How To Make $100M+ By Predicting Trends (Step By Step Guide) (#407)

Sam Parr

But I actually think there's an interesting business opportunity where you can look at anything that someone is having to spend a substantial sum on today for something that's going to happen in 12 or 36 months. If you help them make the right prediction, you can build an interesting business. I'm going to give you an example.

Shaan Puri

okay so let's do it what what topics you got today

Sam Parr

alright I've got one idea based on something you sent me

Shaan Puri

oh wow rich

Sam Parr

yeah but you

Shaan Puri

thanks sam for having one idea based on something I sent you

Sam Parr

it sounds like

Shaan Puri

you barely put in the work today

Sam Parr

Look, I'm in the final interview stage for my new researcher. But you told me last time you had a lot... Just hear me out. You sent me this thing called "Exploding Topics," right?

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

And you said their traffic is killing it and exploding. Do you want to explain what it is?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's basically like a... if you go to the website, you'll see a series of charts. The charts are basically saying, "Hey, this thing, this trend is growing in popularity."

Sam Parr

I think it started with which keywords were growing in popularity. Because Brian Dean, who owned Backlinko, a popular SEO blog, got involved with it. Then it kind of changed to what it is now.

Shaan Puri

Okay, yeah. So, I didn't know what the underlying metrics were that they look at to tell you what's trending or not. But they'll be like, "Hey, there's this thing called PowerDash. It's a vacuum cleaner for pet owners, and it's grown 3000% right now." Right there, but you know, the volume of that search is 320, so not huge. On the other hand, regenerative agriculture is growing 658% with 12,000 searches. You can look at that and think, "That's cool! I'm interested in that topic. Maybe there's something I could do here." So, I think it's similar to what Trends was, which was, "I will tell you about things that are getting more popular before they're fully popular in order for you to take advantage of them with content, business, that sort of thing." That's the idea.

Sam Parr

yes and the people wondering trends so basically I used to own I sold it I used to own this thing called trends dotco and it was a weekly email on an online community that people would pay $300 a year for and we got it I forget what it was when I sold it but I think it was at like 6,000,000 a year but it very easily could have been like a million a month or so in revenue but basically we would send a weekly email and we had 3 or 2 researchers and they would comb the web and find interesting things and they would write interesting reports and they would also include 1 to 2 graphics that showed like here's based off of reddit searches or based off of Google searches or based off of like 20 different data points this topic is growing quickly anyway what exploding topics is doing there's another another company called meet glimpse so I think it's meet glimpse dotcoor.com I don't know and this is just called trends forecasting and these versions of it including my version they're what I would call prosumer so people who just wanna spend 10 to $300 a month on it they're not that big of a deal but there's this whole other industry of people willing to spend 25 a 100,000 10,000,000 a year all on trends trend forecasting and I think it's a very interesting business model and I think it's a very underdeveloped industry and so the one that I brought up a whole bunch is called wgsn wgsn it's basically a monthly report that comes out and it helps people pick which colors are gonna be popular which sounds trivial but that's a really big deal if you're starbucks and you gotta go and buy 10,000,000 name tags or something like that and you wanna make sure that you've got like a good color that is like hit or for example wgsn do you remember sean how pineapple was popular yep they helped predict that pineapple the logo is gonna be popular their next one I think is the lemon I think they said lemon is gonna be popular maybe you told me that actually and so anyway that's what this does but I actually think there's an interesting business where you can look at anything that someone is having to spend a substantial sum today for something that's gonna happen in 12 or 36 months and you help them guess the right prediction you can build an interesting business and I'm gonna give you an example and let's just say that it's like hr or like work styles so what do we think we're gonna predict the work the the the this particular age group what are they gonna want for working from home in the next 36 months and if you're Google or someone that employs 10,000 of these workers you're like alright I kinda need an idea because we're gonna be making x policy we wanna know how they're going to react the way it could work and this is the way wgsn and this is the way trends and a few other things work is you do a combination of surveys so you survey like you need a pool of like a 1000 or 10000 people you can survey and get intel from and make predictions then you look at like different data so like you look at sentiment you look at like what people on reddit on tiktok are saying just what trends are saying and you consolidate in that that into a fairly easy to understand 1,000 to 2,000 word email that you send out monthly and then you have a consultant on staff who you can call on a regular basis to be like hey we're thinking about doing x based off your research is that a wise decision and then you have monthly calls as well as a community and a conference and I think you could wrap this up and do it in most any industry and have something that you could charge 20 to $50,000 a year for and this is something that what's his name what's the bald head guy who I like Scott galloway he did this with he did a little bit like this with his company that he sold for $300,000,000 what was it called it was called l 2 but anyway this is my model that I think not enough people know about and take advantage of that I think could be pretty big

Shaan Puri

And I wish you would let me guess which bald guy you like. That could have been... we could have gone on for a couple of hours on that one. I have so many that could have been the answer.

Sam Parr

yeah stone cold steve austin yeah

Shaan Puri

What would you do? What was your idea here of how you would create?

