You Have 70 Days to Win the Year

Shaan Puri

Alright, it's Q4. So, I don't know what day you're going to hear this, but there are about **70 days left in the year**. Everyone makes a big deal about January 1st and New Year's resolutions, but I have a different argument. I say there are **70 days left in the year**—just enough time to actually do the thing, whatever that is for you, that's going to make this year amazing. Today is a wake-up call: **70 days left**. It's time for **one sprint on one priority** to try to make it happen. The one thing you could do, whatever it is, that's going to make your year awesome. For example, maybe you're trying to get in great shape. The diet starts this morning. It starts now, and we're going hardcore—it's **life or death diet mode**. If you really want to quit your job and start a business, put in your notice today. Just put it in and see what happens. See how it feels. Just the tip... Whatever you're going to do, you have to figure out how you're going to use this **70-day sprint**. If you're trying to hit your growth goal or raise a round of funding, whatever it is, this is the lock-in time. **70 days** is about the perfect amount of time where you could totally shift your life. It's enough time to be honest about how long things take to make a change happen, but it's short enough where you won't lollygag. You're either going to make it happen this year or you're not. These last **70 days** are going to be the make or break. As Frank Slootman, the guy who was CEO of Snowflake and wrote that book *Amp It Up*, says, "Priority should be a single word." If I have somebody tell me their top three priorities, all I ask them is, "Which one is it?" Then they get really flustered. He believes priority is a single word, so I highly suggest you figure out the **one priority**—the one thing that, if you just did this one thing, the whole year is a win. Use these **70 days** to do it and wipe everything else off the calendar.

Sam Parr

What's your thing gonna be?

Shaan Puri

My one thing for this year, the one thing that if I just did it, I could look back and say, "Well, I don't care what else happened that year; that happened, and that's all that matters," is getting in the best shape of my life. I've made good progress; I'm down about 15 pounds. I would like to turn the corner and get the last 10 down by the end of this year. To do that, I'll need to ratchet up my efforts. It's not necessarily about the pounds, but I set these habits. I thought, "Alright, I have these habits that got me this body. If I want that body, I have to have these other habits." So, I've been trying to change these 4 or 5 habits. It's just 4 or 5 of these habits that got me where I'm at and where I want to go. I've probably changed 2 of the 4, so I have the last 70 days to get the other 2 done.

Sam Parr

What are the other two?

Shaan Puri

So, I'll give you the two I did and the two I need to do. The first one is planning the health part of my day at the beginning, first thing when I wake up. We both... I don't know if you still do, but I use my body tutor, so she...

Sam Parr

It's great, right? It's a great service.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's a great service. We have no stake—at least I have no stake—in this business. It's, you know, I'm just a big fan of it. So, she calls me at 8 in the morning and she says, "How did yesterday go? What's today? Blah, blah, blah." But the thing that happens is, instead of waking up and just starting my day with my work, my emails, my Slack, and like my little computer stuff, no. I start my day with the top priority, the thing I really care about, which is rewiring these habits. In doing so, I basically stop improvising because the improvising is where I'm just going to make whatever decision happens at the moment. Those decisions are the key thing, right? So, by planning my day, I say, "Alright, I'm going to eat this, this, and this at these times. I'm going to work out here." And most importantly, we identify what might trip me up. It's like, "Oh, I have to take my kids to the gymnastics thing that's like an hour away. It's at the time I normally eat dinner." So, you plan around the grenade. Yeah, it's like, "Oh, so what are you going to do?" Oh, simple! I'll just bring it with me in the car or I'm going to eat before I go.

Sam Parr

Or you'll look ahead, like three days. You're like, "Alright, on Saturday I've got a birthday party. I know we're going to have cake. I'm going to splurge on that one piece of cake." Which means, leading up to it, I gotta prepare. I'm going to be happy today.

Shaan Puri

So, a big part of it was realizing that the "decision tank"—the gas tank of decisions—is full in the mornings and by the evening, it's depleted. All my bad decisions happen then. So, I just make all the decisions upfront for what I'm going to do, and then I simply just need to stick to them, which, of course, I'm not perfect at.

Sam Parr

Like the daily one. So basically, they call you daily, and the reason why that's good is that’s when you're really getting after it. The weekly one is like, I use her as like, "I'm happy where I am."

Shaan Puri

They should call it the **Serious Person Plan** and then the **Unserious Person Plan**. Like, are you serious about this or are you not so serious? If you're not so serious, here, do this weekly plan.

Sam Parr

And then what's the fourth? Or the fourth?

Shaan Puri

So, her first habit: **plan, plan, plan**. All the meals and the workouts should be organized upfront. First thing in the morning, make the decision. Then, don't make decisions as you go. Make one decision at the beginning. The second one is what I call the **4-point swing**. If you've ever played basketball, you know there's a term announcers use. Let's say you had an open shot that you should have made. You would have scored 2 points, but instead, you fumble the ball. The other team takes it and gets an easy shot. So, it was a 4-point swing. It should have been 2 points for you, and they should have had 0. Instead, you missed your 2 points, and they got 2 points, right? So, I realized there's one part of my day that's like the 4-point swing. It could have gone in my favor, but instead, it totally wipes me out. For me, I work pretty late. After my kids go to bed, I have kind of like this relaxation time, and I'll do more work. I usually stay up pretty late. If I have a late-night snack, then I'm up late, which means I sleep late. Therefore, because I'm up late, I also eat late.

Sam Parr

Dude, I started going to bed early just to avoid that situation.

Shaan Puri

Exactly! It's like, "Yo, I don't know if I have the willpower to not late-night snack," but I can just go upstairs and go to bed. That's kind of the only thing I can do. Then in the morning, if I'm hungry, great! I can make good decisions again because the tank is full. So anyway, those are the two things that I've been working on and made a lot of progress on. Then I have two more. The first is to treat the weekends like the weekdays. My weekends, I just become a different person. It was like **Mardi Gras** for me! I was like, "Wait, why did I throw away all those habits that I do during the week that are great and just treat the weekends totally differently?" That's silly, so I'm not going to do that anymore. Then I have one more. My sort of weakness is chips. It's like, you know, a snack. It's basically the cheapest way to pleasure. It's super fast, it's right in front of me, and it's the fastest way to pleasure. So I'm substituting that with another thing that's a fast, cheap way to get pleasure. There are other things I like to do or other things that feel good in the moment that aren't about delayed gratification. It's instant gratification, just not through a snack but through whatever. For example, I could take a shower or make this other sparkling water drink that I enjoy. So I'm focusing on those substitutes.

