CEOs Pay Him $10,000 Per Appointment

Shaan Puri

Sam, this is the secret to my success right here.

Sam Parr

A plain gray T-shirt.

Shaan Puri

Free shout out to Kohl's! This is the Kohl's super soft tee. I wear a new shirt basically every day, which feels phenomenal.

Sam Parr

You remember the TV show *Cribs* where Master P would only wear a pair of Air Force Ones one time?

Shaan Puri

What do you think my last name stands for? I am Master P myself. Alright, I have an idea for you. Would you like to hear a $1,000,000,000 health care idea? Actually, "health care" is the wrong word. When people tell me health care ideas, I just kind of tune out and run away. I'm like, "Isn't that super complicated, hard, and impossible?" Let me just ignore this completely. But I think you'll like this one. Have you ever done an executive health checkup?

Sam Parr

Not yet, but Nick Huber is convincing me that I should do it.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so these things are pretty interesting. Have you done one? I've never done one. I've tried. I've basically gone through the process of booking, and then there was like... that's kind of the issue. They didn't have a lot of availability. Yeah, so I have a long waitlist. Oh, I gotta travel to Arizona to do this. Like, jeez! If this was just here in the Bay Area, I would have done it yesterday, but it's not. Well, that's the idea! Let's open one of these up in the Bay Area, in LA, and in New York. Okay, so what are these? An executive health checkup is basically something that CEOs and high-net-worth individuals will do. They usually pay somewhere between $5,000 to $10,000 to go for a 1 or 2-day visit to a medical center. You do a battery of tests. Just think of it like the Four Seasons meets a doctor's checkup. You go, and it's kind of this executive VIP treatment where they put you through a bunch of tests all in one day. Normally, if you try to do this in your traditional setup, your normal doctors can be like, "Why do you need this test? You don't have any issues, do you? Are you having heart issues?" It's like, "No, I just want to proactively measure my heart health every year and make sure I'm on top of that." Most doctors won't recommend these, you know? Normally, even if you did, you wouldn't get all your appointments done in a day. You just want to knock it all out in one day.

Sam Parr

Months, yeah.

Shaan Puri

It'd be spread out, it'd take forever, and each one you're like kind of waiting in line. You don't have the... you know, the TSA Pre-Check to be able to just go through and do this. So this is... our actually better analogy is actually **Frontline Private**.

Sam Parr

And a lot of times, they wouldn't talk to each other.

Shaan Puri

Right, it's not comprehensive. So, why is this an interesting business idea? The Mayo Clinic, which is probably the leader in doing this, is estimated to make over **$100,000,000** a year on just their executive health checkup service. The last number they publicly released was **17,000** patients who did it in **2015**. You basically have to fly to one of their locations: Arizona, Jacksonville, Minnesota, or London. These aren't exactly hot spots, but that's where they have their big hospitals. Mayo is doing this, the Cleveland Clinic does this, and there are a bunch of private practices that will do this too. My idea is that somebody needs to create this for **San Francisco**, **Los Angeles**, and **New York**. It's like the **Soho House** for medicine. You could charge a **$10,000 to $20,000** a year membership fee, which includes an annual checkup for you or your spouse. If you can get about **5,000** members in any of those areas, you're looking at **$50,000,000** a year in recurring revenue. That's only about **100 patients a week**, so it's not insane. Especially with the trend towards longevity, as seen with figures like **Brian Johnson** and **Andrew Huberman**, there is a very big movement in this direction. I don't really think that people are going to go back to ignoring their health. Five years from now, I don't think people will say, "I just don't care about health anymore." While some may become disillusioned with certain aspects, I believe that overall, more people are becoming health-conscious than before. As the high-net-worth class increasingly views health optimization as a status symbol, I think this trend is going to get bigger and bigger.

Sam Parr

When we started this podcast, I think I said one of the big things that I'm bullish on for the next 10, 20, or 30 years is the idea that it's insane you can have cancer in your body. The conversation often goes, "Well, had we just known about this sooner, we could have fixed this." But we don't, or we didn't, so you're dead. It's kind of crazy to think that had you just walked through the doors and gotten this test, this could have been solvable.

Shaan Puri

A hundred years from now, it's going to be insane that you didn't know how your body was doing.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I agree.

Shaan Puri

Maybe 50 years from now, I don't know what the number is, but for sure by 100 years, the idea that you could... It's like, dude, my grandpa used to walk around and he had no clue what his glucose levels were. He didn't know if he had cancer. People just had cancer diets. When we talk about smallpox and polio just killing people, or like, I don't know, how did you get around without Google Maps? It's like you just kept stopping at gas stations. Then you'd unfold this map, trace your finger, and ask the guy. He'd tell you, "When you see a blue thing, turn left." And that's how you got across the country.

Sam Parr

It's like going to a restaurant and saying you want smoking or non-smoking sections. It's like, wait, that was a thing? You could go to a smoking section of a restaurant? You know, like, because I remember that as a kid. It's like saying you only have smoking available. Fine, we'll do that.

Shaan Puri

Do you know what else that's similar to starting a newsletter today? Not using Beehive. That's what it's similar to. The thrill of the shield! Today, I'm going to tell you guys about Beehive. It's the easiest way to start a newsletter. You can spin it up and start your newsletter with all the growth tools built in. It's got an ad network, so you can start making money on your newsletter even if you have a small audience. I see people every week on Twitter posting that they're making $1,000 a month or $3,000 a month on their newsletters, and they don't even have that big of a newsletter. It's pretty crazy! Putting your thoughts out there, aside from the money, is I would say the most underrated thing that a smart person can do. If you're a dumb person, you don't need to do this, but if you're a smart person, putting your thoughts out there and creating a magnet that will attract like-minded people is essential. Create a little landing area for luck in your life where people can reach out to you because they heard something you said, or they agreed with something you said. They might offer you a job, or they want to work with you or partner with you. That's what happens when you publish. So, I highly encourage people to do it, and if you're going to do it, use Beehive. It's spelled Beehive, hiiv.com. Weird name, Beehive, but it's a great service.

