When to Go All In on an Idea & the Crypto Exchange That Could Have Been | My First Million #200

Sam Parr

Think this is a good strategy: you say no to most everything. Then, when you see the thing that you're like, "This is it," you go 100% all in on it. Alright, we're live. You didn't know enough about Red Ventures to bring that up.

Shaan Puri

I talked to somebody who sold their company to Red Ventures. They were telling me about it, and I just made a note. I was like, "Fascinating! Gotta go research more." So, I put it on here just to be like, "I'm going to go research more." Then you added, "I know a lot" in all caps. So, you only know a lot, which is great.

Sam Parr

Maybe we can talk about it later. Also, another thing that I actually forgot to add: I was watching the UFC fight, and do you remember about 4 weeks ago, maybe 2 weeks ago, we discussed this business of giving away cars? I saw an ad at the bottom of the UFC fight. I think that one way I find ideas is by looking at anyone who's doing brand advertising. There are two types of... well, I guess there are many types of advertising, but the first type is performance. This is when you click on something, and I can see 100% when you purchase. I can see everything about that, and I can attribute it. It's called attribution marketing or performance marketing. The second type is brand marketing, like billboards. What's another example? I don't even know.

Shaan Puri

Just TV commercials, right? You do a commercial, and you don't necessarily know how effective it is. They try to measure it, but in reality, when Budweiser runs a commercial at the Super Bowl, it's because they're trying to build awareness. They want Budweiser to be top of mind. Maybe they want to talk about their zero-calorie beer. They're just trying to build awareness, and they're not directly hoping that you watch that, open up your phone, and buy Budweiser right at that moment. That's not the way that marketing is designed.

Sam Parr

They hope that you eventually walk into the store and it influences you. This is what Geico does. Often, early-stage companies, particularly tech companies that are savvy with internet marketing, start with performance. Then, when they exhaust that, they go, "Alright, now we need more people in the world to know about this product." What I love doing is looking at who's doing brand advertising because, not always, but often that means they're crushing it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's like buying art. If you're buying art, you're rich. If you're buying brand ads, your company's rich.

Sam Parr

Yes, that's a great example. I saw UFC; they have this ad for Watch Gang. I think Watch Gang may be sponsored in an embedded episode, but then also, before one of the fights, it said, "This episode is brought to you by Watch Gang. Get a Rolex every month." I was like, "What is going on with that? What is that?" I've never heard of Watch Gang, and I know a little bit about watch collectors, or at least I'm a fan. So, I don't want to get into it too much, but they were doing a contest for a Rolex on watchgang.com.

Shaan Puri

Giving away a Rolex? So, my coworker at Twitch, when I was there, came up to me and showed me his watch. I said, "Hey man, nice watch!" He replied, "I got this in this watch club that I'm in." I asked him to tell me more, and he explained about Watch Gang. He said, "Yeah, I found this website. I had no idea if it's a scam or not. It's crazy! This watch is like a $250 watch, and I'm paying $30 a month." I thought, "Okay, sounds fishy." He agreed, saying, "Yeah, exactly." He didn't even know if anything would come, but then he showed me the watch, and it was there. I went and played with it, and it's one of those super optimized websites. You open up the website, and bam! They want your email for this thing. If you don't want to give your email, you can spin the wheel and win something. Oh, you spun the wheel? Okay, you have 30 seconds to finish your checkout, or else your family will be taken ransom! It's like this... If you go to it, it's just one hero image, and the tagline basically is, "Get new watches sent right to your door. Do you keep them? You sure do! Are the watches good? No, sir, they're amazing!" It's well-written copy with a huge hero image. I'm thinking, "This site prints money." I made a mental note about Watch Gang at that moment. It's like a mystery box; you don't know which watch you're going to get. You might get one worth $1,000, or you might get a $100 watch, but you're always getting a watch of good value. The weird thing is, who needs this many watches? I don't know. Nobody needs 12 watches a year, as far as I'm concerned, but maybe I'm just not the demo.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so when I see this stuff, like if you're on the internet long enough—which, you know, you don't need to do it that much in order to see it—when you see something like this, you're like, "Something is going on to where it's maybe a scam and full of it." But also, if you told me this made $200,000,000, I would be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I totally buy it." It's an...

Shaan Puri

Arbitrage plays a significant role here. It's similar to how most direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands operate. They're not necessarily making the best products, but they excel in marketing strategies. For instance, if they're really good at Facebook marketing, affiliate marketing, or influencer marketing, they can build a brand like MVMT Watches. They built a luxury watch brand worth over $100 million in just two years. They made it sound like an old-school brand, partnered with numerous influencers, and utilized effective marketing strategies. This is definitely a marketing company, not just a watch company. They could easily pivot and apply the same model to golf clubs, shoes, or any other product. You could take this watch game website and adapt it for sneakers right now, and I believe it would perform well. There must be some method behind how they're acquiring these watches at a significant discount. Perhaps these are out-of-style watches or refurbished ones. I don't know exactly what they're doing, but there has to be a way for them to offer these watches and still make a profit. I'm not sure if it's $30 or some other price point, but it’s intriguing.

Sam Parr

I don't know why I saw the ad. Whenever I see people advertising on the UFC, I think they're like... there's a lot of new brands. For example, Manscaped advertises there, and I had heard of Manscaped. Then they advertise in the UFC, and I'm like, "Oh, they must be monsters." They... well.

Shaan Puri

You have to be okay with your logo getting covered in blood. I think most brands just don't want that. The brands that were okay with that got this big upside of a huge amount of eyeballs for a very low ad cost. Early on, it looked like NASCAR. Every fighter would come out and they'd have like 50 logos, from their mom-and-pop barbershop in their local town to some random insurance company or energy drink. They've been trying to get it more and more mainstream, although they just announced a $175,000,000 deal with Crypto.com or MyCrypto.com.

Sam Parr

is crypto.com scammy or legit I don't know anything about it

Shaan Puri

Well, they offer an 8% return and 8% cashback. So, that's how you know it's probably not totally... it's not that it's a scam. It's, again, these sort of hand-wavy types of things. It's like, yeah.

Sam Parr

you get our crypto card

Shaan Puri

It's a metal card. It's awesome! When you spend, you earn **8% in crypto bucks**. So, wait, what's a crypto buck? That's our own currency we created. It's like... oh God, you have to hold **5,000 crypto bucks** to earn the **8%**. It's like, "Dude, do I want to go buy **$5,000** of your crypto bucks in order to earn the **8%**?" I don't know. I don't think so.

Sam Parr

Yeah, they let a lot of stuff like that and advertise with them. But I want to bring up a couple of topics. You have a few ideas, but you talked about this house thing, so I want to ask you about that. So, I'm on vacation.

Shaan Puri

First time since COVID, we went to Vegas. I'm staying in a house with somebody, and their house is unbelievable. Dude, I am in awe.