Sam Parr

The weekday-weekend thing is pretty funny. One time, Noah Kagan—he's one of my best friends—said years ago, "You're the only person I know who doesn't drink, but you're still fat. What the hell?"

Shaan Puri

I had a friend who said the same thing. When he saw my company, he goes, "Okay, cool, you're rich now." I'm like, "Yeah, thanks." He said, "There's no way you can be rich and fat. There's no excuse. If you're poor, you just don't have the time. You can't get the nutritious food, and you can't get to the gym." I said, "Okay, understandable. You're rich and fat; that's you. That's all you." So he was like, "You can't be rich and fat. It's just a rule." I was like, "Oh, okay." It felt like I got into some club and they were like, "You need to take your shoes off."

Sam Parr

At the door? That's so funny!

Shaan Puri

By the way, one thing to finish that food thing: remember when Brian Johnson came on for the first time on this podcast? This was before Brian Johnson became way more famous and changed his entire look—kind of like the before photo of Brian Johnson. Basically, when he came on, he said something that really stuck with me. He goes, "Oh yeah, we fired Evening Brian." I thought that was such a good way of saying it. He explained that they had a meeting of the Brians: Morning Brian was there, Work Brian was there, and Evening Brian was there. They just decided, "Evening Brian, you're fucking it up for the rest of us, so you're fired. You no longer get to make decisions. We've taken that power away from you." I thought that was a great way of saying it.

Sam Parr

He did a really good job. Have you read the book "The 48 Laws of Power"? One of the laws of power is to change your identity occasionally. And like, occasionally is that...

Shaan Puri

Is that how it says?

Sam Parr

They're like... it's a tool. It's like a tool. For example, the author mentioned Lady Gaga. If you look at early photos of her, she was a very normal girl, but she always had a little weird, quirky side to her. He said she went all in on it and just changed her identity overnight to become this kind of strange person. Nowadays, by the way, if you see Lady Gaga, she's not actually that weird anymore. Remember that era when she would wear meat as a dress? Now she has an album with Tony Bennett, a very classic singer, and she's more of a... you know, whatever that would be called, like classic beauty. Versus before, she was more artistic.

Shaan Puri

Pump when Bitcoin prices are up and pump when Bitcoin prices are down. There's a tale of two pops.

Sam Parr

And I think Brian Johnson changed his identity, and I thought that that was a really savvy thing to do. I thought it was great, and I take inspiration from it.

Shaan Puri

Hey, let's take a quick break to talk about AI. We all know AI is a big deal. You see demos all the time of people doing really cool things. But as a business owner, sometimes it's hard to figure out, "How do I actually use this? What do I actually do?" I've been trying to use it across all my businesses. You know, things like making little prototype websites without needing to hire a coder, or writing copy for our website. I give it a bunch of data and ask it to analyze it for me. It's been kind of amazing. But the thing I always need is inspiration. I know the tool can do a lot, but it can almost do so much that I'm not really sure what I should actually be doing with it. That's why I think it's great that HubSpot has created a report where they surveyed 2,000 global marketing leaders and asked them what's separating the high-growth and low-growth businesses, and what strategies they're using with AI in their business. You can grab these strategies and apply them to your own business for free. The link is in the description below.

Sam Parr

Can I tell you a story that I've been kind of thinking about constantly?

Shaan Puri

Okay.

Sam Parr

Alright, so I have to tell you the story about this guy named Jamie Beaton. Jamie is a 29-year-old from New Zealand. He was raised in a single-parent household, but he's kind of grown to be probably the best college kid on earth. So, listen to the story. Jamie was raised by a single mother in New Zealand, and if I had to psychoanalyze him, he probably has some rejection-type feelings, like a "I'm not good enough" vibe that a lot of great people who achieve greatness have. He becomes obsessed with school, particularly with university applications and how to get into the best universities on earth. He sets out with a goal to become the most qualified high school student in all of New Zealand. He creates this really in-depth strategy. He knows he has to be unique, so he starts two different businesses: one being a newspaper delivery business and the other an iPhone repair business. He focuses on being the best, strategically picking activities that he can excel in. Then, he looks to maximize validation. Whatever he's good at, he wants to enter into a contest and win. He also aims for really good academics, getting straight A's. He creates this crazy curriculum for himself, and by the age of 17, he's accepted into 25 universities. He's accepted into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Cambridge, Duke, and a bunch of others. But he ends up going to Harvard. Before he gets into Harvard, word spreads in New Zealand that this kid is a wonder kid and that he's the greatest thing on earth. He even hosts a 230-person talk in New Zealand where all these parents are like, "Jamie, tell us how you did this! This is so amazing!" Fast forward to today, he's 29 years old, has seven degrees, and one PhD. If you go to his LinkedIn, it literally looks like a fake LinkedIn. Listen to his education: a bachelor's in applied math from Harvard, a master's in applied math from Harvard, a PhD in public policy from Oxford, two master's degrees from Stanford, a master's in entrepreneurship from Penn, a master's from Princeton, a law degree from Yale, and a master's in global affairs from a university in China. Is that insane?

Shaan Puri

This is a real show: 12 educations. I've never even seen that.

Sam Parr

It looks fake. So now, while this kid—he's 29 now—but while he was a kid, a sophomore in college, he thought, "This is kind of interesting, what's going on." He creates a college tutoring business, which is a common story of people who master the game. They start these tutoring businesses, and it actually starts working. By the time he was a sophomore in college, it did $1,000,000 in revenue. Obviously, he's interning because that's what great college kids do. He's interning at Tiger Management, which is one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world. His boss is like, "Dude, this is pretty cool. You should go all in on this." So he turns his little side business—$1,000,000 in revenue by the time he was a sophomore—into a real business called Crimson Education. That's what the story in the Wall Street Journal was about. Crimson Education does something like $120 to $150 million in revenue and is valued around $500 million. They have something like 1,000 employees, and it's like the greatest way to get your kids into a highly touted university. These parents are spending crazy amounts of money—something like $200,000 a year—for a handful of the product offerings they have in order to get their kid into an Ivy League school. It starts way before high school; we're talking like 5th or 6th grade. You're smiling... is this ridiculous or what?

Shaan Puri

So, I'm smiling for a couple of reasons. First, the headline is great. It says, "The guru who says he can get your 11-year-old into Harvard," and there's a picture of him shaking this Asian kid's hand, which is just hilarious. Longer and alerts: 1st, why an 11-year-old into Harvard? Alright, that's a funny thing. 1. 2. Love the name "Crimson Education" as you...

Sam Parr

Know, right?