Sam Parr

And Tyler's awesome, you guys! I do think people should check it out. Tyler's one of the most interesting entrepreneurs that we've come across.

Shaan Puri

As well as years, the best thing about Tyler is his playlist on Spotify. So, if you go on Spotify and need music for while you work, he has a playlist called **"Big Desk Energy."**

Sam Parr

Is it actually good?

Shaan Puri

It's awesome, dude! I listen to it all the time when I work. **Big Desk Energy** - great name, and it's a great playlist. He keeps it updated, so he keeps curating it as he goes. I've told him, "Dude, you know, Beehive's great, but the playlist is legendary." The playlist is so good.

Sam Parr

But you invested in Beehive, so that's the one that needs to work out. So, yeah.

Shaan Puri

I did invest in Beehive as well. I invested once. I use the newsletter twice a week, and I use the playlist seven days a week.

Sam Parr

Alright, Beehive (beehive.com). By the way, the companies that are kind of testing this out... You did one of these, right? These like C... or are they MRIs that you can go to? It's like $500, and you just walk off the street and get an MRI. It tells you if you have cancer or something like that.

Shaan Puri

You could do a full body MRI at certain places, and so I went and did one. However, the reason I didn't talk a ton about it afterwards was that I just don't know the science behind some of these things. It might be great; I know several people who have said, "Oh, I did a pre-nuvo scan and we found something, blah blah blah." I've talked to doctor friends who are like, "This is BS." I'm always like, you know, there's a sort of "Theranos sixth sense" in my body where I'm like, "Just be careful before you endorse something that you don't understand the science of, especially if it's making a very bold claim." That doesn't mean that they're doing something wrong or that anything is up with it. I'm just saying I have no idea if these things work. I do know that the stuff like the executive checkup, where they're doing more tried and trusted tests, is a bit more safe. This is like the Lindy effect; they've been around for a longer period of time, are more widely accepted in the community, and more testing has been done. They've made it through that gauntlet. Whereas the new stuff, like the full body MRI, it might be awesome, it might be overkill. I'm not sure; I can't say.

Sam Parr

Dude, we have a lady. So, for Hampton, we have perks. You get discounts to different services, and we partnered with one of these MRI companies. This member and her boyfriend, or her husband, went and got one together. He had cancer, they caught it, and he got surgery. Now, he's good. She was telling me the story, and I was like, "That's insane! That is absolutely insane." So, there's one positive story for you.

Shaan Puri

These companies, I think they said, like when I was there, again, I don't want to repeat these claims. I don't know what's true, but I think they were like, you know, 1 out of 20 or 1 out of 30 people come in and find something.

Sam Parr

That's insane.

Shaan Puri

It's so funny when you go do these. By the way, you're just like, "No news is good news." So you're like, "I'm gonna go voluntarily check this thing, give myself a very high anxiety day." Then really what I want is this anticlimactic, like, "Yeah, you're fine, dude. 35? What are you doing? You're normal. Do you feel bad? No? Oh, okay, cool." Then that's the best-case scenario at the end of these things. Hey, real quick, you know one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual $1,000,000 businesses. They made their first million off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy! That's wild! That's why we want to do the show, and we want to see more of that. One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, "Is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about?" Well, the answer is finally yes! The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50+ business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free! You can click the link in the description below and get the database for you. Alright, now back to the show. Sam, did you see this thing that this guy tweeted at us? The AI MMMs theme song?

Sam Parr

The rap song.

Shaan Puri

Ari, can you play this rap song?

AI

Listening to the dudes return their dreams in a bus. Sam Paul has hustled, muscles sealed the deal on the cusp of millions. They say, "30% of your figure, lust with trust." Sean's spinning narratives; his stories prepped. They clutch, "VOD cats vibing." My first million, stirring the pot. Sean, a baller, shot calling—no small boy stuff. He's got both a sage and a slack of productivity unlocked, saying, "A six-pack dreams aesthetics, they cannot be stopped." MFM host with the most, sharing that wealth of brain—from tips to the realm of the game. They still, without restraint.

Sam Parr

How did he do this?

Shaan Puri

So he goes, "Here's my prompt: A rap about Sam and Sean, the hosts of 'My First Million'." Sam previously sold his company called The Hustle for an undisclosed amount, but everybody thinks it's $30,000,000. Sean is a storytelling master, the laziest most productive person who loves basketball and says "No small boy stuff." Sam loves big muscles and six-packs, and then it generated that song.

Sam Parr

It says that I've got **6-pack dreams**.

Shaan Puri

I got "6 Pack Dreams." Yeah, it's so good. It was like actually very good for an AI song, and the second one cracked me up. This is me coming into today's podcast recording. Let's put the GIF up on the screen. If you're on audio, go to YouTube so you can watch this.

Sam Parr

It's always funny.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there are some internet memes that are funny for like 20 years. This might be one of them.