Sam Parr

a hotel like a family member

Shaan Puri

This is somebody I'm related to. Yes, so this is a house that's worth probably **$15,000,000**. In San Francisco, **$15,000,000** will give you a fat house. In Vegas, **$50,000,000** will give you... well, what I'm in. You know, I'm in a resort. I was walking in and I was trying not to trip into the koi ponds along the way to the door. The door opens up and there's a freaking... you know, from the hotel, that little cart the bellman has to take your stuff to your room.

Sam Parr

they have

Shaan Puri

One of those... because the room is so far away from the door. It's just such a big house. So I use that. I get to my room, and my room is like, you know, everything's magical. Dude, we were eating dinner, and then all of a sudden, like, a convertible roof retracted from over our heads. The walls disappeared; they went away. Then we all went swimming in this pool that surrounds the dining room while looking out at downtown Vegas. It's unbelievable. The reason I say this is because I thought I knew how much money I wanted. I thought I knew what I wanted, and now that I've stayed at this house, I'd like some more money, please. That's my brutally honest take. How much stealing my raw emotion that I have 24 hours into this house is... oh, fuck this. Okay, yo, yeah, I can be happy without this, but why can't I do this too? This is pretty nice. I've never seen anything like it.

Sam Parr

A commercial space... you need to have a $15,000,000 house. What do you think your investable asset, like relatively liquid net worth, needs to be? Like, 60 or 70 million?

Shaan Puri

I think $100,000 to be safe. $70,000 if you're 60. $70,000 if you're like 50 or 60, I guess, if you're just kind of playing. You're comfortable with it being riskier, I guess. Or like if that $50,000 or $60,000 that you have is not totally at risk, you could say, "Oh, okay, you know, I've got that cashed out. I'm going to put it in safe investments." And $15,000,000, I'll put into my house. This house was previously owned by somebody whose grandfather started like Caesars or one of the casinos—two of the casinos downtown. It's like a billionaire family. Then they sold the house to these guys, and actually, the funny thing is they sold the house and then regretted it. As soon as they sold it to them, the day later, they were like, "Hey, my... you know, the broker calls. The broker says my client really regrets selling that house."

Sam Parr

oh no

Shaan Puri

And it was one person living here, so it was like this enormous, you know, 30-car garage, bowling alley type of thing. I don't know if there is... I haven't even explored the whole house yet. I've only seen like one-fourth of the house so far. But she called back and said, "I'll give you an extra $1,000,000 in cash just to have the house back," one day later, and they turned it down.

Sam Parr

Dude, I think that's cool. I love visiting that in my head. I think I actually don't want that. Maybe it's because if you're wealthy enough to buy that, then you just have people who could take care of it. But when I think of owning something that expensive and that nice, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I need to take care of it."

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

that sounds like a lot of work

Shaan Puri

I think that's true for most things. I feel differently about a house for two reasons. One is that I think a house like this makes sense when you have what they have—like tons of kids. Basically, you have a full family. They have four kids, and it's like this is your family's compound. This is your home base. Your kids... you kind of wouldn't really do this, I don't think, if you're a bachelor. If you're a bachelor, you want to be in a penthouse in Manhattan or something cool like that. But this is different. This is like a suburban home, right? But it's like a family compound. The second thing is that a yacht or cars are like low use, high maintenance. Whereas a house is tremendously high use and actually quite low maintenance for most homes. They have a cleaning staff and people that can come take care of stuff. Yes, there are bills—I'm not saying there are no bills. What I'm saying is it's not like a car where you're worried about it getting scratched when you park it or drive it anywhere. Most of the time, it's just sitting idle, unused in a garage with a tarp on top. In this case, for a house, you're constantly in it and you're constantly using it, especially if you have a big family. So I would say a house is the one area where I would splurge. Almost every other material possession, like fancy clothes or cars, just doesn't make sense to me.

Sam Parr

When I hear about people like this, the same question always pops up in my head: how much do they spend per month? So, if you had to guess this person's total family expenses, including the house, what would you guess it would be? I imagine...

Shaan Puri

you get a mortgage

Sam Parr

on a you get a mortgage on a $15,000,000 house like

Shaan Puri

Like Randy Moss said, "Straight cash, baby." They had to, in order to get the house, they had to go in home. Oh.

Sam Parr

my gosh so you don't have a mortgage on a house normally a mortgage I mean I think you take do

Shaan Puri

They could finance it afterwards. So, they'll buy it in cash and then they'll go and refinance it. Basically, they'll get a little cash out. You know, they'll leave 30% down and then they'll take the other 70%. They'll pay, you know, some percentage. But for this, you can't even get a traditional mortgage for this.

Sam Parr

yeah you get like a rich person

Shaan Puri

so they got like a a hard money loan basically if they wanted to cash it out or or

Sam Parr

okay so including that let's not include that that's hard

Shaan Puri

to include

Sam Parr

Yeah, because that's even hard to calculate. I don't even know what that would be. I mean, that could be like $100 a month. I don't know what it would be. Yeah, exactly, but if you...

Shaan Puri

just had life expenses

Sam Parr

life expenses not including the house which is a a a ton

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I would not be surprised if it was between **$10,200,000** a month. That'd be my guess.

Sam Parr

wouldn't be surprised

Shaan Puri

I wouldn't be surprised

Sam Parr

that's so much money to spend

Shaan Puri

It could be a little less. It could be 70. It's definitely not less than 50, is my guess. I'll ask you today. I'll find out when we're ready for it.

Sam Parr

the next level that's a good question just like what's your burn

Shaan Puri

yeah what's your exactly what's your burn

Sam Parr

That's a good question. So, let me tell you really quick. There’s a lot next to my house. I mean, you know that little crappy shack that was next to my house?

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

It's for sale. I think I'm gonna buy it, and I'm gonna build a house there and try to sell it or rent it out. I'm excited to do this, and I'll talk about this on this podcast. I'm excited to do it because I've never done a project like this. I've never done a physical business, really. I've only done, you know, digital stuff, and I think it's gonna be exciting. Do you think it's a stupid idea or a smart idea?

Shaan Puri

No, I think it's a smart idea because it's going to change the way you look at the world a little bit. It's right next to you. If this was even 2 miles away, I'd be like, "Nah dude, it's just a headache." When it's literally right next to you, that takes a lot of the overhead of managing a project or even thinking about a project or researching whether there's a good or bad buy. It's like, okay, what's the worst-case scenario? You're going to have a house next to the house you already have. You like this neighborhood; you already enjoy being there. Your friends are all there. You're going to be able to Airbnb this with low maintenance because it's right next door. You know you'll never have to worry about it, and your friends can come crash there when it's not rented out. Or you can expand to it if you build your dream house, right? You can build your dream house right next to you, which is a fun project to do for you and Sarah. Then maybe you leave your house and go to that house if you build it, which takes a year or whatever. So I think it's a great idea. It's not just about finances; in my opinion, it's a life idea. It's a fun thing to do that will probably break even or be profitable when you do it.