Sam Parr

kind of

Shaan Puri

like a trend status prediction type business

Sam Parr

What I would do is package my product in the way that I explained. However, I think that in most industries you work in, you can figure out some type of approach where you can look at the buyers of your company. You can also look at any different roles in your company and say, "Hey everyone, can I just talk to you?" Then, you can figure out what decisions they are making that are going to impact us in like two years. Additionally, ask them, "What type of data do you wish you had today that would make your decision easier?"

Shaan Puri

And I'm sure this exists, but one version of this I could think of that’s pretty valuable would be if I could poll, like, "Hey, we were able to survey every CIO in the Fortune 500." We surveyed 70% of the CIOs in the Fortune 500. Here’s what they’re thinking in terms of their software budget for next year. Or here’s what they’re thinking in terms of, you know, HR people at the top 1,000 companies. Here’s what they’re thinking in terms of remote pay or in terms of XYZ. I think it’s sort of like what GLG is. GLG’s expert network allows people to pay individuals like you and me $2,000 for a one-hour call because they’re making investment decisions. They need to do research and require actual industry input to say, "Hey, what’s the deal with this? I’m not an expert at this; you are. But I need to make a $10,000,000 bet." As part of my research and diligence, I’m going to pay you and 10 other people like you $2,000 an hour. $20,000? No problem. That helps me make the right directional bet here. So, I think rather than GLG being a one-way thing, you could do it as a kind of pulse survey, as long as you had the right key audience that was bought in. Now, how do you get them to actually answer this? I think you could just do it as part of a broader media initiative. If you already have a newsletter for HR people or whatever, you could do it like Industry Dive could do this. I also think you could pay them. There’s some version of payment rewards that could go with this because you’re probably charging a lot of money—thousands of dollars—for these reports.

Hubspot

but

Shaan Puri

There is another business I want to tell you about from a listener here. What's it do? It's called Eureka Surveys. So, Google "Eureka."

Sam Parr

yeah I the bootstrap company

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so these guys... if you go to your Yoga Surveys, it says "Tall," right? It just says "Get paid for taking surveys" or "Make money online." Here's how you do it: These are the small-time version of it. So basically, you go and download their app. Let me pull it up... You download their app.

Sam Parr

did he say we could say their revenue he told me it but I don't remember if

Shaan Puri

It's... he told me once, I think we should just say it maybe generically, but like, you know, **7 figures in revenue** bootstrapped off this product idea. It's kind of amazing that they are doing so well. I think this is a really great business. He acquires, I think in his case, he's going for a younger audience, sort of like, you know, Gen Z, millennial college students, maybe stay-at-home moms—more of the average Joe type of consumer. They are able to survey them, and they offer gift cards in return. The brands who want to run the surveys offer gift cards, and it's a great way to get insight quickly. For me, if I have a brand and I want to run a survey like this, that's pretty time-intensive for me to do. So, I would need to go to a service like this if I want to get an answer.

Sam Parr

Well, so that's my idea for trends forecasting. I think the survey one is interesting. There’s a lot of competition in that space, but I still think it’s interesting. But that's like a simple... this is like a very simple, straightforward thing. It's a lot of work, but a huge business, I think. Alright, what do you got?

Shaan Puri

Okay, so I'm going to tell you a couple of names. I'm going to throw a couple of names out at you, and you just try to tell me the pattern: - Leonardo DiCaprio - Kevin Durant - Ellen DeGeneres - Luka Dončić - George Clooney You might be thinking movies, you might be thinking sports, or it may be celebrity investing. Where am I going with this? No, they all play pickleball. Pickleball is this crazy, crazy thing that is exploding. It's not going to be new to most people here, but I'm just sort of late to the party. I played for the first time the other day when we did our kind of weekend getaway for founders, and we played. It's a lot of fun, and I was like, "I get it. I totally get why you guys have it."

Sam Parr

been taking a long ball

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't leave the house, so it's not an in-my-house activity. Therefore, this is the first time I got exposed to it. Right? Like, you know, I'm one of those people that came out and was like, "COVID? What? They don't know what's going on." That's what happened to me with pickleball. So I started looking into it, and I think there are a bunch of little interesting things. I want to hear what you find interesting in this, but I'm going to throw some stats at you. My overall take is that pickleball is exploding. Here are some opportunities I see, and I think it's going to be huge. It already is getting huge, but I see some potential traps, and I'll tell you what those are. Okay, so first of all, guess how many people in America...