Sam Parr

Dude, did you see this thing? I believe it's called Sona, or is it Suna? Anyway, it's an AI tool where you can make songs. It is freaking awesome! You can make it sound like Frank Sinatra is singing any song that you want him to sing. You could use it for theme songs or background music for different things. It is truly amazing! It's one of the few AI tools that I've seen, and I'm like, "This is wonderful! This works!" There's a perfect use case for this. It's really good.

Shaan Puri

Dude, my uncreative self doesn't know how to use these. I'll be like, "Make it a journey..." singing... [popular song reference]. It's like their actual song, and I was like, "I guess I just wanted to hear that song." And I go, "Oh my god," and I listen to it.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you're like a Journey song about a boxer in Philadelphia. He's trying to beat the USSR. And what do you got? It's "Eye of the Tiger."

Shaan Puri

Dude, there is a cool version of these though. Did you see that Drake tweeted out a song that he made using AI? Like AI Tupac and AI Biggie on his track.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's awesome! I love these things. Dude, let me tell you the story. So, I had to set up this camera at my house, and I didn't know how to do it. A friend of a friend connected me with these three kids. They're 20 years old, and they have a marketing agency. But I guess on the side, they help people like me set up their cameras or whatever. They came out here and helped me out. After about four hours of them working in my house, I said, "Alright, so what's your guys' story?" I could tell that they were being polite and trying to ask a little bit about me, like, "Let's talk. Let's hang out." So, it's these three kids who are 20 years old. They dropped out of college to start a marketing agency. To get business, they go to... what's it called? Is it the Better Business Bureau? Like, where your local small-town communities have these business bureaus? They go there and start convincing all these small businesses to make promotional videos for their websites. They start making videos for their websites, and then they're like, "Well, what do I do with this video now?" So, they go to their clients and say, "Well, you should run Google Ads. We'll do that for you, and we'll make a website." The clients are like, "Alright, cool. I've got this website now. How do I get leads?" And they're like, "Well, we'll run the ads, and then we'll just get leads to you." I go, "Wow, pretty cool! What software do you guys use?" They say, "We just use our iPhones." As a matter of fact, one of their phones starts ringing right then. It looks like someone's calling for this particular landscaping company. They put their phone on speaker and say, "Hi, this is XYZ Landscaping Services. How can I help you?" The caller responds, "Hi, this is Rosemary. I live here, and I'm trying to inquire about seeing if you guys can come and build this small project at my house." One of the kids replies, "Oh yes, ma'am, I'm not the owner of the business, but I'll put you in touch with her right now." They have their iPhone out, click hold, and call their client right there. This is at like 9 o'clock on a Saturday. They say, "Hey Linda, I've got Rosemary on the phone right now. She wants this, this, and this. I'm going to merge you two right now." Linda responds, "Alright, sounds good." He clicks merge and says, "Hey Rosemary, this is Anna, the owner. I feel they're all in about what you want, and I'll let you guys..."

Shaan Puri

He takes it from here, then clicks mute and just puts the phone in his pocket. He goes, "That's... that's."

Sam Parr

$400 right there, and they're doing $15,000 a month. These three kids are like, "Yeah, we have been grinding at this for like 12 months, so we're finally at $15,000. We're able to pay ourselves." We've each been DoorDashing in our free time in order to pay our bills because we live on our own. I just think to myself, "You've got it." Great stories begin exactly like this. You guys are asking me for advice. I go, "Guys, it's going to work out. Just keep doing this for 5 years."

Shaan Puri

Dude, the best part of the story by far is that's $400 right there. Yeah, I'm gonna start saying that every time I unlock my phone and I'm with my wife. I'm just gonna be like, "Another $300!"

Sam Parr

It just... it was awesome what these kids were doing. I respect the hell out of that type of stuff. It just showed me these guys have what it takes. This is how great stories begin. It's these little... it's not complicated stuff. It's really simple. It's not sexy, but it's awesome.

Shaan Puri

Dude, my brother-in-law, I was asking him over the weekend, "What's your favorite job you've ever had?" He goes, "Oh, easy! Smoothie King in high school." I was like, "Smoothie King in high school? You've had a whole... he's 40, he's like 43 or something. I was like, your greatest job was your first job 23 years ago or 26 years ago?" He said, "Yeah, no doubt." I asked, "Why did you like it so much? Free smoothies or something?" He replied, "No, no, no. My boss was so funny. He's like, you know that thing I say every time I answer the phone?" I go, "Yeah." He says, "I stole that from my boss." The thing he says on the phone is what his boss said. So one day, he was in Smoothie King, and the phone rings, like the Smoothie King landline rings. His boss, who was basically like, you know, if my brother-in-law is 17, this is like a 19-year-old, you know, normal dude, he's a manager of Smoothie King, kind of an overweight guy. He goes, "Must be Jordan about that summer league." He did the "f***" on me, and my brother-in-law thought it was so funny that he just came up with that on the fly, like, "It must be Michael Jordan calling about summer league." For literally 26 years, my brother-in-law, every time the phone rings, he goes, "Ah, must be Jordan about that summer league." I could tell it just puts him in a good mood every single time.

Sam Parr

Well, now the new one is when you hang out dollars. You want to do one? What do you got?

Shaan Puri

Alright, I got another thing that's funny... well, it's funny and not funny. But the funny thing about funny things is that if you take a really not funny thing like war and you multiply it times a funny thing together, they become funny. That's the beauty... that's the beauty of humor.

Sam Parr

**Bold statement. Let's see how you pull it together.**

Shaan Puri

The Pizza Meter. Do you know what the Pizza Meter is?

