Joe Rogan Offers Vaccine Expert $100,000 To Debate on His Show (#467)

Sam Parr

You wanna know what I am? Pro a freak show! I love a good freak show. Like, when people start fighting in the middle of the street or there's a car wreck, you know I'm stopping. I'm gonna ask them to pull that wreck a little closer so I could see. Like, "Hey police, can you fill me in on the backstory? What's going on?" I love this!

Joe Rogan

what's going

Shaan Puri

on fellas what what do we got here

Sam Parr

We're live! What's going on? How are you? What do you think? I guess this is the first time we've talked since "Dear Dick."

Shaan Puri

Since you moved into a small woman's bedroom or something, what do you... where are you?

Sam Parr

I'm visiting family for a month in Brooklyn, and I've had to rent a place. It's impossible finding monthly rent, like a three-month rental. It's very hard to find, so we used Airbnb, and it's the best I can do.

Shaan Puri

alright

Sam Parr

how's it look does it look like victorian or something

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it looks like... I feel like my sister had this little princess bed growing up, so it reminds me of that. What you got today? You got a... I can see you're eager for something. What do you have?

Sam Parr

I'm eager for something, and let me preface this by saying I'm not a political guy. I'm not really conservative, I'm not really liberal, I'm not pro-vaccine, and I'm not anti-vaccine.

Shaan Puri

like I'm not I'm not liberal I'm not conservative I'm best described as aggressive

Sam Parr

I'm really... I like, not only do I just not care, it's the thing. But you wanna know what? I am pro a freak show. I love a good freak show! Like when people start fighting in the middle of the street or there's a car wreck, you know I'm stopping. I'm gonna ask them to pull that wreck a little closer so I could see. Like, "Hey police, can you fill me in on the backstory? What's going on?" Like, I love this.

Shaan Puri

what's going on fellas what what do we got here

Sam Parr

When I flew here, I downloaded TV on my YouTube app. It was 3 episodes of [Cox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox_(TV_series)). That's the type of guy I am.

Shaan Puri

so what's caught your eye what's the freak show that's caught your eye

Sam Parr

So basically, this Joe Rogan and Kennedy thing... Here's the background. Robert F. Kennedy, you know, he's Kennedy Junior. I don't know what his acronym is. He needs a good one, like...

Shaan Puri

r rfk junior

Sam Parr

RFK Jr. Is that it? So basically, this guy... I actually saw him talk a couple of times because I went through an obsession with the Kennedy family. He's Robert Kennedy's son, who is JFK's brother. So he's JFK's nephew. He's running for president now, and he's been doing the podcast circuit. He went on "All In" and then he recently went on Joe Rogan. I don't even know all the things that he said because I don't really care that much, but he said a lot of things that could be categorized as anti-vaccine. But here's what happened—this is the cool part. There's this famous professor and kind of famous vaccine guy who's been tweeting all of his opinions and everything. He tweeted out that he says, "Spotify has stopped even sort of trying to stem Joe Rogan's vaccine misinformation. It's really awful. From all the online attacks I'm receiving after this podcast, it's just absurd, and it's clear many people believe this nonsense." Now, here's where it gets interesting. Joe Rogan is the type of guy who doesn't normally respond to this type of stuff. He seems like he's got thick skin; he doesn't really get bothered by this. But on the same day, he replied, and he goes, "Peter, if you claim what RFK Jr. said is misinformation, I'm offering you $100,000 to the charity of your choice if you're willing to come onto the pod and debate him on my show with no time limit." From there, it snowballed. So now it's up to $2,600,000 from other people. Bill Ackman put up $150,000, Dave Rubin $100,000, Patrick Bet-David $100,000, and I think even Andrew Tate is now offering $500,000. So now...

Shaan Puri

Jason Calacanis is coming in with a hard $10K, trying to slip that in and say, "I'm with you. Put me down for a... put me down for a buck."

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, here's the thing. I was thinking about this. I'm like, should I hop in on this and just say some number? Like, who's this? Can I get...?

Shaan Puri

who's collecting from these people no one's collecting

Sam Parr

Yeah, how can I insert this, and how can I insert myself into this situation? But now it's $2,600,000 to get this guy on the show, and I think he said so far that he's not going to do it. I just thought, this is awesome! I love a good freak show. I think that we actually have a presidential candidate coming to our pod soon. I don't know if you know this yet, but I've said...

Sam Parr

it up

Shaan Puri

don't tell me I'd love to be surprised yeah I love a good surprise

Sam Parr

Guy, he started a pharmaceutical company. His name's Vivek, and he DM'd me like 6 or 12 months ago saying he was going to run for president. I laughed at it... well, I didn't laugh at it; I just didn't even respond, which is worse.

Shaan Puri

You know what I’d love to do? Because I think that guy's kind of interesting, but I think what would be more interesting is if we had, because he's kind of, let's say, an upstart candidate or whatever. Like, he's not the favorite; he's not the leading guy. I would love it if we had two of the upstart candidates come on at the same time so we could debate them. It's actually kind of boring when you have one candidate come on and they just kind of monologue their piece for a very long time. I've seen a bunch of these guys go on podcasts, and frankly, it's kind of boring when that happens. I would love to have like the most pipsqueak debate of all time. It's like, yeah, us moderating who don't know anything about politics, not knowing the candidates, and they're only like half a percent in the polls. And we're just like, "This is the showdown!" $100 donated to charity.

Sam Parr

What's the question going to be? Like, "What's your opinion on car crashes?" We don't know anything. Like, do you like websites?

Shaan Puri

ending of breaking bad good or a little underwhelming

Sam Parr

yeah like what yeah

Sam Parr

call your wife right now call your wife

Shaan Puri

right now I wanna talk to her

Sam Parr

I wanna see what she's got to say about you

Sam Parr

Dude, like, we don't know anything. But last time, what was the Asian guy who ran last year who said he loved math?

Sam Parr

andrew yang yeah dude andrew did he just did

Shaan Puri

he run and say I love math I mean that's just like

Sam Parr

I think that was like an implosion. It was like "Make Math Great Again." I thought that's what it was. But he messaged me also, cool actually, a year... well, he messaged me before one of our events in Tulsa County. He's like, "Hey, I'm gonna run for president. Can I come talk?" And I was like, he...

Shaan Puri

wanted you to be vp

Sam Parr

I was like, "Dude, you're gonna make me look stupid by some crazy guy saying he's gonna run for president." You're like that guy on the street who holds up a sign, you know, that says, "Aliens are coming." I can't associate with that. Then it turns out he kind of made a good run. So this time, I was like, "I have to take this at least a little seriously." And so that's why we have to have Vivek on. But yeah, what if we're gonna have two guys being like...

