MFM #171: How to Generate Millions from Paid Events (Bootstrapped)

Sam Parr

When I first hosted my event, I decided to do it around June 1st. The event took place 7 weeks later in August. When I started, I had close to nothing; I had a 200-person email list. So there wasn't this notion of, "Oh, it's easy for you, you had the hustle." No, no, no, it didn't exist. There was no website, just a domain name called HustleCut. I hosted this event, and in the first 6 weeks, it made about $60,000 in revenue and around $50,000 in profit. A lot of people were surprised by that, but it wasn't that hard. The second event, you can see...

Shaan Puri

here adam so how how did you sell the $60,000 of tickets during that process

Sam Parr

today sean let's actually jump right you I think wanna do this billy of the week right away

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

and then I have a thing on events do you wanna do events do you wanna save that what do you wanna do to do I wanna

Shaan Puri

Alright, let's do this. I want to cover a few things: 1. Billy of the week 2. Your thoughts on paid events 3. Two ideas I have: - One cool idea I've seen - A brainstorm of a potential idea Let's start with the Billy of the week. This one is very interesting. Have you ever heard of this guy before? Don't Google him, I want to tell you the story. So don't look him up yet.

Sam Parr

alright I'm

Shaan Puri

not gonna take a picture

Sam Parr

I'm just... I Googled him. I'm just looking. Oh wow, okay. Yeah, young guy.

Shaan Puri

young guy 29 years old

Sam Parr

I think I know who he is I'm so

Shaan Puri

His name is Sam Bankman-Fried, I think that's the way you say his name. If you heard him talk, I actually want you to listen to a YouTube video for a second because he sounds like, you know, an absolute dweeb. I loved it! I was like, "Oh, this guy sounds like he would be a self-made billionaire by the age of 29." He sounds like a genius; he sounds like a tech genius.

Sam Parr

have you brought this person up to me before

Shaan Puri

No, I just discovered him like two days ago. Okay, so what's this guy's story? I'll just call him Sam for short. So, this guy Sam, he's a young guy, very smart. He takes a job as kind of like a hedge fund trader or something like that with a group called James Street. I guess I don't know, forget these details; they don't really matter. The guy's got a job in finance, and he leaves to start something called Alameda Research. It's called Alameda Research because he needed it to sound as legit as possible and not like what it actually was. So, what was it? This guy was into crypto, and there was this known phenomenon in crypto where, as it was getting popular—this is around 2017 when the first big run-up happened, and Bitcoin went from $3,000 to $20,000 and then crashed later. But during that time, from 2016 to 2018, Bitcoin was emerging. And, as with any new thing, it was kind of like the Wild West a little bit. There was this situation where, in the U.S., the price of Bitcoin was, let's say, $10,000 a Bitcoin. In other countries, where the exchanges weren't built or the country had some regulations, there was a premium for Bitcoin. There was more demand than there was Bitcoin available to buy in those countries. For example, in Korea, there was a famous phenomenon called the "Kimchi Premium." The Kimchi Premium was that in Korea, there wasn't...

Sam Parr

kimchi like the like the food like the the food

Shaan Puri

So, this was known as the **Kimchi Premium**. Basically, it was like whatever Bitcoin was selling for here—let's say it was $10,000 in Korea—it was trading for $15,000 because it...

Sam Parr

was that big up up 50%

Shaan Puri

50% premium, and it fluctuated obviously. I think 30% was kind of like the average of the kimchi premium over time. So, everybody wanted this. Any smart person saw, "Oh wow, there's an arbitrage! What if I could just buy it in the U.S. for $10 and immediately sell it in Korea for $15 or for, you know, $13?" So, you had this ability to flip it, and a whole bunch of people were trying to do this. But there were all these problems, right? The reason it wasn't easy, the reason there was this premium, was because it was hard to buy Bitcoin in Korea. One idea was to buy it in the U.S. off a U.S. exchange, go to Korea, and sell it. But you're going to sell it for the Korean won, which is like the local currency. Now, for the arbitrage to continue, you have to convert the Korean won back to dollars to go buy more Bitcoin in the U.S. The problem was you couldn't convert the Korean won back to dollars easily because the government was very tight-fisted with regulations. You couldn't funnel large amounts of money from the Korean won back to dollars very easily. So, a whole bunch of people were trying to get this "piñata" of money, and they couldn't crack it. What this guy did was he said, "Okay, forget the kimchi premium." He went for the Japan premium, which was far less appealing. It was only 10%. But he thought, "Still, if I could trade a U.S. Bitcoin for 10% more in Japan every day, I'm making 10% compounding daily." So, he went through this odyssey where, for like a year, all he was doing was setting up this trade. Initially, when he was trying to figure out if he could capture the kimchi premium, he was doing calculations like, "If I chartered a private plane and filled it up with 100 people, and they bought Bitcoin in the U.S., and I flew them all to Korea, then they could sell it there. Each one of them could convert some amount of that money, and I could fly them back. Every day, I could fly this plane back and forth between the U.S. and Korea. Could I make it work?" He concluded, "I don't think it works."

Sam Parr

wait so you had to be there physically

Shaan Puri

It's not that you had to be there physically. You have to do all the legs of the transaction. You have to be able to buy in Korea or, sorry, sell your Bitcoin in Korea at the premium. But now you have Korean Won. Now you need to convert that to dollars. So how do you do that? You need to convert it there, but there are caps. They won't let you convert it. The way he described it is like this: "What I wanted to do essentially was to be selling $5,000,000 of Bitcoin for the local currency and converting $5,000,000 of local currency back to US dollars every day." Because, like, if you just go to Korea, go to Japan, go to wherever, and you say, "Hey, I'd like to..." it's like a one-way flow of money. "I have $5,000,000 of your local currency. I'd like to convert it to dollars and exit the country." And they're like, "Okay, but where are you getting all this money? Why are you doing such a large amount? What is this?" He's like, "You know, if you go to Bank School 101, that's like money laundering. That's what money laundering looks like. That is exactly what money laundering looks like." So he's like, "Even though I'm not money laundering, I'm buying and selling a good that's differently priced in different regions to them on the ground, to the bank on the ground where I need to do these conversions."

Sam Parr

it's shady

Shaan Puri

It's too shady; they won't let me do it. So, he spends basically a year of his life where he goes to Japan. Now he's got to find... each one of these was hard. So anyway, the net end of this story is this guy's arbitraging $25,000,000 a day of this currency. He's making a 10% compounding margin every single day. In three years, basically, he's become a self-made billionaire. He's worth $10,000,000,000 now, which is a combination of the money he made from the arbitrage trade, as well as he then created his own exchange. So, he has a trading company that's made hundreds of millions of dollars on this arbitrage, and then he used that to create an exchange which is worth $1,000,000,000 on paper. So anyway, this guy's worth $10,000,000,000.

Sam Parr

he and his because the currency is called ftx right

Shaan Puri

that's his exchange his exchange is called ftx global

Sam Parr

Sorry, exchange. Is that basically an alternative to a more high-end option?

Shaan Puri

It's a more sophisticated Coinbase where you can do derivative trades and option trades on all different types of coins internationally.