Sam Parr

I don't know what the pizza meter is.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so the **Pizza Meter** is a way that people on the internet knew that the Iran strikes were happening before the news reported it. You might be wondering, how could just random people on the internet know this before mainstream media? The answer is the **Pizza Meter**. The Pizza Meter is basically a signal that people watch for. They study the pizza shops that are around the White House, the Pentagon, and places like that. They look for a sudden spike in activity. For example, if you go on Google and it says "busier than usual," and you see that at 10 PM it spiked way higher than normal, you know that something's going down. The only reason the closest pizza shop to the Pentagon or the White House would have spiked like that is if there’s something happening that has the staff there late at night ordering pizzas. So, they know. This has basically been a signal for events like the invasion of Kuwait, the Iraq War, and most recently, when Iran launched those missiles at Israel. People knew that this was coming because of the Pizza Meter. The story behind this is pretty funny. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it got popular because there was a guy named Frank. Frank owned 60 franchises of pizza shops around D.C. He actually told the L.A. Times, "The news media doesn't know that something big is going to happen. They're in bed sleeping, but my guys are out there on the front lines doing deliveries. We know when something's going down because we'll get a spike of deliveries to the Pentagon at 11 PM, midnight, or 1 AM, and that never happens." So, this happened, and then the government basically had to shift their approach. They sent out a memo saying, "Hey guys, you can't be doing this." Now, they send staff out to try to pick up pizzas and do all this other stuff to kind of smooth out the curve, so it's not so obvious that something's going down. Isn't that hilarious?

Sam Parr

Dude, that's just brilliant! There's a phrase for this, and I can't remember what it was, but it's basically where you do all of this work to protect something, and just the smallest, dumbest thing that you forget about, that you don't even realize, is the key to unraveling the entire thing. This is awesome! This is so cool. I'm reading the Wikipedia right now. It started in 1983 with the invasion of Grenada, and then again in 1989 with the invasion of Panama. What they noticed was that Domino's Pizza deliveries increased dramatically right before the invasion by 25%. Like, this has been going on for decades.

Shaan Puri

This is the password: "123 of wars." It's like the easy-to-guess password that they didn't realize actually has a true origin story. Apparently, during the Cold War, the Soviet intelligence agency was using indicators like this—not just the pizza thing, but other things—to try to alert them of a potential global crisis. They called it "pizent," like pizza and then intelligence, pizent. So that's how it started, and then Frank kind of put a spotlight on it. There are other signals too. Recently, before the Iran situation, people were like, "Uh-oh, the pizzameter's spiking right now." Sure enough, within 24 hours, the news came out about the Iran issue. Other signals people were looking at included gay bars in the area. They noticed a significant drop-off in foot traffic when the government was busy. There was a guy who was like, "Hey guys, I can confirm..."

Sam Parr

Because the politicians would normally be going to the gay bars.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So there's a guy who tweeted out, "Hey guys, I don't know what this means, but I'm at Uproar right now, and there's way less government guys here than usual tonight." Normally, on a Thursday night, this place is popping, but there's nobody here. So now there's the DC Bear Index, which is basically trying to measure the gay bar foot traffic as well. This is up there on my Mount Rushmore of silly indexes. There are some other great ones that you might not know about. Do you know about the Big Mac Index? I think you probably know that one.

Sam Parr

Is that just the price of a big Big Mac?

Shaan Puri

Or it's like a better indicator of inflation, or what they call PPP, which stands for purchasing power parity. So basically, how much is a dollar versus a euro, versus a franc, versus a yen? The most common denominator between all of those countries is the price of a Big Mac. You can see that, "Oh man, a Big Mac is relatively more expensive in one place than the other." That basically indicates that that currency got weaker. It's a more true indicator of currency strength or weakness than what the government will tell you. So that's what the Big Mac Index is supposed to be. By the way, all of these are not bulletproof. There are people who say, "Oh, the pizza thing doesn't work anymore," blah blah blah. Who knows? I can't say that these are perfect science or anything, but they're funny. The other one that's great is the Waffle House Index. You know this one?

Sam Parr

For hurricanes.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, for storms, there's basically a three-color system. It's called the "Waffle House Index." Waffle House, which is open 24/7, 365 days a year, serves as an indicator of how bad a storm is: - **Green**: Waffle House is still open and operational with a full menu - **Yellow**: It's open with a partial menu - **Red**: It's closed The director of FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] came out and basically said, "You know it's bad when the Waffle House is closed." So it became a whole thing - the Waffle House Index.

Sam Parr

A Mount Rushmore of indexes is awesome! That is a hilarious bit. I thoroughly enjoy this one. By the way, have you ever noticed, if Waffle Houses are supposed to be open all the time, why do they even have locks on the doors?

Shaan Puri

Do they? Maybe they don't.

Sam Parr

They do, because I went one-to-one recently and I was like, "If you guys are open all the time, why do you even lock the place up?"

Shaan Puri

I'm sure they enjoyed that conversation. Like, "Look dude, you want waffles or not?"

Sam Parr

They're like scrambled or... what do you want? It didn't work out. That's pretty good. Where'd you... why did this interest you?

Shaan Puri

There's this general trend which is like whenever there's a murder that happens, or a crime, or there's something like the Boston bombing... Do you remember? Reddit was basically solving it almost in real-time. Or like the other time...

Sam Parr

But they got it all wrong.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but there is like... yes, that seems to work. It is pretty fun to follow along and just see what the open-source intelligence community can do. They do get things wrong, but there are several examples of this. If you go look at the root cause, the root discovery of maybe some conspiracy or some expose, it's usually like some guy on a message board notices something. That's often how things get figured out. For example, that's how they caught the Silk Road. They went and looked at message board postings. I just think it's cool that there are official agencies, but then there's also this open-source community of internet sleuths. I don't think they're necessarily better, but I just think it's a cool addition to what exists out there.