Sam Parr

What I'm learning about finances is that, you know, you and I talk about investing in different stuff. Your average Joe has access to this as well. This isn't like there's this... if you just park it into a general fund, like a general index fund, life is so easy. You get almost amazing returns compared to everything else. Do you know what I mean? It's so easy; you don't have to...

Shaan Puri

Think about it: a big base, right? That's the problem for most people. Yes, that vehicle is available for most people, but let's say you're getting 7% a year. You put in $100,000. Okay, cool, you made $7,000 pretax. Right now, you have $107,000. You need to let that compound for like 15 to 20 years. And like Charlie Munger once said when they asked him, "Hey, your guys' playbook seems pretty simple. Why don't more people do it?" He said, "No one wants to get rich slow." I think that's the problem: nobody wants to take a small base and let it compound for 20 years. Very few people do, and that's the issue there.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it is boring, but it works. I want to bring up one quick topic. I met 2 or 3 interesting people this week, and I think people like hearing this. I enjoyed hearing about this $15,000,000 house. Alright, I met this guy named Jason. Have you ever heard of this company called Blockworks?

Shaan Puri

blockworks no is this like a construction company

Sam Parr

No, it's right up your alley. It's a media outlet. It's basically like The Hustle, Morning Brew, or Axios, but for crypto.

Shaan Puri

oh okay nice

Sam Parr

I think it's blockworks.io maybe

Shaan Puri

dotco maybe

Sam Parr

Oh, is it Dotco? So, Blockworks. It's this guy, Bootstrap. He's only 27 years old. I went to his house last night in New York, in Brooklyn. Awesome business! He'll probably do 8 figures, or yeah, maybe 10—north of $10,000,000 in revenue this year. Completely bootstrapped. He started it because he used to monetize. He was like 23 years old and he cold emailed "Pop" and said, "Listen to this podcast I'm working on. Come to this event." He was just constantly emailing him. Pop, who's this big Bitcoin guy, but who was less of a big Bitcoin guy years ago, said, "Alright, you've been emailing me too much. Whatever, you're persistent. I'm thinking about launching this podcast. I need help launching it and monetizing it. Do you want to help?" This kid—he was a kid at the time—said yes. Then, eventually, he launched a crypto media company called Blockworks. He launched it 3 or 4 years ago. It's only an LLC, so he completely owns it. He didn't raise any money. Really fascinating business. Very simple. He just picked the right category, and now they're doing conferences. It's a slick-looking website, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you go to it. It looks like Bloomberg or something, you know? It looks like a proper... you know, it just looks like a template of a good news site in general. So how do you select the subscriber base to this, right? Is this done through email or is it done through direct site visits?

Sam Parr

They make a lot of money through email, and then they have podcasts. There are some other conferences, and they have a conference that he...

Shaan Puri

for for what it's worth showing them close to half a 1000000 visits a month

Sam Parr

Yeah, so it's not... it's probably, like, if you look at our traffic to TheHustle.co, maybe we were two times that. I know that we had 800,000 to 1,000,000 a month.

Shaan Puri

Right, and we had talked about CoinMarketCap recently, which was probably the bigger player in this space. So, CoinMarketCap sold to Binance, I think. And how much did they sell for? It was like $100 million, right?

Sam Parr

500 of 1,000,000 if it didn't sell for that it's worth that

Shaan Puri

And the shocking thing was that CoinMarketCap had a larger monthly traffic volume than, I think, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. I think it was which just shows you the level of interest. When we talked, we joked about this. We were just like, "Oh, how do we make this podcast grow?" and I was like, "Pivot to crypto." There's just this insane appetite for crypto content because people get in, they think they're going to get rich, and every day there's a news cycle of like, "The world is... the world is, you know, we're going to the moon," or "The world is crashing," and like, "What's going on?" So, crypto was a phenomenal place to go. I like Blockworks. I want to share one thing, but did you have something else on Blockworks you want to share? I have a topic related to Blockworks.

Sam Parr

no he it's just an interesting business I just thought it was interesting it's just not how

Shaan Puri

big does it seem

Sam Parr

It looks like they have 20 people on board. I don't know who's full-time and who's not. If you click on their podcast, they have like 12 podcasts. It's a type of company that is *sexy* in that it's a media company for crypto. I mean, that's definitely *sexy*. The guy is 27, but he runs it just like a small business. He just slowly adds and adds and adds. I think it's really fascinating. If I had to bet—and I don't have to—I just got to know him, and we didn't even talk about this. If I had to bet, I would imagine you're going to see this company sell for in the $40 to $50 million range in the next 18 months. I just wanted to bring it up now to call it out, to see it before it actually happens.

Shaan Puri

Right, I would take the over on that. I think it's going to sell for more. If the numbers you're saying are what it is, just looking at it, I think traditional media companies don't...

Sam Parr

They have to sell for that much. If it's only... I don't know what the revenue is exactly, but it's in the range of $10,000,000. If they only do, let's say, $9,000,000 in revenue, that's probably only worth $25,000,000.

Shaan Puri

But you're not putting the crypto premium, right? So the company's self is based on their story. I think the story here is going to be that, "Hey, look, this is where financial news is going." Financial news is probably the biggest, kind of most valuable segment of the news. Not biggest in terms of popularity, but most valuable per user. Right? The Wall Street Journal, you know, is a very valuable publication because every one of their users is interested in investing somewhere between $1,000 and $1,000,000. So I think if you're the crypto Bloomberg or the crypto Wall Street Journal, like we saw that CoinMarketCap sold for several hundred million, not necessarily because their revenue was that much higher, but because a big exchange wanted to grow. Exchanges are worth a lot; for example, Coinbase is worth $80 to $100 billion. Binance is similar. These companies, the exchanges are so big that they were like, "Great, we need a media arm." Right? This trend we've been talking about—HubSpot, "Oh, we want a media arm." Robinhood, "We want a media arm." They've been buying up media companies in order to own their own media arm, which is basically cheap user acquisition for them. So whether it's them or a traditional media company that will buy, I don't know. But I do think that a crypto news site is going to get whatever a normal media site would sell for. I'd put a 2.5x on it for crypto right now because...

Sam Parr

Could be... I wouldn't doubt it. What I told him is what I would tell the audience as well, which is: **sell to a tech company, don't sell to a media company.** If you want to create a media company, build it in hopes of selling to a tech company.

Shaan Puri

company make a list of enterprise saas companies then sell

Sam Parr

it to them and take

Shaan Puri

an all stock deal alright now now you have set yourself up

Sam Parr

No, I'm just saying, do you think that a media company is going to triple its market cap value pretty quickly? Or do you think that Coinbase will? Yeah, I think you...

Shaan Puri

would much rather go there right but

Sam Parr

Yeah, I would rather own $50,000,000 of Coinbase stock than I would a cat of New York Times stock.