Sam Parr

and that's like and that's like a proper company it's a

Shaan Puri

proper company

Sam Parr

with like

Shaan Puri

So, all of this research made **$100** out of **$1,000,000** in the span of a few months, just doing this one trade over and over again every day. I'm going to describe a couple of things, but he got on people's radar because he was the biggest donor to Joe Biden this year in the campaign. He wrote a **$5,000,000** check at the last minute, at the 11th hour, which allowed Joe to do, you know, as part of this last-minute blitz they did on TV ads in all the swing states. It's kind of interesting; this guy's whole business philosophy is this thing called **effective altruism**, which is basically like: go be a greedy capitalist, go try to make as much money as you can, and your goal is to give at least half of it away while you're doing it. So, it's not like a philanthropist giving away **1%** of his money or **10%** of his money as a tithe. His goal is to give away like **50%** of his liquid net worth, you know, like what he makes every year. That's his mindset.

Sam Parr

where did he get the money to start this

Shaan Puri

So, he started with a very small amount of money, and it just compounded very quickly because he was basically getting **10% extra every day**. I don't know exactly where he got the initial seed capital or how big it was; he hasn't specified that. But he did say that at the max, they were doing **$25,000,000 a day** on the trade, which is basically like a **$2,500,000 profit per day** that they were making on the trade. He describes that if you want to do this, you have to break it down into small chunks. He said, "Okay, so I need, on one side, to be able to buy a ton of Bitcoin in the U.S. How do I get an exchange in the U.S. that's going to give me really high limits, even though I'm this dorky kid with no track record and no collateral or brand name?" So, he found a way to solve that problem of being able to buy **$25,000,000** of Bitcoin in the U.S. Then, he had to go to Japan and sell a huge amount of Bitcoin there. He also had to convert it from the Japanese yen to U.S. dollars, and he had to do that all in the same day and wire transfer it all back to the U.S. to buy it again the next day, maximizing the amount for the next day. He cycled the money every day, and he described that the timing always worked out so that it was in the last hour of the banking day when he would be trying to get all the wire transfers done to get the money back to the U.S. so they could execute tomorrow's trade. Any day that they couldn't get any...

Sam Parr

sound like you said he sounds cray like I'm looking at picture

Shaan Puri

"Oh my God!" [sounds extremely genuine, humble, high-pitched voice] He's kinda like just a nerdy guy who... he accounted for about 10% of all the Bitcoin trading himself through his Alameda Research during that time, I believe. Which is just... insane, because he was moving so much money.

Sam Parr

Dude, I love these people. I love... I love freaks. This guy is a freak. I love that setup.

Shaan Puri

You know, his desk is him with six monitors hanging above his head. His neck is cramped because he constantly needs to monitor the spot price in the U.S. What's the price in Japan? What's the conversion of yen to dollars? What's the conversion of dollars to yen? He's just constantly on it. Any time anything broke, it was costing them tons of money. He always had to make sure nobody was going to stop his trade or create a bottleneck. Then he would be stuck with all this Japanese yen and couldn't move it, or it would get seized by the government. The main banks wouldn't work with him, so that's why he picked Alameda Research as a name to seem more legitimate. He hired a sophisticated guy who spoke the local language to talk to bankers and say, "Hey, here's what we're doing." He also went to these rural banks in Japan, not the main ones in the city. He thought, "Okay, these rural banks will take my business because they're more open to what I'm doing than the city banks that have a tighter filter." I just thought it was super interesting how he identified one arbitrage, moneyball style, and then dedicated a year or 18 months of his life to just hammering this one arbitrage. He ended up making hundreds of millions of dollars and parlayed that into becoming... you know, his paper net worth is $10 billion, and he did that in, I think, four years total. That's how he built it.

Sam Parr

it's 10,000,000,000 because the because the exchange is

Shaan Puri

The combination of the research count, the trading company, and the exchange is estimated to be $10,000,000,000. This is what he estimates his net worth to be.

Sam Parr

Threat! I love people like this. I mean, that's astounding. There's very... he's one of a kind. But I love people, and I try to do this with the hustle, with email addresses, with an email list. But that's peanuts compared to this and what some other people do. Basically, who take a small, tiny, kinda silly thing and just amp it up on steroids. So I love that. I think that is the coolest thing. I love people who think like that. I think it's so fascinating. I'd have to think of some more examples of that, but you totally know what I mean, right?

Shaan Puri

absolutely I've I've met this before with like people who make a poker bot and it's like what are you doing it's like every day they're just tweaking this little bot that's running 247 at the at the 1 and 2 cent tables of full tilt poker and they have this like small edge like this like 15% edge and then they're just like tweaking the system and it and what what it reminds me of is what happens a lot of times is people will go buy information they'll go say oh I pay I pay like my my uncle does this he was paying $19 a month for like this guy's like stock tips and I had to like sit my uncle down and be like look like if these are amazing stock tips do you really think this guy's gonna give it to you for $19 like no like you know if this guy really had an edge in the market he would not need to make money educating you he would be pounding his advantage and trying to make as much money as he can as long as that window exists and so like oh I have another example of this this guy on twitter called harralabob do you follow him no pretty fascinating guy to follow so this guy is a high stakes gambler he's a professional gambler which usually is an oxymoron like there's there's no such thing as a professional gambler but he he was a professional sports bettor and what he realized was back in I think 26 I I forgot what was 2013 20 2012 I don't remember when it was it's like maybe it was even longer than that I think it might have been like 15 years ago now he realized that in vegas the books were like they were so sportsbooks it's kinda like hard to beat the house the bookies are always like spot on and there's one type of bet called the you know over under it's basically like in basketball it's like what's the total score gonna be is it gonna be if you add up the total of both teams is it 200 more and then you bet if it's gonna be over or under that and the over under is really really accurate but what he's noticed was that he noticed 2 things 1 was the bookies did not take into account that actually in the first half like in the basketball game the second half the score is usually higher than the first half because at the end of the game the team that's losing will start fouling because they're like look we have to try to get back in this game so I'll foul you to save the clock stops you get 2 free throws and then I'll come back and try to hit a 3 and so that's usually the end game for most most teams like if you're down you foul the other team clock stops they score while the clock is stopped and then I try to shoot threes to get back in the game and I'm pretty desperate so what he noticed was that the total over under if you just divided it by half that's what they would just 50% that's what they were making as the first half over under and very few people bet the first half over under because it's not that fun of a bet it's like who cares what the halftime score is gonna be if you're gonna bet the score you just bet the end of the game score so he realized it was a small edge where they thought they were taking the full score and dividing by half and making that the line he's like oh my god this is almost always gonna be under and he specifically noticed that these 3 teams their coaches would like do that foul strategy way more in the second half so he's like okay there's these teams that these coaches do this strategy more and the first half is like my arbitrage and he doesn't say shit to anybody he just starts hiring people to go to the books all the different sports teams say this guy harala bob and I'm kind of like harala I'm kind of paraphrasing his story

Sam Parr

how do you spell that

Shaan Puri

It's Harala B.O.B. Harala Bob. And now he works for Mark. He works for the Dallas Mavericks. I think he works for Mark Cuban because he has a big personality on Twitter. He was a sports bettor, and the way he made all of his money was by identifying, over these ten years of being a sports bettor, three different edges. One was that he went super hard on the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. The second was this first half, like first half over/under bet that was just mispriced. He took that mispricing and went all in on it.