Shaan Puri

Big fan of when you hijack the prestige of another thing in a way that's totally legal. The way that you did with Hampton, and the way he's doing with the crimson color for Harvard—**Crimson Education**. Great name! When I Google the name, the very first thing it says—and by the way, this article came out 6 days ago—the very first thing in the Google headline is "Crimson Education, as seen on The Wall Street Journal." Like, this guy is a **fucking prestige hacker**. He immediately was like, "Now it's gonna be like as featured on My First Million," right? Like, he's just gonna keep grabbing badges from schools, from press, from whoever he can get. So I think that's hilarious. The next thing that I find a little bit funny is the premise of this: "I will help your kid get into a top university." Is that right? But it's not test prep.

Sam Parr

No, so they have, first of all, if you go to their website, they're offering—or like their headline is amazing: **98% acceptance rate to your top college choice**. So listen to the product. The product is like pretty ridiculous. Basically, you remember how I outlined it to stick out, you know, like be unique? Crimson Education has these tenets of what you need. It's like get amazing grades. So he's like, "B's are bombs." You basically have to have perfect A's. Then he's like, "You need to have strong leadership." What Crimson does is they definitely tutor people. I think they have 50,000 students who get tutoring. But dude, they encourage you to do all types of crazy stuff. They encourage you to start a business, start a podcast, or go and publish an academic paper. They have services that help their students get PR or help their students publish research. For example, there’s a kid who started a podcast, and it got so popular that universities started asking to be featured on the podcast. That's an example of how they try to tell you that you have to have strong leadership. They also say that you have to have a unique profile. What he says, or what Crimson does, is they help students find like ten activities that they're interested in and then help them be the best at those activities, cutting out the things they’re not going to excel in. It's pretty ridiculous. They offer tutoring, but they also offer, for something like $200,000, really hands-on guidance. They say, "We need you to do this, this, this, and this over the course of a handful of years to increase the likelihood." By the way, it works. There’s debate over how much it works, though. Some argue that these kids are rich, smart kids anyway, and their parents are going to force them into all this stuff regardless. Did this actually help? But something like 2% of the students admitted into Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Penn last year were his clients.

Shaan Puri

And it says, "Like this many people get in as verified by a big four accounting service." He's doubting that they've been audited on their claims. This is pretty wild, dude.

Sam Parr

Because he's like... he was bragging to the Wall Street Journal reporter, like crazy. Or not bragging, they were asking him questions and he was like, "Yeah, like we had 24 people into Yale, 34..."

Shaan Puri

**Marketing funnel, dude.**

Sam Parr

But listen to what he says. He goes, "The acceptance letters were certified by PricewaterhouseCoopers and a list of students had been admitted." So, he sent the Wall Street Journal the thing, and it had PricewaterhouseCoopers' seal of like, "Yeah, it's legit."

Shaan Puri

I hate this. I'm just going to say that out loud: I hate this, but I respect this.

Sam Parr

Well, I'm gonna hate it for one. I mean, the respect is easy. Like, it's easy... like I'm a dog.

Shaan Puri

Like, it's the same reason I hate the Olympics. I respect the Olympians; I mean, this guy is doing the thing. The thing I said was stupid about the Olympics is that somebody dedicates 20 to 22 years of their life to becoming the best luge pusher in the world. And it's like, "Bro, if you had this much talent, why don't you just apply it to something that's useful?"

Sam Parr

Dude, what else could you do? If you're a loser, what do you just have? A big ass and you can push heavy shit? Like, what else are you gonna do? It's the luge; it's built for you. You can lay down, well...

Shaan Puri

Could have been a famous, you know, person in a rap video. It could have many, many options. Yeah, OnlyFans... you got better options on the table. No, but seriously, the sort of like gay embracing the system so much that you try to game the system for this arbitrary university application thing, it's just... it's like dialed up to level 20. There's something off-putting about that to me. I don't know. I guess I just don't like it. I think most college educations—and as I wear a Duke sweatshirt—most Ivy Leagues and the admission process, I think it's all pretty bogus. I don't think it has a very high correlation to... like, it's the wrong game, right? What is the phrase? "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." I think this is playing stupid games to win a stupid prize. However, I get it, and I respect that this guy has preyed on the fears and the hopes and the dreams of these tiger parents to be like, "Hey, give me $200,000, and I'll make sure your kid gets the right logo on their resume."

Sam Parr

I hear you, and a lot of me agrees with you. But let me just make the argument against you. First of all, in your group of people, the Indians have thrived in America because of the emphasis not just on education, but on being the best. So, there's definitely power to it. But you also went to Duke. I didn't go to Duke; my wife went to an Ivy League school. So, I hang out with a lot of these smart people, like you and her. That type of education, on one hand, is sort of like a rich person telling you, "Being rich doesn't make you happy." And you're like, "Yeah, let me figure it out on my own. Let me get there, and I'll decide." But the second thing is, I actually think that there are huge amounts of tangible benefits to education that's normal. What does Will from *Good Will Hunting* say? "I can get that for like $15 in late fees from a library to learn the same stuff as you." But your network—partially because most of me is in San Francisco, to be honest—but a lot of it is because of Duke and Sarah's network because of Penn. It was so much more global than mine was at a small, rinky-dink school in Nashville, Tennessee. You guys thought so much bigger. The people you were with were so much more global, so much more prestigious, and in a good way. So, I actually think that playing the game to go to a top twenty university is probably worth it. To play the game to win, to play the game and not go to one of these amazing schools? I actually don't think it's worth it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm not saying necessarily that going to a top school is not worth it. I guess what I'm saying is the amount of energy and sort of the manufactured nature of this... It's sort of like the way that PR is. It's good to be featured, but the process to get a bunch of press is often a very sticky process.

Sam Parr

And you're hating the game.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I hate the game. I think that in this case, dedicating your life to manufacturing this perfect resume that's optimized for the Harvard admission system just doesn't seem like the right use of talent and time. So, you know, that same person, if they actually just did what they were interested in and followed their actual curiosities and passions, I think that's just a better way to live. But, you know, I'll get off my high horse now. Let me just get a stool so I can get down.

Sam Parr

Did you see a photo of this guy? He looks exactly like I want him to look. He looks like a student still. He’s 29, and he looks smart, I guess. He looks Ivy League. Did you have a college admission counselor or anything like that?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like our high school had a college counselor. I went in, and they said, "Okay, so where do you want to go to school?" I said, "I want to go to Duke." They replied, "You should lower your expectations." I was like, "Wow, that's the opposite of what I think somebody's supposed to say in your job." Aren't they supposed to encourage you to dream big? What's going on here? He said, "Yeah, it's pretty tough out there." So, you know, what else do we have on the list? Let's go down lower on the list and see what we could do because my grades weren't the best.

