Behind-the-Scenes of Shaan's Power Writing Course | My First Million #204

Shaan Puri

Think about it: once you treat your hobby like a job, that's like a recipe for failure. That's what happens to a lot of people.

Sam Parr

alright what's going on

Shaan Puri

what's up man

Sam Parr

So, we're going to get into some ideas, but let me tell you something that I did this week. I cannot go into deep detail, but I've actually gotten in trouble three different times where someone was like, "Hey, we had this conversation and you just went and talked to me." Well, I'm like, "I don't..." I just... when you and I talk now, is how we talk all the time.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

And yeah, they're right. So I'm going to try and keep this one vague. I had this dinner, and I was with a guy who has 8,000 employees in China, as well as many thousands in America.

Shaan Puri

wow

Sam Parr

okay yeah impressive person

Shaan Puri

like a factory or something else in china

Sam Parr

Tech-related, just like... just some huge company. You... if I gave you 100 guesses, you likely wouldn't guess it. It's just some big company that exists in the tech world. Fair enough, and it's impressive, but it's not like a mainstream thing.

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

And there was this other guy there who made a comment where he was like, "China's gonna crush us in the next 5 years" or something. Then a couple of other people...

Shaan Puri

people love to say that by the way don't people love saying how china's passed up america

Sam Parr

A bunch of other people pounced on that, and then this guy—he lives in China, I believe. I don't know what ethnicity he was, but he looked like he was probably born and raised in China. Then there's this other woman there who actually was born and raised in China. This guy, with the 6,000 Chinese employees, said, "A lot of people say that. I do not think that's true, and I don't think any of you should ever think that." He was just saying that Americans actually work maybe as hard or harder than a lot of other countries. It's interesting, and also you talk about this like artificial intelligence. It's mostly AI that people... I mean, they talk about China crushing America and a bunch of stuff, but AI is like a hot thing. This guy was like, "I don't think that would happen." He said, "What I think you should do is invest most of your money into American equities." He goes, "I'm just so bullish on America." So it was like an interesting perspective. Have you ever heard that?

Shaan Puri

It's like the one person who probably knows what they're talking about at the table, and everybody else just reads stuff on Twitter and regurgitates it. Alright, I'm going to go with the guy who's got 6,000 employees in China. That makes more sense to me.

Sam Parr

That's, you know, and that was good. I felt great about that. It was just an interesting perspective, but we have...

Shaan Puri

love you some pro america news

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, I just finished reading this really great book. Do you know who John Steinbeck is? No? Of course, you do. "The Grapes of Wrath."

Shaan Puri

No, what is that? Are you serious? I got a blank here.

Sam Parr

wow have you heard of to kill a mockingbird

Shaan Puri

I have heard of to kill a mockingbird that's the author

Sam Parr

Oh my God, like John Seiden. I mean, people are gonna make fun of you, by the way. Anyway, I mostly just read.

Shaan Puri

harry potter okay like it let let's look clear

Sam Parr

This guy was born in 1902, so he's dead; he probably died in the seventies. But anyway, I'm reading this great book about his memoir from driving across the country for three months in America and getting to know America. It's really funny. In 1965, when he was doing this trip, he was complaining about how Americans are getting out of touch and are becoming too focused on technology. He mentioned how there are refrigerators everywhere, TVs everywhere, and how there's artificial food everywhere. It's very funny. We've always complained about this stuff, but I do love learning about America. I think America is special. I think we have this resilience. Yeah, anyway, I'm very pro-America, so yes, I did like hearing it. But do you want to talk about some ideas?

Shaan Puri

yeah by the way dan corrected us I don't think he wrote to kill a mockingbird but

Sam Parr

no he did

Shaan Puri

of mice and man or something

Sam Parr

he he he didn't write to kill a mockingbird I'm saying his work is like

Shaan Puri

it's like this

Sam Parr

It's like, did he write *Of Mice and Men*? I know he wrote *The Grapes of Wrath*. It's just like a famous American classic. I'm just shocked by the fact that you don't know that he wrote *Of Mice and Men*. So, you know that, so the fact that you didn't know...

Shaan Puri

I know that as in I have heard those words before that's all I know about that anyways let's let's go into the stuff I do know about because I feel a lot better about that and also bitcoin rally thank you I've been waiting for this bitcoin pump and here we are we're back up life is good because bitcoin is now it spiked up to almost 40,000 over the last like 24 hours 48 hours there was a bit of a short squeeze about a $1,000,000,000 of short positions got liquidated and that caused the price to run up because are you familiar with how that works by the way like what a short squeeze is so here's the like nontechnical non super super like nuanced version of it basically when you have a short you're betting against something and if it goes up you are on the hook to pay the the the sort of the price for the for being wrong and so if you think something's gonna keep going up you're better out just closing down your short position just taking the l and saying okay I'll pay I'll I will I will go buy the shares now because I'm you know let's say I was it's at 30,000 I think it's going down it goes to 32 you know what to close out my position I'll go buy the asset at 32 and I'll eat the loss right but what happens is because all the shorts start worrying that the price is gonna run up they all start trying to close out their positions at the same time so they all start buying so the people who are betting against it all of a sudden add all this buying pressure where they have to to close out their position they have to buy bitcoin which causes the price to go up and up and up and up and so what happened is as it started running up all the shorts had to cover their positions because they were massively leveraged right they're not putting in their own money they're putting in like 5 to 10% down and they're taking the they're taking 10 x 20 x leverage on their position so as the price goes up they're very sensitive to it and so I think that's what happened to cause the price to go about $10,000 in the last 2 days is those shorts had to cover their position this is what happened with tesla tesla was the most shorted stock in the stock exchange and then as the price started to go up those shorts you know they basically are paying a huge price for every every dollar it goes up so they start to close out their positions which puts puts a bunch of bunch of buying pressure which is why it becomes a squeeze because the shorts themselves cause the other shorts to like have to cover and it just causes the price to shoot up way above what its earnings is and anything else

Sam Parr

Dude, this is funny. It's funny because... when you... So we're in this chat group, Sean and me and a bunch of other like successful young guys. They talk about like "alpha" and "crushing alpha," and I'm like, "I don't know what that means."

