea. So what's wrong with it? I think that you can learn just as much from common ideas that don't work as you can from great ideas that do work. If you start to identify why this seemingly good idea does not work, why have people tried and failed over and over again? There's a lot to learn as an entrepreneur.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm digging that. So, Pipe.com is out. I'm loving those things. Alright, we want to talk about book club stuff.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, one thing. Hey, Henry, there's a guest downstairs. Would you mind letting her in? She's going to join us for the next segment. Yeah, Julia, what's up? Hi, how are you?

Julia Cheek

doing well thanks for having me

Shaan Puri

you're already in my good books because you actually listen to the podcast not all the guests do

Julia Cheek

I do my homework

Shaan Puri

yeah I try to do my homework yeah

Julia Cheek

yes I I have a there's a bunch of employee

Sam Parr

fans great

Julia Cheek

they found out and it was I mean like they had been really gunning for me to have a chance

Shaan Puri

to do that

Julia Cheek

to them do you

Shaan Puri

have like that like corny name for your employees like emily williams

Julia Cheek

sorry that is literally it

Shaan Puri

oh my god

Julia Cheek

Although we changed it real well, then everyone was like, "Hey, did you just come up with that? Because that is not that great." So I think someone better with words suggested, "How about just Everly's?" I was like, "Oh, that's better, right? That sounds okay." We've shifted it to that.

Shaan Puri

do you guys have started do you have like the hustleonians or some shit

Sam Parr

no I don't say no

Shaan Puri

yeah no you're fired actually if you say something like that I'm terrible but

Sam Parr

no we like

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

because that we you know

Shaan Puri

With Bebo, somebody tried to do that, and I was like, "Thank God there's not a nice one because I don't want this as like a thing." Yeah, Bieber, is that one of it? By the way, I'm followed by Justin Bieber on Twitter.

Sam Parr

no big deal for real

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I crossed 10,000 followers, and Justin Bieber follows me. I did not reply. It's gotta be one of those bots that just follows me.

Sam Parr

how many people does he follow

Shaan Puri

I don't know Henry, Justin Bieber's number of followers. We'll find out. The only way this can go is down for me. I know how to say it; it's...

Sam Parr

not a low number my

Shaan Puri

Friend, it's not a loan number. Yeah, okay, it's $300,000. I'm one of the top 300,000 friends of Justin Bieber.

Julia Cheek

that's better than I would have thought I thought the number was gonna be like 10,000,000 so for what it's worth

Shaan Puri

Okay, so it's vegan names. So you have, your name is Julia Cheek, but your company name is Everlywell. Yes, it's a cool name. Thank you! I hate my last name, and so I'm always thinking of, you know, just totally rebranding it to something cool. But then I know people will be like, "Did you just change your last name to try to sound cool?" which is probably the least cool thing.

Julia Cheek

You can do that. I kind of got the opportunity to do that because I decided I had a choice to use Julia Taylor, which was my maiden name, or if I wanted to, when I got married, take on Cheek.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Julia Cheek

and it was just sort of unique so I did it

Shaan Puri

You did it! Uh-huh, okay great. So for people listening who are like, "Okay great, who's this person? Why are they joining the show?" Give us the like 30 seconds about what's interesting about you.

Julia Cheek

Yeah, so I'm Julia Cheek. I'm the founder and CEO of Everly Well. We are based in Austin, and we are about to celebrate our 5-year anniversary, which is hard to believe. But probably the most interesting thing about me starting this company is that I started a company in the blood testing space, in the direct-to-consumer space, coming with no entrepreneurial background or healthcare background whatsoever. Right? I had every kind of "X" in the box of why you wouldn't.

Shaan Puri

have to start right

Julia Cheek

I was a management consultant. I went to Deloitte and got my MBA. I had a really traditional path, like Harvard's, in the corporate world. Sam's.

Shaan Puri

all about the pedigrees yeah I hate it I don't care if sam's like harvard okay I'm in

Julia Cheek

Yeah, there are definitely some interesting ties that turned me on to being an entrepreneur when I was there. But certainly, I was really on the corporate path and then had this idea when I was working at MoneyGram. I left my job to pursue it, and I can confidently say that 100% of the people who know me thought, "This is definitely gonna fail."

Shaan Puri

there's no

Julia Cheek

way it's gonna work

Sam Parr

so what's the company do

Julia Cheek

Yeah, so when I was working at MoneyGram five years ago, I had a bunch of unexplained health symptoms. This is super common, which you hear from women in their late twenties and thirties. They experience chronic fatigue, aches, and pains, and they're not taken seriously by doctors. I went to five or six different doctors with good health insurance, and each of them ran different blood tests. I never got my results. I paid over $2,500 out of pocket, and nothing material showed up or was communicated to me.

Shaan Puri

what do you mean you never got your results like you personally didn't receive it I personally didn't receive it

Julia Cheek

Or even if they called me, like I missed the call. Nobody ever called. They said, "We'll call you if anything's abnormal." Well, like, what does that mean? You tested a hundred different things. Just because something's not totally out of whack doesn't mean there's not interesting or useful information there. So, I sat down and I looked at the health insurance landscape. I thought, "Man, people are going to have to start paying for all this in a more meaningful way than we are today." I'm at least confident that my cohort of women, between the ages of 25 and 45, can't get the testing that they need, right? And I think I can solve that. So, it really started out, honestly, not that it wasn't a big vision, but it was a little bit like, if you think about the first group you're solving a problem for, that's what we launched for. So today, we have 35 different tests on Everlywell.com, on Amazon, Target, CVS, Kroger. We work with Humana and we offer consumer-initiated testing for everything from STI testing, heart health, food sensitivity, etcetera.