Sam Parr

Let me show you something that I saw recently that is actually related to indexes. I got curious about it when I was looking at an article about some of the most profitable companies in the world. Now, let me list a few that are very obvious. So, Visa, of course, is going to be one of the more profitable companies, something like 40% income compared to their revenue. Nvidia and Berkshire Hathaway are also very obvious ones. Now, here are two less obvious ones: Public Storage. I think we've talked about Public Storage. They make something like 50% profit on each dollar that they take in on revenue. Another one is Relx. We've talked about Relx; they own the academic publishing industry, and it's a very controversial thing because it's kind of a pay-to-play model. It's a little weird. But there are two that stood out to me. The first one I'll tell you, because you may not know, is called the Intercontinental Exchange. Do you know what the Intercontinental Exchange is? No? Well, the second one that stood out is Nasdaq. The Intercontinental Exchange owns the New York Stock Exchange. So, these two stock exchanges are some of the most profitable public companies in the country. Something like, I think in 2018, the Intercontinental Exchange— I think they call it ICE— had a 60% profit for every dollar that it took in. This company is worth something like, I think today, it's worth $35 or $40 billion. It's one of the most profitable companies out there, and it makes, I think, $10 billion in revenue. So, it's just like printing cash. It kind of got me interested that these stock market exchanges might be the world's greatest business models. Because when you think about a stock market exchange, once a company lists on an exchange, they're basically never going to go away. Hopefully, a great company like Ford or something like that can last for 100 years. It's incredibly challenging to build a new stock exchange. There are actually only, I think, 15 of them in the world—like 15 legit big ones—and the barriers to entry are super big. But it got me interested. Do you know who started a stock exchange recently? Have you heard about this? It's called the Long-Term Stock Exchange.

Shaan Puri

Eric Reese

Sam Parr

Eric Ries, from the book *The Lean Startup*, is one of the most famous startup authors of all time. I think he started this in 2010 or 2012—a while ago—and it's taken some time to get going. The reason he started it was that at the end of *The Lean Startup*, in the epilogue, he lists a bunch of ideas that are interesting to him. He mentioned in a talk that all of these ideas have been started. His readers have messaged him saying, "I've started this, this, and this after reading your book." However, he noted that the one thing that no one started was a long-term stock exchange. So, he decided to do it. One of the reasons he decided to pursue this was because of how long large index funds or many of the large traders hold a stock on average.

Shaan Puri

No, I have no idea.

Sam Parr

10 minutes. That's how long, on average.

Shaan Puri

I'm super bullish on this stock for the next 10 minutes. Yeah, and his? At home with all my ideas.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's for 10 minutes; that's the average hold time. He was like, "I think that's insane because nothing has changed with that company," and it really bothered him. Another thing that bothered him is there's this chart—one chart about businesses—that shows the average number of public companies, and it's been going straight down. I think 20 years ago, there were something like 10,000 public companies, and today there are about 4,000. So, people just don't want to take their company public for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons being is that it's kind of a short-term... like what does Warren Buffett say? In the short term, it's a... what does he say? It's like a measuring stick, but in the long...

Shaan Puri

**Term contest**: Long term, it's a weighing machine.

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's right. He's like that. A lot of people don't like that; they don't want to take their companies public because of that. So basically, in 2011, he proposed this idea of something called the Long Term Stock Exchange. The concept is that you get more votes for how long you've held the stock. So if you've held the stock for longer than someone who just recently bought it, you get more votes in how the company is run, theoretically. He actually raised something like $100,000,000 to start this. I think Andreessen Horowitz funded it, along with a bunch of others.

Shaan Puri

Wasn't the only thing, right? I think there was like a mandatory 1-year hold time, right? Wasn't there like a rule that if you buy, you can't sell within a certain period of time? Wasn't that the rule?

Sam Parr

Yes, and there are a few other rules. In order for companies to get listed on the stock exchange, they have to do what you just said. They also need to have a plan for how their company is going to be great for the next many decades. It's all about long-term stuff. So, yeah, there are a whole bunch of rules about this. Now, the story isn't exactly going well because I think there are only like 2, 3, or 4 companies listed on his exchange so far. I think it's Twilio, Asana, and ThredUp. I don't think there are that many companies listed there, and those companies are also listed on the NASDAQ. So, I don't know why you would use Eric Ries's long-term stock exchange. However, I thought this idea was interesting. I didn't understand it when I was younger. I was like, "Why do you need to do that?" Now, I'm kind of growing to understand that it is pretty badass. This is an epic idea that has not played out yet. I was researching these exchanges, and they're so fascinating in how they work. It's a little bit crony capitalism because they're in bed with the SEC, so they're in bed with the government. There's a lot of regulation around this whole thing, but it's so fascinating. Eric Ries was talking about starting it. He said that in order to start it, you have to file paperwork called SEC Form 1. When you file paperwork with the SEC, even for a startup, it's all this paperwork. This is literally paperwork number 1; it's their first document. He filled out all this paperwork, and now he's finally starting to get a little bit of traction. I found this to be so fascinating—these stock exchanges and how they're probably one of the best business models I could think of.