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I had no idea what that means. We talk about "short squeeze" and I'm like... these words don't mean anything to me. I don't even know what they mean. You guys feel like so sophisticated to me. Yeah, alright, let's talk about some ideas. Can we?

Shaan Puri

yeah let's do it you wanna go or you want me to go

Sam Parr

you go first

Shaan Puri

Okay, I have one. Here’s another one that’s crypto-related, and you’re going to be like, “What?” But I’m telling you, this is a good idea. This is actually Ben’s idea. So first of all, Ben is visiting me, so I’m getting to see Ben in person. He’s sitting 5 feet away from me. I wanted him to join this, but I had so many goddamn technical difficulties setting up that I don’t know how I could get it to work. But maybe Wednesday, we’ll take an extra hour beforehand and just get it set up for a two-person setup. Anyways, Ben and I were talking last night. He’s like, “You know, we’re talking about courses, right?” Because I could share kind of like what the numbers were. I just finished my course, and I can share what the numbers were on that. But we’re talking about a few other potential courses we could do, like what would be fun. He’s like, “I don’t know. We’re not the right people to teach this, but I think this course would crush right now.” So, Sam, tell me, do you know what Solidity is? If I say, “Oh, Solidity...”

Sam Parr

no when I saw you writing I thought I thought it was a typo for solidarity

Shaan Puri

Yeah, right. **Solidarity** is what we call it. So, **Solidity** is the programming language that you use to write smart contracts for Ethereum. Let's say one of the most promising things about crypto is that you can write a smart contract. Think of a basic escrow contract: I buy a house, you're going to give me the title, and I'm going to give you the money. I don't want to give you the money first, and you don't want to give me the title first. So, we use this third party, this escrow agent. We pay them $5,000. Basically, you hand them the title, I hand them the money, they say, "Yep, they're both here," and then they give it to each other, right? In the real world, we pay these exorbitant middleman fees. I don't know what you paid for your house when you bought it or if you just did another real estate transaction. I don't know what you're paying for escrow.

Sam Parr

I don't even I didn't even look at it

Shaan Puri

I mean, I went for $4 to do an escrow transaction, which sucked. I was like, "This is $4,000 for nothing."

Sam Parr

when I sold my business I think the escrow was $50,000

Shaan Puri

right crazy they they it's crazy so and and they literally do like one ounce of work they literally just oh you hand me the title and you hand me the money great I'm gonna just turn one hand over here and I'll give you the you'll give you this I'll give them that so a smart contract basically says look we don't need this like person in the middle we don't need to pay them $4,000 let's just make a contract with some rules and we'll just instead of writing it like a lawyer contract we'll write it like a programmer contract the programmer contract says hey when this wallet has this much money in it person a has fulfilled their obligation and when this wallet has this asset in it person b has fulfilled their obligation and then release the assets to each other and so and instead of paying $4,000 you can pay $4,000 or $40 whatever the gas fees are at the time so that's smart contracts so what what that means is a lot of jobs today that go to lawyers are gonna go to programmers because you're not gonna want a lawyer to write a contract for something you're gonna want a programmer to write it down but you need that contract to like work it needs to be like solid bug proof hack proof and like I need it to do the many things that I need my my transactions to do so there is an extreme shortage right now of smart contract developers of developers who know how to write in this new programming language and write these types of contracts but it's clearly like a big part of the future in my opinion and so one idea here is to create basically a boot camp that takes an existing engineer and says hey cool oh you write javascript or like you know you're a you're a back end engineer you're one of like 10,000,000 why don't you come over here where there's this high demand high shortage of engineers that know how to do this thing I could train you in 6 weeks to learn how to write like smart contracts and solidity and then go to all the companies that are trying to hire this and basically do a lambda school I think you can do a lambda school that's really niche really focused and if I'm an engineer that like I'm a crypto nerd this is a business that I think you could do you could just train other engineers to like learn how to write smart contracts and then get hired and placed in these jobs that you take the placement fee what do you think of that

Sam Parr

So, I'm doing research while you're talking. Alright, oh wow, okay. No, I agree with a lot of what you said, except for the last part. So, there's this company called Coursera. Have you heard of Coursera?

Shaan Puri

of course

Sam Parr

So they were starting in 2012, and I believe that they were started because the two guys, I think they worked at Google, and they were noticing that we are struggling to hire a particular type of engineer. I'm just... this is just off memory, so I might be a little bit off here about some of the stuff, but anyway, they built these courses. They built it so people can get jobs at Google, maybe as data scientists.

Shaan Puri

or machine learning or something

Sam Parr

Yeah, it was some type of data science or machine learning. I forget exactly what it was, but they came out of the gate and they crushed it. Then, over the last 5 years, they kind of went nowhere. It's like, "What the hell happened to that company? They're not really doing that well anymore." Well, over the last year and a half to 2 years, with COVID and a bunch of other stuff, they started crushing it. Do you know what Coursera's revenue is now?

Shaan Puri

no idea

Sam Parr

so they they went public did you know that

Shaan Puri

no

Sam Parr

yeah a lot of people didn't know it we didn't talk

Shaan Puri

about it thought they had like stagnated and like wasn't going anywhere thought

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's what everyone thought. So in 2020, they did about $400,000,000 in revenue (sorry, my bad on the initial figure). They're currently publicly traded at a $5.5 billion valuation.

Shaan Puri

wow wow hot damn

Sam Parr

Yeah, crazy, right? Totally forgot about it. And what you did with your course... well, I don't know if you did this, but what a lot of people, like you and me, will do is create courses and will kind of do these... not bootleg things, but like, yeah, it's a model. And you'll charge like $300 for it.

Shaan Puri

something like that

Sam Parr

Which I've done before, and that makes things a little bit... You want a person to buy it, and that makes things a little bit challenging. What I would do is take the thing that you're describing. With Bitcoin, there are all these crazy new things that you have to learn really quickly. I would just copy the Coursera model and churn these out, charging like $8,000. It's like a company needs to buy it in order to train their people. I want to do that.