Shaan Puri

comms

Sam Parr

or dot gov yeah

Shaan Puri

"Just ask them about their workout routines. We're gonna compare you on things that we value in other men." So, you know, like here's a situation: Person breaks into your house, and we just see how they react.

Sam Parr

And the reason I'm bringing this up is I'm not one of these guys that says, "Oh, like..." I think Jason Calacanis said this: he's like, "Podcasts are gonna shape the next presidential election."

Shaan Puri

He says the next president will be decided off of a podcast or something ridiculous like that. Let me... let me... let me let...

Sam Parr

me let me I'm

Shaan Puri

Not gonna... By the way, do we have a little beef with Jason Calacanis? He's kinda sliding into our mentions here. He's coming in a little hot, I gotta say. I like Jason Calacanis, but if he'd like some internet beef, I would happily be the recipient of some internet beef.

Sam Parr

yeah yeah you're the chef of internet beef

Shaan Puri

let's do this grass fed internet beef I mean sign me up

Sam Parr

I like Jason too. I've only hung out with him a couple of times, and he's always been nice to me. But he's been nice to me in a *rude uncle* type of way, where it's like...

Shaan Puri

pat you on the head give me a compliment

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah he's like

Sam Parr

oh that podcast you have it's really great I think it's precious

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah you know

Sam Parr

what I mean like he's like it's

Shaan Puri

Like, yeah, Jason said he loved my startup, but then he said I was cute at the end. Yeah, what's up with that?

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so, for the sake of entertainment, I'm happy to call him out.

Shaan Puri

Well, I want to do two things. First, on your birthday, I tweeted out a little something. He came into it, and I tweeted out a thing saying, "Happy birthday to..." I made up a bunch of nicknames like "the Vanilla Gorilla," "the Long Arm of the Law," and "the 2% Milk himself, Sam Parr." I gave you a little shout-out like that, just freestyling. He replies with the thinking face emoji, as if to say, "What the hell is this? What does this mean?" Then, someone mentioned, "Oh, I think he thinks you stole his shtick from All In," where he gave them nicknames like "the Sultan of Science" and "the Queen of Quinoa," whatever, right?

Sam Parr

is that adjacent calcanist trademark yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah I was like oh oh yeah you think you started nickname

Sam Parr

Can I nickname it, like, "Turning Left"? Is that a thing? Can we trademark "Blue"?

Shaan Puri

yeah ridiculous

Sam Parr

that's a little weird

Shaan Puri

So yeah, I do think he pats us on the head and thinks he's creep[y]. But then there's another hilarious Jason Calacanis moment I gotta say, from Twitter. I just replied and said, "All in: billionaires talking about billionaire shit. MFM: millionaires talking about millionaire shit." You know, I just... that's a description. So people liked it and then...

Sam Parr

but someone someone said except jason

Shaan Puri

they go oh you they go all in 3 billionaires and their friend jason

Sam Parr

I was like okay

Shaan Puri

That's a good burn. And then he came back and said, "You know, a bottom five lamest thing you could say." He goes, "More like 1 billionaire and 3 centimillionaires."

Sam Parr

whatever

Shaan Puri

just roll

Sam Parr

up the punches man

Sam Parr

roll up

Shaan Puri

The punches say "centimillionaire." That's like... I mean, if I had to insult someone with $100,000,000, I would call them a centimillionaire.

Sam Parr

yeah like 511a half exactly

Shaan Puri

Is that what that is? Got big 5'11" energy. I do want to challenge, by the way. I want to challenge the All In podcast to a poker game. I will play all of the All In podcast heads up in a game of poker. So, I will play them heads up. I'll put up $100,000. If 2 out of the 4 beat me, they get $100,000. But if I beat 3 or 4 out of the 4, I get $100,000 from them. They each only have to put up $25,000, and I'll play them heads up. We'll livestream the whole thing.

Sam Parr

thing win

Shaan Puri

We'll livestream the whole thing, and I will go in order from centimillionaire to billionaire. So I'll play Jason first. I'll make quick work of Jason, and then I'll go Friedberg, Sachs, and then Chamath at the end because I think they think Chamath is the best player out of them.

Sam Parr

so

Sam Parr

are you good I mean I I I know nothing about poker are you good

Shaan Puri

I'm better than them that's all they need to know

Sam Parr

I mean, they named their pod after it. I mean, they're basing a little bit of their brand on that.

Shaan Puri

My nickname is **"The Nuts,"** and if you know about poker, you know what that means. So, we have our own nicknames for ourselves. Alright, let's get back to it. I don't know why I got on this Katz sales rant.

Sam Parr

We could wrap up this little part, but I'm not one to say... I'm not going to make an absolute statement like Jason did. However, I do think that we are going to see that this little freak show that's going on right now is awesome for RFK.

Shaan Puri

beneficial to him for sure

Sam Parr

I

Sam Parr

For sure, and I think we'll see a little bit more of podcasting. Here's why: I think that this is inside baseball. A lot of people don't realize this, but The Hustle is now read by, let's say, 3.5 to 4 million people. I have 250,000 followers on Twitter. I think that's precious. Sean, you had 250,000. I've got 250,000 followers on Twitter, and you have 350,000. The podcast, let's just say, has 100,000 listeners per episode. The podcast consistently outpunches in terms of engagement. All of those things, I would say, would you agree with that?

Shaan Puri

In terms of people who actually trust and will take action on things, yes.

Sam Parr

Yeah, 100%. I do think that for people who don't realize, or who aren't in the game, they don't realize that podcasts have significantly more influence over people than I think any other medium that I've used or that I have access to. I don't have a big YouTube channel.

Shaan Puri

I think YouTube will do the same, but yeah, podcasts definitely do. I agree with you; I think podcasts are a bit of a sleeper still, depending on who you are. I think people are shocked at how effective podcasts are at swaying opinion. I want to point out a couple of other things. Some people are saying, "Oh, Joe Rogan, you're just doing this self-serving thing. You're just trying to have this freak show, this debate, to pump your ratings." I would say that's not true at all. Look at somebody's actions, not their words. Joe turned down having Trump on his podcast. He turned down having other presidential candidates on his podcast that he thought would just be promotional or not a good conversation, or bring unwanted attention to the pod. Saying no to Trump is saying no to ratings, especially in the last election when he was on the rise. He just said, "You know, I'd rather not. I'm not sure I'm the right person to moderate that debate." He also mentioned, "I don't think that they would be truthful. I think they would just talk talking points, you know, if I had Hillary or Biden on." So, I'm not sure that would be a good thing. I think you can't really say that Joe's just doing this for ratings. I think Joe actually thinks RFK is worth discussing. He says, "Alright, if you're going to say this guy's full of shit, come explain why and let him argue with you, and let's see where it lands." That's the first thing. The second thing is, have you seen this guy, this scientist?