Sam Parr

And he rubbed it in his face. Did you have a tutor?

Shaan Puri

No, but I did take the GMAT and, you know, the SATs. I studied for the SATs using Kaplan test prep. That was what I did.

Sam Parr

I did not have any of that stuff, but when I was reading this article, they said roughly 25%.

Shaan Puri

Did you take the SATs?

Sam Parr

No, I did the act.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so you took the ACTs. Did you do a test prep thing?

Sam Parr

No, I took it one time my junior year. I think I may have taken it twice my junior year, and I got a combined score of 28, which is like a combined...

Shaan Puri

Score with it, like on both tests? No.

Sam Parr

I think... doesn't it? Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought they take like...

Shaan Puri

Oh, like math and verbal or whatever.

Sam Parr

Yeah, like they combine the best of each try. I think I got a 27 or a 28, which is like the 85th percentile. Did you do well on it?

Shaan Puri

I did good on it. I was a good test taker. I wasn't good in school, like the consistency of every day. You know me; I'm not good with the everyday stuff. But if it was time to do the big performance, I could do that part well.

Sam Parr

That's what... Did you get on the SAT? You have to brag about it then if you did.

Shaan Puri

I think I got the equivalent of like a... because they had changed the scoring system to like the 2400 or whatever. But I got the equivalent of what now is like a 1500, basically.

Sam Parr

What per... I don't know. Let me look it up.

Shaan Puri

It goes up to 1600. 1600 is perfect, 1500 is excellent, and like, you know, 1300 is... dude.

Sam Parr

It says that's in the 98th percentile.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was a really good score. It's like you missed a couple of questions, basically.

Sam Parr

Did you try?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I tried. I basically, for like 60 days before the test, took two practice tests a day. This essay is like a 6-hour test. So, I took a 6-hour test in the morning, took a break, ate whatever, and then took another 6-hour test or a 5-hour test, whatever it was, in the evening. I just did that every day for like 30 days during the summer, and then I took the SATs.

Sam Parr

Well, you should have gone and started one of these companies on how to master that stuff. I didn't realize how big this was. They said that like 25% of people going into Harvard this year had one of these tutors. It goes up even higher if your parents have a household income of at least $500,000; half of them use these types of tutors. I didn't realize how much of a game this was or how you could gain an advantage. You could really excel at it if you just... well, if you have rich parents, for one, and two, if you just hire coaches. I didn't buy into that before, but now I do.

Shaan Puri

So, you're going to do this type of stuff?

Sam Parr

I think that if my children show an academic inclination—if they're good at academics—then, yes, I would encourage them to pursue that. If they're only mildly decent at academics, I would say, "Let's consider all different alternatives." I think I’m kind of an elitist. I believe that these fancy schools, like the one you went to, should be designed for the academic class. The rest of us, like the plebes, I think should have the option to go to a trade school or a state school. I feel I should have gone to a university that costs around $15,000 a year, like one in Missouri, and explored my options there, rather than going into debt for a $150,000 education at a non-top university. I think that's ridiculous.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's right.

Sam Parr

Alright, I have one and you have a few. Which one do you want to do?

Shaan Puri

Let's do a quick one on this catfish thing. I don't know how much I have to say; it just kind of fascinated me. So, let's see if there's something interesting here. I was at a breakfast, and somebody was talking to me about a business idea that they were doing or that they've done in the past. I was like, "Man, that sounds like a good idea! Where'd you get that idea from?" He goes, "Oh, it's the Fisher Investments model." I asked, "What's Fisher Investments?" He replied, "Oh, you don't know Ken Fisher? You gotta look this guy up!" So, I go down this rabbit hole: Who is Ken Fisher? Basically, he's a billionaire money manager, so he's my billionaire of the week.

Sam Parr

Time billionaire, like $11,500,000,000. Yeah, exactly.

Shaan Puri

He basically created a simple firm, which is an investment adviser and money manager type of firm called Fisher Investments. He grew it over the years to where they now manage upwards of **$275 billion** in assets under management. They have **3,510** employees. They ended up selling to private equity; they sold to Advent. They sold not the full amount, but they sold at a **$12.5 billion** valuation. That was the first outside capital raise. So, this guy basically bootstrapped his way to a **$12 billion** company. The question is, how did he do it? What did he do? In simple terms, this guy's story is that his dad was a finance guy. He actually wrote a book that was kind of popular called *Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits*. By the way, when I went to Monique's house, I asked him to recommend four or five books off his wall, and that might have been one of them. I remember seeing it in his library. Warren Buffett called that book a major influence on his career. So, that was his dad. What he did was leave and start his own firm. The key is that this guy is basically a marketing master. What he did was, instead of trying to... I shouldn't say instead of, but like most people who are great with investments or money management, there's a certain profile of a person. That person typically doesn't have incredible direct response advertising skills.

Sam Parr

By the way, it's typically the opposite. A lot of people who are in this industry are the opposite of extroverted. They kind of want to be in a hole and just not talk to anyone.

Shaan Puri

And they don't advertise at all. So when they did this deal, some of the numbers came out. Basically, these guys are spending **$60,000,000** a year on marketing, which sounded like a ton to anybody else in the money management space. To him, he was like, "That's nothing." Then he goes, "I get the question, why do you advertise so much?" He responds, "Because we have no market share." They go, "You have over **$100,000,000,000** in assets under management." He replies, "That is nothing. Have you seen the size of this market? We're just the biggest grain of sand in the sandbox, but we're still just a grain of sand. We have **1%**, if that." So he said, "We spend about **6%** of our revenue on marketing."

Sam Parr

That's still not a lot.

Shaan Puri

They spend, you know, $60,000,000 a year, and so they're doing about $1,000,000,000 a year in revenue. He basically created this marketing system. You can go watch his ads; I went and watched a bunch of his TV ads. What he says is, "We broke it down. There are six mental profiles of people and how they think about their retirement, savings, and investing." They break out these six psychographic profiles. You have, let's say, the grandma who just doesn't want to lose at all. Then you have the guy who's stashed away in his 401(k) and feels like he should be doing more, but he doesn't know exactly what. He's pretty distrustful of most people who come to him. So they have these profiles, and then they start running ads. They do fake focus groups to try to figure out which ads are working. There are little nuggets along the way. For example, they asked, "Why do you use your face in the ads? Do you feel like there's some risk with that, or would it make it harder to sell the business?" He responded, "Because we found that clients want to believe there's someone who wakes up in the morning and gives a darn. They want to know there's a person, not an institution, who cares. That's why we use my image. Here's Ken; he's 68 years old, he gets up in the morning, and he cares. That's what I needed to convince you of." Then he talked about what they learned from their advertising, as they're very scientific about it. He said, "One thing we learned, for example, is that men's faces do better than women's. Everybody told us we should be using female faces because that's going to appeal more. Not in our testing. Our testing shows that men's faces are going to convert better than female faces."