Shaan Puri

so so I

Sam Parr

think that's why lambda for x I would do coursera for x

Shaan Puri

Okay, I think that's fair. The thing with the Lambda side, which is basically, I think every time you place one of these engineers, that's like a $20,000 to $25,000 fee that you get. So, it doesn't take much to be... I don't... I wouldn't do this as like a venture-scale business. Not at all. This is basically... I'm a developer who you have to be the right mold. It's like I've been tinkering with smart contracts for the last two years. Anyways, I've actually kind of gotten up to speed myself. I'm a converted back-end engineer who now does smart contracts. I couldn't go... I work at like a FAANG company today. I make $400,000, but like wouldn't it be great to make like $4,000,000 a year? I think this is a way to make $4,000,000 a year as like a two-person company, basically.

Sam Parr

that's I agree

Shaan Puri

yeah but I

Sam Parr

I would never do it in a Lambda. When Sean says "Lambda School," he's referring to it being free, and you make money by getting like a $25,000 referral placement or a percentage of their income/salary. I have... I know nothing about Lambda other than we had Austin on this show, and I think he's amazing, and I love him. And you're an investor. That's really all I know about it. I think my prediction, if I had to bet money on it, is that it won't work.

Shaan Puri

yeah I think that's a I mean I think that's a fair prediction about most startups I think that's true

Sam Parr

But yeah, they're not like most startups. They've raised about $100 million. They're not an early-stage startup; they're in the thick of it. I think that if they're out of business in two years, I wouldn't be surprised.

Shaan Puri

Right, and I would agree with that even as a fan and an investor. I would agree with that. I think that you... Okay, so here's... Okay, let me do two things. First, let me share with you a really hilarious story. Do you know this Twitter account "Greg"? It's like @greg955322... or 327737, is that it?

Sam Parr

a white guy like a like a white old guy

Shaan Puri

it's a white no not old guy it's a white like nerdy dork guy

Sam Parr

no I don't know it

Shaan Puri

You haven't seen this? Just Google search "Greg meme" or "Greg meme account." You'll see it, and I bet you've seen this guy. You know, like these meme accounts. So there's like Dr. Parikh Patel. By the way, big fan of him. I think he's a big fan of us.

Sam Parr

he works for the hustle you know that right

Shaan Puri

Doctor Parikh Patel works at The Hustle. Yeah, we can... you just outed Doctor Parag Patel. Amazing!

Sam Parr

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He, like, him? He's a contractor for us. He writes for us sometimes.

Shaan Puri

oh my god I love it wow no I did not know that

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah so like we

Shaan Puri

my brain is racing to figure it out who it is now okay no

Sam Parr

he's not like like I was a fan of his and I dm ed him and I was like hey

Shaan Puri

you wanna write so you don't know the real identity

Sam Parr

I do

Shaan Puri

okay you do

Sam Parr

but it's yeah

Shaan Puri

So you're saying after you saw Darkbar himself, then you contracted? Okay, gotcha. Alright, that makes way more sense. So anyways, one thing he does is like every time Chamath tweets, he's like the first reply. He just says something like, "I'm proud of you, son," or something totally nonstandard. Greg does that with like Kylie Jenner and other people. Every time she posts something, he'd be like, "Babe, why didn't you call me?" or he'd just say, "I'm so proud of you, babe." It's like as if they're dating. So he's this dorky-looking white guy account. The other day, do you know who Jose Canseco is?

Sam Parr

of course

Shaan Puri

Ben told me the story... So, Jose Canseco, the former baseball player, tweets out: > "I need a smart contract developer for a new token. A token developer for a new token I'm gonna launch." It's just like the classic thing for Paris Hilton and Jose Canseco, these like [celebrity endorsements for cryptocurrency].

Sam Parr

you know anyone know any good designers

Shaan Puri

Has been... has been celebrities that are ready to launch their own crypto token. Here we go! What could go wrong? So, Greg replies, and Greg's like, "Whatever, like me pick Ben." What did he say? What was his reply? Was it just like, "Pick me," or something like that? Yeah, I mean, how can I help? Oh yeah, he goes, "Hey, it's Greg. DM me. How can I help?" And Jose replies and goes, "Awesome! Are you a token developer?" Then he asks, "Are you a developer or smart? Do you know how to do token development?" And then Greg just replies, "No way, Jose." It has like 200,000 likes on that tweet. It's just one of the most liked tweets on Twitter.

Sam Parr

uber eats ever

Shaan Puri

And it's just like, so good, so dumb. But anyway, this guy's like crushing it right now. He's got, I don't know, 100 and something—130 answers handled well. The funny thing is, you know when you sign up for Twitter, let's say you type "Sam," it would say "Sam is not available. Would you like Sam 800,006?" because that's like the next one available. So his is "Greg," and then it's like 12 numbers that are like whatever the default thing would be. You would never think it's going to go viral. Yeah, it's "Greg 16676," whatever, like you know, like ten numbers long.

Sam Parr

so what does this have to do though with

Shaan Puri

Oh yes, that was just my smart contract token developer tangent. My next idea, if you're ready to transition, is unbundling a piece of Y Combinator (YC). YC does a few things for founders. They put a stamp on you that says, "This is a YC startup," so all of a sudden your valuations go up, blah blah blah. They kind of coach you. They say, "Oh, you know, you come in for office hours, tell us about your idea. Maybe we help you pivot your idea. Maybe we help you stay focused on growth or, you know, how to tweak it so you grow faster." They do that for three months, and then they start working on your pitch. Then there's Demo Day, which is where you're going to stand in front of investors. You have to give a one-minute pitch to raise money, and that works. They have, whatever, 120 startups a year now or something doing that. But another kind of course—quote unquote course—I'm very interested in is working backwards from what's a course where the person gets a clear outcome. This is part of my learnings from doing a course: people don't buy a course for learning; they buy some change. They buy a transformation for themselves. For a startup, going from unfunded to funded or from no name to having a stamp of approval is actually a big change. One transformation that people would buy is getting their first round of funding. It's like, "I'm not just going to teach you knowledge that you can may or may not use; I'm going to help you get funded." I was thinking, could you... I've raised probably $20 million in my life, and I've helped a bunch of founders raise money. I think I'm pretty good at storytelling, so I was like, I think I could help a founder who's got no funding today get funding in like one month?