Sam Parr

this is

Shaan Puri

a tough one guess how many people in america played pickleball in the last year

Sam Parr

20 no 5,000,000

Shaan Puri

It's a good guess: 36,000,000. So, 36,000,000 is a crazy number, right? That's twice as many people as go to Disneyland every year. It is also the population of California. So, 36,000,000 is a kind of crazy number, right? That's like 14% of the total population. You can see this trend growing. It went from 5 to 36; that was a 1-year jump. You can see on Google Trends, it's just an upward trend. You have celebrities, like I said earlier, billionaires buying teams, leagues, that sort of thing. I personally know two people who have built multimillion-dollar brands in this space. I'm going to tell you about them. One guy, I can't say his name, but he built an Amazon FBA store. This was 2 or 3 years ago, and he sold it. He actually sold way too early. At the time I met him, I was like, "Oh great, you built a store doing what? I've never even heard of this sport." He was like, "Yeah, I just got into it, you know, got really into it." So, I just thought, "Oh, let me see if there's much competition on Amazon for this." There wasn't, so he built a popular FBA store and sold it for about $8 to $10 million. I was like, "Wow, you know, highway robbery! Tell that guy to lose your number." Now that he spent $8 million on this, you know, pickle... what? You know, what the hell is this? I bet you if he had that thing now, it would be a $40 billion brand. This thing has exploded in popularity. Whoever bought it knew what they were doing. The second is a guy doing a newsletter called "The Dink." He's doing the hustle or Milk Road for pickleball. We talked to him, and we were like, we talked about what we're doing.

Sam Parr

spell it oh I see it

Shaan Puri

The Dink, like D-I-N-K, and the cool guy, he's doing a bunch of really smart things on the growth and content side. He was making more money per reader than we were making on Milk Road. We're in the crypto and finance niche, and he was making more money per reader in pickleball than we were. This is because, A, he's executing well, and B, it turns out there's a lot of people who want to advertise and people who want to buy stuff. There weren't really very many mediums for them to meet each other, and this newsletter was that. So, this guy was... yeah, I think this newsletter was probably worth $3 million to $4 million today. I know two people personally who have done this. I have a couple of ideas here on why this works, where this is going, and also just some of the interesting characters that are involved here. You've played, I assume you've played...

Sam Parr

Yeah, but hold on. Before we... I'm looking stuff up while you're talking. I've got a few "I told you so's" that I want to bring up. I was looking this up as you were talking. Episode number 147 aired on January 19, 2021, so almost exactly two years ago. Let's go to the listener notes. It says Sam brings up pickleball, a booming sport in Austin, and he talks about all the opportunities there.

Hubspot

and why he thinks

Sam Parr

it's gonna be big

Shaan Puri

sean brushes it off

Hubspot

Sean says, "Yeah, stupid! Never go in any way." Then, he gives Sam a wedgie and tells him to "F off."

Sam Parr

Then you talked about Dink, and I was like, "That sounds familiar." So I wish I could... can I share my screen right now? I don't... I won't share my screen, actually. I looked up Dink's founder; it's a guy named Thomas Shields. I Googled Thomas Shields' Twitter, went to his Twitter, clicked his DMs, and there's an unread message that he sent me on September 18, 2020. "Hey Sam, Thomas here. Nice to meet you." He sent me a video on YouTube, where it's a custom video of him talking to the camera, saying, "Hey Sam," and he's explaining to me about this newsletter that he wants to start. He wants to know if I want to participate in it or something like that. This is the first time I've seen this video, by the way. I'm watching it for the first time ever. So, I take full credit for telling you about pickleball. I take not full credit, but it is cool that this guy hollered at me, and this is three years later, and he's absolutely doing what he said he was going to do.

Shaan Puri

man he didn't respond to his personal video

Sam Parr

I well, this is an unread Twitter message. I never saw it, but anyway, that's my... But you remember before we... Yeah, well, I remember seeing it, but...

Shaan Puri

twitter's actually great because you can open up a message

Sam Parr

and they don't know

Shaan Puri

And they don't know until you hit "Accept." You could read the whole message, and some people are like, "Hey, you never saw it." I'm like, "Yeah, I never saw it."

Sam Parr

Anyway, that's my story. So, you're asking me, "Have I played pickleball before?" My response to that is, "Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?" Yes, I've played pickleball before, dude! Of course I have. Have you seen me? Have you looked at me? I'm a tall white guy from the Midwest. Of course I play pickleball. Do I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

Shaan Puri

Sure do! Am I taking a swig of an old school Coca-Cola Classic right now? Sure am!

Hubspot

yeah yeah you ever had orange soda of course

Shaan Puri

do you know how pickleball started by the way

Sam Parr

old people it was like a senator or something right

Shaan Puri

yeah dude you know your shit man this is crazy that's crazy you know that it was a congressman so there was it was a board congressman who created this it was 1965 it was in the like the the pacific northwest and they get back from some trip him and his buddy they have nothing to do they're at this house they have nothing to do they're bored the house has a badminton court they're like great let's go play some badminton I guess they go down there there's no equipment for badminton they're like oh fuck what are we gonna do so they're like well we got ping pong inside but we kinda be out I kinda wanna be outside so they take the ping pong paddles a wiffle ball and they go to the badminton court and they start inventing this game and they're just bored and they invent this game and they're like and they call it pickleball because I guess there's this phrase called pickleboat which is like a hastily assembled crew for a boat and they're like ah it was a mash up of we just grabbed the paddles and played badminton and lowered the nets like this mash up thing we'll call it pickleball and so they create this thing it's like you know just a small regional game nobody's really playing it and somehow I I couldn't figure out the link but like somehow about the last 5 years this thing has gone like very very mainstream to where now there are professional leagues there are you know tons of celebrities' own teams that there people are buying gary v is buying a team kevin durant's buying a team tom brady is buying a team patrick mahomes is buying a team these teams cost $1,000,000 now there are billionaires that are trying to buy leagues and merging the leagues to try to make this like an official thing it has become kind of real and there's people are trying to create like topgolf for pickleball so there's a place called chicken and pickle and camp pickle that's trying to like basically create venues where you can come drink eat and play pickleball and so there's like this you know mini gold rush that's happening right now in the world in the world of pickleball and I started thinking okay where do I think this goes because I've seen this now a couple times I've seen this with mma right going from super fringe to more mainstream esports and even some other things like the drone racing league you ever seen the drone racing league the dlrl