Sam Parr

I saw what he looks like. He looks like, I would think, a sign. I mean, he just looks like a nerd, right? Like an older... yeah.

Shaan Puri

he looks like a guy like cosplaying neil degrasse tyson so he so check out this clip

Joe Rogan

Do you take care of your immune system in other ways? Do you take probiotics? Are you cautious about your diet?

Peter Hotez

I'm not as cautious about my diet as I should be I'm a junk foodaholic

Joe Rogan

that seems ridiculous for someone who works with health

Peter Hotez

yeah yeah what's going on with you man sometimes man

Sam Parr

I just don't get it right

Peter Hotez

so you living large we call it

Joe Rogan

like that mouth pleasure so much you're willing to sacrifice a little bit

Shaan Puri

of health

Peter Hotez

yeah I you know I you know I I can I have to concede that's the case

Joe Rogan

do you take vitamins

Peter Hotez

I don't take vitamins

Shaan Puri

really

Peter Hotez

yeah wow I think they

Joe Rogan

What about essential fatty acids? They are great for your brain. Fish oil and all these different things are fantastic.

Peter Hotez

I'm not gonna I'm not gonna argue with you

Joe Rogan

you got

Peter Hotez

you you got you got it hand you got you got

Sam Parr

it over

Sam Parr

me yeah

Joe Rogan

you gotta listen but it would you would have a much better argument though

Peter Hotez

you're you're making my wife stay here

Joe Rogan

if you're taking care of yourself a 100% instead of just outside

Peter Hotez

your still need your vaccines

Joe Rogan

I'm sure you do but vaccines aren't gonna prevent cancer

Peter Hotez

no that's true

Joe Rogan

We gotta get you healthy, buddy. Yeah, you can't be pushing only chemicals and injectable forms to facilitate health.

Peter Hotez

fair enough yeah they're not chemicals they're vaccines

Joe Rogan

oh I'm sorry what's in them what I mean it's some sort of chemical no

Peter Hotez

no they're antigens right

Shaan Puri

they're they're

Sam Parr

because they're fluid

Peter Hotez

mac macromolecules

Joe Rogan

what's the liquid

Peter Hotez

typically it would be saline or you know saltwater

Shaan Puri

And so, it's him on Rogan. That's the same scientist, I believe, on Rogan and in the past.

Sam Parr

peter his name is peter

Sam Parr

I think

Shaan Puri

Zarhautz is talking about vaccines. He mentions that he is very pro-vaccine. He says something about vaccines, and Joe responds, "Yeah, but you know, not everybody feels good about putting chemicals in their body." Zarhautz replies, "Oh, it's not chemicals; these are antigens, these are cells." Joe counters, "Okay, well, you know what I mean. It's just putting something else in your body. Are you taking care of the main things?" He then asks Peter, "Do you do other things to be healthy?" Peter is kind of circular in shape, and he responds, "Well, you know, I dabble in junk food." Joe starts pressing him, which I've never really seen him do before. I think he wanted to make a point. He asks, "How much are we talking? Like once in a while or every day?" Peter replies, "No, not every day." Joe continues, "So how often?" Peter says, "I don't know, like every other day." Joe asks, "What do you have?" Peter responds, "Potato chips or candy or whatever." Joe then asks, "Do you exercise?" This guy is basically over a two-minute conversation.

Shaan Puri

Is like, "Yeah, I eat like shit and I don't exercise." And Joe's like, "Isn't that crazy? Shouldn't you know better than that?" Right? Like, you're saying people are crazy for not taking vaccines or pushing against them, but you're not doing the basics of human health. You're not exercising, you're not eating in a nutritious way. Don't you see that that's a problem? He's like, "Yeah, I should. You know, no one's perfect." And he's like, "Do you really just love that mouth pleasure so much?" He goes in on him a little bit, which... oh, he goes home.

Sam Parr

I've never

Shaan Puri

Seen Joe do... he's generally quite amenable. You know, he doesn't really do that, but I think for him it is like a... you know, he plants a flag around like, "You gotta..." he's like, "It's non-negotiable." You know, for me, when I travel somewhere, the first thing I do is go to the gym. It's just a non-negotiable; it's just something I do. Then the other guy goes, "Yeah, I do that too." It's just like, "No, I don't think you do that too." Look at the look on his face. He's like, "Yeah, but it's different. Maybe the way I'm doing it is different from the way you're doing it because look at what's happening here."

Sam Parr

Dude, whenever I go and pick which doctors I'm going to use, like when I move to a new city or something, I definitely think their body matters.

Shaan Puri

right right you know

Sam Parr

what I'm saying

Shaan Puri

you don't want the bald barber yeah like I

Sam Parr

I went to this one doctor, and she had a beautiful vein up her bicep. I was like, "I'm in! I'm in veinie!" I was in, yeah.

Shaan Puri

That's hilarious. I also think that there's some other strange stuff about this guy. Like, his daughter has autism and he wrote a book called something like "Rachel's Vaccines Didn't Cause Rachel's Autism," which I just thought was... I don't know. I can't imagine, as a parent, doing that. That sounds very aggressive.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

So anyway, I would say, and it's funny to see the debate here because some people are on both sides. There's the Rogan, you know, macho bro, which is basically like, "Yeah, bro! Showdown! Let's go!" They want to see a fight happen, and they really just want to see him get punked. That's kind of one energy. Then there's the other energy, which is like, "This is stupid. This is not what scientists do." Trying to bully a scientist into debating when that's not his skill. This other guy is a politician; he's going to have talking points written for him and all this stuff.

Sam Parr

well he's not a politician he's not a he's a wannabe politician

Shaan Puri

Oh, well, he's... yeah, I guess trying to be current. But they're basically like, this one guy is like, you know, this is what he's doing. He's going around talking about the stuff he's been doing. He's been giving talks on this for a long time. This guy is, you know, trying to just be a scientist. He didn't sign up to be like, kind of a debater on the stuff. So that's like the other point of view. They're sort of like anti-bro in that way, saying, "You can't... like, stop trying to make this a fight." That's like anti-science to do that. This one guy who I really like, his name is Yushan Long. He used to be... he's from the tech world. He worked at Facebook early on and he was the CEO of Reddit.