Shaan Puri

And I think I could basically just sit you down with the deck and your story. Then, I would say, "Cool, there's a pretty intense workshopping of your deck and your story to get that to be as good as it's going to be." Then, there's a bunch of angel introductions and teaching you how to manage your pipelines. You would run this like a process, like a bidding war. Unlike what most people do, which is they kind of try to date one investor at a time. They go kind of slow, fear rejection, and don't know how to reach out and all this stuff. I could teach you that, kind of like the sales process of investing. I was thinking, "Oh, you could do this on a success basis." So again, like Lambda, which you don't like, but honestly, you could align your intentions, which says...

Sam Parr

By the way, I like Lambda. I just think the business model is silly. The thing with education is that most people would never benefit from what you're telling them.

Shaan Puri

Right, well that's the... in some ways, that's the beauty of Lambda, but it's also the downside of Lambda. The beauty of Lambda is that their incentive is aligned. So, let's say most courses, like for my writing course, I don't care if you're good at writing or bad at writing. I really don't truly care if you're going to do it or not because I get paid either way. I'd love for you to take the course and have a big benefit, but the reality is that my financial incentive is not such that if you don't hit your goals, it doesn't really make a financial difference to me. Whereas for Lambda, it does. They have to select people who are going to be able to succeed, and they only make money when somebody gets what they want, which is a high-paying job. So, that's the beauty of Lambda, but it's also the hard part about scaling Lambda.

Sam Parr

what what were what were the results from your course though like did that go well

Shaan Puri

it went well it so basically okay so here's the kind of the like the learnings from my course alright

Sam Parr

so can I guess can I guess

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, we'll do it on each category. So first, let's just start with the most interesting one: **money**. How much money do you think I made doing this course? And part of it, I'll make sure you get the context. I taught a course on **power writing**, which is basically writing to get a result. So, like, the writing I do—if I'm writing an email, it's because I want somebody to reply. If I'm writing a landing page, it's because I want somebody to click the buy button. If I'm writing a tweet storm, it's because I want people to share it. The stuff you learn in school is not the stuff that actually works in the real world. So it's like **copywriting**. That's the course. Alright, so I...

Sam Parr

do this a 150 is my guess a 150,000 very close

Shaan Puri

So I did $127,000 of top-line sales. Then let's just break down the P&L [Profit and Loss statement]. So then there's my cost of making the course. I basically had a guy do custom illustrations and graphics and things like that.

Sam Parr

that'd probably be 8 to 10000

Shaan Puri

$75,100 and he was amazing. He was really good, and so I'm like, "I love that. That was worth it." Then there's Maven's fee. So Maven's fee is on the top number, so I...

Sam Parr

should take that 10%

Shaan Puri

10% right. So, take out $12 roughly from $127. Then you take out $7,500 to $10,000 of cost production. Then everything else, and then there's payment processing fees, which was another $3,000 or $4,000. So my net was like $10,000. I'm doing the math badly here, but I think it was like $10,500 roughly. Okay, so that's kind of like the money in. That was off of 320 students. I charged, in the first batch, I did it at half price, so I charged I think $450 or something like that. Maybe it was $400 for the course.

Sam Parr

And if I had your bet, did you do like an NPS? Yes, I would bet it was like out of 10.

Shaan Puri

Out of 10... So for those who don't know, Net Promoter Score basically asks one question to your audience, which is: "How likely are you to refer this to a friend on a scale of 1 to 10?" 10 being "I absolutely will refer," I would absolutely refer a friend to this. 1 being "No way."

Sam Parr

7.3

Shaan Puri

9.1

Sam Parr

that's amazing most everything is in 7

Shaan Puri

Bias, right? Because some people didn't reply to the survey. So I'm assuming the people who really didn't give a shit also didn't reply to the survey. I gave myself a true NPS [Net Promoter Score] of probably 8, but it was 9.1 on the stats.

Sam Parr

so do you think people loved it

Shaan Puri

I think people loved it. The feedback was kind of amazing. Then, I did a survey asking, "What did you like about it?" Basically, it broke into three categories. The first one was, "Dude, two of those sessions were like game changers for me." It's like, "Oh, you're cold emailing? That was great! I immediately implemented this and I got meetings that I wanted. I booked more sales like that one. I just used it right away." The second one was about writing inside of a big company. It was about how to stand out with your writing inside of a big company. I didn't even know I wanted that, but it was a great one. So, everybody kind of had two sessions that they were like, "That was the one." The rest were fine, you know? The rest were good, but didn't really stand out like those two. I got my money's worth; the rest was gravy. Then, I asked people another question: "On average, how much value did you get? Was it $0, the price of admission, a 1x return, 3x, 5x, 10x, whatever it was?" The average answer to that was, "10x my money! I got 10x my value back out of it." I was like, "Okay, for what?" I don't know if that's a scientific question because how the hell are they measuring that? I don't really know. But okay, downsides... guess what the biggest downside was? Because you've done a course before, so tell me, what do you predict was my biggest downside?

Sam Parr

Well, does that include logistics, like quality? I think they'll probably complain about your camera, or your sound, or the time.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, timing was the biggest one because I taught it live. A lot of people, you know, were like: > "Oh, the time worked great for me." > "It worked okay for me." > "It was horrible for me because I'm in Australia and that time zone was awful, so I only watched the recordings." The... I meant, what was the biggest complaint I had in doing the course? What was the biggest downside of doing the course?

Sam Parr

talk too fast

Shaan Puri

no no no I mean like why what was a pain in the ass for me

Sam Parr

well it's probably just way too much work

Shaan Puri

yes complete underestimation of the work

Sam Parr

yeah it's so much work

Shaan Puri

I spent probably **50 to 100 hours** making the content, which was way more than I thought I would do. I thought it would take...