Sam Parr

quite yeah that one hasn't picked up like I thought it was going to but maybe it will

Shaan Puri

Same, same. And so you see these happen and you sort of think, "Okay, what does it take to make these work?" I'll give you what I think pickleball has going for it, and then I'll tell you what I think is going to be tough for it. So here's what I was going for it.

Sam Parr

By the way, we had a writer, a freelancer at The Hustle, who quit for a year. She wanted to compete in pickleball, and she did. She started traveling to competitions. Yeah, it's like an intense thing; people love it.

Shaan Puri

what did you say to her when she told you what she was planning here

Hubspot

what do you think I said I said that's awesome

Shaan Puri

I said

Hubspot

that's a great that's awesome

Shaan Puri

get out

Hubspot

yeah give me your laptop right now yeah give me your laptop

Shaan Puri

your laptop right now

Sam Parr

and then get out

Shaan Puri

and that's awesome yeah but it is awesome

Hubspot

text me a text me a pic go after yourself yeah

Shaan Puri

And you're like, "Objectively, this is awesome." Emotionally, I feel a little wounded, and I'm rooting for...

Hubspot

you to fail no but she did and and she's doing good

Shaan Puri

Okay, so here's what I think it has going for it. So why... let's brainstorm. We've done this with food. Remember you had your food thing? That was, I think, like low-key genius, and nobody really respects you for it except for me. But like...

Hubspot

that's such a lovely compliment look people don't get it I do but no one else does

Shaan Puri

no one else does

Hubspot

your parents don't understand but I'm okay with your lifestyle

Shaan Puri

We’ve talked about it two or three times just to say the joke again and see if it hits. Yeah, and it just doesn’t seem to hit. But, like, let’s do it again.

Hubspot

what's your

Shaan Puri

food thing and then let's let's do the equivalent for the sports

Sam Parr

The world of food is interesting. I was thinking there are a handful of categories that you need to check off in order to make your food go viral. So, it either has to be a side food that becomes the main thing. For example, instead of ice cream that has cookie dough in it, it could be only cookie dough. The other thing is it has to be a different color than normal, like green ketchup or rainbow bagels. It could also be a different size, such as a huge pizza or a really small item. Lastly, it has to be a combination of two things that are related but you wouldn't normally combine, like the cronut.

Hubspot

yes

Shaan Puri

exactly again genius finally hopefully

Sam Parr

I got it hopefully you get your due

Shaan Puri

This time, I think there's a similar concept when it comes to creating a hit game or hit sport. When I played pickleball, I thought, "Okay, that was fun." Here’s what was fun about it: there’s zero learning curve. Nobody even really explained anything. They were just like, "Stand here, and when the ball comes to you, hit it." Then they said, "There are two rules: don’t go in the kitchen," and, you know, "Here’s how the scoring system works." They told me that as we were playing. It was very intuitive. I thought, "Okay, cool, got this." The paddle is similar enough to tennis and ping pong, so I kind of already know how to move my body this way. Alright, this will work. There’s zero learning curve. We were playing, and the age range of the players was broad. Somebody had their son there, who I think is around 11 or 12. But I think you could basically play this game from age 8 to about 65. So, everybody...

Sam Parr

my my mom's close to 70 and she goes to her pickleball league twice a week

Shaan Puri

Okay, we only pushed it to 80. You know, I don't know how, but this is a super broad range. How many sports can you really say that for? Very, very few sports can be played by extremely young and extremely old people. You can just play it with two people, so you don't need like 5-on-5 or a full football team, basketball team, or baseball team. It picked up during COVID because it was kind of like an outdoor activity that anybody could do that was sort of socially distanced. I think that was a big factor in why it grew. It's basically like a lightweight version of tennis or even maybe a lightweight version of golf in the way that people use it. You can talk while you're doing it; you're not just huffing and puffing and running the whole time. Lastly, and most importantly, you can play the game drunk. So, if I wanted to create the perfect game, those would be my criteria, and then out would come pickleball. I think it is kind of a perfect game in that way. I think it has legs for that reason, and it's going to keep getting more and more popular. The fact that the whole state of California's worth of population has played this game in the last year is crazy. You also see other things going for it, like the founder of Lifetime Fitness, you know, the gym chain, got really into pickleball and then put $500 million into building pickleball courts in all of his locations because he's like, "I love pickleball; people are going to love this." So, he then deployed half a billion dollars into building infrastructure.