Sam Parr

basically is it every test

Julia Cheek

It's like 90% of common test coverage from what you would get from the doctor. I've raised over $50,000,000 from...

Sam Parr

50s

Julia Cheek

We received funding from 50 venture capitalists from the West and East Coast. This was after, obviously, having gone through three rounds of clawing my way through funding. Then suddenly, things did get easier. We actually grew from $0 to $41,000,000 in sales.

Shaan Puri

last

Julia Cheek

year in our 3rd year in operation

Shaan Puri

is that okay no coronavirus but fish milk

Julia Cheek

No coronavirus. Yeah, no for the 40 million, especially for the healthcare entrepreneur. We have to learn not to...

Shaan Puri

do that we are gonna talk about coronavirus do you

Sam Parr

guys sell coronavirus test

Shaan Puri

yeah you know

Julia Cheek

If we did, I think I wouldn't be here right now. I'd probably be doing something else. But I'm hopeful. There's progress, as we learned today from Gilead and a couple of other companies. I'm hopeful someone is close on it. So, no, we don't have that, unfortunately.

Sam Parr

are those one time purchases the 40,000,000,000

Julia Cheek

No, it's... I mean, it's a combination of new customer acquisition and repeat business. We have a really healthy repeat business because a lot of our tests are things like cholesterol, which is not recurring.

Shaan Puri

that's what

Julia Cheek

I mean, it's not recurring. We do have enterprise contracts that are recurring, right? For Medicare, right? But it's a mix of what I would call one-time repeat and then actual recurring contracts. There are challenges; there's good and bad. I think when you have a one-time heavy business upfront, you have to build a good set of unit economics from the get-go so that you're not just optimizing on this promise of payback, right? So that's been good for us. On the other hand, we've had to be super, super disciplined in a way that I think some consumer brands haven't been.

Shaan Puri

Right, so you're based out of Austin. You do this D to C [direct-to-consumer] at home. Yes, you test that, and then it gets sent to a partner lab. They analyze it, and you get the full report. It's like, "Here's everything." Here's what's interesting about this: you can share it. It's like the way that it should be. If you didn't even have to invent this, if you just asked a layperson, you're like, "How should this work?"

Julia Cheek

work right

Shaan Puri

That's the description, and then you just made that happen in real life. The other thing that's interesting is you were on *Shark Tank*.

Julia Cheek

I was yes

Shaan Puri

as a fan of reality tv me and sam both watched the challenge probably the trashiest reality show

Sam Parr

well today's the season finale of the netflix

Shaan Puri

1 of the circle

Sam Parr

no the one where they get married after living in a room

Shaan Puri

love is blind oh yeah but did it all come out already didn't they just release it

Sam Parr

it's today today no

Shaan Puri

I'm at episode 3 of that one good show

Sam Parr

it's pretty awesome pretty

Shaan Puri

good show have you seen it

Julia Cheek

I haven't seen it yet

Shaan Puri

do you know the premise I do

Julia Cheek

know the premise they put people in rooms and they don't see each other

Shaan Puri

yeah so it's

Julia Cheek

actually about a terrible discussion oh they have to get married

Shaan Puri

I missed that part where you just get cut off from the show. You don't even get eliminated "Survivor" style; they just edit you out. You're just not shown ever again if you didn't propose. So what ends up happening is you're 10 days behind a wall. You talk to this person, and you're speed dating basically behind a wall, pretending. You're kind of deciding who you like. Then someone proposes through the wall. They're like, "Can you come close to the wall, please? I'm on a knee now, and I want to ask you to marry me." But the thing is, I thought that's where the show would end. Then they put them in the real world together and say, "Alright, you're going to get married in 30 days and see what happens." Okay, interesting.

Julia Cheek

okay

Shaan Puri

good job netflix cheers who are you

Sam Parr

asking her about

Shaan Puri

**Shark Tank**—tell me about how it came about. You applied many times. One time, how did you get on?

Julia Cheek

Yeah, so *Shark Tank* was... honestly, I am a huge fan of the show. I also am a huge fan of my own experience, and that's not something I think everyone has to say. But I always tell people, I think it can be a really game-changing thing for entrepreneurs if you do it the right way. It is a lot of freaking work... a ton of work.

Sam Parr

once you're on

Shaan Puri

or before you're on

Julia Cheek

before you're on

Shaan Puri

okay

Julia Cheek

So, I would say, like, we aired in November of 2017. Good, because how do you... I know it was like a 9-month process. I would say that the year of 2017, 80% of my year was just shocking-related things. So, we applied. It's a 50-page written application that you do.

Shaan Puri

oh my gosh oh

Julia Cheek

It's no... it is printed and written out. I tried to use a PDF editor. I mean, it was like, yeah, you know, it was like a decade ago technology.