Sam Parr

wow that's crazy

Shaan Puri

Anytime a sportsbook would limit him, he would then pay a guy and say, "Hey, go walk up and bet $25,000 on this game, please." He had people betting at all the sportsbooks in different casinos at the same time. This way, he could bet the type of money he wanted to maximize his advantage while this arbitrage existed. I love people who find these arbitrages and the lengths they have to go through to maximize it. It's like the movie *21*, where they're counting cards in Vegas. They're strapping cash to their bodies while walking through the airport because they need to pounce on this edge.

Sam Parr

You used to have this guy who worked for you named Steve or Steven, I think. Yeah, he... so basically, if I remember correctly, what he did was create these... I don't know if he created or bought them, but he would buy a really small Twitter handle called "Today in History." It would just tweet a picture of what happened 50 years ago, you know, like "JFK was shot." Then he would buy a cool car Twitter account where it was like, "Here's all the interesting cars." And then there was one called "I Can't Believe It, It Can Fly," which featured weird flying devices that, when you look at them, they look silly. He eventually bought, I believe, 100 of them to the point where he built a business. So he did two interesting things. The story you mentioned was that he would say, "Basically, I control the internet. Let me show you how. By the end of the talk, I'm going to have X trend." Yeah, like, "I'm gonna have this..."

Shaan Puri

He'd be like, "Say a word," and people would say "gobbly gook." He'd say, "Alright, cool. While we're talking, in 30 minutes we're just going to check Twitter." We'd have a clock here. Then sure enough, "gobbledygook" would be trending on Twitter, the number one trend in all of Europe. His accounts would all start talking about gobbledygook in meme format, and it would just start to go viral basically. Nobody even knew anything about it.

Sam Parr

Of that, and he parlayed this into getting sponsorships. Now, I don't know if you know him anymore. I don't know him at all. Yeah, but I read about him, and this company went public. It went public in a really shady way, so I don't know if I believe everything. There’s something about it; I don't have too much evidence of it.

Shaan Puri

it's just a roll up of a bunch of bunch of media companies

Sam Parr

Something was weird about it, but basically, I think it went public in England for like $200 or $300 million market cap. So, it turned him into quite a wealthy person, by the way. I think.

Shaan Puri

he just released a book called what is it

Sam Parr

happy sexy millionaire

Shaan Puri

sexy millionaire yeah so go buy steve's book

Sam Parr

so anyway well

Shaan Puri

it is the same principle he found mispriced assets so I remember the first one that he discovered was one that was like shit freshmen say or is like like but you know whatever the the the uk slang for that is it's basically like a parody account that tweeted out funny things that freshmen say on a college campus and what he found the reason it was mispriced was most of these accounts were made by accident by somebody who was 18 years old and 16 years old and they were bored at home and they just made a you know like harry potter you know harry potter jokes twitter account and it gets to a 1000000 followers and they don't know what to do with it and then they kinda like they get paid like $75 on venmo to like shout out some app or like they get paid like $200 to like say a protein powder or they would make a blog selling you know like protein powder and they would just like try to funnel some traffic to that but it didn't like make sense it wasn't very sophisticated he needed he needed promotion for his business so he was working with these guys then he realized screw my business this is just a really powerful promotional engine we used him early on when he was we brought him on he was part of my team we used him and we became the number one app in the uk number one app in europe because we used his like network to like talk about our app and what he had the insight was was that you don't say like our app was beboe at the time so it wasn't go download beboe it's a great app no he's like that shit doesn't work I I was like well we need that and we need the link in there so we can track how many clicks it gets he's like no that's not how people talk on the internet I was like okay so tell me what do you mean he's like you gotta think like what you wanna do is we have so many accounts that we want somebody when they scroll on twitter they see bebo mentioned like 7 times and that they don't even nobody's explaining it nobody's selling it to them they just realize why is everyone saying this thing bebo what is that and then they go Google it or they go search for it and and they actually download the app because they think this is what's hot this is what people are talking about he's like so what we'll do is we'll make content that's like you know my mom when she sees me check bebo for the 50th time today and it's a meme of the mom throwing your phone out the window and it's like so the implied meaning is that bebo is this addictive app that you keep checking that your parents hate that you keep checking well what is that app why would why would this person check that app 50 times I don't even have that app never heard of it it right and so that was the genius of his marketing like tactics at that time and then he had the like audience to back it up so they got spotify and Microsoft and all these companies to pay them tons of money because anytime they needed to spread the word about a new thing that they were doing this was the most effective way to reach a bunch of people a bunch of young people and so then he parlayed that he started launching his own consumer brand so if they have a bunch of food accounts they would launch like a food subscription product or they had a bunch of fitness accounts they would launch like a women's athletic wear you know like company and it didn't all work but man like crazy ass like business that came you know

Sam Parr

out of nowhere if you if you wanna go research it it's called social starts right

Shaan Puri

social chain

Sam Parr

social chain steve what's his name bartlett

Shaan Puri

Bartlett, yeah, you should follow him on Twitter. He's a great follow. Now, he tweets out just like, I don't know, inspirational stuff all the time and motivational content.

Sam Parr

yeah he's like a mini gary v although

Shaan Puri

he's like a better gary v to be honest with you

Sam Parr

probably a getter yeah I was

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna say he's probably more popular in 5 years, and he's gonna be much bigger than what Gary V is today. I think if he sticks with it... Yeah, and there are some articles that are cool if you go search like "The 21-year-olds that control the internet." I think there was like a Vice article about 22-year-olds.

Sam Parr

that control it buzzfeed

Shaan Puri

BuzzFeed... Yeah, so BuzzFeed and Vice did like crazy articles about them. I mean, at one point they had 25 employees that were all under the age of 22 years old. They were all just managing these media accounts and they were making tons of money. And they... yeah, it was insane. They built like an office with a playpen inside and, you know...

Sam Parr

All of those things... So, do you want to talk? Okay, I was doing research. I'm very... you showed me this, and a few other people did. Basically, our most watched recent video is something I... you've kicked ass on Instagram. I think I've got the YouTube prize so far. But because our most watched article, or most watched video, is on paid communities, I think the title is "How to Make $20,000,000 a Year Doing a Paid Community" or something like that. We talked about a company that does that. Now, we'll make this title like "How to Make $1,000,000" or "How to Make $100,000 a Year Doing a Paid Event." And, Abre, you asked me to talk about it, so I came with a few bullet points. So, do you want to talk about paid events?