Sam Parr

dude I love that

Shaan Puri

and people are converting tennis courts all this stuff is crazy there's 35,000 courts in the united states now

Sam Parr

Dude, tennis sucks. Anyway, only a couple of people know how to play it. You know what I mean? My wife took lessons on how to play, and I would go and play with her. She would serve it at me, and I would basically just try to hit it back. That was how we played. It sucked. It sucked.

Hubspot

then I was driven her

Shaan Puri

weird form of abuse actually is what you just described

Sam Parr

Tennis is stupid. So, to anyone listening who wants to capitalize on this, we can brainstorm. But I'm going to summarize this into two simple words: **Vince McMahon**. If you are in this business, remember those words: Vince McMahon. Who's Vince McMahon? Vince McMahon is the owner and current or former CEO of the WWE, the World Wrestling Entertainment. I don't know what it is, but anytime we grew up, you know, **Stone Cold** and **The Rock**—this is WWE. Back then, it was WWF. Dude, when you think about it, WWE is just a bunch of ripped dudes in their underwear having a soap opera in front of 50,000 people, and then the rest of the people on TV. It's all it is: a soap opera with a little bit of ripped dudes in underwear wrestling. That's all it is, and it's awesome. You've got grown dudes who are the most homophobic guys ever, and yet they're sitting there watching two oily, ripped dudes just rolling around. It's like, you know, they get past it all because all they care about is the story, the drama. This is all you need to do. So, if you're interested in this, just go and get a picture of Vince McMahon. You put a picture of him on your wall and you just say, "What would Vince do?" Yeah, what would Vince do? **W.W.V.D.**—What Would Vince Do? That's all I'd care about if I was entering into this. Because that's exactly what happens with tennis. I only cared about, what's her name, **Serena**, in that last tournament she was in because it was her last one. Story, you know what I'm saying? Like, I only care about this **Naomi Osaka** lady. I only care about her because I hear that she's kind of going a little... like she's having some mental issues, and I'm like, "Oh, okay, now I'm kind of interested."

Shaan Puri

we got a train wreck

Hubspot

hang on yeah yeah

Sam Parr

I've been to it like that. That's when I get hooked on it. Or, you know, some of these sports that I don't think are mainstream. I get it. Like, Lance Armstrong, the guy gets cancer. Maybe he's on drugs, killing these Europeans. Alright, cool, you got my attention. I need a story, and that's what anyone who's interested in pickleball needs to understand.

Hubspot

This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago that I totally missed. HubSpot: grow better.

Shaan Puri

So, I think as funny as what you just said is, I think you're totally right. I remember when we started working on an esports product, right? Like, that's what got bought by Twitch. We were building basically an esports company. I met with a venture capitalist, this guy Zach. He goes, "I love esports, but esports needs its Dana White." Dana White is basically the Vince McMahon of the UFC. He goes, "There is no UFC without Dana White," right? Because literally, the company was going bankrupt. So, I don't think there would have been a company without Dana and the Fertitta brothers coming in and buying it. They bought it for $2,000,000 and then burned another $40 or $50 million trying to make it successful at a loss before it finally turned around and started to become a thing. They put in years, $1,000,000 of dollars and expertise in promotion, and were willing to just run through walls to make it happen. They went state by state to get this thing licensed so they could even host events. Then, they had to figure out how they were going to sell tickets. Once they sold tickets, they had to figure out how to get this thing on TV. Once it got on TV, they had to build these characters and the storylines. Oh, we gotta invest in all of these documentaries and do reality TV shows and things like that.

Sam Parr

Before smartphones were even a thing, Dana used to give his guys... I remember when these first came out. There were these video cameras that looked almost like an iPhone does now, but they were like flat flip cams. He would say, "Hey everyone, we're having a meeting. You UFC fighters, everything you do, here's your flip cam. Record it and post it on..." I forget what was popular at the time; I think it was YouTube. But he was one of the first guys to do that.

Shaan Puri

Totally, totally. It was the fur one, and he had to do it because no mainstream channel would let him in. He couldn't get a... you know, now they're on ESPN. It took 20 years to get on to ESPN as a sport. You know, that's how crazy this was. So, you need somebody like that, which is basically just saying you need a world-class, 1 in 100,000,000 entrepreneur if you're going to make this work. There are some interesting characters that are involved in this thing. Do you know who this guy is? Dundum. If you hear that, just search "Dundum pickleball." There is this billionaire who is really trying to make pickleball a thing. This guy made his fortune doing subprime auto loans, which... like, you didn't... I didn't even have to say the Tom... yeah, Tom.

Sam Parr

tom dundum yeah yeah some prime mortgage loans

Shaan Puri

Like, you don't even have to say he made his fortune. If I just said, "Yeah, he worked on subprime auto loans," you'd be like, "Oh, so he's filthy rich." You know, there's no way to put those four words together without being a billionaire. So, he's super rich. He takes a bunch of big wild bets. He put, I think, like $70,000,000 into an NFL competitor called the AAF, which basically folded before it even had its first game. He lost $70,000,000 trying to do that. Now, he basically owns Pickleball.com. He bought the major league, you know, the biggest league for pickleball. There are two competing leagues, and he bought one of them. This guy's trying to make pickleball happen, and he's...