Shaan Puri

so write this whole thing out

Julia Cheek

I wrote this whole thing out. I will be honest; I was a finalist at TechCrunch Battlefield in 2016. The producers scouted from the Battlefield company, so they reached out. It's kind of like if you're thinking about *American Idol*, maybe, which I would never be. You either can get contacted and sort of put in the front to audition, or you kind of blind audition or wait in line. So, it's not that I had necessarily a better chance, but I did get shortcut into the application process. I filled that out; the application probably takes 40 hours. Then, you have to sign all their contracts and basically sign your identity and image away to ABC.

Shaan Puri

for in perpetuity but and

Julia Cheek

Then from there, you do a voice interview with producers. You also do a video interview as part of the application. After that, there's another video interview for your pitch. From there, the producers work with you for about four months on: what is your story, what is your brand, and what is your script. Ultimately, it's your... what I think people don't realize on.

Shaan Puri

shark tank story

Julia Cheek

It's a human interest story. You are there to make good reality TV, but it is your decision. The producers will help you and advise you, but this is your gig. It's up to you to decide how you want to display yourself and who you want to be on TV. However, they can then decide whether or not to air you.

Shaan Puri

do you still remember your opening because you probably drilled it like a 1000 times

Julia Cheek

I did, I did. And I will tell you, I thought I was really good and comfortable at public speaking. Then I did this, and I was like, "Okay, I was really bad." Now, I feel comfortable. Yeah, I made money from that. I did. So, I signed—or I shook on—the largest deal ever for a female entrepreneur in terms of valuation. So, yeah, with Lori Greiner, she is on board. She's been tremendous.

Shaan Puri

because of qvc or what

Julia Cheek

For me, it was really at the time we had no brick-and-mortar retail presence. I knew that creating a product that was actually accessible and ubiquitous was a priority for us. In hindsight, that's actually been a good move for us. I felt that she would be invaluable in helping us to get there.

Sam Parr

into some

Julia Cheek

Of those stores, yeah, she really helped with packaging and branding. She made something that's accessible when you're trying to sell a testing kit, where either people think it's a DNA kit, right?

Shaan Puri

or

Julia Cheek

they have no idea what it is right being able to differentiate that when you have like 10 seconds to grab some

Sam Parr

of the I'm trying to check this you're right

Julia Cheek

so the deal we shook on was what do you

Sam Parr

say shook

Shaan Puri

because there's the shaker there's

Julia Cheek

the shake and then there's the actual deal

Sam Parr

there's the

Julia Cheek

I can't disclose the actual deal. However, it was different. Yes, it was better for the company and probably better for Lori as well.

Shaan Puri

Honestly, why does the deal change? Normally, there's due diligence, and they might change it, probably for their favor. You're saying it went better for you guys?

Julia Cheek

It went better for us. So, there was a... and it's very case by case. So, what happens after the show is I'll...

Shaan Puri

call you one second

Sam Parr

I wanna

Shaan Puri

Make sure you project because your audio... what you're saying is great. I want to make sure we're getting it all set up. My audio paranoia.

Julia Cheek

we're here

Shaan Puri

just make sure you're talk louder than you're comfortable talking

Julia Cheek

So, after you shake on the deal on the show, a fair number of those deals— I think it's something like over half—never come to fruition at all. Then, another quarter or so actually change, and another quarter get done at the terms that you shook on. Screwed? Yeah, I think it screws these... each shark has a different approach. So, like, they're totally unique. Then you go into their management company, right? So you're going into Mark Cuban's companies or Lori Greiner's companies. I don't know what each shark's process is, but I can say Lori's was super fair. They go through very detailed diligence on everything. But, you know, what the show actually does is diligence on you. They have a venture analyst on board, so they run diligence on you before you ever pitch.

Sam Parr

what was your valuation that you guys agreed

Julia Cheek

on I I pitched I I my valuation was 20,000,000 post money

Sam Parr

and how much did she invest

Julia Cheek

So, that was pretty hard work. It was a line of credit deal at an 8% interest rate for 5% of the company.

Shaan Puri

And was it like, you know, "Hey, deal offer on the spot," or did you have this long pause where you're like, "Can I think and write this down?"

Julia Cheek

Well, in my case, every shark was out. I actually knew I wanted either Lori or Mark Cuban. I was really excited about it, and I really did want to work with her. It was a good deal. So, I actually sat on the show because you're supposed to negotiate. I said, "Because it makes good TV."

Shaan Puri

yes good enough

Julia Cheek

And so I said, "I know I'm supposed to negotiate, but I want to take this deal." So I didn't. You do have options. It's really what you see. Like, you can exit, you can talk about it with your partner, or you can call a lifeline or a friend. They may edit that out or whatever else, but you can take a minute to think about it.

Shaan Puri

What's something people don't see or don't realize that is different from having actually gone through it versus watching it? What's one difference?

Julia Cheek

I think people know it's edited. I don't think people realize how long the actual filming time can be. From when you walk in and walk out, they edit it down to about 5 minutes. So, it varies, but mine was probably an hour, and they edited it to 7 minutes. Some people's footage has gone on for up to 2 to 3 hours, while others are around 15 minutes. I think, you know, it's edited to a degree, but I don't think you realize how much discussion actually happens.