Shaan Puri

I want to because this is how the hustle started so this is like your roots

Sam Parr

And also, we're starting to plan Hustle Con again. I have a feeling that now, more than ever, is the time to plan a paid in-person event. I think it can do really well because there's going to be very little competition, and people are really eager to go. We've talked about events in the past, but Sean, if you go to my $1,000,000 brainstorm document, you'll see I'm highlighting my name. Okay, I actually listed a whole bunch of our old profit and loss statements from our events. Nice! If you hit "metrics," you can actually see our all-time metrics. Although, this only goes to 2018, so it's not all time; it's missing three years. But you can kind of see the data. You can see how much money we're making. In the first year of business, I think we made about $500,000 with an 84% margin.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

In our first year of business, let's talk about events. This is going to be a 10-minute segment here, probably. Basically, when I first hosted my event, I decided to do it around June 1st, and the event took place 7 weeks later in August. When I started, I had close to nothing. I had a 200-person email list, so there wasn't this notion of, "Oh, it's easy for you; you had the hustle." No, no, no, it didn't exist. There was no website, just a domain name called HustleCut. I hosted this event, and in the first 6 weeks, it made about $60,000 in revenue and around $50,000 in profit. A lot of people were surprised by that, but it wasn't that hard. The second event, you can see here...

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna explain that so how how did you sell the $60,000 of tickets during that process

Sam Parr

I'm going to explain, and I just want to give a little more context. The second event I think made about $150,000 to $200,000 in revenue and something like $150,000 in profit. I did these events six months apart. I would basically host an event, travel when I needed money, and then host another one. Each time, I was starting with close to $0. So, let me explain to you guys a little bit about how I started my events and what I would do if I were starting again. If I were starting again, I would do mostly the same stuff. I think everyone listening, if you're willing to spend eight weeks working 40 hours a week dedicated to this, you could make at least $100,000 in profit starting probably in September, because that's when I think events and conferences are going to be okay. The biggest thing you have to do here is recognize that your email list is the most important thing. I launched hustlecon.com on June 6th. Within just a few weeks, we were averaging around 1,000 to 2,000 unique visitors a day, and the email list jumped from about 200 people to about 2,500 people in seven weeks. Keep in mind, at the time, I didn't even have a Twitter account. There was Twitter, but I didn't use it. Hustlecon.com was basically a landing page that explained what the event was, and then you'd enter your email. That was called the "front door." The "side doors" were all these blog posts. I would write 2 to 3 blog posts a week on each speaker. I would post that on Hacker News, and people would come to the website via the side door. Only 5% of them would say, "This is interesting, what's this website?" and they would click the homepage, allowing me to collect their email. Once I collected their email, I would send them a variety of other blog posts that I had written. At the end of each blog post, I would include a note saying, "P.S. This person is speaking at Hustlecon on August 1. You can get a ticket right now for 10% off if you buy in the next 12 hours."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

by the way the next 12 hours that code was working all the time there

Shaan Puri

was no

Sam Parr

Switching in there for 12 hours, it was always the next 12 hours. The countdown clock... there's a simple plug-in that you could buy, and it just starts.

Shaan Puri

to

Sam Parr

Shows up... So, sorry guys. I'm sure everyone knows this now, but I don't... Even Shopify wasn't popular at that [time]. So not everyone had that technology, but that's what we did. Pretty easy, pretty basic, and in doing that I...

Shaan Puri

I saw an example of the blog post because I remember, like, I remember vividly the one you did about "Eye Cracked," which you kind of did, I guess, on an infographic. I also remember the one about Pandora.

Sam Parr

so I would do

Shaan Puri

But explain what you did. Also, these were speakers. So, you got speakers to agree—legit speakers to agree—before you even had an audience or anything.

Sam Parr

yes which is the second thing I'm gonna talk about is how to land a speaker but the the blog post I basically would just use forbes business insider all these places and just write a biography on the person but I would do it in an interesting way and eventually what happened is we would create infographics so I had john who worked there and I would say john here's the here's the bulleted points of their life turn it into an infographic please and that's what we did we had infographics it could have been a blog post which is what I used to do we this time we made infographics and it worked quite well and it was basically I read the book made to stick and I just copied that so I took information about their company and I made it really easy to understand so for example pandora streams this amount of music per hour which is the equivalent of x y and z they the reason why they were able to do that is they were one of the first people to launch on the iphone and then I like I just tell that story pretty simple I thought it was simple very effective now that's how we got our initial sales now the thing about sales for events it's incredibly stressful the reason it's stressful is typically 20% of your sales come in the 1st 5 to 7 days and then 20% sometimes more 30% of your sales comes in the last like 4 or 5 days which means that dead time so you you you won't you have to kick you gotta kick ass right out of the right out of the gate so your 1st launch series you need to kick ass your 1st email launch series you need to do really well then there's a fair bit of dead time and it feels we're failing we're failing we're failing and then the last 10 days or so you get a wave of sales and it all comes down to the last minute and it is incredibly nerve wrecking and anything could ruin it for example a pandemic or if there was like a terrorist attack if there was bad weather as simple as bad weather you're fucked and so you've been working for 7 weeks now eventually in our case a whole year on this event and you're screwed so it's very stressful but the way that you can actually make more money and this is something that I didn't learn until later on for the tickets you actually wanna charge higher than your than you think so let's say you wanna make a $100,000 and you wanna get a 1,000 people to pay you a $100 you always charge 2.50 and then you give you give discounts in order to get to a 100 average sale price and so you want in my opinion you wanna be very generous with discounts but you wanna charge a lot of money so it anchors it at a high at a high price value

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

Correct. One other thing that you want to do is run this like an e-commerce site. For an e-commerce site, you say, "Well, I want to make $100 this month. Therefore, I need to get 100,000 high-quality people to my website, of which 3% are going to convert." I know 3% are going to convert because I'm constantly tinkering with my landing page. The average sale value is going to be X dollars. Therefore, this is how you do it. Now, I just need to get people to my website. That's what a lot of conference people don't do. That's what you should do, and it works quite well. Finally, time is one of the best ways to create sales. You have to give discounts early on and at the end. The goal is to have 3 to 5 tiers of pricing. You want to have early bird, then early bird, then middle bird, and then you're late. Okay, seriously, this is the last reminder: you're late! If you actually look, can you see if you log in to that document? I actually put a chart of my very first event from July of '24. You're going to see big spikes. Every single one of those big spikes was a new ticket tier ending, and there's a direct correlation between the amount of revenue that I made that day and the tier ending. I would send an email blast reminding people, and I would email some 2 or 3 times a day to remind them.

Shaan Puri

Wow! So, when you were going to Hacker News for traffic, were you going anywhere else? Is that where you would go today if you were doing it again?

Sam Parr

well if I was doing a tech event if I was doing a tech event yes

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

I would go to hacker news and what's the secret

Shaan Puri

A lot of people will say, "You know, when I post on Hacker News, I get no traffic. I get downvoted. I get... you know, I get removed." It's like...

Sam Parr

Well, I would say the obvious - or not the obvious, but maybe obvious - is that your content might suck. But I would actually suggest writing content or inviting speakers who I knew I could write about that would go viral on Hacker News. Also, if you post 10 times, only 3 times it will go viral. But those 3 times, you'll get like 100,000 views on Hacker News. So it's like a hits-driven business. You've got to post a ton actually for it to work.