Sam Parr

me like

Shaan Puri

Alright, so let's say 2 hours per session. That's like 15 hours of work. It was like a full day, an 8-hour day per session. I made, plus the actual teaching of it. The best thing I did, by the way, was I structured the session like this. I don't think I invented this; I'm sure other people do this, but I didn't really know what it's called. Basically, I structured the session like this: "Alright, you show up. We're going to be here for an hour. The very first thing I do is say, 'Alright, the promise is this: by the end of this hour, you're going to be able to do this.' That's my promise. That's the magic trick I'm going to show you today. If you can't do that or you're bad at it, you're going to be good at it by the end of this hour." Then, I would say, "Alright, let's say it's a cold email. I'm not going to tell you anything about cold email. Write a cold email right now." They would all have to sit there while I'm watching them for 10 to 15 minutes as they write the thing. So, it was called "Do, Learn, Redo." I'd have them do it; that gives the baseline. They would all share it in the Slack channel. Then, I would teach them—not everything about cold email—but I'd say, "Hey, here are the 3 biggest things you could do to improve your cold emails." I'd do some examples and teach them the theory. Then, I'd say, "Alright, last 15 minutes, you're going to redo it." They would redo it, and then they would have a before and after of their 1-hour session, where it's like a really bad first attempt and then a pretty good second attempt. After the course, I would take 1 hour and go through as many examples as I could of students and just give them feedback through Loom. That worked pretty well, but it was kind of intense for me because I'm basically performing a magic trick live. I don't know what they're going to do, so it was kind of high risk. It wasn't like... it could...

Sam Parr

Anything should have happened. My wife did it, by the way. Sarah, my wife, did it and she sold out. She made $10,000 in like 2 weeks, maybe.

Shaan Puri

and why did she cap it because they told me to cap it and I didn't cap mine

Sam Parr

She's not like you and me. This is her first time doing a public-facing thing, right? You and I have tens of thousands of hours of experience, like ripping under our belt, and we know how to perform. She's just learning and trying to figure out how to do it.

Shaan Puri

By the way, one thing you should tell her: the best thing I did was rehearsals. For each session, I would invite 4 kids who are kind of like 25 and under, usually who can't afford the course. I'd just say, "Hey, you want the course for free in a personal session? I need to do a dry run with you." So I did a dry run for each of the sessions, and in doing that, I would realize 5 minutes in, "Oh, this is all messed up. I gotta change this." Or like, "Wow, this is way too hard." When I just asked them to answer, they're confused... they don't [understand].

Sam Parr

they don't know what's going on comedy

Shaan Puri

yeah so I needed to do those open mics basically to make it work but when

Sam Parr

you do this do you think this will be a significant income source for you in the future or are you gonna quit doing it

Shaan Puri

So, I'm doing it one more time, and we're going to see how that goes. My goal was basically to put the price back to the original price of $9.50. I'm like, "Alright, let's see if there's enough demand at that price." Because below that, it's not really worth it for me, I don't think. You need a lot of students, and it's a lot of work. So, I'm doing it one more time in August. We'll see if it's good again. I had a lot of fun doing it, so we'll see if it's fun again or if it gets old for me. But then I also have a bunch of other ideas for other courses that I want to do. I think I'm going to teach different courses, which is more work, but I think it will be more fun.

Sam Parr

For me... Can I tell you? Okay, so now we're talking about Maven.com. Which, this is... here's your disclosure: we both have incredibly invested interest in this, and I want them to make money. Yeah, because we invested in them, but... I do think they're gonna have to change. I don't think it's gonna work to do live courses. I don't think they're gonna have... it can't be their bread and butter. It's just gotta be where... how they get into the market. That's my prediction, but we'll see.

Shaan Puri

Well, I started off thinking, "I'm gonna do it recorded." I began recording the content and bounced ideas off a few people. First of all, recording good content takes a lot of time. So, it's not like it was going to save time. It saves you time when you know it's scalable later, but it takes a lot more time upfront. The second thing was that people were way less excited about me recording. I was like, "No, no, look! I'm planning this out. It's gonna be as good as I can get it. It's gonna be edited, it's gonna be tight." But they were like, "No, we'd rather just have you live, off the cuff, and not so tight." The perceived value of live is way higher. So, I was like, "Okay, if it's easier for me to do and has a higher perceived value," that was one pivot I had to make halfway through—switching to live.

Sam Parr

Alright, let me pivot to a different topic. Yeah, you maybe told me about this, but I had Jake research it. I think you did tell me about Swimply.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

Okay, so I like to keep a list of things that I thought were horrible ideas but ended up doing amazingly well. I definitely would put Bitcoin in that category. Like, if you don't break around, it's like the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Ryan Hoover told me about Product Hunt the day that he was launching it, and I was like, "Just quit."

Shaan Puri

I I also thought it was stupid yeah

Sam Parr

yeah if you tell

Shaan Puri

I have an easy hack to do this. I just have a bookmark thing on my Chrome. So whenever I see a startup website that I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting," I bookmark it either into "I think it's gonna work" or "I think it's not gonna work." Then I can go back, like a year later, and just click to see how many of those websites are still up and doing something, you know? And I have these books.

Sam Parr

I could do that

Shaan Puri

I've had this for like 5 years

Sam Parr

So, if I saw this next company that I'm about to tell you about, this next idea, if I saw that five years ago or even a year ago, I would have thought, "Well, just quit! Why are you even doing these stupid games? This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard." So, let's explain it. Dave's even stupid. It's called Swimply. Is that piece supposed to be there? Is that a typo?

Shaan Puri

That's it. Hold on, let me see. Is it Swimply? It might be Swimply. No, it is Swimply.

Sam Parr

It's Swimply, that's it. Okay, so we're looking at the Google Doc. That's crazy! I thought that I wasn't sure if that was a typo, but he wrote "Swimply" in my favorite thing.

Shaan Puri

The way I found this was I was just driving and I saw a billboard. It just said, "Swimply: Rent a swimming pool near you." And I was like, "What?"