Shaan Puri

when you're pitching

Sam Parr

her own money

Julia Cheek

she is investing her own money always

Sam Parr

so then does she have a fund or is it literally just hers

Julia Cheek

it is in a fund structure but it's her capital it's her money do you

Sam Parr

think she's worth

Julia Cheek

You know, I don't know. I will say she is a **prolific salesperson** in the sense that she has relationships with the top 3 or 4 companies from *Shark Tank*. I mean companies that have done like a quarter of a billion in sales, like **Squatty Potty**. She has a relationship with each of those companies and is invested in each of them. So, I suspect quite a bit, not to mention her own patent portfolio and the success she's had with products.

Shaan Puri

she has

Julia Cheek

a great team

Sam Parr

But do those pay cash flow? I mean, who cares if you... I mean, it's important, but if you own equity in...

Julia Cheek

yeah that business and there's not an exit

Sam Parr

yeah so I

Julia Cheek

don't know

Sam Parr

where does her cash

Shaan Puri

flow go

Julia Cheek

I don't know I don't know

Shaan Puri

I'd be great yeah I'd be great get to the bottom yeah I'd be great because I also agree with

Sam Parr

bad checks

Julia Cheek

well and I also don't know she

Shaan Puri

takes that saudi money

Julia Cheek

Each deal is different, right? So, like, she does it just like an NEVC deal is different. She's negotiating a deal with me, and that's different. I don't know what the terms are, you know, with the rest of her companies. I do know she has put all of these companies on the map, from Scrub Daddy to Squatty Potty. These companies have incredible consumer platforms now. She delivers. Yeah, I show the funny part. So, I'm telling you, I think... it seems to be actually... I don't have one, but it does seem... I mean, it does seem very popular, apparently. So, okay.

Shaan Puri

so so everly bow question for you we actually get the test how do you actually wait

Sam Parr

let me ask

Shaan Puri

one more question about shark tank and then we'll end

Sam Parr

on shark tank how much traffic did did your site get oh yeah

Julia Cheek

so we got

Shaan Puri

this is back 3

Julia Cheek

years ago it was it was november we aired

Sam Parr

them even better than that because it's more

Shaan Puri

oh yeah

Sam Parr

twitch tv more than

Julia Cheek

right and it aired the night before cyber monday it was thanksgiving weekend

Shaan Puri

it was

Julia Cheek

couldn't have been a better day my although my poor team they were wonderful

Shaan Puri

they canceled all their thanksgivings it was you know a

Julia Cheek

A lot of work, but we got about 30 times our normal traffic. We had an interesting situation; we didn't have this tremendous spike the night of in terms of purchases. However, we ended up doing about **$1,000,000** in sales, which at the time was a tremendously large number for us in like the **four days** after.

Shaan Puri

right

Julia Cheek

The show... so there's been a little bit of this interesting thing for us that I haven't heard many other companies have, which is we doubled... we doubled in that week on a run rate standpoint. Then we continued doubling the next month, and we never had that decline.

Shaan Puri

right

Julia Cheek

but we didn't have this spike in like the 3 hour. That we aired yeah

Shaan Puri

we had

Julia Cheek

a lot of traffic traffic I think like a 1000000

Sam Parr

sessions unique

Julia Cheek

Yeah, units. So, we did... I mean, we had to. At the time, we were not set up for that scale. Now, we don't even have to think about it. We’ve always been on WooCommerce, Stripe, not WooCommerce, not Shopify.

Shaan Puri

bigcommerce

Julia Cheek

We've built on it now and totally customized it. So it's not... I know, but it's one of the big ones that actually I think we should have gone to Shopify, but we didn't. Gotcha. So I shouldn't name them because it's going to sound bad.

Shaan Puri

but

Julia Cheek

shout outs to shopify yes exactly I like the pinkies listening yeah so

Shaan Puri

might be we're trying to get them all

Julia Cheek

more I was gonna say that valuation

Shaan Puri

right yeah

Julia Cheek

that right so

Shaan Puri

most of the streams on twitch great guy oh

Julia Cheek

So, yeah, we saw a really good traffic increase, but it was a very different pattern. Lori warned us about that. She said some companies sell out immediately, while others experience a slow kind of burn. That was what it was like for us, but we did not crash, which was essential.

Shaan Puri

do you do you I have

Sam Parr

a bunch of questions do you have some

Shaan Puri

I have some not about shark tank though

Sam Parr

I mean meaning to

Shaan Puri

close the track on shark tank

Sam Parr

I I know enough about

Julia Cheek

Stay tuned. There may be an upcoming thing for the group.

Shaan Puri

will come back as one of the glory children

Julia Cheek

Potentially, we are actually in 2 years. I think we're number 10 on the all-time best-selling list out of 9 seasons.

Shaan Puri

squatty potty

Julia Cheek

those socks and then squatty potty what's the socks bombas

Sam Parr

oh oh they're on there

Julia Cheek

yeah number 1

Shaan Puri

why is

Julia Cheek

that 250,000,000 in sales shit yes

Shaan Puri

I'm wearing bombas yes

Sam Parr

you have bombas yeah

Shaan Puri

but I I went on twitter and said what's the best sock money can buy when we sold the company I

Julia Cheek

people love it

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna buy unlimited of the best socks. Yeah, that was the thing I'd always told myself. That's cool. When I become a millionaire, unlimited best socks. And Bombas was like what everybody said.