Shaan Puri

I remember when you were doing your events. So, okay, go $60,000 to $1,000,000... I remember you were basically like, "Yeah, HustleCon brings in $500,000 of revenue and like $300,000 of that is profit," or even more sometimes, you know, if I recall correctly. So is that typical that it was so profitable? Or were you doing something different than the average event host?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so when we would get towards the 3rd or 4th event, we could easily make $700,000. I think maybe, let's just say easily $500,000. I forget the exact amount, but we were making seven figures a year from events. We could do 50% margins, but the margins got smaller as we actually grew. It was actually more profitable to do some of these smaller events. We did a few things that made us profitable. The first is that I paid—now I'll say it, it's against the contract, but I'm going to say it—I paid Casey Neistat money to speak at HustleCon, which is no surprise. Yep, it's like you can just Google what a speaking fee is. But besides that, I've had probably 300, 400, or 500 people speak, and not once did I ever pay for another speaker. Not one time. Now, what I think I did do a few times is pay for their flight, but I would pay economy. I had Sam Yagan, who was the CEO of Match.com and is very wealthy. I paid for a $350 flight from Chicago to San Francisco, and then maybe we got him a hotel, but I think it was just a $350 flight. He actually emailed me to remind me, "Oh, you guys still owe me a $350." So we didn't pay for any speakers other than Casey Neistat. The second thing is I used a ton of volunteers because there are these people— not necessarily kids—who will email you once you have an event to volunteer. There's a whole crew.

Shaan Puri

of them get

Sam Parr

to them for free

Shaan Puri

and they wanna be around you and they do the work

Sam Parr

They do the work, and it's fun for them. It's a lot of fun to be part of something. We would schedule it so they could go see some talks, but they didn't really even care about the talks. They just wanted to be in the mix; it was exciting for them. These people love doing that. I use volunteers for everything now. The third part is actually important, and this might get some flack, but I would never work with, or I would try my hardest to avoid, union venues. You want to avoid union venues and Ticketmaster venues because a lot of venues sign contracts with Ticketmaster or something like that, and you have to work with Ticketmaster. F that! Sorry, Ticketmaster, but I don't want to work with you. The goal is to work with some place that isn't bogged down by that or bogged down by a union. There are some places where I would say, "Alright, I want my volunteers to be at the door," and they would say, "Nope, you have to have our union guy do it. We charge $50 an hour." You have to have... $10.

Shaan Puri

Yes, uh-huh. So I remember you had the sickest venue in Oakland, right outside of San Francisco. It's the Oakland... what's the theater called? The Paramount Theater. This thing looks so grand! I remember you were like, "Dude, guess how much this cost us?" I don't know if you could say, but it was amazingly affordable to rent that place.

Sam Parr

like 10 or $15

Shaan Puri

$10 $15 to rent out for the 2 days

Sam Parr

including all the people

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and so you know, when you're doing an event that's bringing in $700... I thought that would be... I thought that thing would be $100,000, right? Like, my wedding venue cost that much, you know? And it was just for me to get married. It wasn't even like a business event. It couldn't host 1,000 people.

Sam Parr

And there are a few things to consider. I preferred hosting conferences in places that typically aren't used for that purpose. For example, I hosted an event at the Brava Theater in San Francisco, which I think cost around $3,000. I made about $100 from that event. I would choose venues that weren't meant for conferences because if you go to a hotel or a conference center, they will charge you for union stuff, which adds up really fast. This can end up being about twice the price of the hard cost of the venue. They also charge something like $50 per head for meals because you have to use their caterer, and that's something I would avoid like crazy. Instead, I would find local mom-and-pop places. I would call them and say, "I need meals for $8 each, prepped and ready to go in a box. Can you do that?" I would get loads of cool people to help with that. Now, in my opinion, the food isn't really that important when it comes to a conference. Some people will debate me and say, "Oh, it's actually really important." I got the cheapest food I could find, and I thought it was fine enough. Then, that morning or the night before, we would go to Costco and buy every single Danish they had. We would rent a truck and bring it there. That's how we did things. I managed to do it all very cheaply. You don't always have to do that, but if you want to make a lot of profit early on in your career, it's a great strategy.

Shaan Puri

Way to do it! You also had vendors that were like, "I make a keto breakfast bar." You're like, "Great! You're providing breakfast for everybody." You know, that's your... you're paying me for marketing and you're giving away free goods to my... you know, "Oh, you make vitamin water" or whatever. Like, some... you're the startup that wants to be the next vitamin water. Well, here, you need to be here and...

Sam Parr

Now, that's the third... that's the fourth. The way to make money is to get stuff for free. Usually, when I first started, I only had revenue from ticket sales. That's actually foolish. As you grow, usually it's a 50/50 split between ticket sales and sponsors for your revenue. Early on, I didn't charge people that much in sponsor money. Instead, anyone that emailed me offering free stuff would say, "Hey, we want to sponsor you," or I would email people and say, "Hey, instead of sponsoring us, just bring your stuff. I've got 300 great people who are going to be there. Will you come and bring 600 bottles of Vitamin Water or whatever it is?" And they would say, "Absolutely, I'm there." I would say, "Awesome! I'm not charging any money; I just want you to provide free stuff."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And people did that. We got someone to pay $17,000 for the lunches because all they did was hand out free stuff. They would just get a little bit of business from it, and it would be worth it. So, we got tons and tons and tons of free stuff.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

So, the... I actually didn't provide anything, and that is quite effective. Then a few more points: A lot of times your sponsorship money is going to come in the second year because the first year you want to just invite the sponsors there. They're going to see that it provides value and that you're the real deal and you'll follow through. They'll sponsor you the second year. You have to sell the second year sponsorships and sometimes the second year tickets immediately, like the day of or 24 hours after [the event].

Shaan Puri

When you're in the heat of the moment, they're seeing everything. "Wow, this is great! Oh, people are loving us." Next year, are you in title sponsorship?

Sam Parr

exactly and you wanna do that right away and the big guys like the intuits and the microsofts of the world they plan that

Shaan Puri

everyone will they'll

Sam Parr

Plan that cycle two years out so you can actually book your two, three, or four. Sometimes it's that crazy, and you could get $100, $1,000, or even $1,000,000 from them.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And so, if you're going to... Don't worry about not getting sponsors the first time. You'll get them the second time if you do well. Finally, a few points on speakers: For content, I didn't pay anyone, but what I would do is I would try to land the... I would put all my work in early on to get the biggest speaker I possibly could right away.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

For example, I convinced the founder of Pandora, Tim Westergren, to speak and he was one of the first people I had. The truth is, I kind of lied about who else was coming. I said all these other people were coming to speak, [but] none of them had actually committed. Once Tim said yes, then I went to all those other people and I told them Tim was coming. They, in turn, said yes. It was way easier to land bigger name speakers because I got the "whale" [speaker].

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so... and you've actually published your cold emails that you sent to speakers, I think on either your blog or Neville's blog. So if people search, what do they search for to go find those? I've copy-pasted those many times already because I'm like, "This is great how [name] did this."