Sam Parr

oh he he has a he has a new company where he's trying to plant trees right

Shaan Puri

Exactly, he's trying to change climate by planting trees. I just want to read you what he said; I thought he had a good point. So here he goes: "Every science and tech person who's currently on the bandwagon calling for the vaccine doctor to go on rogue in a debate should be ashamed of themselves. If you care about the truth of science, like a kind of podcast debate is probably the worst thing to advocate for. Usually, that argument goes something like this: if you're the vax doc and you're so sure you're right, you should be willing to go on and defend it. Otherwise, you lose credibility. That sounds like a good statement, but he's like, it's an example of what Plato, the philosopher, would call rhetoric's oral spell. In simple terms, what he's explaining is that there's a difference between what is actually the truth and what can be said in a very persuasive way. You should want a medium where it's not all about who can be most persuasive. If you want a debate to find the truth, you should do it in a way where your charisma, your persuasiveness, your loudness, and your on-the-spot thinking are deprioritized compared to just making your most logical argument and then letting somebody take time to refute it."

Sam Parr

I call it the **Malcolm Gladwell effect**. You know, he writes so well, and even though it's theories, I'm like, "Oh, it must be true."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. When you hear somebody who is so eloquent, you can conflate how nice it sounds and how persuasive it is with how true the actual argument is. Conversely, someone could be so dry and boring that even though they're saying something that's really on point, the message is not received by the market. So, he basically says, "If you really wanted to do this, this is what you would do." I just finished the Plato thing; it's basically about oratory. Going and verbally giving a speech or a presentation is the medium where you're most likely to have people fall under a great orator's spell. He mentions that people are more like sheep than you want to think. A great orator can get people to do crazy things. If you've ever seen Hitler give a speech or Mussolini give a speech, you can see how a great orator can move people to do something and believe something that they may not have actually believed otherwise. So, anyway, his...

Shaan Puri

Was like, if you really want to do this, they should do it through long-form boring writing. One person should write down their argument with sources cited. Give the other person time to respond to each line, each paragraph of that argument. Then you'll have basically both sides of the argument written out. Nobody wants to do this because this is boring. If he actually wanted the truth, though, that would be the way. I thought that was really good, and it reminded me of something that I had also seen from Yashawn's blog. He was like, "Yeah, in companies, the same thing happens. The person in a meeting who is tall, charismatic, and willing to put their opinions forward, basically, they are 100% confident in their opinions." Yeah, exactly. Sound familiar? No, I'm not holding up a mirror right now. But basically, that person is going to disproportionately sway what actually happens. There's another method called the Delphi method. The Delphi method is basically this method where you bring up a topic. Everybody presents, and everybody gets the same set of facts. Then you write down your initial thoughts and statements, and those are circulated. Everybody reads everybody's initial thoughts and statements anonymously. You don't know who said this, so you can't just say, "Oh, the CEO thinks this, okay, I guess it's right." You just judge it by the merits of the argument anonymously. Everybody reads it, and then you can revise your statement based on new information that you've got. You update it and pass it around again until you get to a sort of, you know, what people believe is the strongest meritocratic argument after several rounds.

Sam Parr

how do you spell that it's called the what message

Shaan Puri

Delphi. D-E-L-P-H-I. There are a couple of benefits to this approach. **First**, it's anonymous. This means it's not just the highest-ranking official who gets their way. **Second**, there's a time delay. You don't have to come up with an answer on the spot. If it takes you 5 minutes to think of something, that's nothing. But in a meeting, 5 minutes can feel like everything. You can't just sit there quietly, thinking and formulating an idea for 15 minutes or an hour. By then, the meeting's over, and the argument has moved on. So, this time delay and anonymity are really important. I love this concept. I shared it with the CEO at Twitch, and I said, "I think we should do this." He responded, "Dude, I love this! This actually would solve one of our biggest problems." He mentioned that in their meetings, people often think that his opinion is the answer, but it shouldn't be. He is usually the least informed on the topic because he is the furthest away from the data. Additionally, they tend to reward the loudest voices rather than the most thoughtful individuals who might have the best answers. It's really hard in a normal meeting setting to get that thoughtful person to speak up. Then, I'll give you one more piece of data.

Shaan Puri

Josh Ellman, who's an awesome dude and a friend of the pod, is a VC. He now works at Apple, but he was basically the growth guy at Twitter, the growth guy at LinkedIn, and the growth guy at Facebook. He led growth at three or four of these companies.

Sam Parr

robinhood robinhood

Shaan Puri

He invested in Discord and led growth at four of the biggest consumer hits there have ever been. For fun, while he's kind of goofing off, he built this Slack app that does the same thing. He's like, "Yo, Slack kind of rewards the same thing; whoever's online the most gets to say the thing in Slack." He created this app that was like a time delay. So, anybody could prompt a question, and then everybody has a certain amount of time. In the question, it'll say, "You have... we'll read the answers in 4 hours." So, anybody could write their answer within the 4-hour window. What's it called? Oh, "Thinking Time" is the name of it. Just Google "Josh Ellman Thinking Time." It's a Slack app, and thinkingtime.org is the URL. Basically, it just gives you time, and then you could say, "Alright, here's what I think. I think X." Then it tells you all the answers will be released together in 30 minutes. In 30 minutes, it posts everybody's answers at the same time to prevent groupthink. I just love this because I think these little nuances can really change the way any group of people interact. I know I'm guilty of it all the time. I'm loud and persuasive, but that doesn't mean I'm smart or right. I actively look for methods or tools to counteract that.

Sam Parr

This is awesome! I'm going to use these things. I like that "B" in real time. I just want to call out what just happened. This is called a good partnership, where I bring kind of shit and Sean just kind of polishes that shit. We somehow get something amazing. This is called chemistry, my friend. This is how it's done. That was beautiful! I didn't know you knew all that stuff, and you tied it around perfectly. I was actually asking those questions and writing notes. I'm going to use this thing. Thank you!

Shaan Puri

take your time yeah

Sam Parr

it's true and the delphi method that's awesome I've got a few more things but you wanna go to a few more things let me

Shaan Puri

Do a quick one first. I got a simple business opportunity for people. So, I don't know if you know this dude, but Google Analytics, which is the most popular analytics tool on the planet, is basically shutting down. They're not saying it's shutting down; they're like, "It's changing for the worse." I would love to see, actually, I want to film a commercial on behalf of all marketers out there—a Google fake Google Analytics commercial—where it's like, "But what if we made it worse in every way? What if we rethought it?"