Julia Cheek

do you love them

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I love them, but I need more. That's it. What you're like right now, I'm involved. Yeah, I bought the whatever, the like 60 pairs or whatever, but I think I need like 500 pairs of socks.

Sam Parr

Like laundry, you know, that's like one of the best hacks you could do. What I did was I bought... I only have one pair of underwear, but I own like 30 of them. Yeah, and one pair of socks, and I own 50 of them. Yeah, so I never match socks.

Shaan Puri

yeah it's

Sam Parr

the greatest hack ever

Shaan Puri

yes I've

Sam Parr

been doing since I was 18

Shaan Puri

should we apply okay so so I I got a question for you

Julia Cheek

so

Shaan Puri

let's say I buy the product what do I actually do at home when I take this test like physically what is this what do I have to do

Julia Cheek

So, people are often surprised by how many individuals we get to take their blood at home. But that's often what it requires. Most of our testing involves pricking your finger to draw a small sample of blood. Some tests use saliva, and some use urine. However, there's a reason why blood is typically taken at a lab: it allows for the analysis of the most number of markers and the broadest assortment of markers. Dried blood spot testing is, frankly, an old-school model.

Sam Parr

your method

Julia Cheek

Yes, Quest, LabCorp, and all of the labs have dried blood spot testing. This is nothing novel.

Shaan Puri

in lung

Julia Cheek

Just means you're pricking a finger and dropping blood onto a treated paper, right? Or a treated device. The blood is then drying.

Sam Parr

but you guys aren't doing the

Julia Cheek

we're not we're not

Sam Parr

you're a middle person

Julia Cheek

We are a middle person, which if you were a VC responding to me back in 2016, I was a marketing company.

Sam Parr

that's what I was gonna say about when

Shaan Puri

you take a bit of time

Julia Cheek

I don't take a bit of time relationship

Shaan Puri

so that's the most important part

Julia Cheek

Right, and I think, you know, it's interesting when people say, "Oh, well, you're just a middleman" or "You're just marketing." But I really view us more as... okay, the labs are our manufacturing partners. Typically, you don't buy things directly from manufacturers, right? You buy them from a brand.

Shaan Puri

who is

Sam Parr

your provider

Julia Cheek

So, we have seven different partner labs we work with. Probably the one that runs the majority of our business is PerkinElmer, which is a publicly traded life sciences company. They're huge, they're global, and they've been a really good partner to scale. They have a lot of credibility. They're the worldwide leader in dried blood spot testing, right?

Shaan Puri

So, it's been a good... is what everyone grows up wanting to be: the worldwide leader. The worldwide leader in the day.

Julia Cheek

Hey, I know, but you know what? For us in our space, and we're in the medical space, it's really important to have that stamp, especially with all the failures that...

Shaan Puri

have happened

Julia Cheek

so to

Shaan Puri

hear sam's thoughts on food allergy testing sam yes

Julia Cheek

either way I'm excited

Shaan Puri

I let's go

Sam Parr

think that a lot of them are bullshit yeah am I right or wrong or what do you

Julia Cheek

think that'd be I think it depends and and you need

Shaan Puri

we talked about this earlier

Julia Cheek

it's it's important and it's

Sam Parr

but they do every test though so

Julia Cheek

we do every test

Sam Parr

it's okay if I don't find one of them

Julia Cheek

You know, it's interesting. Well, first of all, to correct you, there's a major difference between a food allergy and celiac disease, and then a food intolerance or a food sensitivity. Food intolerance... okay, so, but just for, you know, listeners, I think it is important because even doctors just say allergy and sensitivity are the same thing.

Sam Parr

have to do the intolerance test to chiropractory

Julia Cheek

interesting yeah okay

Sam Parr

I was like I think that it sounds good but but it doesn't work

Julia Cheek

You know, it's interesting. We have become associated with food sensitivity testing in general, which has become linked to Everly Well. I suppose I'm proud of that from a brand standpoint. On the other hand, this testing has been going on for over 30 years, and there are thousands of doctors that perform both IgG and IgA testing around the U.S. Most people you talk to, if you've discussed food intolerance with them, will say, "Oh yeah, I had that done at my allergist," or "I had it done at a nutritionist," or "at my general practitioner." It has to be used in a specific context to be valuable. I do think that is why it's really important to educate people on how it should be used. It should be used with an elimination diet. It is not a be-all-end-all; it's a guidance. It is our test where we have more people quantitatively saying it's changed their lives than any other test. There is good research around it for that use. However, what there isn't good research around is saying that it diagnoses you with an allergy. It can just be used as a kind of black-and-white guidance of what you should and shouldn't eat. That's absolutely not true. I think there's a lot of misinformation. There are a lot of different types of testing, and the nomenclature gets mixed up for things that shouldn't be used for. I think it's great that Everly Well has been known as a brand for that, but honestly, we're offering a test that has been around for decades and needs to be used in the right way. If we can take the lead in educating people on what that should be, then we'll do that.