Shaan Puri

Right, right. Another sort of related thing on this. I was thinking back; I was doing some reflection yesterday. Actually, I was thinking about crypto. I don't know if I've told you this story, but basically, very early on, my crypto story was like this: We were at lunch, and I was running an idea lab. That's a good position to be in when new things happen. Running an idea lab, you've got a bunch of engineers and designers. You already have funding, and you're ready to take a new idea and just chase it to market. So, Bitcoin, I think at that time, had its first kind of pop from like the $7 range to, I don't know, what it was—$20 and then $100. It was all happening within a period of like 1 or 2 months. That first spike happened, then it came crashing down after $100 back to like $17 or something like that. The exact numbers are wrong, but ballpark, Bitcoin was very cheap back then. Our sysadmin guy, Pete, who's like kind of a very early internet guy, would hang out all day at work. He'd be in the IRC channels, not Slack, and he's talking to other sysadmins at other companies and stuff like that. This guy was always like a security guy. He was always like, "Oh, these big companies are tracking us." You know, he's the kind of guy that would use DuckDuckGo early on, type of thing. So, Pete was in the right community for something like Bitcoin. He starts telling us, "Oh, Bitcoin, Bitcoin's amazing, dude! We're mining!" He's like mining it on our servers in the office. He's like, "Yeah, it's great! I love Bitcoin!" And we're like, "Here's Pete." You know, Pete, who's kind of like more of a neckbeard archetype, right? He's like, "Oh, Pete's really into something again. Great!"

Sam Parr

yeah so what's he worth now

Shaan Puri

Well, I didn't take it too seriously, but I think he was more like a lot of people who early on weren't putting a ton of cash into it. They were mining it or they were earning it for doing a job and then spending it because they wanted to be a part of this new economy. By the way, have you ever heard that story about Andreas Antonopoulos?

Sam Parr

mm-mm no do you

Shaan Puri

know who that guy is

Sam Parr

no well I may maybe do is he the guy who looks like is he greek

Shaan Puri

He, I think he's Greek, yeah, based on the name. But he's basically, he was like the Bitcoin evangelist. So when Bitcoin came out, he was going and talking everywhere to promote it.

Sam Parr

who he is as a personality

Shaan Puri

Bitcoin's amazing! He wrote this Bitcoin book, and it's great. So, anyway, he's spreading the gospel. He's like, "What you need when you have a new movement..." It's like this guy was out there. I don't know much about the Bible, but you know, he wasn't Jesus, but he's like, you know, Paul or whoever, taking the gospel and spreading it. He had been doing this for years. He had been earning money, and he would only take in Bitcoin. Then, he would spend it on his rent and his coffee. He wanted to live in crypto and live what he was preaching—that this new financial system, with real kind of like hard money, true money, sound money, as they say, is the way to go. So, anyway, the Bitcoin price keeps going up, up, and up. People are like, "Andreas, you must be like a millionaire a hundred times over by now!"

Sam Parr

oh no

Shaan Puri

And he's like, "Well, no. I was living off Bitcoin. I was spending it like I was earning it for talking at some events, but I didn't charge a ton because I just wanted to get the word out." He's like, "When I had it, I was using it to pay rent. I have a family, and no, I actually didn't have a ton." He wasn't saying it like, "You know, pity me." He was just like, "Contrary to popular belief, here's the case." So there's this guy on Twitter, I forget his name, but he's like this famous guy who forked Bitcoin and owns Bitcoin.com. It's kind of like he's not very well-liked in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Roger Ver, or something like that is his name. He starts making fun of Andreas on Twitter, saying, "Oh my god, the biggest Bitcoin carnival barker for all these years didn't even make money when Bitcoin shot up in price to thousands of dollars per coin. What a joke! Nice one, schmuck." He starts making fun of him. Then the Bitcoin community rallied and overnight donated anonymously to his wallet, making Andreas a millionaire in Bitcoin. People were donating money because they were like, "No, I got into it because of this guy. He's getting made fun of because he didn't profit off of this? Like, fuck that." So I thought that was a pretty cool moment, one of the cool parts.

Sam Parr

of this bad

Shaan Puri

not the like annoying parts anyways back to my story I'm I'm in the idea lab and basically my cto catches the bug too he starts saying he's like yeah fiat is trash I'm like what is fiat's a car like what are you talking about and he's like fiat currency that means currency that you know the government makes up and prints like by their by their fiat they create this currency he's like it's bad I'm like well okay why like the dollar seems fine and he's like yeah it's fine till it's not fine look at the history and he starts telling me about this this and this I'm like yeah but that's like ancient history he's like just yesterday japan announced that they're going to double the money supply in the next 10 years I was like that can't be good right he's like yeah that's massive dilution that's like if you just doubled the shares of this company right now I would be pissed and he's like he's like so he's like we should do something I'm like okay paul we'll like run with it what's the idea normally paul was the guy I would give directions to he's not the idea guy he's like tell me what to build I'll build and I can build anything and in this case he's like mocking up a website and he's basically like crypto doesn't have any of the basic like financial instruments that that that the normal economy has so all we gotta do is just build either an exchange or a like kind of like a maybe like an ach protocol or like a place to deposit in a savings account like we just need something like that for crypto so he mocks it up we start going with it and our idea lab was backed by this couple michael and zochi burch it's basically an individual couple who's you know independently very wealthy and so the he come michael comes by for lunch the next day he's like hey the lawyer like our lawyer susan told us that you're you're doing like a bitcoin project and I was like yeah kind of exciting like and I don't really know it myself I wasn't the one with conviction it was like my team and I was just backing them and so he's asking me he's like isn't that like like kind of like for the silk road and like isn't that like kinda scammy and I was like no I think there's merit to it but I couldn't like make a strong case so he's like dude I I don't know man like if we do something wrong here in the financial space like look if we if we make a social app that fails whatever I burned a $1,000,000 of funding if we do something that's illegal the sec comes after us I could lose everything so like let's put the kibosh on on our crypto exchange that you guys are trying to like create like launch tomorrow and I was like ah shit so I go tell the team and blah blah blah and we long story short we do nothing so we don't launch the thing I don't buy any bitcoin at that time when bitcoin's like under a $100 and we we move on with our life and then like now years later I'm just chasing that you know crypto dream the whole time buying it at like you know $20,000 a coin instead of when it was at 20 and I was thinking back on it I was like what was the right move there and so I'll I'll kind of lay out my thinking here I think the right move and I think many people will come into these situations where a new trend happens and you're you know you want to chase it but there may be risks associated with why you should or shouldn't do it and here's kind of like my revisionist thinking you tell me you tell me actually I'll pause there tell me what you think I should have done in that situation did I make the right move or what could I have done differently because I think it's important to kinda learn from our game film as entrepreneurs

Sam Parr

Well, so, like objectively, you made the wrong move in that you didn't... We know what the right move was now, but looking back, knowing what you knew and being who you are, I wouldn't say you made the right move. However, I would say you didn't do anything wrong.