Sam Parr

Kent, there's a famous ad where it's an outline. You know how the Wall Street Journal has photos of their authors that are like dots? It's like a sketch, actually. It's a sketch made out of dots. Yeah, whatever. He buys Outbrain ads and Taboola ads, and they would always see a dotted profile photo where you think it looks like a Wall Street Journal article. Then you click, and it goes to Fisher Investments.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Sam Parr

And so that's how I first learned about them. Because I'm like, these guys, Fisher Investments, they're following me everywhere on the internet.

Shaan Puri

Well, if you click one of those, they're great with headlines. For example, if you click one of those Outbrain ads or Taboola ads, you're going to go to a page that's just a video. There's no navigation, there's nothing. The video is called "Debunkery: Seeing Through Wall Street's Money-Killing Myths," and it's a 12-minute video where he debunks Wall Street myths. This type of buzzfeed headline stuff isn't what you're going to find from most money managers. Most money managers would cringe at that. They don't know how to do those; they don't have the team in place. Like you've talked about Agora, for example, he's basically agorified money management by putting out really compelling, juicy content and then advertising it everywhere. They spend a ton of money on ads. They're on Fox News, they're on Forbes, they're in the Wall Street Journal, they're on MarketWatch. They have his profile; they're looking for somebody who's got a $500,000 retirement portfolio. They don't want the get-rich-quick ad. Then you look at their ads, and it'll say, "Wanna retire comfortably? If you have $500,000, download this guide by Forbes columnist and money manager Ken Fisher's firm. It's called 'The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income.'" Then there's a picture of a guy on horseback, like a dude who's ready to retire and get out of the office. He'll have an ad like, "What does your net worth say about how you'll retire?" It's kind of like a personality quiz. There's a picture of a man and a woman on a boat, like Titanic.

Sam Parr

Dude, this is so good! I'm looking at it now.

Shaan Puri

I mean, I want to show you this here. I'm going to screen share this real quick.

Sam Parr

It works, by the way, because I have to assume that his product is good, right?

Shaan Puri

I don't know, we'll see. I don't have a strong opinion on that. Look at this landing page, though. It's designed for conversion. He's got the "15 Minute Retirement Plan" as a book, and there's an arrow with a drag-and-drop box that says, "Where should you get it? Get it right here! Get my free quote!" Then you've got Ken Fisher below. Here's a white guy you could trust. I just thought this guy's marketing is excellent. I think it's to be studied. It's extremely effective, especially with the crowd he's targeting, which is kind of the 50 and up crowd. Studying this guy's ad library was pretty insightful. It also brought up an interesting idea: a lot of people who are great at marketing tend to go into spaces where they and their friends are already involved, often like D2C e-commerce or marketing agencies. You're trying to be a great marketer in a sea of great marketers. I think the genius of this guy is that he asked, "How do I be just two notches above average at marketing but go into a space where nobody knows anything about marketing?" Or where everyone is using a very rudimentary playbook. That's where I think the opportunity lies. If you go into the senior living space, the people who own and operate senior living businesses are not the same sharks you’ll find trying to sell handbags on the internet. Those people, the ones selling handbags online, are world-class marketers. That's why they're able to sell a handbag for 10 times the cost of goods sold (COGS).

Sam Parr

And the other thing is that when people see these ads, they think, "Does this work? I can't believe this works." First of all, yes, it works. It does. It works for everyone. It's not just like, "Oh, you kinda made a comment like only older people are into this." I think this always works. This type of stuff works really well regardless of age. But when a brand advertising guru who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and wears Common Projects shoes sees this type of stuff, they think, "This is fucking lame. I should make my wife's website look flashier." When in reality, a plain white website that has just long-form copy of like 3,000 words can oftentimes, more often than not, convert better than a flashy website.

Shaan Puri

So, let me read you the last few notes I have here. He’s been a Forbes columnist for over 20 years. He was like, he’s basic content marketing, right? Like what we do and what we get a lot of credit for, which is: you build an audience, you build a brand, and that helps you with distribution. This guy has been doing that for over 30 years. He wrote several books, including *Super Stocks* and others. He has an army of salespeople that cold call investors. They talk about this basement of cold callers that are just sitting there. People report that, "Dude, I signed up for this free guide once I read it, and then they've just been badgering me for years ever since." They keep calling me, trying to get me to invest with them. He says that everybody else relies on referrals from other partners. They don’t think about the broader world. Their goal was: how do we get people calling us? They have estimated about a $14,000 customer acquisition cost (CAC). It costs them $14,000 to acquire a customer. They spent just over $60,000,000 on ads back in 2019. They are the 12th biggest spender in financial services. They have over 60,000 individual investors, and they manage another $10,000,000,000+ from pensions, state governments, municipalities, etc. They charge about 1% to 1.25% in fees. So, you could do the math on 1.25% of $250,000,000,000. It’s hard to gauge the performance; they don’t have publicly available numbers for everything. However, in the past, Fisher Funds, with publicly available numbers, have underperformed the market substantially. They have a *Purisma Total Return Fund*, which was a mutual fund that had a 25% return in 10 years. The S&P 500 index would have been 1,000% in the same time. Yet still, there’s a quote: if his firm is not the biggest Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), it’s close. So, the story here is about building the biggest investment adviser firm while not necessarily having the best returns, but being the best marketer.

Sam Parr

Dude, **forget** podcasts! I want to do that. This sounds awesome, right? Of course, there are a billion reasons why, like it's a pain in the ass to run, just like everything else is. But that sounds great!

Shaan Puri

Dude, I've been watching *Better Call Saul*. Do you ever watch the show?

Sam Parr

What? You want to become like an ambulance chaser? Isn't he just a lawyer?

Shaan Puri

No, but... well, yeah, he's a lawyer. One of the things they show him doing is making his commercials and ads to try to be, you know, like "Better Call Saul." It reminded me so much of this Ken Fisher playbook. The show makes it seem... the hustle he does to create these commercials is also very fun.

Sam Parr

He's nailed the branding. This is cool! I've seen his ads all over the place, and I knew he was big. I didn't know they got acquired, so I wasn't able to ever see any of the numbers. But that's amazing!