Sam Parr

Yeah, just Sam Parr, Neville Cole... emailing you. Yeah, and you'll see it. That stuff worked well. And I don't want to hear this nonsense: "If you're starting... if you're gonna start an event, well, you already knew everyone." No, I know everyone because I hosted these events. That's why I have a huge network, not because I had them before I started this event. Yeah, and so I think... and so...

Shaan Puri

I think what you just said is like a mountain of gold. I believe people would pay you **thousands of dollars** to hear that. How do you do this? You know, as a consultant or a course or something like that. I think you gave them the goods for free on this podcast, which I think is amazing, and it's what we're all about. The other thing I would say is that it's not just about making money doing this. The way I look at it is, if I'm **22 years old** and I don't want to have a traditional career, this is how you bring luck to yourself. You go host the party; you go host the event. That's how Sam built his world-class network. That's how Sam made a bunch of friends. That's how we met. You know, that's how these things happen. You bring luck to you by going and taking a bunch of action. All you have to do is be the hustler who connects a bunch of dots and do it in a topic area that you're interested in. So, if you're super interested in biohacking, then you create the **Biohacker Conference**. You don't need to know anyone; you just go figure out who are all the biohackers that you need to speak here. How do you get in front of biohackers? Well, you need to create content about biohacking, and you need to get that in front of people using **Reddit**, **Hacker News**, or some other source. You need to collect emails, then you need to keep telling great stories. At the end of each of those stories, you need to say, "Hey, if you like this kind of stuff, there are **1,000 people** like you, including these big names, at this event. Come, you know, buy your ticket now to join."

Sam Parr

I think you 100% should do that, and I think if you're going to do it, start planning now. It will change your life, and it's actually not that hard. Yep. Now, last thing I'll wrap up with this: we've had Ryan Beagleman on the podcast. I actually... Did you see that email I sent you, Sean?

Shaan Puri

that one

Sam Parr

In 2017, I called people who worked at Ryan's company. Ryan's company was, I mean, I guess it was the other way around. My company was basically Ryan Beagleman's company for tech, business, and entrepreneurship news. Ryan Beagleman ran this thing and started something called BizNow Media, which was basically what my company is for.

Shaan Puri

real estate

Sam Parr

The hustle, but for real estate. They did about **$18,000,000** in revenue the year they sold, which was for about **$50,000,000** to **$60,000,000**. They had **75** employees. The revenue was made up of a third from media, a third from advertising, a third from event ticket sales, and a third from sponsorships. The average revenue per event team member was around **$300,000**. They did **250** events around the year before they sold, with the average ticket price being **$80**. They wouldn't do an event unless they could make **$8,000** to **$10,000** in revenue. Most of the venues they got were free, and a lot of times, programming was very short. An event would start at **7 AM**, kick off with an hour of breakfast schmoozing, followed by a **90-minute** session for panels and discussion. Then, attendees would hang out and talk, and they’d be back in their office by **10:30 AM**. It was very effective. That's my final thought about events: the content is actually not that important. All the speakers and all the content you have, it just brings together a particular like-minded group of people. The value comes from those people being there, and the content is basically just a way to market and get the right people.

Shaan Puri

The way you know that’s true is if you go on YouTube. You can watch all these talks from HustleCon; like all the years, they’re all on YouTube. They’ll have like 2,000 views, 3,000 views, and you would think, “Oh, if people are coming to hear these great speakers, they’re willing to fly and pay, you know, basically $1,000 all in to have this experience.” If you’re from out of town, which I think a lot of people are, then wow! You know, ten times more people should be just consuming the content for free from the comfort of their own home. Nope, that’s not what happens. People don’t actually take the... It’s just like the same thing with Coursera. They have all of Harvard’s courses online. If you want the Harvard education, you can go get it for free right now online. Turns out, people don’t want the Harvard education; they want the Harvard label. In the same way, people don’t want the content from HustleCon; they want the experience and the network and the kind of serendipity that can happen by going out there and getting amongst it with a bunch of other people and putting yourself in that position. That’s really the value that you get. Sorry, that’s what I should say: that’s the value you’re providing to the person who’s deciding to come. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they’re coming to hear this mind-blowing content. Although there is this, like, surge you put up where you say that’s why you’re coming and they say that’s why they’re going, but that’s not really what they get out of it.

Sam Parr

That is absolutely correct. I'm showing... I actually, if you pull this thing up, Sean called, I don't really want to share this publicly, but you can look at it. It's called **Event Metrics**. All time, I've listed 46 events that we've done. I list out how many people showed up, how much revenue came from tickets, and how much revenue came from sponsorships. There's this one event series that we came up with called **2X**. It stands for 2X chromosomes, meaning women have 2X chromosomes. It was an evening event that we would host from 7 PM until... I don't know whenever it ended. We would get a sponsor to pay for it, and we would invite people to come. The first one had 400 people. I'm pretty sure towards the end, we would get 1,000 people. So here's one: this one had 982 people coming. We did $24,000 in revenue, $7,000 in sponsors, and $31,000 in total revenue. Then it looks like $16,000 in cost. Frankly, we probably didn't even need to spend that much, and we made $15,000 in profit. We would host that almost monthly in a variety of cities, like LA, Chicago, yada yada yada. One night could make you $15,000. Do that 12 times a year, then you launch a paid community on top of that, and you've got yourself a multimillion-dollar business inside 18 months. If you just rinse and repeat this, it works very well.

Shaan Puri

While building a great network and being kind of the hub in between all these different people, the downside, of course, is that event planning **fucking sucks**. Events are stressful, and, you know, it takes years off my life every time I have to do one. So, I hate events, but I love this business model. I love that you laid it out for the person who gets energy and wants to do this. For me, the nightmare job would be a wedding planner, but for some people, they dream of being a wedding planner. For those who find that fun, they like that version of stress, that flavor of stress. I think you just laid out a pretty amazing playbook.

Sam Parr

Yes, hopefully it's a good plan. Someone can go do it. By the way, if you just Google "The Hustle 2X"—literally like the number 2, the word "and," and then the letter X—I think it says we did, in 2018, from that event series, which is just... I think we only won about $200,000 in revenue and $110,000 in profit in 12 months from launch to the first year. It's pretty good. Anyway, that's information on paid events.

Shaan Puri

do you wanna do one idea before we go I'm kind of excited about this one

Sam Parr

so

Shaan Puri

yeah okay have you heard of this company future fitness future fit

Sam Parr

Yes, I have. Have you tried it? I was one of their early users, and they did a good job of onboarding me... hand onboarding me, you know, nicely. But the product didn't stick with me. I do think it's a good idea. Well, I don't know exactly how it ended up being, but when I first signed up, it wasn't that unique. However, it was slick. You have a personal trainer, so I would pay them $100 a month. A personal trainer made a plan for me based on what sports I cared about and what I wanted to be good at. I would talk to them weekly about my progress. That's what it was when I first signed up, but it was all tracked via an app on a watch, and they would send you an Apple Watch.