Shaan Puri

right okay so fair enough so let's say door 1 is do nothing always right so do nothing that's where that's the door we ended up taking door 2 was create and launch this like kind of crypto exchange / money transit or whatever that was like where we were headed what I think was I should have looked at what does door 3 4 and 5 look like so the first thing I should have done is I should have bought the currency right that that's kind of an obvious one if you believe in this thing and have to build a startup around it you should own some of the underlying asset as as something you own so that was like the first part 2nd was when I got pushback from somebody richer smarter and more experienced than me and I didn't have the answer the answer shouldn't have been okay no okay I'll stop it it should have been well let's let me put together a case for doing this give me a week to put together a case of why we might do this why this might not be such a bad idea I agree with your logic let me put together a case and let's start with that and so I could have took a pause breath and I could have said all right let me go and actually like get to conviction myself and if I have conviction I'll convince anybody in the world to do that we should do this but if I don't have conviction it's just a matter of I haven't really thought this through enough and the third option wasor the next option was what are the other things you could have done so what are the no risk ways to ride this wave that's what I think blockworks did that's what coindesk did that's what coinmarketcap did so there there was other things you could have done you could have created a media company that said alright I'm not gonna like try to be a financial exchange and that has some risks but why don't we spin up a media side well there's gonna be if this is gonna be a thing people are gonna be interested in the content we could build that and then that gives us options to launch more stuff so that would have been a smart move that was zero risk financially as far as like the the sort of regulations and sec goes but still would have been riding that wave I didn't think about that because I didn't have all these other business models in my tool belt of like what else I could do another would have been to instead of just launching like a media company it could have been an agency so we have several friends like andrew from metalab our friend greg who launched late checkout you can launch agencies that help big companies understand what to do with this thing and you can actually charge a shit ton of money to do this consensus is is the big one right now that's the big kind of consultancy for this I think they do over a $100,000,000

Sam Parr

yeah we talked about them they're it's multibillion

Shaan Puri

Yeah, right. Just from consulting with big companies and saying, "Hey, do you know how to spell blockchain?" We can tell you; we could spell it for you. So, basically, there were other business models I could have pursued. Looking back, I would say that’s one learning I had. I guess, going forward, I think it's important when these new waves come out to dive in on them, learn about them, and then think about, "Alright, should I try to build the big risky thing? Should I try to build a community? Should I try to build a media site? Should I try to build an agency?" I have 10 options, and depending on my level of conviction, I can go in either one of those directions. I can build the audience first, I can build the technology first, or I can try to land grab and do something there. We could have created our own currency; there were 10 other ideas that we could have pursued. But anyway, this is like a...

Sam Parr

To continue talking about strategies, my opinion is that you should actually take door number 1 in most cases.

Shaan Puri

do not

Sam Parr

And yeah, when you see something that you think is a good life strategy, you say no to most everything. Then, when you see the thing that you're like, "This is it," you go 100% all in on it, right? There are a few examples of this. When you go all in, it's a high-risk but high-reward type of thing. For example, you become BuzzFeed, and Facebook gets popular. You launch an entire media company. BuzzFeed and Cheddar did this as well; they launched an entire media company off Facebook Live and sold for $200 million. Now, you have loads of examples of it not working for people—more examples of it not working than it does work, right? But when you spot these waves, I actually think that the risk versus reward is far in your favor for doing it. Bitcoin is one of those where, of course, we know now... you didn't know that.

Shaan Puri

What are the hallmarks of a wave? Alright, what were some recent waves? And then, how do you know when it's a wave versus just a shiny object distraction?

Sam Parr

I think engagement is important for sure. It's not about how many people are using it, but rather how much the few people who are using it are engaging with it. I think that...

Shaan Puri

Feel like a cult? Do these people seem crazy? That's actually a very positive sign for waves.

Sam Parr

Yes, I think that's the biggest one: are people, like, how into it are they? So, I was just talking to a guy who was selling in a multilevel marketing scheme. He didn't know it at the time, but he thought it was multilevel; it was actually a pyramid scheme. He was like, "Well, I'm just a salesperson for this energy."

Shaan Puri

drinker participant in it

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like, "But I loved it," and I thought it was okay. He goes, "And then it took me forever to realize that it was a pyramid scheme." I was like, "Scamming people? So I had to bail." But for a long time, I was so into it. When you see people who are so into something like Amway or Herbalife, they actually become huge, huge companies. Even if most people don't get it, you only need a few people that are passionate about it. So it's all about engagement.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I would say that. So, I would say, what are you going to look for with the wave? The second one is **complete behavior change**. Facebook, early on, was a good example of this. All of a sudden, people were checking something like 30 times a day. There really weren't websites that you would go check 30 times a day, and Facebook was one. Similarly, with Fortnite or Twitch, it's like, "Wait, you're just streaming a webcam of yourself for 8 hours while playing video games?" It's like, yeah, not a lot of people do it, but the people who were doing it were engaging in this completely weird behavior that made no sense and had no real parallels to what that same person was doing before. So, if it's been able to consume this person's life and change their whole workflow, then it's going to do that for other people. Remote work is like that in a small way, but that's another one. The third one is...

Sam Parr

go ahead

Shaan Puri

The third one is just a technology wave. A new device comes out that can do something the other devices couldn't. For example, "Oh, this is a phone. It has an accelerometer in it and a GPS." So now, what can you create when you have a GPS in your pocket? Well, you could push a button, and someone could come find you, pick you up, and take you somewhere else using that same GPS. Rideshare became enabled because this new device was there. Or, you have a camera in your pocket at all times. Well then, I guess people are going to take way more photos than they were before. Alright, that's when you get Instagram and Snapchat. So, I think the technology wave is the other one.

Sam Parr

Yeah, there's a bunch of these, and it's actually fun to talk about. Like, we all know what the waves are, but let's talk about some of the waves that we've seen recently that actually turned out not to be waves or likely won't be waves. Clubhouse is one of them.

Shaan Puri

a

Sam Parr

A lot of people dedicated a lot of stuff to them. I could have seen a startup raise money on top of a Clubhouse show or something like that, right? But I don't actually hate people taking that shot, and I think that a lot of people do. Right? And I think... I think it's...

Shaan Puri

Just a measure: how much do you have to lose? For example, in that scenario I was talking about, I would have launched the crypto thing because I had nothing to lose. Our investor, who's basically a billionaire, is like, "Hey, you know what? I don't mind if you fail on the startup, but don't have the SEC come after me. That doesn't seem good." Let's not hold, like, if this works, we're going to have like $100,000,000 of user deposits that we're on the hook for. That sounds bad. I don't... you know, it wasn't easy to get this $1,000,000,000. I don't want to lose that. So for him, it was the correct decision to say, "Let's not risk ruin." When you have nothing to lose, feel free to go more all in and take more risks faster. And if, hey, if Clubhouse turns out to be a dud, what did you lose? Six months of your life? You know, $2,000? It's okay.