Peter Hotez

dude

Shaan Puri

and removed all the key functionality and replaced it

Sam Parr

is it possible to use

Shaan Puri

With vague analytics, wouldn't that be better than precise analytics? It's like... people are wondering why. I think the reason why is because of all the privacy stuff, the cookie stuff. So basically, the same thing that happened to Facebook, where Apple changed their rules—the iOS 14 rules—and all of a sudden, Facebook ad performance went down. It was like, "Yo, geniuses over there, why is performance down? Why don't you have attribution? Why don't we know if I spent $1,000 on this ad, did I make $900, $1,200? What did I make? Why can't you just tell me that?" You know, I put your pixel on my website. You're Facebook; you're the biggest geniuses in the world. It's impossible! The reason why is because now, legally, they're not allowed to use this type of tracking that they used before. It's not a technical problem; it's a regulation problem. Meaning, the site that serves the ads can't also track the users on third-party websites. This is why my portfolio company, Triple Whale, exploded. One of my investments exploded in popularity and is now on track to be this huge winner. Because let's say you owned an e-commerce store and you were using Facebook. You're spending, like, we spend $100 of $1,000 on Facebook ads every month. We have to know how our Facebook ads are performing. When Facebook's ability to track that got cut off due to regulation, people were like, "What's another solution?" Triple Whale was like, "Hey, we have this thing called Triple Whale Pixel. We can tell you more accurately than Facebook how your ads are doing." So everybody signed up, and Triple Whale took off and did amazing. I think the same thing happened to Google, where Google had to, because of the privacy reasons, be like, "Alright, you know what, we..."

Sam Parr

yeah they're just gonna ballpark

Shaan Puri

Because of the ads business, we've got to just, you know, lick a finger and guess... roughly you've got about this much traffic, conversion, etcetera. So, not great. That's why they're upgrading to this thing called **GA4** [Google Analytics 4].

Sam Parr

it's called Google analytics lackadaisical that's like the new update

Sam Parr

yeah they're like that's the update

Shaan Puri

Google analytics after 6 beers and it needs an

Sam Parr

app yeah

Shaan Puri

Every marketer I know hates this thing. Also, nobody knows how to migrate from Google Analytics to GA4. It's like, every time you log in to Google Analytics, there's literally a ticking countdown, like it's season 4 of *24*. It's as if your analytics are about to explode. You need to learn this new tool that, by the way, sucks, and you need to migrate everything over because in 14 days, there's no more Google Analytics for you. So, me and a bunch of other people are like, "How do you do this?" We tried to migrate over, but we're like, "Is this working? I don't know if this is working out of the box." I think right now there's a very simple business opportunity for somebody to become the GA4 export expert. They could put out a ton of free content and say, "I will handle your migration for you." Just cold email every business owner you can think of, maybe in the e-commerce space—that's where I would start. But if not e-commerce, then SaaS businesses, whatever. You could say, "Hey, do you want help migrating over to GA4? I'll do the whole thing for you. It's done for you, turnkey. Just pay me, you know, $1,500, and I'll do it." I think someone could make $1,000,000 in the next 6 months just migrating people over to GA4 and auditing their GA4 to be like, "Hey, is this set up correctly?" This could be a one-person service business or a two-person service business.

Sam Parr

I agree, I need it. We've been trying to figure this out. I don't even know how to set up reports. I was out of the game for about a year and a half, and then I came back and everything had changed. I don't know how to do it.

Sam Parr

did you you don't know what

Sam Parr

else has changed

Shaan Puri

pronouns and Google analytics what the hell just happened I take 2 years off

Sam Parr

everything has changed

Shaan Puri

doesn't work the same way anymore there's no office

Sam Parr

Dude, everything has changed. Another thing that's changed is newsletters. People are asking me, "What do we do for this newsletter?" and I'm like, "Dude, I don't know." It's been two years, and in that amount of time, everything has changed. When we started The Hustle, it was us, Morning Brew, and The Skimm. I always hesitate to say it this way because it sounds like it's a bigger deal than it is, but we kind of pioneered this very small industry. Now, people take it seriously. There are all these agencies around it, and they tell me what they're doing, and I'm like, "I don't get any of that." I don't understand how any of this works. Things have just changed very quickly.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say something, but I decided to take the high road on something. I was gonna call someone out on Twitter, but I just decided not to do it. I think you'll know who it is, but... yeah, I'll avoid it.

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Shaan Puri

HubSpot, grow better. Okay, I got another thing for you. What if I told you about a business deal that involves one of the **GOATs** (Greatest of All Time)? It involves **$1,000,000,000** and a messy divorce. Let me tell you the story about Michael Jordan selling his team right now: the Charlotte Hornets.

Sam Parr

that was related to a divorce

Shaan Puri

In a roundabout way, the story actually... So, a lot of people are looking at the story right now and they're saying, "Michael Jordan bought this team for, I think, $275 million, and it's about to sell for $2 billion."

Sam Parr

the the whole thing did he sell the whole thing

Shaan Puri

The majority owner... I don't think anybody—no, I don't think any of the NBA owners own 100%. But I think he's the majority owner. So, the valuation of the team at the time was $275,000,000, and he bought it. Now it's going to sell for $2,000,000,000. MJ strikes again! The GOAT strikes again. The guy's going to make, you know, more money doing this than he ever made playing, and probably more money on this than he made through his Nike deal as well. So, you know, he found a new way to double his wealth. But what's interesting is actually who owned the Hornets before MJ did. So, I don't know if you know... do you know the story? Do you know who the owner was? This guy, Bob Johnson. Does that sound familiar? Most generic name in the race.

Sam Parr

I I know a bob johnsons

Shaan Puri

well do you know the one that was the richest black man in america at a at a given time

Sam Parr

well okay we're narrowing it down no but may maybe the

Shaan Puri

guy who started b g so

Sam Parr

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I listened to his wife. His wife was like also the head honcho, I think, right? Him and his wife kind of ran...

Shaan Puri

I'm not sure about that. So, he starts with like a... he has $15,000 of his own money. He puts that in and gets $500,000 from a guy named John Malone. He's like, "Look, there's no cable network, there's no channel that caters to Black Americans." And he's like, "You know, we can do this. We can build this up." So, they had music, obviously. It's basically like the Black MTV. They had music, they had award shows, culture... whatever. BET is a winner, and BET wins. He sells BET to Viacom for $3,000,000,000, which is just an incredible outcome, right? So, he...

Sam Parr

did he own the whole thing

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they were the... oh, I don't know what John Malone got. I don't know if it was a loan or equity, but like, yeah, he owned the majority of it. So after everything settles, Bob Johnson is reportedly worth about $1.5 billion—1.31 to $1.5 billion. He diversifies; he puts a bunch of money into real estate. He owns hotels, so he owns hotel chains. He owns a bunch of different assets, basically, but they're all kind of cash-heavy assets. Building hotels was a lot. He had, I think, a casino-type thing or some gambling thing or whatever. He needed money for that, so he put out a lot of cash. Then he gets divorced. He gets divorced, and his wife gets $400 million out of the $1.3 billion awarded to her in the judgment. So that judge made a very nice settlement or a very nice ruling. Guess who she marries a few months later? The judge! No, wife gets divorced, hey, just $400 million. I don't know if it's a few months later; I shouldn't say that. Mary is the judge, which is just incredible. Wow, that's incredible! I honestly wasn't going to tell the story until I heard that. I was like, "Oh, I gotta tell the story," just because that is...