Sam Parr

And that's what it is. So, you know, with everything going on, people are desperate to get out of their homes. They're working from their houses and they want to get out. So they go and they can rent someone else's pool—Airbnb for pools. If you told me about this four years ago, I'd be like, "This is the dumbest thing I've ever done." This is right next to like going out and renting a dog for an hour, but...

Shaan Puri

you're a believer

Sam Parr

I'm not a believer yet, but the numbers definitely show that I'm wrong. They've grown **2,000%** since summertime. In roughly a year, if you grow **4**, they've grown **4,000%**. What does that mean? **40x**.

Shaan Puri

4000 is 40 times... yeah, okay. They just raised a series beyond anything, right? I can start with 1 and get to 40.

Sam Parr

that's true but they raised a series a which I'm shocked and who's their their their they

Shaan Puri

They raised like $11 or $12 million. So the idea is like this: I have a pool in my backyard, I can set a $50 an hour rate, and somebody who doesn't have a swimming pool in their backyard (because that's a big expense) can say, "Cool, we'll rent your private pool. We're gonna come swim for 2 hours. $100 for 4 of us, it's worth it. We're gonna have fun doing that." And you just kind of clean up your backyard later. That's the idea.

Sam Parr

But they raise their money from like some ballers, people who I respect as knowing what they're doing. So I definitely think I was wrong about Norwest Ventures. I mean, they're like a huge, huge thing, right? Norwest.

Shaan Puri

yeah generic name come on if you're gonna if you're gonna

Sam Parr

Have your fund, like a multibillion-dollar fund. They're big enough that I assume they have employees who vet.

Shaan Puri

Well, yeah, of course. Okay, so their traffic... if you look at their SimilarWeb thing, it's pretty nuts. So like: - January: It's about 50,000 visitors - By June: It's hockey sticking to 400,000 monthly visitors According to SimilarWeb, the exact number might not be right, but the direction is usually correct. So this thing is like doubling: - It doubled last month - Doubled the month before that - Doubled the month before that That's **four doubles in a row**.

Sam Parr

And so, I got interested in the space because I found a company that was raising money. The reason I got interested in this company was we had this guy, who I talked about on the podcast, named Preston. I don't even remember his last name, but I think the company he started was called Spacious, where they would do short-term retail space and rent it out for co-working. There's this other company that I'll find... I'll say the name in a second. What they're doing is you can rent people's homes just during the day for co-working.

Shaan Puri

yeah I've heard of that

Sam Parr

and it starts with a c what's it called

Shaan Puri

cozy or some I don't know what it is yeah chillz I'm just making up names

Sam Parr

And again, that idea I thought was the stupidest thing. Then I talked to Preston, and he's like, "No, these could be legit. These could be huge companies." It's astounding. So, here are a few more companies that are interesting: - **Nabor** is a storage marketplace. By the way, almost all of these I would bet against, and I am being proven wrong consistently. Nabor just raised a $53,000,000 Series B. - **Imove** is an electric vehicle subscription service. They just raised a bunch of money. I'm actually on board with that. It's just like leasing. Kazoo allows you to subscribe to your next car online. - **Picasa** allows you to buy and own a second home with 8 others. That's just a timeshare, isn't it?

Shaan Puri

yeah that's

Sam Parr

Right, and then resort for a resort pass. You can share day passes to resorts, pools, and hotels. So anyway, kind of interesting. This space has always interested me because I've been the one saying how I think it's really stupid and it's not gonna work. But these things are actually proving me wrong.

Shaan Puri

Right, by the way, you just said something like "share a thing." We were talking about courses, and we had this idea a long time ago. I still think it's a good idea. If somebody wants to do this, I'll be your first customer or your minority business partner who does nothing besides give you the idea, which is **ClassPass for online courses**. So, right now, I would pay. If you said, "Hey, I can bring you a student, but you're going to have to give it to them 50% off," but I can get you a volume of students and you don't have to worry about getting students, I'd take that. I think you can work out the math where you can basically get, let's call it, **$100 a month** from somebody, and then they get access to like your course, my course, Sarah's course, you know, like 10 other courses right now. They would get all of them basically like an **all-you-can-eat pass**. So, I think there's a ClassPass for courses that could work for online courses.

Sam Parr

let me

Shaan Puri

let me

Sam Parr

Keep being a hater, but there's this company called Every... what is it called?

Shaan Puri

2 every dot so or every dot 2

Sam Parr

I think every.2... Yeah, there's guys doing that for newsletters. The guys running it are great. His name is Nathan, really cool, wonderful guy. I know Nat is a writer there. I like his work. There's a bunch of interesting, great writers on there. But I think this business model is horrible because dealing with how you're going to pay each writer seems like a huge pain in the ass, doesn't it? And if I'm like... you're... I'm like a big shot...

Shaan Puri

Based on who brings in subs, if your stuff brings in a sub, you get the bounty of that. You give some to the core.

Sam Parr

I'm bringing in subs like go f yourself I wanna own all of it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but you get the majority bounty on yours. So let's say you get 50% of those subscribers you bring in, but you're going to put 50% of the pool. So you're going to get 50% from everybody else. The beauty of it is when you do a paid newsletter, there's this obligation. Like, "Shit, I gotta write this thing." I can't write one a week; I gotta write two a week. It's gotta be good. It can't just be like off the cuff, you know, random stuff. They're paying for this; it's gotta be better than normal blog content. So what everyone does is say, "Look, you just gotta write one good thing a week," let's say, because the consumer is going to get value from eight other writers in the bundle. That's why this works. Each person doesn't have to carry the whole subscription value themselves; they have eight other people contributing to that subscription's value. In return, they just give away some.

Sam Parr

do you think this is gonna work

Shaan Puri

I don't know if it's going to work I think

Sam Parr

or the concept at least you're you're

Shaan Puri

I think it can work. Basically, I'm kind of a believer in that Marc Andreessen idea, which was basically that most businesses are just bundling and unbundling. Right now, newsletters are all unbundled. Someone will create a bundle of newsletters, and it'll be like a cable package. People will say, "Why am I paying for this? I don't want to pay for 10 individual subscriptions." Some of them are good, and some are bad. Instead, if I can just pay a flat $15 a month and get access to my 10 favorite writers, that would be great. So, I think it can work.