Shaan Puri

Alright, I have a bunch of short stories related to this. **Story 1:** I met the CEO of either the NASDAQ or NYSE. He came to my office once to meet Michael Birch, who was our main investor. They were hanging out, and he said, "Oh, come in here and join." So, I'm sitting there, and I'm like, "I didn't even know the exchange was a business." I was like, "What the... why would it have a CEO? It's a business!" He's like, "Oh, it's not only a business; it's a phenomenal business." Basically, we have the exchange, and the exchange in the U.S. is obviously the big one. But what they do is actually run a software company. They power the stock exchanges of a whole bunch of different countries. So, it's like, "Oh, I mean, Finland needs a stock exchange. They're not going to build their own thing; they'll just take the U.S.'s battle-tested, military-grade exchange and be a customer of it." That was the first line of business: countries will use their software to run their own exchanges. The next part is that they fight for IPOs. He said, "Yeah, the big deal is basically how we, versus the NASDAQ, compete to get Facebook's IPO. How do we get the next big tech IPOs?" That's why he was in Silicon Valley meeting people. He was like, "These are long-term relationships, and when the time comes that they're deciding which exchange to list on, that's a big deal for us." It's a network effect, right? The more great companies you have on your exchange, the more valuable your exchange is. It's like a network effect married with enterprise contracts and complete defensibility. Nobody has regulatory defensibility like this. So, you get the defensibility of network effects and regulations, and then you get the business model of enterprise sales. It's a pretty phenomenal business. It's also a marketplace because they can take fees on all the different transactions that exist. I was surprised to learn that this was a business. It's just another reminder that everything you see around you didn't just show up. It's there because somebody somewhere has a motive and a profit to generate that product, service, or thing that exists. Once you see that, you can't unsee it. --- **Story 2:** The second story is about Eric Ries. I love Eric Ries; his blog was one of the key blogs that shifted my entrepreneurial journey. I was like, "Oh, this makes a lot of sense. That's why we failed; we should have been doing this." I got to meet Eric. I went to his house in San Francisco. He was the nicest guy, but he wasn't just about pleasantries. He was so helpful. I was like, "Oh, we're planning on doing this," and he said, "Okay, that's an interesting idea." I was excited about a big launch, and he said, "Don't do the big launch." I was like, "But I just talked for five minutes about my big launch plan!" He wasn't a believer in big launches. He explained, "Here's what you're going to do: you're going to take the worst version of the product that you've ever made and will ever make, and you have no idea if there's demand for it. You're going to completely blow your wad telling everybody how great this thing is. The odds of you getting it right and your initial product being good enough are so low that you're actually lowering your odds of success by doing that." At that time, big launches were still kind of a thing that people tried to do. He talked me off that ledge. Then, I came to him and said, "We have this idea; it's not really working, so I'm thinking about pivoting to this." He asked how I was planning to pivot, and I explained my changes and features. He said, "Cool, here's what you need to do: you need to take your old idea, bring it to town square, and shoot it in the head." I was like, "What?" He explained, "Your team is going to be so confused unless you explicitly tell them that all the stuff I've been saying for two years is changing. The old assumptions turned out to be wrong. We learned this by doing this, and now we know this is a more viable path." He emphasized that the old idea is done, and you need to do a public execution of the assumptions and ideas that you no longer are married to. Nine out of ten CEOs are too afraid to admit they were wrong or to be explicit that the old path was a dead end. They try to blend it together and keep iterating in the shadows, leaving their team confused about what they should be doing. He referenced Instagram's pivot: when they became Instagram, they said, "Look, this other thing, Burbn, this idea of location-based check-ins, we're not doing that anymore. Locations suck. We used to say location means everything; now it means nothing. It's photos with filters." They had a new app with a new name, and it was about photos with filters. The old app had photos with filters, but it was about the old concept. This was now about something new. That was very valuable advice that I don't think anyone else had ever told me, and I'm sharing it here on the pod because there are probably a hundred people out there that need to pivot. This was good advice, and it really helped me.

Sam Parr

That's such a good metaphor too. That's a very, very sharp metaphor.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I needed to be punched in the face because, like most founders, we ask for advice. Really, what we're asking for is, "Can you please affirm the things I want?" Anything you say that I don't want, even though it's important, I'm going to ignore to my own detriment. Then, two or three years later, when it's all failed, I'll be like, "Maybe there was some wisdom in that if only I had listened." I thought it was really good that he just punched me in the nose so that I couldn't ignore the advice. Most people, that's actually very generous. Most people won't put themselves out there to do that. Most people don't need it. It didn't help him, you know? I went to a house that changed my life, and he never heard from me again. I've never bumped into him again. So, you know, I paid back nothing for that, but he kind of went out on a limb and was like, "Look, I'm going to be direct with you, bro." I really appreciated that directness because that's actually what I wanted.

Sam Parr

Do you think his new company is going to work?

Shaan Puri

Well, it's his old company because it's over 10 years old now. Dude, yeah, I don't... I mean, as much as I love the guy, it just seems like this idea has not come to fruition. You mentioned Twilio, Asana, and ThredUp. Twilio delisted voluntarily, so now there are only Asana and ThredUp. They have two companies listed on the exchange. So, in terms of objectivity, it's not working unless there's some other momentum. I know that for a long time, they really couldn't do anything. They needed the regulatory approvals, and that was like a multi-year thing. So, it does seem like they've crossed that, but you know, it doesn't seem like they have a lot of traction at the moment. I wish they did; I think it's a great idea.

Sam Parr

I wish they did too. I wish they did too.

Shaan Puri

In the words of Gary Halbert, "Never has more money been lost than trying to convince the market what they should do versus what they want to do." Maybe long-termism is what you think the market *should* do, and not necessarily what it *wants* to do. Perhaps that's not what companies or investors want.