Shaan Puri

Well, look, here's some of the report. I think this is his own reporting of his performance. In 2007, he says, "If you bought... this is not their funds, this is like his recommendations. But if you bought all of my 60 recommendations, you'd be up 0.9%. Assuming you lost 1% in transaction fees, the S&P founder is down 0.5%." Okay, so nothing big. In 2008, he says, "How are my results last year in line with the market?" Which is to say, not good. 2000 and what...

Sam Parr

He said.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, in 2009, I made 64 recommendations. If you put it equal, it should be up 44%. The stock market's up 29%, 20.9%. In 2010, he says your return is 18% versus 12%. But these are like his stock picks, I think from his Forbes column, which is not the same. That's like his entertainment; it's not the same.

Sam Parr

As that, if you have a wealth adviser or whatever this stuff's called, if you have an adviser who promises to make you more than the index, they're lying.

Shaan Puri

But then, what is the role of the advisor?

Sam Parr

The question is, as you grow and get older, is it savvy to think, "Alright, I need to get less stocks and more bonds?" Those bonds mature sometimes in 6, 12, or 24 months. So, when it comes to buying those, if you're setting up an estate plan, there's a bunch of administrative stuff that often, but not always, that 1% can kind of pay for itself or help you. You could also say that they are kind of like a therapist. When you want to sell stuff, they're like, "Dude, don't sell it! Don't be an idiot!" But there's a bunch of administrative stuff. Outperforming the market is not the main value. If you have an advisor who says that they're going to outpick, then they're foolish. By the way, do you know who else does this? It's Motley Fool. The Motley Fool has a fund that has well over $1,000,000,000. It started as a stock-picking newsletter, and now they've branched out to having a fund. They actually have a wealth advisory business that is massive, and it was built up the exact same way as Ken Fisher.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's pretty crazy that you said $1,000,000,000. This guy's over $250,000,000,000. So somehow, Motley Fool, which is also excellent at online content and probably has way more traffic, does not have anywhere near the same assets under management. I think it's always interesting to look at, you know, when two people pursue the same strategy and one gets a 100x return. You know, sometimes it's due to luck or timing or other things, but often it's a business model choice, a strategic choice, or it's an executional difference.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this is insane. The Motley Flow is $1,500,000,000. Can I tell you a quick story related to something that Elad Gil said? Yeah, so he made a comment where we asked him what he's interested in, and he said "monuments." What he meant was that an example of a monument is the Statue of Liberty or, in some ways, the Eiffel Tower. These are things that exist mostly to bring pride to a country but also act as tourist destinations.

Shaan Puri

And he was saying, "You know, why don't we build more of these?" What happened to the monuments was sort of the question.

Sam Parr

Yeah, he was like, "Look, when we were up and coming, we loved building monuments. It gave a sense of pride and it was very pro-America. It got people bought in." I had a guy listen to the podcast, and he sent me the deck that he's trying to raise money for a monument based in San Francisco on Alcatraz. You have to see this. So, it's a picture of... first of all, I don't know who this is. I've never heard of this person, but you know who Prometheus is? He's like a Greek god, and he basically represents the spirit of innovation and courage for the purpose of building for manifest destiny and inborn nobility, which elevates humanity. They want to build a massive statue of him that's 350 feet tall, and it's on the site where Alcatraz is. It's like... if the statue...

Shaan Puri

If Liberty had a hot boyfriend, this would be him. Yes.

Sam Parr

That's exactly what it is.

Shaan Puri

On the other side of the country, he's just holding up a torch, just like she is. Except for, he's absolutely ripped and he's from the movie *300*.

Sam Parr

And he's got like a speedo on. Yes, it's basically...

Shaan Puri

A Speedo, to be honest. They did not pull any punches as far as the amount of stone and steel that's going into this guy.

Sam Parr

And so, first of all, I've got to say the obvious: there will never be a statue that touts **manifest destiny**, **inborn nobility**, and the **spirit of courage** that's going to sit in the Bay of San Francisco. A shirtless, ripped dude? None of that I think will ever happen. But the idea is actually interesting. What they want to do is raise **$100,000,000** to build the statue on Alcatraz. It's **350 feet** tall. In their deck, they talk about the money, revenue, and profit of other statues. So, listen to this: the **Statue of Liberty** generates **$154,000,000** a year in revenue and **$70,000,000** a year of net income. Then you can go down to something like **Pearl Harbor**. Really? Yeah, I mean... oh.

Shaan Puri

That was okay. So, the Statue of Liberty... let's just say that again. That's mind-blowing! So, the Statue of Liberty, you said $70,000,000 of net income and $150,000,000 of revenue. That's a 50% net profit margin on 4.5 million visitors, each one paying $25 a ticket and $10 for concessions.

Sam Parr

It's insane... it's insane. Then it goes down to like Mount Rushmore, which is on the smaller end, doing $50,000,000 in sales and $20,000,000 a year in net income. Or Pearl Harbor, same thing: $50,000,000 and $23,000,000.

Shaan Puri

Dude, I was laughing. Why are we not doing this? These are amazing businesses.

Sam Parr

That's my...? And so I went and I saw these numbers, and I'm like, "That's absolutely ridiculous!" It's like, amazingly good. Of course, with all things related to investment decks, you know, you paint the best possible story. Who knows if any of it is actually true?

Shaan Puri

Source cited on this.

Sam Parr

There's no source. I looked up some of the stats, and like the Statue of Liberty numbers, it does kind of check out. It is plausible that those are the numbers. But they're raising $170,000,000 to build this, and their goal is to make $100,000,000 a year in profit, or like that's what they say the numbers are. So you start doing the math, and like I said, this is all just some guy drawing this up. Who knows? This is painting the best story ever of a thing that doesn't exist. But the math is somewhat interesting behind how this all works.

Shaan Puri

There's a chance.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so they're like, "If we do this, we'll do $94,000,000 a year in net income." It's actually pretty interesting that, like, Monument... of course, dude, you're not going to be able to build this in San Francisco. They're not going to have any part of it.

Shaan Puri

How much have they raised so far? Do you know?

Sam Parr

No, in like when I was Googling it, they have a Substack and they say things like "Joe Lonsdale is on board" and like all these amazing people are on board. They have a Substack documenting what they're talking about, but I don't think I saw that they said how much they've raised.

Shaan Puri

I think it's cool that people are doing this. I guess I have a few thoughts. I hope something like this happens. I am stunned at the profitability of these other monuments. That is my golden nugget for the pod; that is amazing. Noted. Okay, noted. There's something here. This deck, by the way, does not look well made. I think if you're going to try to pull something like this off, you have to... like, if you can't pay for a designer for your deck, then I'm not sure I believe that you're going to do this.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I wonder how... like, when they're going to bed at night talking to their wives, I wonder if they're saying, "Isn't this hilarious that we're trying this?" Or is it like, when these things build, we're gonna...