Sam Parr

are you getting sick of newsletters

Shaan Puri

No, I have fun. I like writing my stuff, but I do it on my terms. So, like, I'm not consistent. This thing I send out every Tuesday, but if you subscribe to it, you're like, "Bullshit! You don't send it every Tuesday. You send it like every other Tuesday at best." Yeah, because if I'm doing something else that's fun, I just don't send it. You've experienced the pain of my inconsistencies or being late or things like that. It's just kind of the way I operate on all things. The good of it is that when I do it, I'm never just going through the motions. I'm always trying to bring it. But if I don't have something to bring, I don't do it. Sometimes I don't send the thing because I'm doing something interesting, but that'll make the next week's letter more interesting because I was doing something interesting. So that's my only way of sustaining newsletter things. I think when you treat your hobby like a job, that's a recipe for failure. That's what happens to a lot of people. They think it's fun to blog, and then they want to make that their career. Then, you know, they make the grave mistake of turning their hobby into a job when they didn't really want it as a job.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's hard. It's fucking hard. As someone who hasn't written them but has owned a newsletter company that has sent 365 newsletters times 4 years, it's very hard. By the way, *very* challenging.

Shaan Puri

I heard another newsletter company (that shall not be named) say, "Oh, you know, our subscriber base is like... the 3rd largest city in America." I thought that was just a badass way of saying, "We have 2,000,000 subscribers," or "3,000,000 subscribers," or whatever it is. I think you should steal that and start saying things like that.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I like that one. It's kind of like, I think The Skimm was the one who said, "If we were a morning show, we would be the number one most popular morning show."

Shaan Puri

right another great way of framing that's part of the

Sam Parr

power dynamics

Shaan Puri

it's just like how do you bullshit frame it

Sam Parr

it's a bit bullshit but it is yeah it I it is useful

Shaan Puri

Right, okay.

Sam Parr

do we want we wanna wrap here do we wanna go to one more

Shaan Puri

let's do one more fun thing do you have one otherwise I can pick one

Sam Parr

you pick 1

Shaan Puri

do you wanna pick 1 off your list maybe do this elon filing a patent thing that sounds good

Sam Parr

Okay, so basically, I'm working with Jake, our researcher, to find different signals and figure out what those signals mean. There's something interesting: I've always been interested in gas stations. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a bit of a nerd about America. I love nostalgia and middle America stuff. Gas stations are interesting to me because we spend a lot of time there. I have fond memories of gas stations. Many of the biggest privately owned businesses in America are gas stations. If you look at the top 100 privately owned companies in America, a very large percentage are gas stations. By revenue, gas typically makes up two-thirds of sales for gas stations, but it only accounts for one-third or less of profit. The majority of profit comes from buying items inside the store. Elon Musk recently filed a trademark for different restaurant services aimed at electric vehicles and food services. I'm very eager to see what Tesla is going to do. I'm also curious about how the modern gas station is going to change. So far, the biggest gas station chains I think of are Casey's and QuikTrip. There are a few more that are at the top, but they aren't doing much. If you go to a gas station right now for Tesla, it's still a pain in the butt. The Tesla superchargers are way better. I'm very eager to see what happens next, and I wanted to know what you think: What is going to happen to gas stations, and how are they going to continue to make money?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I think there are two big changes happening. First, cars are going electric. What happens to gas stations? Do they just convert into electric charging stations, or is it going to be different? You're charging at home, right? I can't fill up my tank overnight in my garage, but I can charge my electric vehicle that way. So maybe those gas stations just aren't needed anymore. They need to convert to some other use of real estate. It's like Blockbuster on the corner store. Why would I need that when I could just push a button and stream Netflix to my TV? The second change is self-driving cars, which is going to change the game for both gas stations and parking garages. You don't need as much parking when you have self-driving cars. Most of city real estate is parking, whether it's street parking or parking garages. There's a huge amount that's just parking. Because cars are idle 90% of the time, when cars go self-driving, they're not going to be idle 90% of the time. So cities are going to have to renovate basically the way they use their land because it's going to become totally obsolete. But let's focus on gas stations for a second. One theory is that gas stations become like entertainment hubs because charging a car takes a lot more time than filling up a gas tank. I think even a supercharger takes like 30 minutes to recharge your Tesla while you're on a road trip or whatever. So, what do you do to entertain people during that time? Maybe they're just sitting in their car using the in-car entertainment system, but maybe there's something else you can do with food, drink, and TVs. It could essentially turn into a sports bar. The other thing that I think is interesting is, I'll give my cousin a shout-out. My cousin Rohan has a startup called Stable.auto, so check it out. You're not going to fully grasp it from the landing page, but I'll just tell you about it. The company is called Stable...

Sam Parr

can I spell it

Shaan Puri

stable like s t a b l e like a like a stable

Sam Parr

and then dot what

Shaan Puri

Auto... A-U-T-O. So, he started off doing... he was like a robotics guy from MIT. He said, "Look, how do I make it so that a self-driving car can charge itself?" Self-driving cars are great because they can drive people around without a driver, but how are they going to charge? They have to go to a charging station. Are you just going to have attendants there plugging in cars and taking them out? How is it going to work? He was creating, if you've ever seen, Elon tweeted this out once, a robotic arm that would find the charging station and plug itself in. It was like a self... yeah, yeah, yeah. Imagine if the gasoline pump could go into your car without you having to pick it up and put it in the hole. So, he built a robotic arm that did that. What my cousin was doing was basically saying, "Oh, if Tesla's doing that, but there are all these companies trying to compete with Tesla, I'll make the robotic arm for all the other companies." Every other company has a different charging location on the car. How would I make machine learning that finds the hole and sticks the plug in it, basically? He started doing that, but the problem was, and I told him this, "Look, self-driving cars are not here yet. You're building for a future market. You don't know when it's going to happen. We all know it's going to happen eventually, but that's a little bit difficult." Also, building these robotic arms is really hard. So, he switched to something else, which is basically software that...