Sam Parr

dude he also owns the majority of topgolf

Shaan Puri

He owns the majority of Topgolf. Yeah, he does a bunch of stuff like this, so he is a pretty fascinating guy. There are a bunch of really interesting characters that have kind of pushed this forward. So, he's one of the guys who have pushed this forward. There's another guy named Seymour Rifkind. Have you ever heard of this guy?

Sam Parr

no why would I have heard of him

Shaan Puri

here are some things about seymour rifkind self made millionaire by creating a marketing company alright check does ironmans check does ultramarathons check taekwondo black belt check he has bicycles solo coast to coast check he he created the 1st rating system for pickleball check he did all of this after the age of 50 that's pretty baller that's a that's a pretty baller post 50 resume to have so so this guy kinda you know pushed pushed the the the ball forward and kinda helped legitimize it make it make it more popular as well and then obviously there's all the players and the people who have been playing at the grassroots as well so so I feel like with pickleball there's just like this tremendous groundswell and here's a couple of my quick takes first of all rip badminton I knew I knew from the first time I saw badminton badminton was a little bit of a big sport I could tell I saw it coming and I avoided it like the play and it just needed a little little tweak a little tweak there for badminton and you know pretty sad for badminton it was like sitting there the whole time and missed missed this wave so you know that sucks second could this happen again like I need to go start playing all old people sports and just sniffing around like what's up with bocce ball how do you play this shit is this good is this the next thing like I there there might be another old person sport that could be translated down 3rd you may not know this but I was on the cusp of creating the next pickleball back when I was in middle school me and my buddies created a game called golf and you might be wondering what's golf sean and golf was basically a combination of golf and ping pong it was an extreme version of ping pong and shout out to my guy steve adibi who was there with me in the in our game room and we created golf and it I I guarantee this is the most fun game ever and we invented it we just didn't know how to commercialize at the time incredible game last

Sam Parr

my version of that my version of that was in 8th grade we came up with

Hubspot

the game called nutball or you or it's

Shaan Puri

bloody knuckles with other parts of your body

Hubspot

oh no it's better it's called nutball you sit 20 feet apart

Sam Parr

and you sit on the ground with your legs and you open your legs yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm a person who has to yeah

Hubspot

and the person who has to throw a ball the first person that flinches loses

Shaan Puri

yeah you move to lose

Hubspot

to get

Sam Parr

in trouble yeah my my the sister mary came up to me

Hubspot

and said sam no more nutball so I I got banned

Shaan Puri

Which is a win in itself. Funny story: I left, you know, we did that weekend kind of retreat for founders. We were just like, "Okay, we're going to brainstorm. We're going to really make plans. We're going to think about what's next. We're going to give each other great business advice." I left early on the last day, so I missed the last 24 hours. I hit up Ben and I was like, "Ben, how was the last day? Did I miss anything good? Do you have any notes you can share with me?" He goes, "No, we basically just played pickleball for 7 hours because Sully really wanted to beat me at pickleball. He couldn't, but he wouldn't let me leave until he beat me. He just couldn't beat me." So we just played for 4 and a half, 5 hours straight, and I just beat him nonstop. After that, we didn't talk. I think that's the sign of a great game—a game that could take over your life and make you a bit of a degenerate. So I am all in on pickleball.

Sam Parr

Dude, they need a leader with a good name. When I was in San Francisco, I got into competitive skee ball, and the guy who ran it was called "Joey the Cat." Do you remember Joey the Cat? He branded himself in San Francisco as "Joey the Cat, the skee ball guy," and people would rent skee ball machines.

Shaan Puri

For him, like startups, he was just renting out skee ball machines to bars or to offices. What are you doing?

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's he was making

Shaan Puri

good money doing it right

Sam Parr

He was making great money. He owned buildings in the Mission. Yeah, he owned anywhere where he had like a little warehouse with all of his skee ball machines. It was Joey the Cat, and all of his skee ball machines had like a tiger stripe on them. "Oh, you got a Joey the Cat machine? That's great, man!" You know, it's like a fire service office is off.

Shaan Puri

yeah you guys must be doing well you're having you have fun in your office oh cool

Sam Parr

like yeah like oh you're into like local shit nice right

Shaan Puri

right right oh you still yeah you're supporting this local guy

Sam Parr

joey the cat

Shaan Puri

you have kaboochae you're like wow you guys got it going on

Sam Parr

so this guy needs the the leader of of pick a ball they need a cool name like joey the cat

Shaan Puri

I feel like there should be a tiger sound every time you say that. Alright, okay, cool. Let's do one more topic. I want to give you one more interesting person that I think is worth talking about. Okay, so have you ever heard of Virtual Gaming Worlds?

Sam Parr

no dude whenever we talk about those what's my answer

Shaan Puri

well it's just kinda like a rhetorical question really so go I play sports

Sam Parr

that's what I

Shaan Puri

I play sports and I eat meat. Do you remember about the Metaverse Quest? Like, you're like, "No."