Sam Parr

what category of tests do you think are is the biggest opportunity to do

Julia Cheek

Sexual health... well, we call it sexual health, STIs. Yeah, and there are several reasons for that. Right now, our tests are too highly priced because the lab itself is expensive for us to run the tests. So we price... I mean, right now our single marker STDs are a really good price between **$39** and **$49**. It's also HSA and FSA covered, so for some people, that's a great solution. But many people, for obvious reasons, want a comprehensive test, and that test is, I think, **$201**.

Sam Parr

the leading company in the space for s what stis I think I

Julia Cheek

think stis

Sam Parr

I think they have stds

Julia Cheek

It's STIs. It's the clinical right school. Yeah, sexually transmitted infections is the correct nomenclature. We call it sexual health testing because we think that this is something people should just be proactive about. Who do I...?

Sam Parr

guess in the space for digital

Julia Cheek

for at home

Shaan Puri

yeah

Julia Cheek

it's I would say it's probably us just from branding standpoint there's a couple of companies that specialize

Sam Parr

you guys

Shaan Puri

at home I always ask wow

Julia Cheek

Which, to be clear, should tell you how under-resourced and underserved this opportunity is. Because there's a multibillion-dollar company business. Yes, this is a multibillion-dollar opportunity. I'm going to, again, if we're going to riff, lots of other people can come into this space. There's a specific company that only does sci testing, but they haven't been well funded. They've struggled. We really believe that this is not only how you can best close public health gaps, but you can also get people on board to then use testing from home over their lifetime for any other health issue as well. People don't want to go into a clinic. You don't want to go.

Shaan Puri

Right

Julia Cheek

And our solution, you actually can not only get your results, but then you can diagnose and treat through an independent physician if you have a positive result for a relevant STI that can be treated. So, it's a full-service solution. What you're looking at right now is we have a really good business, but if you look at the price sensitivity, there's a certain age group that's going to be willing to pay $2.50 to get a test versus going to a clinic and potentially doing it for free.

Sam Parr

Customers profitably on first touch, or do you hope to lose money on them on their first touch and then hopefully...?

Julia Cheek

Profitably on first touch. But that is for me. We're in Austin. I'm a first-time founder. We're building a sustainable business. We didn't go out and raise money on this premise of just negative contribution margin and then hoping to sell people later.

Shaan Puri

down the road use main channel or it

Sam Parr

by way search

Julia Cheek

Well, it depends. Search for different categories, but search has a ceiling. It does have a ceiling, even with STI testing.

Sam Parr

test online you need that shit right now

Julia Cheek

right which so so for that category certainly search is great

Shaan Puri

for us but facebook

Julia Cheek

Instagram was, for a long time, our largest acquisition channel. Both by force and by proactively moving away, we have really diversified, which has been a good move for our business.

Shaan Puri

so some tv now or what

Julia Cheek

Some TV... we've had mixed success with. We, again, because we are on this profitable unit economics from the beginning, when we can't fully measure attribution and ROI on the first purchase, sometimes it's hard for us to want to invest. So, we've had mixed success with TV, but we do believe it's important for **brand building** and **category education**.

Sam Parr

is all that 50,000,000 go into marketing spend

Julia Cheek

No, no. Engineering, product, clinical... a lot of it goes into clinical and medical affairs.

Shaan Puri

but you're not doing the clinical so what's the is it the kit making sure the kit is as robust as

Julia Cheek

You have... well, we have a regulatory and compliance team, right? That ensures that either the lab partners we're working with or new lab partners are meeting the highest quality standards. We're starting our own research studies to prove outcome data, which will take time, but we think is really important. We do have, obviously, a healthy paid marketing budget, but we're trying to hire more in-house around content, SEO, organic, and those pieces as we start to actually build out a healthy marketing engine and not just be dependent on this paid social.

Shaan Puri

right

Julia Cheek

thing that we were the last few years

Sam Parr

did you bootstrap this

Julia Cheek

no and that I think is a really you

Shaan Puri

would've if you could've

Julia Cheek

I would've if I could have it's a really important question though

Shaan Puri

go ahead

Sam Parr

said like you're a marketing company I'm like oh okay so just white label this thing

Shaan Puri

right I

Sam Parr

See it with this cute millennial pink on it and then just start buying traffic. Where's the... I mean, that's it. That's how simple it sounds.

Julia Cheek

right what were some

Shaan Puri

Of the challenges beyond, like, you know, sending traffic to the landing page and ordering this web and product.

Julia Cheek

Right, so we don't white label. We actually fully end-to-end construct and brand our kits. Really, what the lab does is run the sample; that's the goal of the lab. But there's also a really complex product from an engineering standpoint. Not only are we creating what is somewhat basic—an e-commerce site—but then a results platform that is able to communicate with a third-party physician network. It translates lab results that are often really messy and then presents that information in a meaningful way to consumers. Five years ago, that was not as easy from a user experience (UX) standpoint as it is today.

Sam Parr

so a doctor interprets all the results

Julia Cheek

an independent physician

Sam Parr

Why couldn't they do something where they just say the normal ranges and indicate if you are in range or out of range? I use WellnessFX, and they don't let us do that. They just say, "You..."