Sam Parr

I think when I was thinking about this, I'm like, how do you make this work? I'm like, well, I think the biggest way to make it work—this has to do with the SEC—is to get rid of quarterly earnings calls. I think quarterly earnings calls should probably go away. I think that this is actually something that I think Trump proposed, but many other people have proposed this. I think that's something audits...

Shaan Puri

Never. Yeah, check anything.

Sam Parr

He... I think that's something he proposed. But I think earnings every three months is kind of ridiculous. That's beyond... I think long-term stock exchanges like [the] purview. I think that's like some SEC bullshit. But anyway, I thought it was interesting. It doesn't sound like it's getting the traction that I wish it would get, but I still think it's intriguing.

Shaan Puri

The coolest innovation in this space was actually from crypto. Crypto, basically, yeah, when they had the token stuff.

Sam Parr

t x

Shaan Puri

No, no, no. Like, crypto tokens... they didn't clear this for regulatory reasons. But the idea was actually really good, which is that an app should be able to issue tokens to the users or members of its community who are helping build it. We've all been a part of things early on where, without that user contributing, without them being a part of it, without them actually participating—whether it's Airbnb or the drivers on Uber—for them to not get anything is surprising. Take Reddit, for example. After like 20 years, they were like, "We're going public! We made $1,000,000,000." And the moderators, who have made this place what it is and who actually created these communities and run them, were told, "You know what? We're going to do the thing no company does. We're going to let you buy the stock at the price 20 years later." In reality, the proper way to do this is what crypto was trying to achieve: to let any app create an incentive mechanism that rewards early participation of people who bring value to the network. So, if the network actually becomes valuable, you, by being there and putting in work, are able to invest energy. What if you do that? It actually gives you a chance to spin up new networks or new things. Now, of course, all these things have the other side of the coin, which is you might attract the wrong person—the person who's just there to get the early coins. It's like the worst customer is the one who's the coupon clipper, who's just there to redeem their early benefits, then quickly cash it out and bounce. So, there are all kinds of things you have to get right to make this work.

Sam Parr

But a lot of them are evangelists.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like... you know the idea that you could allow your early adopters, early evangelists, and early contributors to own a piece of the upside in something? I thought that was a really good idea and a big step forward. It's something that just simply doesn't exist in the traditional system today.

Sam Parr

Alright, well that's my bit on stock exchanges. I'm gonna be paying attention. I think this will make it to Eric. Eric, you gotta reach out to Sean, man, and let him thank you face to face.

Shaan Puri

What?

Sam Parr

Do you have...?

Shaan Puri

Alright, this is my **Hustler of the Week**. We've got the blue-collar side hustle, and we've got the "Billionaire of the Week." But I don't know what we call this lady—she's the hustler of the week, just someone who's making things happen. Her name is [Daniel Baskin](https://daniellebaskin.com/), which I thought was the same name as the Tiger King lady, but maybe it's not. Here's her story: I saw that this lady is running a **fruit swag company**. Basically, imagine you're a company hosting a conference—say, HubSpot hosting Inbound. You want to have something cool, something unique for the 10,000 attendees. They've got enough T-shirts; how many koozies can one person have? Oh great, a pen—how thoughtful of you. So what she does is, she says, "I've got it—put your name on fruit, baby!" Let's do a Salesforce avocado, a Lyft banana, a Mailchimp pineapple, or whatever it is. (I guess it should have been a Mailchimp banana, but basically…) She prints corporate names onto fruits and charges $5 per fruit to the companies. And companies actually pay for this at their conferences. She's made a bunch of money doing this, which I think is awesome. What I liked about her is that I looked her up, and she's this opinionated artist who's done a bunch of random businesses. For example, she thought bike helmets were ugly, so she painted her own bike helmet. Then she kept getting stopped by people asking about her helmet. So she thought, "Okay," and created a bike helmet company that makes cool-looking helmets. That was her first business. She didn't know anything about tech, but she went on Squarespace, set up a site, added Stripe or PayPal, and started taking payments. That started to work. Then she thought, "Alright, where do I sell these helmets?" So she bought a vintage tricycle with a wagon attached to it—a three-wheeler with a wagon. She piled up all the helmets into the wagon and made a cool little stand. People loved the stand, so she started selling those as well. I think the fruit thing started the same way. She created the fruit branding just for fun, and people started asking, "Hey, could you do that for my brand?" It was just a great example of this awesome quote from the founder of Geek Squad: "Marketing is the tax you pay for an unremarkable product." This lady has such a remarkable product—products worth talking about—that she never needs to do any marketing. She just spins up new businesses. She'll make something for herself, and then ten people will talk about it, and she thinks, "Okay, that's a business. That's a thing." And then she makes it.

Sam Parr

She has another thing called **Mask Alike**, where you upload a picture of your face, and it creates a COVID mask featuring the bottom half of your face. On her branded fruit website, she needs to improve her copy. It's a bit funky. She should move this part up; this is actually good. It should be the tagline: **"Go Bananas!"** It explains how they work with local farms to source produce, and then they put these cool stickers on the produce. It's pretty cool!

Shaan Puri

If we do a MFM meetup, we need to have this at one of them. I don't know what our fruit would be, but... I'm a beet guy. I like beets. Big, **big** fan of beets. So maybe you...

Sam Parr

How do you eat beets? How do you eat a beet?