Sam Parr

it it

Shaan Puri

It basically tells you when you need to charge your electric car. Imagine Uber and Lyft; they have these fleets of electric vehicles that are definitely going to be on the roads. So, when do you go charge? If you wait until you're almost out of battery, you might miss peak traffic times when you could get a lot of rides and make a lot of money. You also might charge when it's really expensive to do so because electricity costs fluctuate throughout the day. What they're building is essentially an app that you load onto your device. This is the last I heard of it. It's an app for any Uber or Lyft driver with an electric vehicle. It will say, "Now is the optimal time to charge. Go over here; there's a charging station nearby. There's not much traffic for Uber rides right now, and the price of electricity is low." This will work while you have human drivers, and when you have self-driving fleets, it will automate the whole process. It will say, "Hey, let's send 10% of your fleet to charge right now and keep 90% on the road." It will optimize everything so you're saving the most money both ways.

Sam Parr

But let's talk about what you think is going to happen. Where's the opportunity right now? I mean, his idea that maybe... I think it's far simpler. Have you ever heard of Buc-ee's?

Shaan Puri

Yes, let me tell you what it is. **Buc-ee's** is basically a gas station chain in Texas that people don't just like, they *love*. It's a tourist destination, and it's a destination for a couple of reasons: 1. It has extremely clean bathrooms 2. They have a bunch of food that people are obsessed with I think... I've never been to one even though I lived in Texas.

Sam Parr

It's basically **shitty sugary food**, but it has a funny logo. They serve like brisket; it's just low quality but fun.

Shaan Puri

it became a thing

Sam Parr

The bathroom... yeah, but it's huge. So I think that it's going to break down into two categories. The first category is just everyday use. I think people are going to keep their stuff at home, charge at home, or they're just going to charge while they're in the grocery store. That's how they will do it, and I think Whole Foods is going to be the winner. The second thing is traveling. I think the way that that's going to look is Buc-ee's. It's going to be just like a Buc-ee's meets the Museum of Ice Cream. When I go to Buc-ee's, it's a spectacle. I stop there because I'm going to get a huge soda, maybe something to eat, but I'm just going to look at stupid stuff like a Buc-ee's knife or a Buc-ee's book bag—just dumb trinkets that I need.

Shaan Puri

bass pro shop basically

Sam Parr

It's like going into a Bass Pro Shop or just walking around IKEA. It's just a spectacle. It's going to be like that with a little bit of the Museum of Ice Cream, where there are going to be even more spectacles that are fun to take pictures in front of. That is where what's going to happen, I think. I think like the Shells of the world or whatever gas station, 7-Eleven, could actually become a Buc-ee's because 7-Eleven has a little bit of nostalgia. Like, 7-Eleven is kind of cool. It's like Subway.

Shaan Puri

it's like vans

Sam Parr

yeah yeah it could subway could be could be the next version of vans

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I think there are definitely some people that are going to go that route, right? They make it a tourist destination and have a quirky brand, and that works. I think some people are going to go full automation. So, like in San Francisco, we had that thing, Cafe X. I don't know, did you ever buy coffee from that?

Sam Parr

no it took too long

Shaan Puri

took too long I mean it takes like a minute right

Sam Parr

it's just stupid I thought it was dumb cafe x is stupid

Shaan Puri

How did you think that's stupid? That's like... that's so good! So if nobody knows who... what Café X is, describe it.

Sam Parr

So, it's basically okay, but here's the thing. It's like a Keurig machine; it's not that fancy. But it usually looks like it's in a building and has this glass around it. There's a massive robot arm making a spectacle of moving the coffee cup around and then pouring the milk into it. In reality, you don't need that stupid arm. It could just be like a coffee vending machine. That's why whenever I see that, I'm like... when I see these in warehouses and stuff, it's just like you put in two quarters and you get a coffee. Have you ever been to the hospital and used one of those cappuccino machines? I don't need this dumb arm to trick me and act like it's doing something special.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so that's definitely one way of seeing it, and I could see that point of view. I think, what's the difference between Starbucks and that vending machine? Is it the quality of the coffee, or what is the difference?

Sam Parr

probably not the quality

Shaan Puri

so what is the difference

Sam Parr

one's a spectacle and one you talk to people

Shaan Puri

No, no, no. It's not what I'm saying. Like, between the Keurig machine and Starbucks, why do you even need a Starbucks? Why couldn't Starbucks just be a Keurig machine?

Sam Parr

like getting out of the house and seeing people

Shaan Puri

Okay, so maybe it's that. If that's the case, then Starbucks is safe. The other case is basically that there's some middle ground of variety and quality that's above a coffee machine, but more like a Starbucks. You have like 40 drinks that you want because you want your soy latte with, you know, almond milk, and then you want two pumps of sugar, and you want light ice or whatever. That's how you like your drink. You can't get that out of a normal coffee machine either. The coffee doesn't taste as good, or the drink is not as elaborate. Café X basically says, "Cool, what if we could serve coffee faster and cheaper than a Starbucks? What if we could serve Starbucks-quality coffee but faster and cheaper than a Starbucks?" Why? Because we have a robot arm that could just do the thing 24/7, never call in sick, and never have any employee issues. By the way, it takes up one-tenth of the square footage of a Starbucks. It's like a giant robot in a hamster ball; it has everything it needs right there. It takes up like 10 square feet, whereas Starbucks is much bigger. So, what they're doing with the idea of Café X... I don't think Café X specifically is going to succeed, but I'd be shocked if there's not a Café X-type winner down the road. You can shove these things anywhere. You can put it inside an apartment building, and it can make sense in an apartment building, whereas a full-service Starbucks with staff wouldn't make sense in an apartment building. I think those are going to succeed. I think there's a version of gas stations that's like that. I think there's a version of gas stations that is just all automation. The charging is automated, and then you go and push a button, and it creates a giant Slurpee for you, like 7-Eleven, but it's just a robot arm doing it.

Sam Parr

We'll see if it works out, but I think it's gonna be more like buggies... at least I hope it will be. Alright, that's the episode. I gotta go get a haircut.