Shaan Puri

You gotta fully believe that you're doing God's work out here.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and it could happen. But it's called, if you want to look it up, I've got no affiliate. I've never talked to these people. It's called the **American Colossus Foundation**. Kind of funny.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think you're right though. That location really matters. You have to go somewhere that can be a tourist destination but also has the necessary approvals. You can't just get stuck in limbo. The San Francisco Bay Area is probably one of the harder places to get approval for something like this.

Sam Parr

Dude, San Francisco is the antithesis of a ripped, alpha-looking heterosexual male. This is not what the culture is about. I lived in San Francisco for 10 years, and I think... do you remember kind of?

Shaan Puri

The art we had on the wall, the giant painting at my office at Monkey Inferno, was the reverse of the evolution of man. You know, the evolution of man typically shows an ape, then standing half upright, then fully upright, and finally walking, leading to the Homo sapien today. However, the piece we had on the wall depicted the Homo sapien bending over, looking at his phone, then bending over while sitting at a laptop, and finally typing. At the end of it, there was a printer. It was like that was the final evolution.

Sam Parr

I think the opposite.

Shaan Puri

That should be the monument in San Francisco.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's...

Shaan Puri

Like a giant neck beard.

Sam Parr

Yeah, wearing a hoodie, not a jacked Greek god.

Shaan Puri

Yes.

Sam Parr

You wanna do one more thing?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I got a few quick hitters. Okay, let's do this one. So, talking to bankers, I think this is a good value add. This is a pro tip, a life pro tip for Friday founders out there. I didn't know this when I first started doing startups. I had no idea. The first time I ever came into contact with a banker was when I tried to sell my company. I was kind of like, I don't know, 8 or 9 years into doing entrepreneurship, and even then, I didn't know what a banker was. Somebody said, "I'll introduce you to a banker," and I thought, "That's the guy at Wells Fargo that sits in the back, not in the front." I didn't really understand what that meant. Turns out, a banker is like an investment banker. They're somebody who can help you sell your company, raise capital, or get debt, that sort of thing. They come in at a certain level of scale, usually something like $30 million and up. Really, they try to be like a $100 million company or so. I had a friend who was a successful entrepreneur, and he told me something that really stuck with me. He said, "When do you think you should talk to these guys?" I was thinking, meaning like...

Sam Parr

When you're ready.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like when I'm ready... at the very beginning of when I'm ready, or do I need to have all my stuff together? He goes, "The best thing I ever did was I talked to a banker a year before I wanted to sell my business." I asked him, "A year before? What do you mean?" He explained, "Yeah, because I went to the banker and I said, 'If I wanted to sell my business today, what would it be worth? Would it be able to sell? How strong would this asset look in the marketplace right now?' They know all the deals that have gotten done. Bankers are in the process; they're in the middle of selling companies just like yours in your industry. So, you go to a banker that's in the industry. They've seen everything that's traded. They know the relative strength, they know the valuations that they're trading at, they know who the buyers are, and they know why they're buying. They can give you a really clear picture. He said, "I went before I was ready because I wanted them to tell me what would cause this to not sell. What would be the weak points of this business?" That became my roadmap for the next year of what I needed to fix. That became my priority list so that when I did go to market, I actually had those things fixed. If I hadn't gotten that feedback at that time...

Shaan Puri

I would have just gotten that same feedback a year later, and it would have punted the cat way down the road.

Sam Parr

They're going to tell you that regardless, so it's nice to know early.

Shaan Puri

And so, I think bankers are actually a pretty big cheat code, not just for selling your business. That was the first thing I learned. The second thing was, you can actually talk to bankers before you even go into a space. I think you've done this before too. You go to a banker who's in a space that you're interested in and you talk to them about the companies that have sold. You're like, "What companies have sold? How are they doing? What were their strengths and weaknesses? Who were the buyers? Why did they buy?"

Sam Parr

The question is basically, what's the profile and attributes of a business in this space that outperforms the rest? You know, that performs better than the others. So, tell me all those attributes, strengths, and weaknesses, and I'm going to just do that.

Shaan Puri

Or exactly, you can reverse engineer. Maybe you could work backwards from that and find a great business. I did this with a recent business we haven't announced yet. We first talked to bankers, and then we learned from that. Oh, that validated a lot of things we already liked about the business idea. We had an idea, talked to the bankers, and that kind of cosigned or stamped that yes, this is actually an even better idea than we thought. This means it traded for much higher multiples, and the business could be like... we didn't have to do A, B, and C. A and B were going to be more than enough to have an outstanding outcome. They also told us, on the other hand... So, for example, here are my five questions for bankers: 1. I go to bankers and I say, "What deals have gotten done recently?" That's the first question. 2. The second question is, "Which ones, like you said, outkick the coverage? Which ones traded at the highest multiple and why? What was so unique about those? Was it just simply timing, or was there something in the way that they did it or the cost structure that made them particularly attractive?" 3. The third question I ask is, "What deals didn't get done and why?" Meaning, what deals couldn't cross the finish line? What were the big red flags that stopped people from buying the business? Because you want to basically know those two. 4. The fourth question is, "Who are the buyers and why are they buying?" Basically, every buyer has a plan, and you want to know: Are the buyers only strategics, or are there private equity folks? Are there independent sponsors? Who are the potential buyers, and what's their game plan once they buy it? Oh, they're buying things at a $55,000,000 EBITDA number for 7x or 10x, and then they're rolling up five of those and trying to get to $25,000,000. They're trying to trade that at 20x. Okay, that's their game plan. Gotcha. 5. The last one is, "If my business did X, Y, Z..." This is the useful one when you're not ready yet. I basically say, "Hey, here's where we're at today. Here's where I think we're going to be in a year. If this is what my business looks like a year from now, what do you think it would trade for and why?" Getting that from four or five different bankers really helps triangulate a space. So, I did this last week. I spent maybe seven hours on the phone with bankers doing this process, and I feel like I learned more in those seven hours than I would have in seven months of just operating my business. It was so clarifying how to do this, and it just made me realize, man, more people should do this. I'm going to come on the pod and at least say it so that for the people for whom it's applicable, which I would say are entrepreneurs looking for their next hit, next space, and you're not just being driven by some passion or calling. You are doing it more analytically. Let's say this is a tool. Or if you're a business owner and you want to sell someday, and you're at a few million dollars of your profit minimum, go have this conversation.