Sam Parr

So, since we're talking about reflection and stuff, let me tell you a quick story. I'm going to send you this guy's LinkedIn. I met this guy this week. Just last week, I was off, so I went and hung out with people. My friend Joe introduced me to this guy named Val. I don't even know how to say his last name, but Val and I went out to lunch together. So, this guy's story is basically that he came from a Soviet Union country. I forget what it's called now, but he is from Uzbekistan. He's a Jewish immigrant from Uzbekistan. At the age of 18—listen to this—he started a cell phone ringtone business. He was the only employee, and it did $10,000,000 in revenue in year three. He started when he was 18, so this was when he was like 21. $10,000,000 in profit, he said. He goes, basically...

Shaan Puri

ringtones to americans

Sam Parr

yeah he goes I was the only boy

Shaan Puri

oh a kid from I don't know what you said uzbekistan

Sam Parr

uzbekistan I believe

Shaan Puri

selling $10,000,000 worth of ringtones to stupid americans isn't that beautiful I love that

Sam Parr

Ain't that amazing? I believe it's called **Tone Media**. You can scroll down on his LinkedIn; I believe that's what it is, or **ToneFuse**. I don't even know which one it is; there are so many of them. The reason why this guy interests me is that I'm going to tell you everything he has done since, but it's all been bootstrapped—no outside funding and all in different industries. So, the first one, and he probably has more, but these are the ones he told me about. He had a phone business, the **BrinkTone** business. He mentioned that revenue and profits are pretty much the same thing because he was the only employee. He said it went from $2 million to $4 million, then to $10 million, and then he sold it. His second venture was called **MobileFuse**, which is an ad tech company. It's not that exciting, but it's a big business—something like, I imagine, he didn't tell me, but I imagine around $50 to $60 million in revenue. That's pretty big. Then, while he was getting that started, he noticed that peer-to-peer lending was becoming popular, like **SoFi**...

Shaan Puri

yep

Sam Parr

stuff like that so he created a company called prime meridian capital I've never even heard of it but I think their url might be poiz lending basically at this. They've given out 1,000,000,000 of of peer to peer loans so totally different from ad marketing or ad tech then from there he started a a thing called I don't even know how to pronounce this jacollo but he was telling me all about this but basically a company like zales have you you know zales or do you know jay kay jewelers jared ernest jones peoples there's a bunch of them so it's all owned by this company called signet signet is a multibillion dollar diamond business and what they do is they own all of these brands and he was telling me he was like I was thinking about what makes that company special and he was like basically they have this headquarters where they just look at which diamonds are most popular which which brands and which cuts are selling the best and how can we tell all of our brands what we think are gonna be the next big thing how can we help you optimize that brand by selling a little bit more efficiently how can we buy in bulk things like that so it was basically it was just a normal mom and pop store but we just multiplied it by however many and so we just created these these these trends bit and then these economies at scale you know buying in bulk stuff not not particularly special but but just executed really well and so he goes as well you know I'm gonna build software so I'm gonna help all the mom and pop jewelers do that same thing and so he went and started this new company and if you look at his linkedin and go to the website you could see it looks like really janky really simple but they what they do is a mom and pop brand can sign up and they'll the the the the name of the company I think it's called I don't even know how to pronounce it it's a horrible name how do you say that jicaglio jicaglio it's it's really bad so jocaglio will help you get bulk discounts but then will help you spend your marketing so it's almost a little bit like an part agency part buying in bulk part crm where you could like look at sales and like fit help predict which is gonna be the most popular in order in bulk and I believe this company is gonna be doing around 80 or so 1,000,000 in revenue wow and so this freaking guy will have to like he's he he he his english has a as a second language and he's real quiet and

Shaan Puri

he's real understated very low key and he was just telling

Sam Parr

Me all about this, and you know, stated very low key. He was just telling me all about this, and I had a few learnings. The first is just, it's crazy—the story.

Shaan Puri

I haven't done shit in my life the second this guy's a fucking beast 3rd

Sam Parr

Yes, he... he just... and he didn't... he's not flashy. I mean, he had a nice watch on, but he wore normal clothes. He didn't brag about himself. I had to pull it out of him. A few things: what we tell ourselves about why we can't do something is mostly bullshit. I mean, some people are more talented than others, but you can get so much done just by working really hard. So, what we tell ourselves about why we can't do blank? That's nonsense. Second, there's this... I don't know, some people call it the "red pill." I forget what people call it, but they see the world differently. I've hung out with enough people who just crush it, and a lot of them you’ve never even heard of. Oftentimes, when I'm looking at this house, I'm like, "Oh, should I buy this lot? I gotta sink this money into it; it's gonna fail." But there are a few people in this world, and I know a lot of these people, who just say, "Yeah, of course, let's do it." They're just so confident. I actually think you have a little bit of that in you. They're just so confident, and they default to optimism. It works so well. It's like this ability... in this case, it's money, but it could be anything. It could be, "You know, we're just gonna fly there, and we're just gonna figure it out." This is like defaulting to, "Yeah, of course, it's gonna work." A few people have that, and that attitude gets you so far. I've been able to experience that just by being around some of these people. They're just really fascinating individuals.

Shaan Puri

Wow, I love this! I love that little story. I love this guy. This is extra; this is really cool, and yeah, I'm impressed. I love meeting these kinds of under-the-radar, self-made business badasses that have hopped from industry to industry. It's like there's zero luck involved when you're going to do that, right? Luck is kind of a scaler; it's like a multiple of whether the thing was successful. Whether ringtones were going to be worth $10 million, $20 million, $50 million, or $1 million, it was hard to say. But if you're the type of person that's going to make the ringtone business, the mobile ad business, the jewelry independent business, or whatever the peer-to-peer lending company, you have... you know, the track record speaks for itself. You know what you're doing as far as identifying an opportunity and then chasing it properly.

Sam Parr

And I just Googled this guy. It looks like he has a Twitter, but like no followers. He has 200 followers on Instagram, and he posts pictures of his vacation with his family. Like, nothing sexy. I mean, yeah, he's got actually some fancy cars—that's sexy. But I guess this whole idea of getting caught in this bubble of "you have to build an audience"? No, you don't.

Shaan Puri

yeah no you don't

Sam Parr

You don't... you can! And maybe that could be fun for you. You can do something that no one has ever heard of. You could just cold call and get done whatever you want to get done. Another thing that I've learned is just intensity. So this idea of, "Well, you have this ringtone business, that's kind of silly." It's like, "Yeah, maybe." But I bet you it could make $10,000,000 a year, which is like crazy rich. It's all about stepping it up.