Hubspot

no I'm too busy having fun

Shaan Puri

yeah like I beat up the last guy who said those words

Sam Parr

to me

Shaan Puri

So, go Google this company. You're going to be kind of interested in this. Go to this website, and I just want you to guess their revenue. Just say, "We'll play a game called 'Guess the Revenue'."

Sam Parr

well it's just like a little squarespace rinky dink site looking I don't know 5,000,000

Shaan Puri

close close 3 and a half 1000000000 a year

Sam Parr

oh great

Shaan Puri

great great 500,000,000 of profit and they did this in 10 years so what they do is they're basically they're one of the only legal online casinos in the united states they own one of the largest poker sites in america called global poker and basically it's casino games done via sweepstakes and trade promotions that's kind of like the legal arbitrage here to make this work is that they do it as it's not gambling it's basically sweepstakes and they have a patent on it so they have like very he has very little competition at the moment apparently and I gotta give a shout out to the guy so there's a guy who sent me this message and a bunch of notes on this I'm gonna shout him out real quick it's kind of he was like dude you gotta feature this guy he's basically a billionaire he pays like you know basically he he just dividended out you know in the late latest like whatever year or quarter and just bought a private jet off the off the dividend it's like so shout out to this guy ansell who who told me about them so crazy crazy crazy business he's he's ansell on twitter alright so here's what here's what's interesting so the guy who started it he's an ex financial planner he basically was not a builder or a seller right like the typical startup archetype is like you're a great engineer or you're the great growth marketer and he was neither he was a solo founder he was a financial planner didn't know how to do marketing didn't know how to do coding he he was basically just a badass and he recruited a bunch lawrence yeah lawrence exactly he paid a developer agency to handle the build out so didn't have a technical cofounder cto just hired a dev shop you know it wasn't perfect like they basically the code was so buggy like the slot machines would accidentally just pay you out a bunch and this happened several times they had to like survive that and this is built out in perth australia so this is like built in the middle of nowhere so kind of violates all the rules single founder didn't have the skill set wasn't in a big city where you know oh you gotta move to silicon valley or new york or wherever to do this he came to silicon valley once couldn't raise any vc because they can't invest in gambling opportunities but the good news is this that means this guy didn't take on any invest take on much investment didn't didn't get diluted so he still owns 66% of this company that's doing 500,000,000 a year in profit and and does you know 3 and a half 1000000000 in revenue and so you know it's a you know basically started fully remote they they got their first office 8 years in you know 8 years into the business it's pretty crazy

Sam Parr

Dude, it says he... wow, this is amazing! So, he said they increased their profit and they made $454,000,000 in profit. They paid dividends of $413,000,000. I actually have a question. Does that mean that the company only needs $40,000,000 or whatever? Yeah, $40,000,000 in cash to operate?

Shaan Puri

Either that or they have enough cash reserves already there for whatever. Let's say their burn might be $100. They might have already stockpiled the cash reserves; they just divvy out the excess.

Sam Parr

that's wild man this is wild

Shaan Puri

So, it's all based around this workaround, which is that U.S. law lets you do sweepstakes. They offer sweep coins that can be redeemed for cash. They have a trademark or a patent around sweepstakes trade promotions. Basically, they worked with U.S. lawyers to build a system where customers could buy virtual gold coins and use them to play the games. These coins have no value outside of the game, but when you buy the gold coins, you receive these sweep coins with it. They found a regulatory insight—not a product or marketing insight—that allowed this to happen. Sweepstakes are regulated state by state, so in order for something to change, each different state would need to individually make a change to allow this to happen. There are brands that will use multinational companies, like sweepstakes companies, to run sweepstakes across states because of the complications involved.

Sam Parr

Dude, whenever people tell me, "Hey, I have an idea. Should I hire a developer or should I hire one of these agencies to make an app?" 99% of the time...

Hubspot

Of the times I say no, you're wasting your money. You're never going to do anything with it, and it's just going to go to waste.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

This is the guy. This is the guy that Tal needs to jump on. This is like a story of how these things work. This is a really fascinating story.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. There's a video of him in 2012 where he's pitching at the Launch Conference to Jason Calacanis. I don't know if it's this exact idea, but it's basically a similar sort of gambling idea. All the judges are basically like, "Oh, you know, the opportunity is outside of the U.S. It's too hard in the U.S." They didn't listen. He knew his stuff and understood that there's a regulatory moat and a patent moat that he could create. This would allow him to do this and essentially create a large cash cow. It's surprising to me that a patent would be this powerful at stopping someone from competing because, in tech, patents usually do nothing. They usually... I don't know.

Sam Parr

I don't care about patents at all. When someone says they have a patent... yeah, whenever they say someone has one. By the way, what do you have, Conor McGregor? Nice! I like that word; you should bring that back.

Shaan Puri

yeah a little a little brit in

Sam Parr

Me? Yeah, you gotta call me, mate. I like that. That was pretty good. Whenever I hear someone say they have a patent, like in a pitch, I'm like, "I think that means nothing."