Julia Cheek

they also use a doctor

Sam Parr

oh shit

Julia Cheek

Really, it's for regulatory reasons. It's to make sure that you basically have a doctor in the process of saying, "Okay, I've made sure that this test is appropriate for you." I've made sure that if there are critical values, so for example, if you took our STI test and you had an abnormal result, a physician would call you and talk you through the next steps. They would also offer you a telemedicine consult.

Sam Parr

yeah so that wouldn't be

Shaan Puri

right

Julia Cheek

And so, there are checks and balances in place. You don't always have to interact with the doctor if it's just a normal result, but there are certain levels of escalation. It is similar to Oneus FX, except it's home kits. Oneus FX really kind of stayed on the quantified sulfur brand and never was able to scale.

Sam Parr

that business totally fizzled

Shaan Puri

yeah well it's fx yeah

Julia Cheek

it's still out there

Sam Parr

it's alright though yeah I use it but it's not like that successful

Julia Cheek

But it's interesting. I mean, there have been a lot of companies, many especially after *Shark Tank*. I would put it in the two dozen range that launch on Instagram, create a pretty logo, have a kit, and then about 6 to 12 months later, you never hear from them again. Right? And it does speak to the power of brand marketing and experience. I mean, our NPS is a 60. We have a world-class customer base. I think in this case, first mover advantage really helped us in the category. It doesn't cause us to keep winning, but it mattered a lot here.

Shaan Puri

I'm not an nps I'm not super savvy with nps but is 60 good I thought 60 would be sort

Sam Parr

It all depends on what you compare it to. If you have to compare it to others that are similar to you, then yeah, sure, sure, sure.

Shaan Puri

if you're

Sam Parr

a bank and you have a 60 nps you're the best thing

Julia Cheek

on earth so if you're

Sam Parr

a 60 but you're like a movie then like have

Shaan Puri

yeah

Julia Cheek

Exactly. World class would be like 80 or above, right? So certainly, it's below that. But I think how we view it is we look at other healthcare services, and most are around a 0 to a negative.

Shaan Puri

don't measure

Julia Cheek

Right, right. And so we feel good about it. Our product rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars on average. We do look at that and say, "Okay, this has to be qualified." It's a very favorable VC metric, one that I think has sometimes limited actionability or limited data-driven decision-making around what to do with it. But we like it in terms of saying, "Okay, just benchmark where..."

Shaan Puri

are we

Julia Cheek

just benchmark right

Shaan Puri

so when you were starting this and something my sister was managing it so my wife was managing it

Julia Cheek

right

Shaan Puri

And you have this idea. You're sitting at Double 8, and you have this personal experience where you know you do this test, and you're like, "This is crappy." That's what I'll call the "stated story." Every entrepreneur has the stated story, which is like, "I was trying to get a test, and I was so frustrated, and therefore I decided to create a solution." Behind the stated story is more of the real story. Our audience is very entrepreneurial, and they feel this on a daily basis. They have these ideas, but they also have doubts. They want to vet the idea. So tell me, from the moment you had the idea, those first couple of weeks, what was going through your mind? What were you doing? And what got you over the hump where you thought, "Okay, I'm actually going to do this"?

Julia Cheek

Yeah, I think this is important because it is the real story. Right? So I'm like, "Oh, I just had this idea," and I... you.

Shaan Puri

know it's not a lie

Julia Cheek

We moved to Austin in a U-Haul. All those things are true, but there are a few things my husband, our dog, and I think are important. It's not like I woke up one day and said, "Oh, I'm going to go do this crazy thing." I did go to Harvard, and I was there during a weird time. It was during the recession in 2009 when everybody in my class and the class above me were becoming entrepreneurs. So, you had Rent the Runway, Birchbox, and Gilt. A few years before, there was Stitch Fix and Oscar. I had two unicorn founders in my section alone, and at the time, there was GrabTaxi out of Korea.

Shaan Puri

grab's huge

Julia Cheek

Who was... oh, Coupang, both in my section, right? So at the time, it didn't feel that unique, but I was being exposed to this day in and day out. I had this kind of roadmap for how to go about it once I started thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. The reality is, I probably spent two years on the weekends, in my spare time, not making any money, but going through different industries, different business models, advising different companies on their business plans, and seeing what would really stick. Yeah, well, it's really safe, I do, but it's really like... I look back, it's kind of boring. It's like travel. I don't know, I will send it, but it's... it's like I would be very literal in how I would go about evaluating all these ideas. Honestly, Everly Well was probably the craziest and the worst of the ideas for me to go and actually do, given my background.

Sam Parr

what were the other ones

Julia Cheek

No, I mean it was like travel, luxury resale—something like what The RealReal is doing. I mean, house decorating, curation online, like all kinds of different spaces where there's probably opportunity in any of those if you do it the right way. House.

Shaan Puri

like for 2 for 2 for 2 for

Julia Cheek

2 for 2. To be clear, I don't know if I took an idea from them or if I actually came up with it. But, you know, the match with Everlywell was not necessarily one where you'd be like, "Oh shit!" It was not obvious. However, it was the one where I realized really early on that this is a decade-long thing.