Shaan Puri

on the step it up on the amp it up format on the intensity idea so I was working out this morning with the guy's house I'm in and so he was like hey like I don't know if you're up but like trainer's coming at 8 am if you wanna get a workout in I was like yeah fantastic come up let's do it so I go downstairs home gym crazy go inside trainer's there we're doing our thing and and I don't particularly work out I'm not like a super intense workout guy like I'm trying to do well but like my default is like I I I feel the way most people feel when they work out like I'm getting super tired I'm like my muscles are failing like they're not I don't feel like I could do that anymore you know like I'm trying oh like if she she's like alright how much do you wanna squat I'm like well I don't really know and alright let's start with like a little bit and then like let's go up from there I'm not like trying to like prove something every second of the of the workout but he was talking about intensity during the workout he's a very intense guy and so he at the end we were doing abs just to finish and so we're doing like a a russian twist thing or whatever he's facing the other direction he's doing the other ab workout and we're just taking turns I'm doing mine he's doing his I'm doing the russian twist and he heard me ask the trainer I go should I have my legs in the air she's like yeah that makes it a bit harder and I was like okay cool let me try it and so I was just doing it it was just kinda like an offhand comment and then when it was his turn to go to that it it was like the 2nd round 2nd set he's like oh I gotta I gotta move my legs up now and she's like no no you don't have to you can just put it down he's like no if he's gonna do it then I gotta do it and he's like he's like that's the best part about working out with somebody is that their intensity picks you up and if you pick the right partner then you match their intensity and you just get that little extra that you're working again if you're on your own he's like that's the best part and I think that's what this podcast is for a lot of people is we are like their workout buddy for their like kind of like their brain workout basically of just thinking about businesses being excited about things learning new shit and so I think that's the benefit we're giving some people through this podcast but it's also what like when you go meet this guy and you you know what's the benefit of being this guy you're not gonna do a deal with him you're not gonna invest in his company but literally just having met him and heard his story all of a sudden now you you you got red pill you're going to see the world differently just because you know that he exists and when we tell his story now hundreds of thousands of other people listening to this are going to know that he exists I think that's really cool and I think it's something you should be intentional about of getting around other people so that you have those red pill moments and you get around other people's intensity so you raise your game

Sam Parr

So, let me give this guy a shout-out. I'll spell his name because I don't think I said his last name. His name is Val (V-A-L) and his last name is Katayev (K-A-T-A-Y-E-V). I don't know how to... I'm sorry, Val. But anyway, that's his name. Pretty interesting dude! If you click on his contact info, all of his companies are there, and his emails are on his LinkedIn. Interesting guy. Okay, so we're like 45... Are we going to go to ideas? Are we going to... do you want to keep it to this little... I don't know. What do you want to do with it?

Shaan Puri

so I have one that I think is gonna be a good segment

Sam Parr

we can

Shaan Puri

Finish on that. Let's finish strong! People are going to be hyped up by the end of this. Alright, so somebody... I think...

Sam Parr

by the way I I think they will dan are they gonna be hyped on this

Dan

very hyped

Sam Parr

okay very hyped thanks you sound great

Shaan Puri

Dan is trapped somewhere. Dan is trapped inside my computer right now, it sounds like. Alright, so I want to finish up with this idea of teenage side hustles. Somebody emailed me and they said, "Hey, you know, love the pod! My kid is, I think, 12 or 13 years old. They're like, I want to get him into entrepreneurship. My daughter is like 11, my son is 13. I want them both to learn about business. Do you have any ideas for side hustles or little, like, kind of mini hustles that a teenager could do?" So it got me thinking, and I started going on this. I thought this would be a fun brainstorm for us. I do have some ideas that I wrote down for this, but I basically gave it 15 minutes of thought and I was like, "Okay, cool! I'll do this on pod live." What do you think?

Sam Parr

Great! You gotta kick it off though because you spent more time thinking about it. Then I will come up with a few while you're talking.

Shaan Puri

alright so here's the teenage side hustles I break it down into 4 categories so the first one is called blue collar stuff okay so this is stuff people teens have been doing for a long time but with a twist here so local you know normal blue collar stuff you go you mow lawns in the neighborhood you deliver the paper you shovel snow depending on where you're at I think that's all cool so here's how I would step it up so I would say hey here's one thing we could do right we're gonna provide a service to our neighbors but let me teach you in business about leverage right we don't wanna trade our time for money I don't wanna be the one mowing the lawn I don't wanna be the one shoveling snow so you could do 2 things you could teach them to hire up other kids and basically have the other people in the neighborhood doing the work while you are doing the sales and you're taking in the money and you're paying out from there so you could teach them labor leverage there the other way of doing this is you have them learn 2 things at once so you have door to door sales in your neighborhood but secondly you teach them about lead gen so instead of actually having to do the work all you need to do is make the sale or or get the warm lead even so I was thinking you could go in a neighborhood you could go door to door so here's my specific idea for for them go go around your neighborhood and you're gonna you're gonna knock on the door and you're gonna sell one of 2 things either pest control so you're gonna say hey we live in the neighborhood you know our house and other houses have had issues in the past with pests and infestations and it's better to catch it early before it becomes like a major problem and you have to gut the whole kitchen because you got this you know mice infestation or rats or or or cockroaches or whatever and so would you be would you want a free inspection would you be interested in an inspection to let you know if your house is in good condition bad condition or needs needs some work and then basically what you do is you call up the local you know pest control service and you say hey I have 15 houses in my neighborhood that are interested in getting an inspection and and you know I think that even if 10% of them or 20% of them convert that you guys will get some good business out of this so I'm calling up local service local service providers and seeing if anybody basically would want to want these leads and I I have all their information for you I did the the first first contact with them I have their name their number and I have the details about what they're interested what they're worried about what they're interested in and basically I would sell those leads to a local pest control company and I think you can make good money doing that just around your neighborhood and other neighborhoods and you would learn that hey you know where is the value capture the value capture is in getting the customer not in actually going and looking under the floorboards for cockroaches okay so that's the first first blue collar one the other version of that

Sam Parr

Hold on, listen to this. So, I'm just trying to... there, here it is. Okay, so I know a guy. He spoke at Hustle Con. His name's Gabe Gabriel Unasaseki.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's this

Sam Parr

Guy, so what he did was, he's a friend of mine. He started this company where basically they did lead generation. It was called Cal Finder. So if you Google "California home painting" or "California pest control," you get brought to their website. They just do a better job of displaying information. You submit a lead, and they send it to a paint company. That paint company pays them $5 for that email address.