Shaan Puri

yeah so okay so I think I think it's evolved a little bit so basically what future fit is is it's your it's a personal trainer it's really like an accountability coach and that's what I'll call this bucket of ideas I wanna brainstorm within of accountability coaching so future fit basically says hey okay a personal trainer is like $100 per session you know so so let's say it's a $150 per session in in big cities like new york or sf and then you know a gym membership is like $15 a month right so you you have this like big discrepancy there where one is like one session is over a $100 and the other one a whole month is $15 but then there's something in between and what these guys did was they said well look for a $150 a month you're gonna get a fitness coach and they're not gonna come you know they're not gonna be with you you know like sort of spotting you while you do your bench press they're gonna be spotting the accountability of you actually working out so what they would do they would ask you about your goals then they would send you a customized workout plan based on your goals and in reality they just have a huge library of workouts that's like oh guys who want to build muscle here's a bunch of workouts to choose from you know a woman who wants to have toned but okay you know here's a bunch of workouts to to to use so the trainer sends you a workout that's you know for you based on your goals and then they'll kinda text you and be like hey did you get that workout in and they also connect to apple watch so they can kinda see if you did it and they can say hey great job or they can be like hey what's up man like don't don't let go of the rope like keep keep going like we said we wanted to do this keep keep doing this and so I think this is a very smart idea and a very smart business model which is basically the core thing that stops most people from being fit is the habit of fitness the habit of exercise yes if you work out with a trainer you can get more out of every workout but for most people the bigger problem is just sticking to the workout like schedule and routine and actually like not just feeling lazy and not going to the gym you know and so I like that they basically accountability is the primary feature of this app and so I I like that there is knowledge there is technique but it's packaged around accountability so I was talking to ben and my right hand man ben and he was like he just had a kid I'll say how's it going how's how's baby life you know you still getting any sleep he's like actually we hired a sleep coach same model who woman in texas and she basically what's it called so she's just like an independent person there's not even like a service so we talked before about battelle which is like my friend damien who's who's starting this company to do this so he just used you know somebody he found that's like known to do this in texas and so he just said great like you know here's kind of what we're doing today here's my here's my current like routine you know we'd like to be getting some sleep and here's my rough schedule here's my wife's you know rough schedule so we'd like to make it work we don't wanna have the baby cry it out so that's like our constraints so they you know your coach basically downloads your goals and your kind of like your limitations your constraints and he said great I got a program for you and I was like oh wow what's her technique he's like honestly it's like not that much he's like you know just he needs nap at this time specifically and like during these times he needs to stay awake so make sure you're playing with him or you're feeding him or you're doing something then don't let him fall asleep and then like at this time you're gonna put him to bed every single night and like you know when he cries you're gonna go in for this many minutes and whatever it's like a little bit of a coaching on the technique he's like honestly it's not the technique he's like it's just the accountability of like she asks us okay what time did he nap what time did he wake up today what time how did he sleep last night and because we keep having to report to this lady it forces us to not like throw in the towel and just be like oh man like I don't know I give up just let him sleep if he wants to sleep right now it's like no our coach told us he needs to stay awake during these daytime hours so that he's gonna sleep well at night he's like dude it's amazing he's now sleeping 8 hours a night he's 2 months old like life like the 1st month was so rough and the 2nd month is so much better just with this coach he's like and it's not even like anything that we couldn't have just googled a schedule he's like it's how having this woman who we're accountable to to maintain the schedule is much more important than like just taking a schedule off the internet of a in the same way like you can go download a workout off the internet but this coach helps you stay accountable to actually doing those workouts so I thought okay

Sam Parr

Yeah, let's break this down a little bit. Let's talk about what this could work. So, I actually use a service called... Do you have your phone on you? Yeah? Okay, go to **mybodytutor.com**. My Body Tutor. Okay, like a tutor, like a coach tutor.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

look at that website how ugly is that

Shaan Puri

Oh my god, I'm... I'll just describe this. I'm on a... well, it looks like a 1990s website. It says at the very top, it's like this awful logo, and then it says "Celebrating 2007 to 2021 - 14 years". So, you know, this has been around for a while.

Sam Parr

It looks like it's 2007. What it is, is a guy named Adam Gilbert. He has a variety of people on the payroll. I was paying $500 a month, and all I had to do was very simple: every time I ate a meal, I would take a picture, and he would comment on it. Once a week, I would have a 20 or 10-minute phone call, and they would ask, "How's it going?" The stress of knowing I was being watched made me change my habits, and I lost weight. It's almost like when you're writing in a Google Doc; that stress makes you do it. Yes, that's what this is.

Shaan Puri

Right when you see somebody else's cursor there... Okay, so I just started using this because I was like, "Oh, when you told me about this, I started looking into like, okay, where else could you do this?" I thought, "Well, it's anywhere you have a goal." And the goal, like, it's not that you need some specific strategy that no one's ever heard of. It's like, no, you kind of even know what to do. It's just helpful to have somebody who's on your side, in your corner, supporting you and keeping you focused, keeping you on track. So productivity, I think, is a big one. You're probably like me; you know you have goals for what you want to do. Probably everybody listening to this is like, "You know, I want to make five more sales this month. I want to get five new clients, or I want to grow 20% this month, or I want to grow my email list to 5,000 people," or whatever. It doesn't matter what your goal is; you have a goal. "I want to get promoted." So you have a goal, and then your progress is basically... sometimes you need tactical help, like strategic advice. But really, what I've found for myself is that...

Sam Parr

you just need pressure

Shaan Puri

I need accountability. I need to make each day count. If I can get like 25 out of the 30 days in a month to count, I'm going to actually hit my goals. But if I have an off day, if I get distracted, or if I go down this rabbit hole of doing something else, or if I get stressed out, then I might lose 4 of those days. If I didn't make the most of those days, now I'm down to like 20 days out of the 30, and I'm off track. I didn't reach my goal. For me, the difference between staying on track and being off track is accountability. This is why I work well with a co-founder. A co-founder helps you focus every day on, "Alright, what do I need to do today? Did I get it done? Did I make enough progress?" I found this service that can help with this. If anyone listening wants to try it, it's called WeFocus. It pairs you with a coach to help you focus on your professional goals—anything you want to do with your work or projects. You just text this number: 434-505-4769. I'll put it in the description and comments, but basically, it's 434-505-GROW. You pay $150 a month, and you get a coach. The coach will text you and start by asking, "What are your goals for the month? It's April; what would make for a great April?" Honestly, just that question is pretty powerful because you have to articulate your goals. You might say something like, "Oh, I want to make progress on my book." But then you realize, what does "making progress" mean? Do you want to have a draft that's 100 pages? They help you set a good goal. Then, on a day-to-day basis, they act like the manager you need. They kind of nag you enough to get things done, but they're not annoying.