Sam Parr

that's how thankful

Shaan Puri

she was so so did

Sam Parr

Did they freak out afterwards and appeal it? Or is that a thing that went in some form?

Shaan Puri

I don't know... I think it was done so... this happens: he buys an NBA team. He buys the Bobcats at the time for **$300,000,000**. I think they were like the expansion franchise, basically. But they're burning money. He's losing **$20 to $25 million** a year. He loses another **$200 million**. So, he buys it for **$300 million**, then loses **$200 million** operating the thing and just on operating expenses, which is crazy. There's this famous phrase when it comes to NBA teams that "nobody's ever lost money running an NBA team." All the owners claim they're losing money, but it's really just like a negotiation tactic against the players. They don't want anybody to know how much money they're actually making, or they'll run it at like a slight loss. But the franchise value is appreciating like crazy. So they're like, "Oh, poor us! How could we ever afford to pay for our stadium?" It's like, dude, you bought us for **$300 million**; it's now worth **$3 billion**. I think you can afford it. So he's losing money. He's got all his money tied up in investments. He's got a ton of debt and is using a ton of debt to build this thing. He's like, "Alright, look, I need to turn this team around." He hires Michael Jordan. So he's like, "Mike, come work for the Bobcats. You're from Charlotte, you know, come work for the local team. You run the team." So Michael's running the team, but Bob is getting stretched for cash. Basically, he's got too much debt, and his situation is all about to come due. He's about to lose his entire empire because he can't come up with enough money to pay off his note, and they're about to take all the collateral. So he's about to lose all his hotels and his team.

Sam Parr

do you think that in those situations which has happened a lot they go to the ex wife and they're

Shaan Puri

like hey

Sam Parr

Do you remember that time that I tried to make sure you got nothing, but you still got something? Can we talk? You know what I mean? Like, I wonder if there's any... I wonder if I've never...

Sam Parr

like been

Shaan Puri

close to the our first date you know why I brought

Sam Parr

you here

Shaan Puri

I just wanted to see if you had any of those feelings left for me because I'm about to lose it all. So, he's about to lose it all and he's like, "Okay, I need to sell the team or something." But the team is losing money; they're the worst team, they're the sorriest team. He wants to sell it for like, you know, $350,000,000 or something like that, but he can't find a buyer. Then, Michael Jordan comes to him and says, "Alright, I'll buy it. I'm gonna buy it for $25,000,000 in cash." Just $25,000,000. He wants it at a $275,000,000 valuation. So, he gets like a 25-30% discount on the team because Bob's under pressure and has no other choice. Basically, he's like, "But here's what I'll do: I'll assume all the debts of the team, so I'll get you off this debt, which will relieve the pressure on you." So, MJ buys this team for only $25,000,000 down and now is gonna sell this thing for $2,000,000,000, which is like a 100x cash-on-cash return for him buying this team. This is just an incredible move and yet another reason MJ is one of the GOATs.

Sam Parr

there's a shark is that story popular I've never heard that

Shaan Puri

No, that's not popular. That's a **MF**M original, an **MF**M classic. Soon to be copycatted by all of our little fanboys everywhere, who will take this and turn it into a thread, a newsletter, a TikTok, and an IG reel for themselves. So, you know, it'll be everywhere soon. The one thing that... another interesting twist.

Sam Parr

It's going to be called: "Michael Jordan Made Money: He Became a Billionaire in Ways You Didn't Even Realize Were Possible." It has nothing to do with him playing and has nothing to do with Nike. Here's the story of how Michael Jordan turned $25,000,000.

Shaan Puri

hey guys

Sam Parr

I've ripped

Shaan Puri

Your hook for you too. There is more to the story potentially. So, the team has struggled ever since Jordan bought them. Basically, he actually underperformed; the team has not been doing well. The franchise values are down, and his franchise value should be up more than it is. He didn't actually maximize the value on it. But it just shows that when you buy right, it's hard to lose money at that. The other rumor is that MJ is only selling the team because he himself owes a bunch of money. That's the other rumor. I don't know if this is true or not.

Sam Parr

But, well, there are always these crazy conspiracy theories that he's like a degenerate gambler. There was a podcast I listened to called "Conspiracy Theories," and it discussed how the mob made him retire from the NBA or something like that. Then, there were even theories that they killed his father.

Shaan Puri

That's the conspiracy. They killed his father because he owed money, and the commissioner told him, "You need to take a couple of years off because we could suspend you, but that's a bad look for you and us because you have this gambling problem. So, you just disappear." So, that's the conspiracy theory. Who knows if that's true? The other version of this is that the guy who bought the team now is named Gabe Plotkin. He's the guy that ran Melvin Capital, which is the hedge fund that the Redditors, the Wall Street Bets guys, blew up in the GameStop thing. Gabe lost like $500 million in that. His fund was about to go under, and then he gets bailed out by, what's his name, Ken Griffin. The rumor is that Michael had given Melvin Capital a lot of money—$100 million—to invest on his behalf, and that they had lost it. So, he needed cash, and that's why he sold it. Now he sold it to that guy, he sold it to Gabe, which is pretty crazy.

Sam Parr

this is this is juicy man

Sam Parr

this is this is a this

Sam Parr

is a juicy grape

Sam Parr

this is a this is

Sam Parr

a grape of a story I don't know if this is a big

Sam Parr

bad grape

Shaan Puri

A lot of what I just said is stitching together pieces. The people don't come out and say everything, but they do say pieces. Then you kind of have to assume things in between the gaps.

Sam Parr

And he's protected. Jordan's protected pretty hard. Like, I remember... you remember that rapper Chamillionaire?

Sam Parr

yeah

Sam Parr

He told the story because, you know, rappers love Jordan. He's like a good example of a black man succeeding, and they love his brand. Chamillionaire was like, "No man, Jordan's the worst." One time, I tried to get an autograph from him, and Jordan goes, "Nah, I don't give autographs or take pictures with [N-word]." Chamillionaire was like, at the time, he was famous— not famous enough that he thought Jordan would bow down to him, but famous enough that he thought maybe he would get a "Oh, nice to see you" type of response. And he's like, "I got nothing. I got nothing from Jordan, and he's an asshole." I don't remember how he explained it, but it basically made me think, "Oh, Jordan's not a nice guy. Not nice at all." I would have thought that it was like a story of, you know, everyone knows that he's a jerk on the court, but I would have thought, "Oh, maybe that just ends once you retire." But it sounds like maybe that's not the case.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know why that would end when he retires. Okay, yeah, so that's the Jordan story. Where do you want to go next?