Sam Parr

I'm so on board. I've done this a bunch of times, and I think it's so smart. I think that there's this idea in Silicon Valley. There was like this trick question when you're raising funding from a VC. It asks, "What's the outcome here? What would you sell for?" And the answer that everyone pretends...

Shaan Puri

My dead body.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I would never sell. The answer, like, the answer absolutely could be, "I'm going to sell," but the answer probably should be, "Well, I don't know. Maybe we will, maybe we won't." But like, if we get to these numbers, we can sell for this or we can IPO. The idea of having an exit in mind has been told to us, so that's silly. I think that that's that.

Shaan Puri

That's silly. It's a very Silicon Valley thing for two specific reasons. 1. All venture capital is predicated on the idea that you're going to drive this to a **$1,000,000,000+** valuation. So, if you show any weakness, any hint that this guy would sell for less than **$1,000,000,000**—like if he got an **$80,000,000** offer that would change his life—he'll take it. Well, then this is not a good investment for me because I'm taking all the risk of failure. But I need to know that if this succeeds, it could be a **$1,000,000,000+** company. One of the risks of it being a **$1,000,000,000+** company is not just that the business works, but that this founder will hold on and resist temptation. Silicon Valley investors, because of the fund math, need that. That's why they put their values on you and say, "Whoa, those are your needs. That's cool for you, but that's not my needs necessarily as an entrepreneur." The second thing is there's an ego pride. It seems noble in some way to say, "This is my life. This is my life company. I'll do this for a hundred years. I think we're going to dominate the space so much." It just sounds so cool. It sounds so brave.

Sam Parr

By the way, I...

Shaan Puri

Thank you.

Sam Parr

I think you can do that. Also, there's this book that I love called **"Built to Sell."** Have you ever seen **"Built to Sell?"** No? It's a popular book. Here's the premise: you build your company to sell. Building a sellable business means you may or may not sell it, but you have a company that operates well. What does Warren Buffett say? He says, "Build your company so an idiot can run it because someday that idiot will be running it." That's kind of the premise here with **"Built to Sell,"** which is like, you know, you're going to build your company to operate well. So, I think you should build your company to exit, regardless of whether you're going to exit or not.

Shaan Puri

I agree fully. I guess what I'm saying is that this works for us because we don't raise venture capital for our businesses anymore; we just own them ourselves. However, a lot of the advice you get is still from VCs because they're the loud people. They're the ones who are famous, so you sort of take their advice even though you're not actually in their game. You're in your own game, and I think that's a very, very important distinction. The other thing, though, is it does sound cooler to say, "I would never sell this." I sell to sell to Amazon; I'm trying to buy Amazon, right? Why do you love your boy Brett Adcock? Because Brett Adcock is all bravado. He's all chest, right? He basically will say, "We're gonna change the world. We're gonna build a $1,000,000,000,000 company. Anything less than that, what's the point?" And you're like, "Oh my God, this is... it's intoxicating." As Sam Parr would say, it is intoxicating to be around somebody who is going only for the big shot and is not saying, "I'm building this to sell," or that there's a path here to a $350,000,000 exit which will, you know, 7x your money. He doesn't talk like that, and because he doesn't talk like that, it is very attractive and admirable. Many of us wish that we could be as hardcore, brave, and bold as that. We're just not. By the way, I don't think you have to be. I don't want to play that game, but when you do see someone play that game, it's cool. I gotta admit, it is cool.

Sam Parr

I agree, it's cool. I like it. I've invested in a couple of companies, like Brett Adcock; I invested in him, and I like that attitude. By the way, do you know that you have friends who are VCs? I mean, you sort of were one for a minute. Isn't it funny how you talk to them about your company and raising capital? You'll say, "No, we don't raise capital," and when you're friends with them, it's like, "That's the right move." Yeah, you know?

Shaan Puri

What I mean exactly.

Sam Parr

When you're not...

Shaan Puri

When you're not giving them a low five, they're not going to do it. I'm about to hit you with a low five real quick.

Sam Parr

Yeah, they say that's the right move. Now, when you tell your potential client, they say, "Oh, that's cute." You know what I mean? They think, "That's a lifestyle business. That's good for you." But when you're friends with them, they think to themselves, "That's smart."

Shaan Puri

The irony of the VC thing is that a VC does the opposite of what they want all the founders to do. They don't go all in on one idea; they have a diversified portfolio. They are not only looking at the upside. They make a ton of money in fees, right? So, when somebody raises money, for example, the podcaster Harry Stebbings just raised a $400,000,000 fund. That's amazing! That's incredible! By the way, Harry is going to make $80,000,000 guaranteed in fees—just fees. He could be the worst investor in the world. Why?

Sam Parr

Because that's his first.

Shaan Puri

Make $80,000,000 because he's going to make 2% a year on $400,000,000. It's 20% over the life of a 10-year fund. So just do 20%, $80,000,000 in fees guaranteed. That's his floor. Who cares about the upside from there? If you're Harry's, right? All you gotta do is keep the game going and maybe raise another fund. That would be amazing, right? So VCs, while they want you to be all in, live on scraps, have no diversification, and stay super laser-focused, they want you to go ride for the big upside. They themselves have a very different picture of risk, which, by the way, I think is a smarter picture of risk. But it is just funny that that's true. It's funny that the person giving you that advice is literally doing the exact opposite with their own finances and portfolio. That's insane. They're not wrong because they're saying, "Oh, you want to play the Mark Zuckerberg game? Then that's how you gotta play." So they are giving you the right advice for you if you want to be doing that.

Sam Parr

The $80,000,000 fee thing... I never knew that. I mean, I knew that they get, what is it, 2%?

Shaan Puri

When you do the math, it's well... 2% is misleading. It's 2% every year off the top. So, the same reason why financial value... we talk about Ken Fisher. Oh, 1%? That's not much. But 1% of your entire net assets every year off the top, regardless of performance, is like one of the great sort of seven wonders of the world. That's the eighth. It's like the eighth wonder of the world is a 1% off the top fee every year. It actually becomes a gargantuan number over 10 years. So, that's the same thing with a venture fund like this.

Sam Parr

Dude, God bless him. God bless America! I guess he's not even in America.

Shaan Puri

That's the best part. They didn't put a monument of Harry Stebbing somewhere for raising a $400,000,000 fund at $80,000,000 in fees. It's the $80,000,000 monument.

Sam Parr

Oh my God, that'd be great! That fun thing or that monument thing is ridiculous, right?

Shaan Puri

This monument thing is fascinating. We gotta... I gotta go look more into this. This is a great, great episode.

Sam Parr

Alright, that's it. That's a pod.