Shaan Puri

right

Julia Cheek

so if it actually works you're in it for

Shaan Puri

a long time right right right right you have

Julia Cheek

to be passionate

Shaan Puri

and have you do this exercise and sort of started it now

Julia Cheek

No, it was a couple of years. I mean, until I had this health experience in 2015, and then I kind of matched the two together. So, this was early 2015. I ended up incorporating the company on June 18, 2015, and then I left my job in August.

Shaan Puri

Did you think of yourself as an entrepreneur? You said you were on the corporate path. It sounds like you had dabbled in the idea of being an entrepreneur.

Julia Cheek

I had dabbled. Both my parents are lawyers, and I didn't realize that being an entrepreneur was actually a career choice. It’s a path that you could become good at, which didn’t necessarily mean financial success. You could be a serial entrepreneur and actually make that a career. I also, frankly, didn't have a lot of confidence. So, it was interesting at Harvard because I kind of looked around and thought, "I think I'm just as smart as all these people who are really founding successful companies."

Shaan Puri

right

Julia Cheek

So maybe I can do it too. I honestly did it just to see if I could. I never truly could even imagine having made $1,000,000 in sales. I'm not sure I necessarily thought about what it would look like today.

Shaan Puri

just thought it was a really big opportunity and something that I wanted to see if I could go

Julia Cheek

Do you want me to provide the formatted transcription? If so, please provide the raw transcript again.

Shaan Puri

well I

Julia Cheek

think that's what people

Sam Parr

Started as like scientists or something like that, or they're in the industry, right? I think there's a weakness. You have to kind of be a marketer first or...

Julia Cheek

you don't

Sam Parr

have to be but

Julia Cheek

if it's a consumer brand

Sam Parr

you you have to have that part of the deal you gotta be aggressive you have

Shaan Puri

to you have to be aggressive you have to be aggressive you have to be aggressive at as you

Sam Parr

were you were an outsider right

Julia Cheek

in this industry completely

Sam Parr

What opportunities have you uncovered where you tell people, "Man, just so you know, there's this huge problem in this industry I think could be solved for?"

Shaan Puri

what other adjacent things

Julia Cheek

can you observe

Sam Parr

Because I'm a total outsider, but when I hear about these hypotheses, I'm like... if you can solve a handful of problems, it's so easy to crush it.

Julia Cheek

Price transparency may seem obvious, and I think there are a lot of companies in healthcare that talk about it, but they don't actually implement it. Even the digital startups trying to achieve this can't accurately tell you what something will cost in healthcare. So, we just go outside of insurance so that we can actually inform people about the costs. However, if you were able to do this in a really big way and say, "Hey, we can accurately tell you your cost commitment for this service," I think you would crush it.

Shaan Puri

and I what would it be in the insurance system

Julia Cheek

I don't work within insurance, but I think there is a much, much larger growing acceptance of consumers who are happy to pay for something in healthcare as long as they know what they're going to get and what it costs.

Sam Parr

right

Julia Cheek

And so, I don't know that it has to be within insurance. You also have this HSA and FSA space. That's HSA plans and then what they're using those dollars for. I think there's an interesting play there. What does that look like?

Sam Parr

what's an example of who you started

Julia Cheek

of a company

Shaan Puri

fraud addict yeah oh

Sam Parr

that's okay what we do

Julia Cheek

Man, if you could be... so if you had physicians and you said, "Okay, I'm going to have you pay $50 anytime you see the physician," we're going to own a pharmacy. Any of your drugs are going to be transparently priced, and you can't use a coupon. Everything is the same price, and it's all generic. Then, if you say, "Okay, and I want to be able to get testing done," they can tell you the pricing on that. But here's the problem with it: you have to actually own the supply chain and the services chain. You have to be vertically integrated to do this because otherwise, that's a nightmare. I know, but my idea is you almost build a system external to the system, right? You can do this at affordable pricing. The reason healthcare is so expensive is because you're adding cost into the system through the insurers, right? Those contracts... and when you get the bills, you're getting the bill for whatever they didn't want to cover. But that was intended; like the provider billed the insurance company what they had hoped the insurance company would pay, not at all what it cost.

Sam Parr

what else

Julia Cheek

in health care

Shaan Puri

health care it could be whatever

Sam Parr

the big issue that you discovered all the way for example when we started our company we were like paying freelancers for

Shaan Puri

this yes well I didn't know how hard that was yeah so

Julia Cheek

like 3 years ago 2 years ago on on

Shaan Puri

black friday we

Julia Cheek

Had a bunch of compliance limits with our banking system on spending in Facebook. So I was like, "Gosh, I wish there was a product where you could actually get a cash advance for social media advertising." Now, we're big enough to where we don't have to use a product like Abraxas.

Shaan Puri

we just

Sam Parr

started that

Julia Cheek

but

Shaan Puri

or like clearbank

Julia Cheek

Well, like Clearbank would do it right. So, at that time, if those solutions had been around, we absolutely would have been able to take advantage of them. Then, of course, they came out and I was like, "Oh, that would have been a really good idea." So, yeah, we really hit a bunch of challenges with that, and it can really bring down businesses. Then I think, you know, other places are how do you make... as you think about doing a startup, I mean, the amount of time we spend on contracts, HR, and legal, and templatizing... I mean, there's so much cost in the system that I would love to take out of it. In healthcare and in highly regulated industries, it's really hard to do things quick, dirty, and cheap, and it's unwise.