Shaan Puri

I actually see a red flag. I'm usually like, that means you think it's something, and it is nothing, which means you don't know anything.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like asking me to sign an NDA to hear someone's pitch. I'm like, "Oh, you... yeah, this is a joke."

Shaan Puri

We... I remember at one of our startups, it was like when we bought Bebo back. We got the patents with it, and it was like, "Oh, it was a patent for the idea of going on a social network and a whiteboard." There's like a whiteboard feature where one user can draw anything on this virtual whiteboard. I was like, "Oh, you invented that?" He's like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Cool, but I use that on Facebook." He's like, "Yeah, because this means nothing. This piece of paper means nothing, and it does nothing." It's impossible to really use this or enforce this. It's just way too hard in the world of internet innovation to make this work. That was my belief coming in. So this is a bit of a frame breaker here for me on why this guy has no competition doing this, and it might be some other reason.

Sam Parr

there might

Shaan Puri

It could be another reason, which is that this is actually **shady as hell**. Most entrepreneurs might not want to do it, or there could be too many lawsuits or whatever.

Sam Parr

Definitely that one. By the way, I think it's definitely that one. Without knowing anything about this and just going strictly off a guess with zero information, other than I see this guy owns a bunch of Ferraris, probably that one.

Shaan Puri

Oh, his Instagram is prolific. Speaking of names, this guy's got a name: Lawrence Escalante. You can't be Lawrence Escalante and not have a profile picture like he does, where he's at a poker table and just looking over.

Sam Parr

yeah he's them boys

Hubspot

that's what his

Sam Parr

That... that's what his Instagram bio needs to be: "I'm the boy." This guy's the guy. Well, congrats to him! That's an interesting find. This is a crazy story, so...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, shout out to Anthony. He sent this over because he knew, "Dude, I got something that's great for MFM," and sure enough, it was.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's juicy. That's what it's called—a big juicy burger. It's a good find, by the way. We forgot... oh, I totally forgot.

Shaan Puri

Speaking of the thing, legal agreements, patents, and important contracts, there's one more.

Sam Parr

Look, if you've made it this far, normally we put this in the beginning. This one's for the real OGs who are into this. There's this thing called the MFF, "My First Million Gentlemen's Agreement." And by the way, Sean, in our last video, you called it a gentlemen's agreement and then you actually said, "Shoot, we have 4 women listeners. We have to call it a women's agreement." Did you see our 4 women listeners actually comment in the YouTube channel?

Shaan Puri

And in fact, many said, "No, you have more. I'm number 5." But what they don't know is that actually, there can only really ever be 4. For whatever reason, it's just like a law of physics or something like that: 1 in, 1 out. It's like a nightclub. So we really appreciate all of you. All 4 of you are near and dear to our hearts. We look forward to getting to know you personally because we can, because it's 4. And actually, they don't even need to sign the gentleman's agreement; they're in.

Hubspot

they're grandfathered in

Shaan Puri

they're grandmother in

Sam Parr

There are two requirements here. If you've made it this far in the video and also if you've ever listened to more than one video, Sean and I dedicate dozens of hours a week to making these videos. So now you are in debt to us, and all you have to do to repay your debt is click "like." It doesn't matter if you're listening on Spotify or iTunes—I always call it iTunes, but you know what I mean. It doesn't matter where you're listening; just go to our YouTube page, type in "My First Million," and then click "subscribe." Now we're even, and we work for you. It's called the **gentleman's agreement** because we're not there; I can't see your computer. So you just have to do it. Just don't lie. So please go and do that, and that's it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's like, you know, Biden was thinking about canceling student debt. Well, we're going to cancel your debt. You're going to cancel all your podcast debt if you just do this one thing. I mean, I couldn't think of a better deal for you, honestly. So, honor the gentleman's agreement: go to YouTube, "My First Million," click subscribe, and turn the notifications on too. Why not?

Sam Parr

Dude, by the way, this part of the pod has become a fan favorite. Yeah, this is really... and I have to say, I stole this from someone, Jesse on Fire. I stole this from him; he's another YouTuber. But this has become a hit.

Shaan Puri

I don't know why you're admitting that. I would just steal everything and say that he stole it from you and let the... well.

Sam Parr

he's a he he's a ufc podcaster so maybe he can kick my ass and and how does he feel

Shaan Puri

I've never heard it

Sam Parr

He goes, "Look, the other day I went and I saw the dish at 7-Eleven. It was for Alzheimer's or like muscle dystrophy. I left a quarter there, and I didn't steal the other quarters. I just left that one quarter there because that's called the gentleman's agreement, and I just stand by it." And that's the same thing with this. I edit the video, I come up with the content, I do all this work. I do it for you. What you're going to do for me is you're going to click subscribe. That's our agreement. This is how society works, and right now everyone's doing it. If you haven't done it, you're being left out. So please do that. And that's his pitch. It's pretty good.

Shaan Puri

It's good, and it's tough. Tough to come up with it each time. I feel like in doing so, we also earn our part of the gentleman's agreement just by making it interesting, right? We gotta earn it.

Sam Parr

alright

Shaan Puri

we should we should wrap it up we're done