Shaan Puri

yep

Sam Parr

The way it started is he bought a yellow notepad and went door to door to find people who would be interested in having their home painted. He collected a list of 100 names on the first day and then sold that for $10,000 to a variety of different paint companies. He did that a couple more times, and then he eventually created a proper company that made $20,000,000 a year in sales. So that's the outcome, or potential outcome, of that.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so the downside of this is your kids might start making more than you do in a year. But the upside is they'll learn a lot about business. Alright, so that's the first one. You could do this with anything: pool fencing. "Hey, I noticed you have a pool, but you don't have a fence. You know it's against California law to have a pool without a fence when you have kids. Would you like us to come out and give you an estimate of how much that would cost to keep it safe?" You know, you could do pool fencing, pest control, home painting... whatever. It doesn't matter. So, my specific idea would be **blue collar lead generation**. That's number one. Number two: events. You've hosted conferences and events. I think that if you're a teenager, you could host a neighborhood fair. Here's how this works: you go out and rent the bouncy house, the slip and slide, all the stuff that, for one individual home to do, is kind of an expensive birthday party. But if you're going to do it and amortize the cost across the whole neighborhood, it's actually not a bad idea. So, I would create the neighborhood fair. I would charge for entry. I would have a local sponsor, you know, the local bank, who could sponsor it. Because who could turn down your kid's smile and say, "Hey, I'm hosting the neighborhood fair. Would you be a sponsor for us for $500 or whatever?" And you know, all the proceeds go to us as kids to fund my own education. So, I would basically rent a bunch of cool stuff, have cotton candy, have all the fun stuff, charge tickets, and maybe have a fair. That's my second idea for events. What do you think of that one?

Sam Parr

I think that's okay I would do the first one over the second one the second one sounds like a pain in the butt

Shaan Puri

I'm just giving them options here I'm giving them options alright

Sam Parr

sorry for the 3 keep swinging

Shaan Puri

The theme of this one is **little kids acting like adults**. We've all had that kind of fundraiser where you go door to door and say, "Hey, would you like to buy cookie dough, ice cream, and wrapping paper for our school charity?" Great! So, here's my twist on that. I would call it the **Bitcoin Junior Club** or something similar. Basically, you go door to door and say, "Hey, I'm really interested in Bitcoin. Have you heard about Bitcoin?" When they respond, "Yeah, I've heard of Bitcoin," you continue, "Well, in the neighborhood, we want to create the first kids' Bitcoin club. What we want is for every house to invest somewhere between $100, and we're going to buy Bitcoin. You'll own it, and we're going to take a management fee on top of managing the money." So, we're going to create a little investment club. We want to learn about finance and money. It's a great way for us to do it, and for you, you'll be owning Bitcoin. We're going to help you out; we're going to teach you all about it. We'll give a presentation at the end, and hey, if your kid wants to be involved in the club, they can too. I would create a small money management fund and try to get houses to give me $1,000 if they can. Depending on your neighborhood, this could either be impossible or easy. I would go to the rich neighborhoods and say, "That's what we're doing." For them, they actually get to own an asset, so it's not just giving away money; they're actually going to get the asset. But you're going to charge, instead of a normal 2% fee, we're going to call it a **10% fee** that you're going to take in exchange for managing the money. Then, you're going to send out a newsletter with a report about what's going on in Bitcoin.

Sam Parr

It's awesome! I think that it's just like, "Yes, this is easy." Yeah, it's just cute enough that it justifies sending your kid to hang out with people.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. Okay, so those are three ideas. The way I was thinking about this—and this is another piece—is like, how do you even brainstorm this? When I brainstorm, I don't think about what's the idea. Instead, I think about two things. The first thing I thought of was: What do I remember from my childhood? Then, what's the 20% twist I could put on this? For example, that's the fundraising idea, but the twist is now it's for Bitcoin. Or I used to mow lawns, but the twist is actually I'm going to sell those leads to a lawn mowing service. That's the first way I think about things: What do I already know that I can just put a 20% twist on to make it fit this situation? The second thing is, I don't look for answers when I brainstorm; I look for questions. So here are the questions I wrote down before I brainstormed this: What's cute when a kid does it but annoying if an adult did it?

Sam Parr

that's a great question

Shaan Puri

Brainstorming ideas, right? The second one is: what's fun for kids but boring for adults? Like, you know, my daughter, she loves cleaning. If I let her clean, she'll clean and fold. She loves to fold! Kids actually like... I used to have a lot of fun mowing lawns, but I guess as an adult, I hate to mow my lawn now. So, if I know something that's fun for a kid but boring for an adult, we can have them do it. The next one is: what are kids actually just good at that adults are bad at? There are just things that kids are better at. Okay, what are those? Lastly, what amount of money is a win for a kid but would not be a win for an adult? Because then the kid could do it and they would be happy with it, but an adult won't do it because it's not enough money to fill the void of what they're looking for—the opportunity cost. So, that's how I brainstorm this. That's just a little peek under the hood about how to think about stuff like this. Don't look for the answer; ask a bunch of questions and then spitball.

Sam Parr

If I had a kid, I would probably think about what skill they should learn now that they won't have time to learn in the future. For them, I believe it would have a big impact if they learned door-to-door selling. I would send them to a program like Amway or, sorry, Cutco, or some type of door-to-door sales for knives or books. It would be a cutthroat time where it's like, "Look, you're going to spend three months for two different summers in a row doing this. You're not going to like it at first, but the skill that you learn, you're never going to be able to learn this again in your life, and it's going to change your world."

Shaan Puri

if you could

Sam Parr

get this yeah exactly

Shaan Puri

We're not going to baseball camp. We're going to Cutco camp. You're going to learn how to sell knives door to door this summer. That's what I'm... I wonder what I'm going to do.

Sam Parr

that that I think that would be the right move

Shaan Puri

Yeah, anyway, so those are my teenage side hustles. To the person who wrote in, that's my answer. Sorry I haven't emailed you.

Sam Parr

dan what do you think did we we meandered a little bit

Dan

Yeah, I really liked the end. I used to sell calendars in high school, door to door. I got a free service from...

Shaan Puri

By the way, my brain's still firing on ideas. Here's another one: **digitize the neighborhood's home videos**. Everybody I know who's kind of like my parents' age has a bunch of photos, albums, and videos on little cassette players.

Sam Parr

a great business for kids

Shaan Puri

I'm worried that those are all going to go away. So, I thought, "Hey, I'm going to drop this box off in front of every door." I'm just going to put a sticker on it and say, "Put your photos and videos in here. I'm going to give it back to you." You know, sort of like, "I'm going to send you... I'll put it in the cloud for you, so you'll have these forever in good quality." You'll never have to worry about these going bad or losing this box or water spilling on it or anything like that. Let's save your memories! I think that's the genius of it.

Sam Parr

that's the the g that's incredibly smart because you don't need to be that good at doing it you just have to have time

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly we could basically just go drive it to like costco or whoever does this but or you could do it yourself

Sam Parr

costco does this

Shaan Puri

I don't know if it's costco but like some of these yeah one of the retailers they do this they'll digitize stuff

Sam Parr

**Service offer**... offer because your time's free. Yeah, I would... that's a good one. That's what I would do. I would pick that one. Alright, I guess that's the episode. We'll see what people think of that. I thought it was actually quite good. I enjoy hearing stories about people, so we'll see if it's good.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, let us know! Tweet at Sam; he's @SamPorr on Twitter. Tweet at me, I'm @SeanVP. Let us know what you think of the episodes. We take that feedback and that's how we adjust. A little less randomness, a little less life advice, a little more ideas, and a little more stories about wealthy people or whatever you guys want. So let us know how you want us to proceed!