Sam Parr

Alright, I have got one interesting thing. So, everyone wants to say, "Sean, what's your ecom store? Tell me all about it." You give out little nibbles when you kind of tell people, you know, things are going well. We want to know what the problem is with ecom and also a lot of other businesses that we talk about. The things that are somewhat easy to start, the valuations are terrible. Like, a decent ecom business right now, what do you think it sells for? Five times profit?

Shaan Puri

yeah one times revenue which is usually which is the same thing as 5 times profit for most of these

Sam Parr

So, the thing is about a lot of these businesses that we talk about, particularly the really poor ones like drop shipping or agencies. They don't really sell for a lot of money. I like to research businesses that: a) Can last a really long time. A lot of e-commerce businesses, well, a lot of businesses in general, don't last long, particularly those built off of Facebook and similar platforms. It's a struggle, at least. b) They sell for very little. One type of business that I've brought up consistently is trade shows. The reason why is I've noticed a trend where a trade show business can last many, many decades. Sometimes, there are examples of them lasting over 100 years. These businesses may not be fast-growing, but they're good. They're consistently selling for 10, sometimes 15 times profit, which is pretty good. That can be 3 times revenue. In contrast, a media property like "The Hustle," if it's only okay, will sell for 5 times profit, sometimes 6 times profit. It depends on how fast it's growing. I was reading "Flash and Flames," which is a tiny, tiny trade publication that I read. They were telling the story about this guy named Tony Robinson. He started this company in 1991 called Uki, I believe it's Uki Media.

Shaan Puri

and his seo is screwed you don't wanna be tony robinson

Sam Parr

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

he's screwed for a bunch of reason but he like never gives interviews he's like a pretty low key guy but it's called uki media and events and you could go to the website if you click it it's like it looks old it doesn't look special and most of the people in the pictures look like they're above 60 years old so it's like not like particularly new looking you know they're not at least trying to like be cool and but here's what's interesting so they own 17 b to b trade shows and they own a couple magazines but almost all the revenue comes from these trade shows and their biggest one is a 24 year old thing called the automotive testing exposition or expo and it's basically this is like a niche among niches it's not a car show it's a trade show and a core exhibition that has it's where the people making the machines that help you test if your car works so if you're building a tesla or a ford or whatever you're constantly testing like your new self driving system or you're testing like I guess different new components in the lcd screen things like that there's people who are building machines to test that this is a trade show for those people and I was like doing more research about this and he was saying he goes I chose I chose to specialize in transportation and avoid developing products and or what's he say whatever actually I was gonna quote something it's not that interesting of a quote but here's listen to the revenue 2019 they did 32,000,000 with 30% margin so they made $10,000,000 in profit let's skip 2020 and 21 they only did 8,000,000 in revenue how they still did 8,000,000 in revenue during those periods I don't know 2022 post covid revenue of 26,000,000 same margin of around 26 so they did 6,700,000 in profit 2023 the expectation is 30 in revenue 9 in profit and there's a rumor that they're about to sell for around 12 times profit so there this $30,000,000 a year trade show business is about to sell for somewhere between a 100 and a 120,000,000 in revenue and he's done this multiple times so he had one for aircraft interiors expo so like people building aircraft interiors he sold that for 10 times profit he also had a magazine company that he sold for only 4 times profit but he's done this multiple times and there's this there's this guy in hampton his name is jonathan wiener he's done the same thing he did money 2020 he did shop talk and I think he did one more he sold each of them for around a 100 to a $150,000,000 and it was like 13 times profit I'm gonna ask him to come on the pod but it's just crazy that these trade shows are consistently selling for 10 or 13 times profit now here's the opportunity if I'm listening to this pod and I'm trying to start a business what I would do there's a whole lot of niche twitter handles there's the strip mall guy there's the used car salesperson guy there's the used watch guy I don't know this for sure but I bet I'll it's not just you and I like a a pop culture type of person who's just like paying attention because it's fun and we're outside but I bet there's people like the strip mall guy and I bet there's dozens and dozens of other people like that who are in these really niche in which the actual industry insiders follow them and they get they get a kick out of them it could be like the motor home guy or it could be the I don't know whatever it is I think you could partner with some of these people and build these trade shows because the way these these particular this guy tony robinson the way that his thing works is I think access to the events are free but what they do is they hire salespeople and they pay their salespeople a lot you give them I think he even says in the article it's like $80 a year base but up up you they can earn $300,000 a year but what they do is they sell spots or boots at the at the trade show and they create a map where you can like see it all and and it's just like real estate different locations can get higher prices and it's basically like you know it's not like a conference like what I used to do hustle con or ted talk where you're going to like watch content like the content's not important you might have speakers but that's just to attract the right type of people it's really to do business and so this small I bet you there's a lot of like 10 30 $40,000,000 a year businesses that sell components that sell toyota it's like just your door handle I don't know something and they do business there and they say alright great I got 5 leads that was 5 leads I can probably get a few $1,000,000 if I can close one of those leads so it's worth it for me to pay $50,000 I think someone could do some of these trade shows with a lot of these industry insiders on twitter and I think that's an interesting opportunity and I think it's significantly better than many of the other opportunities including agencies that a lot of people are starting online it's harder like if there's bad weather you're screwed if there's a pandemic you're screwed but these things can sell for way more money and they can actually last for dozens and dozens and dozens of years so that's my pitch on trade shows and and a small opportunity

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I love it! I think that's great. Nobody talks about trade shows more than you in my life. I was stunned when I heard about that guy who did ShopTalk in 2020. I think they did the healthcare one; I forgot what that one was called. Those are really, really remarkable. I don't fully understand it. Meaning, what don't you understand? Let's kind of walk through it. So basically, what's the draw to get the attendees to attend? How do you tell them what the value proposition is for the attendees? Is it to meet others in your industry? Is it to see these vendors up close and personal? Is it to listen to these famous people talk? What is the core draw?