Sam Parr

about it and this is wefocus app

Shaan Puri

there's no app there's no website there's no app no it's just a phone number it's literally just a phone number you text

Sam Parr

what the hell

Shaan Puri

and so they they have these like coaches

Sam Parr

wow okay so I can't Google it I heard about it my friend

Shaan Puri

Was using it, and so I was like, "Okay, what's the number?" So he just gave me 434-505-4769. Anyways, they have a waitlist. I think I got let in recently. Basically, you pay $150, and then what happens is the coach will say in the morning, "Alright, great! Like we said, your goal was, let's say, to grow revenue by 20% this month." You said you were going to do that by ramping up your sales efforts. So it's like, "Alright, cool! Hey, Sam, let's get it today! What would make today a great day? What would be really satisfying at the end of the day if you've done it?" And you're like, "Oh, I want to make like 10 sales calls." "Alright, great!" Then in the evening or the afternoon, they'll check in. They'll be like, "You know, remember to keep the vision in mind. We want to get there. Go for it! Make sure you get those 10 in today." At the end of the day, they'll text you something like, "Hey, did you get the 10 calls in? If not, what do you think held you up today? Let's reflect on it." Or if you got it, it's like, "Awesome! High five! Think back to one of those calls where you really kicked ass. What made it kick ass?" So it just helps you, and you can put in as much or as little as you want. If you just want it to be like, "Just check in with me once a day or once a week," it'll do that. But if you want it to be more reflective, like, "Alright, let me think back on my day. What's something I could've done better today?"

Sam Parr

So, I actually disagree with you strongly on this one. This is far too broad. I would want to make it incredibly narrow. For example, we guarantee you're going to be a better writer, or, sorry, the service will make you write more.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And you have to log in every day. If you don't get 1,000 words, your coach yells at you, like, "Dude, what the fuck do you even want? Do you really actually want to be a good writer? Because you're not writing." So, I actually would make it far more...

Shaan Puri

vertical specific for

Sam Parr

Both relationships... I think could be relationships. Yep, you know what? I would do another one. I would just call it **gratitude**. Right? I'm going to make you happier by... so hey, you're going to practice.

Shaan Puri

this deal

Sam Parr

write will

Shaan Puri

you yeah

Sam Parr

why didn't you write here what you were thankful for this morning

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

What the hell? You could say gratitude. What else? We said relationships. I actually don't know how you would do a relationship one. Well, I think... I think.

Shaan Puri

For relationships, it's like, you know, people think a relationship is when they say they need or want a better relationship. What they're really saying is, "Fuck, my partner does these things and it annoys me. Why don't they just not do those things and not annoy me?" In reality, to make a better relationship, you need to be the best version of yourself. If your partner agrees to do the same for themselves, you'll have an amazing relationship over time. So, what you would do for relationships is basically say, "Awesome! What is the best version of you that you're going to bring to your relationship?" They would just coach you on doing your part and not engage in tit-for-tat measuring. It's not about, "I'll behave if my partner behaves." That's a recipe for failure. It's about, "I'll be great because that's who I am." That's what works in the context of being a great boyfriend, great girlfriend, great husband, or whatever.

Sam Parr

Okay, so that could work for relationships. Diet and fitness is easy. I think that's easy. Yeah, you know, you have to run. You have to hit the...

Shaan Puri

smile ish where you have a goal

Sam Parr

so it could

Shaan Puri

Be like as narrow as people who are training for a triathlon. I know a lot of people hire a marathon coach who helps them structure their ramp-up running and all that stuff. So it could be as narrow as anything you have a goal on. The reason I like this one is because I have goals when it comes to work. I know that if I can be a little bit more productive every single day, if I can be a little bit better at my projects, and make a little more progress every day, $150 in a month is like nothing compared to the value I create by actually doing better in my projects. So it's anywhere you have a goal: fitness, diet, relationships, and whatever those goals are for people. I think that accountability coaching is going to be a bigger thing because it's like anywhere that there's a need. For example, in relationships, you have a relationship therapist or couples therapy, right? You have this option where you could go pay $150 an hour, or you could read a $10 book. Well, now there's something in the middle. It's like a human on the other side, but you don't have to pay $150 an hour; you pay $150 a month because they're digital and they're managing multiple clients this way in a light-touch model. The same thing applies to fitness. You can have a personal trainer or a gym membership, or this is the thing in the middle: your accountability coach. The same goes for work. You can have an executive coach who's like thousands of dollars as your CEO coach or whatever your job is. If you're not a CEO, you can have an executive coach, or you could go read a management book. Well, this is something in the middle. It's a way for you to be better at work with an accountability coach. So that's the model I see here, and I bet there's a bunch of areas where this could apply.

Sam Parr

how big do you think futurefit is

Shaan Puri

So, FutureFit says that they're trying to get to **1,000 coaches** this year. They've raised **$35,000,000** in a Series B round, so I think they're doing fairly well. They're kind of in that **Peloton model**, right? They just need, you know, if you're making a **$150** subscription per month, it doesn't take that much to reach **$15,000,000** a year in revenue. It doesn't take that much to get to **$150,000,000** a year. These are achievable numbers as you get to like **10,000 subscribers** or **100,000 subscribers** type of thing. I don't know what their subscription is.

Sam Parr

so the issue is churn though

Shaan Puri

The issue is, of course, churn. I think that's why the harder the goal, the more the churn. This is the unfortunate part of this business. It's like fitness; people fall off that horse. Even if your product is great, sometimes they just stop wanting to work out or eat right. So, I think diet is going to have a lot of churn. I think fitness is going to have a lot of churn as well. Work, I think, will have a little bit less churn, but maybe, you know, it will still have churn. Relationships, I don't know where that would fall, but I find this pretty fascinating. I've been trying it for a few days, and I like it.

Sam Parr

have you invested in future fit

Shaan Puri

no I invested in fitness ai which is an ai version of it

Sam Parr

I wouldn't invest in FutureFit because of the churn. That would be something I'd be concerned about. However, I would love to own one of these companies.

Shaan Puri

yeah totally

Sam Parr

I've I for sure would like to own it do we wanna do one more or not

Shaan Puri

I gotta run

Sam Parr

Alright, well, do you know that we get criticized for Irish goodbyes? We just end the podcast.

Shaan Puri

It's our thing. I actually do the same thing with my family too. Like, if I'm talking to my mom or my sister, there's no "Okay, well, you know, I'm gonna go run to the store now, so it's been great chatting." No, it's like, "Gotta go, bye," or I'll just be like, "Bye," and I'll just hang up the phone.

Sam Parr

yeah I do the exact same

Shaan Puri

Whenever I'm at the store, they can do the same right back to me. You don't even need to tell me why you need to leave. If you need to leave, you just yell "bye" and hang up before I can reply.

Sam Parr

I do this at gatherings too I don't I I actually don't say goodbye I just walk out yeah

Shaan Puri

I do that too

Sam Parr

because I think it's I

Shaan Puri

I think

Sam Parr

goodbyes are pointless like what's the.

Shaan Puri

It's just like, I don't know. It's just a lot of effort for something that's uncomfortable for me to do. Once I've decided I'm moving on to my next activity, I've moved on already. It's too late. I'm here, I'm there, I'm not here anymore. I'm gone.

Sam Parr

Right, like I gave you the beginning and the middle. I don't need an end; the ending's stupid. You just need the... it's pointless. Alright, so that's the end of the podcast.