Shaan Puri

Dude, I think I told you this. My buddy Sam Soli from college one day sent me a PowerPoint deck. He's like, "Oh, I was listening to the podcast. I haven't talked to this guy in years." And he's like, "Oh, I heard the podcast you're talking about health. Here's my beets presentation." I was like, "What?" He just sends this slide deck of all white slides, no design, and it just says: - "Beets want to have a longer life." - Next slide: "Beets want to have better sex." - Next slide: "Beets want to feel good every morning." And he's just like, "Everything you want is on the other side of just a few beets." He's like, "You need to buy raw beets. You need to put them in a smoothie. Here's my recipe. Beets are amazing for you."

Sam Parr

How do you eat them?

Shaan Puri

I just blend them up in a smoothie.

Sam Parr

What's that mean?

Shaan Puri

What part of "blended up in a smoothie" is unclear? What do you mean?

Sam Parr

That’s incredibly unclear. Do you literally take a bunch of beets and put them in a smoothie? Do you juice it?

Shaan Puri

I make a smoothie, and one of the ingredients is beets. Okay, that's what I was asking you. You just said you...

Sam Parr

You said you just put beets in a blender and make it into something. So, what do you put? What is your beet?

Shaan Puri

Smoothie recipe: His recipe will be spinach, beets, water, I think like a splash of OJ. He puts in olive oil, salt... he puts in different stuff that I never put in smoothies. Like olive oil, I never would have thought of that. Hemp seeds too. He makes like a killer, super healthy smoothie. I'll try to publish the recipe. I gotta go find the exact recipe. I haven't done it in a couple years, but for like a year and a half, I was all on the beets train. And now...

Sam Parr

Did it make you feel better?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it feels great! Well, mostly because his presentation was very convincing. I got placebo pretty hard there. But the hard part is that raw beets are the worst for cleanup. You have to peel them, and then everything is red. Your hands are pure red, the cutting board is red, your whole kitchen is red. It's like these things are just pure ink. So that's the only reason I stopped for a period of time. I was just tired of having red hands all day. I need to figure out a way to do this. I need some gloves; this is the answer.

Sam Parr

Dude, what a dork! I love this guy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you made a face like it's gross, but this is everything you stand for in life: doing weird, overkill stuff for health.

Sam Parr

I'm not that overkill, but beats are like... oh.

Shaan Puri

I don't know that. What you're running right now, how long is that race you're training for? Is it 2 miles? What are you doing? You're not overkill, right? How long is it?

Sam Parr

About 50 of them. About 50 of the miles.

Shaan Puri

Oh, okay. So, like, a marathon wasn't enough? You needed two? But you're not overkill, for sure.

Sam Parr

Alright, well, congratulations to Danielle! How'd you find her?

Shaan Puri

I honestly have no idea.

Sam Parr

Are we like the Christopher Columbus? You're like Christopher Columbus where it's like you discovered America. It did not exist before you. Before you, it was not a thing. You came across it, and now it is a thing.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and by the way, she to me is like the female Peter Levels in real life. You know how he's like the indie hacker who just spins up cool projects online and makes a bunch of money? I feel like she's the female real-life Peter Levels. That's how I think about her. I also have a couple of her ideas that she's been tinkering with. For example, Daniel Baskin has been considering other applications for this idea. What if companies sponsored produce that's at the store? You could buy discounted fruits or vegetables if they came with the brand's logo on it. What if Taco Bell sponsored some tomatoes or avocados, for instance? Then you could think about the brand as you make your Super Bowl guacamole. These are the thoughts going through the mind of Daniel Baskin.

Sam Parr

Dude, she has a whole website full of crazy things. She's done drone sweaters and clothing for cold drones. She's got the helmets thing. Oh my god, she has an escape room for your baby in your womb! It's a womb escape game, which is an escape room kit for newborns, complete with a tiny "We Escaped" sign for baby's first photos.

Shaan Puri

She hosts funerals for expired domains.

Sam Parr

Oh my God, this woman is something! She has Touch Base, a collectible and rare trading card company featuring venture capitalists, including stats, a foil pack, and a stick of gum. She also runs SF Sign Maker, a sign-making company that does painted and printed signage for local businesses in New York and San Francisco. Additionally, she's got the Trillobox, a phone mount compatible with irregular handlebars for bike share companies. This is funny: she has a stained glass window for airplanes—a removable window decal that transforms your flight into a place of prayer. This woman is really good!

Shaan Puri

Yeah, she got some of those: 1. **Founder Fitness Club**: A service that will print your pitch deck onto a yoga mat. So if there's an investor at the yoga club, they will be attracted. 2. **Last Chance Tours**: An immersive scanning service that will tour a place that's about to be demolished, which you can later revisit in VR.

Sam Parr

She has Blue Check Homes, which is a satirical service that offers a verified, like a Twitter verified blue check crest that goes on to your home if you're a public figure.

Shaan Puri

She literally has more on here than we have time to say. Pretty impressive! She's brilliant.

Sam Parr

She's awesome. Is this stuff like making a living? Surely it is, right? I mean, you have 20 of them.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'd like to believe that that's true. She must be doing well. You can't be this talented and not do well.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm a fan. Danielle, you're awesome! Is that it? Is that the pod?

Shaan Puri

That's it. That's the pod.

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod.

Shaan Puri

Hold on, we had to come back on. Sam found Daniel Baskin's best... best one of all.

Sam Parr

It's called **Moonlight**. [moonlight.world] What tagline did you just say, Sean?

Shaan Puri

It's sass for witches! All those witches out there who've been needing some sass tools to let them do their tarot card readings, she made it finally.

Sam Parr

For transformative social rituals, experience interactive and deep illuminating tarot card sessions right from your browser. SaaS for witches - beautiful! I'm all about it. Danielle, you're awesome!