Sam Parr

Well, I think it's all of the above, but let's go through each one. The first one you didn't mention is, I think sometimes it's like, "Oh, sick! I could justify a free trip to Florida." Like, I'm going to go hang out with people and also, "Oh hey, Bob, who is not really our competitor but he's in our industry, he might be there." So maybe I can go and shoot the shit with Bob and hang out with him. But I could bring like 8 of my teammates, and we could justify this trip. I think that's definitely a thing. The second way you get there is you need interesting speakers. It could even be someone who's not even related, but it's like, "Oh wow, this one person, like Gary Vaynerchuk, that's not really in our industry, but whatever. I've always wanted to see what he had to say." Like, "Alright, cool! I can get that person." Then the third one is, let's just see the latest and greatest technology. We can spend one day getting to know what's going on in our industry. But I really think a lot of times it's rooted in, "I want to get out of the office," and I can justify this $3,000 ticket, and I can get 5 of my coworkers to go. It's an easy justification.

Shaan Puri

but in this one they're giving away the passes for free is that correct the this uk I think

Sam Parr

When I went to their website, they advertised free passes. So that's the extent of my research. Gotcha.

Shaan Puri

okay and then

Sam Parr

in money 2020 they charge people

Shaan Puri

Right, and so how do they sell those tickets? How do they build the brand from scratch? Is it content first, free content, then they lead up to it? Or are they just cold emailing? What do you know about how that guy, Jonathan Wiener, or whatever his name was, did it?

Sam Parr

Well, so that's why it helps to have some type of audience. What you'll notice is that a lot of these companies have their trade show and media businesses. Oftentimes, they'll create a blog or a magazine in order to build an audience. Then, they'll use that to leverage their authority to sell tickets. But other times, I think what you can do is just cold email a bunch of people. To be honest, I think that in order to get... Look, when I did HustleCon the first year, I charged $300 and I was a nobody. I didn't have an email list; I had nothing. I got the right speakers and was able to get 400 people to come, and that was only in 6 weeks' time. I think it's actually significantly easier than you think. If you go into a niche and just tell a handful of people, those handful of people can tell a handful of others. Because a really successful show in a particular, smaller niche can do a lot of damage with 1,000 or 2,000 people. But then, you really start making revenue after a year or five.

Sam Parr

and 6

Shaan Puri

Would we do off MFM? Let's say we could magically get somebody to organize this whole thing because we don't want to do it. What could we use our distribution for? That would be awesome.

Sam Parr

Well, I would never want to do this because I think the value here is low. But podcasting... you can do podcasting. You know, we have 30 friends who are big-ish name podcasters. You could do a podcasting trade show where you have, like, what are we using now? Riverside. Riverside would be a booth and, like, I don't know, all the other stuff that...

Sam Parr

we use

Shaan Puri

What it's just like, the podcast. The business side of podcasting is just so small, but it's like... oh man.

Sam Parr

but small is good small is good the the problem is is that the contract value is lower

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly

Sam Parr

that's the issue you need something where people spend 1,000,000 of dollars

Sam Parr

so the

Sam Parr

Would you ever want to go out? You don't leave your house, so hypothetically, a person like you—would you want to go and shoot the shit with some other guy who's a little bit ahead of you and just hear best practices?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah that's fine maybe okay so podcasting is 1 what else

Sam Parr

I don't know dude what what what are you interested in

Shaan Puri

Oh, it's not about what I'm interested in. So, what do you think? What niche do you think would work? For example, these guys are doing auto parts and all the automotive industry because it's B2B. A bunch of people are selling high-priced items. We've seen that money. In 2020, it was like, "Hey, fintech is going to be a thing." Let's just make the number one... I don't even know if those are trade shows as much as they were conferences, but let's make the fintech conference. Let's make the e-commerce conference. That's kind of what they tried to do with those to ride an upstart wave. We could probably do something either involving investing or high-net-worth individuals.

Sam Parr

So, where your boosts are different types of questions that you and I, and our friends, constantly ask each other is like, "Does anyone have an accountant who they trust?" or "I am having this tax issue. What are some lawyers that I can trust?" I think you could do something in that vein. I would have to narrow in on what it would be. I think you could do something like that where one customer for a particular law firm can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in a lifetime of fees. Or, a financial advisor could... I think you could do something in that vein.

Shaan Puri

And by the way, we've been to a couple of these farm conventions. I think it is exactly this. So that was for the agriculture industry. We went to that, and another one was back when I was doing the sushi restaurant. I remember we somehow were at the QSR event. I don't even remember what it's called; it's the QSR event. I just remember that the CEO, the guy who created it, his last name was Hamburger. I was like... I forgot what the name of that effect is where people end up living up to their name. There's a whole subreddit about this on Reddit.

Sam Parr

was he just a big juicy guy I mean what what would he what was

Shaan Puri

He, like, just... basically, this is the idea of somebody named John Hamburger. He ends up creating the quick, the fast food trade show. You know, Usain Bolt is the fastest man on earth. This is just too good to be true.

Sam Parr

like if you're that wolf of franchise guy who we like on twitter oh yeah you definitely could

Shaan Puri

pull off should do

Sam Parr

You could pull off something like this. Now, logistically, it's still not easy. There are some challenges, but it's a...

Shaan Puri

not easy

Sam Parr

It's a problem that's been solved tons and tons of times. It's not like you're inventing anything new. This is a... we're selling T-shirts, you know? It still revolves around logistical issues, but it's not... you're not inventing anything.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's cool. Alright, well I think that's good. I'm going to save my other topics for the next episode.

Sam Parr

did that not tickle your fancy

Shaan Puri

it does

Sam Parr

it seems like

Shaan Puri

You know it's good when I'm slacking in the background because I'm just like, "Oh, here's a half-baked idea. Here's a half-baked idea of what could happen." I think the trade show stuff is actually pretty fascinating. I like, you know, I think there are two ways to approach a business. One is like, "What do I love to do?" and let me just follow my curiosity, follow my natural inclination, like scratching my own itch type of thing. Then the other is the cold, calculating approach: "Alright, let me work backwards from businesses that sell with high multiples, and I'm just going to go fishing over there." Because I don't know what my passion is, so I might as well just calculate the best opportunity. I've actually done both in my life. Both can work; you can win both ways. I think it is better to win when you follow your passion, but if you're not going to do that, this is a fun way to reverse engineer what business you should be in.

Sam Parr

And I don't want to say this is like an absolute thing, but it appears as though there are lots of buyers for these businesses. The way that like, there are a handful of publicly traded companies, as well as some really heavily backed private equity companies, is that they just buy like eight of them, put them together, and do synergistic stuff to reduce costs and whatever. It seems as though it's a very, very high buyer market. Whereas, like e-commerce, for example, I don't know if agencies are like this. I don't know, they might be, they may not be. But some of the things that people start seem a little bit more difficult to sell, whereas these things aren't as difficult to sell.

Shaan Puri

totally that's right good stuff alright

Sam Parr

that was

Shaan Puri

a good episode I like that one

Sam Parr

that's the pod