How Pieter Levels Makes $2.7M/Year With 0 Employees

Sam Parr

Are you intimidated? Why are you? He said he took a run before this because he was nervous. Now he's not.

Pieter Levels

Because I've been on a lot of podcasts, but they're usually kind of small. You know, I see you guys as like "Joe Rogan for business." So it's like this one step above Joe Rogan, and then there's you guys. Below that is like... yeah, I don't want to diss all the podcasts I've been on; they're amazing. But you know, this is like a level up. So, it's good. You know, I'm a defensive.

Shaan Puri

Levels... So, you also don't know what Sam might ask you. Sam might just come out of left field and be like, "No."

Pieter Levels

But that's the thing. I was thinking, like, Sam is not a regular interviewer. You know, he asks some crazy questions. So, wait for me.

Shaan Puri

first of all I I

Sam Parr

I don't know if that's true. I don't know if... First of all, it's not just me, it's you too, Sean, that asks weird stuff. But also, I don't think we ask *that* weird of questions. I think we ask the questions that everyone's thinking.

Pieter Levels

No, that's true, but I mean you're not "yes men" like, you know, those "yes man" podcasts where they just... it's kind of like a fan thing. Obviously, that's not you guys. You have real shit, real questions, and that's... I think it's more interesting as well.

Shaan Puri

Can we, Sam, can we share the thing you were just telling us in Slack? Can I share that on here on the pod? Yeah, the Sam... which one? The Sam Parr strategy for networking. You know, you can go to Harvard, you can go to Stanford, but you're not gonna learn this one. Sam has this habit where, if he wants to hang out with you, he'll text you just like a normal person would. He doesn't even need to know you; he's just interested in you. Maybe it's a cold DM, maybe it's a text message, or maybe he got your number from somebody else. He'll say, "Hey, it's Sam. I'm in San Francisco." But instead of saying, "Wanna hang?" Sam will just go, "I'm in San Francisco, let's..."

Pieter Levels

Dude, he sent me some stuff that I won't say out loud, but yeah, I think it works.

Shaan Puri

yeah so sam what what is this and why does it work so well

Sam Parr

It's like a phrase, you know, like people will be like, "You know, I fuck with that guy." Like, "I fuck with Drake." I like Drake. It extends from that, and I just say it and people... they reply. I don't know, I just... So this particular one, it was a CEO of a multibillion-dollar company who I'm friendly with. I just said, "What's up? I'm in your hood." Let's... and he goes, "Down." When? Yeah, like it worked out.

Shaan Puri

It's amazing! Normally, we try to play it cool, but we've actually been chasing you, Peter. We've been talking about your projects and saying, "Hey, we gotta get this guy in the pod." Sam is definitely a fan of yours. I would say I am less of a fan than Sam, but that doesn't mean I don't like you. I'm just more in the closet about it, whereas Sam is very open. Sam's like, "This guy's amazing! This guy's like an artist."

Pieter Levels

thanks man

Shaan Puri

This guy's got great hair, and you do have great hair, so it's all true. Thank you! Now we finally got you here, and it was hard, I think, right? Because you don't schedule or something like that? I mean, it looks like being an ass, right?

Pieter Levels

On Intel, if you do that... but I like, like you guys. I would get so many DMs, and they're all like... I mean, generally, they're very low-quality DMs, right? Like, "I want to collaborate, but I don't want to invest." People want something from you. I think it's like being a hot girl in the club; people want something from you, but they don't want to invest the time to actually get to know you. You know, you feel like an object, and I don't like to feel like that. I want to spend more time with my friends in real life, with my girlfriend, or something. I want to spend time in the gym, on my health, cooking food, and going for walks. I think because I've been doing this for 10 years—like startups for 8 years—and now that the money is going well, I don't really need to do any calls or DMs anymore. So, I'm just trying to create a more chill life. I'm not an asshole; it just means I don't have time to reply to everybody. So, I closed my DMs, and then people got really angry on Twitter. They're like, "Why did you close your DMs? Are you arrogant?" So, I wrote a blog post kind of explaining my day, my routine, and what I do in a day. I don't really have time, if I do all the things I do now, to also DM everybody, reply to everybody, and do calls and stuff. That's pretty much the argument for it.

Shaan Puri

Let's give the context. So, let's explain who the heck you are. Your name is **Peter Levels**, and you're known on Twitter as **Levels.io**, right? Yeah, that's the right way to say it. I saw you a while back, and I'm just going to say some interesting things about you. I believe—now you can correct me if I have any of these wrong—that you publish how much you make every year. In fact, it's in your Twitter bio. In your location, there's like a meter that shows your road to $3,000,000 a year. Yeah, and it says $2,700,000, so your meter is almost all the way filled up. You build a bunch of random small projects, usually around some things you like or believe in, or your lifestyle, which is kind of a nomadic lifestyle. So, I believe you hop around; you don't have a home base. You could be in **Bali**, then in the **Netherlands**, or in a different place all the time. You make these small websites or apps, and it says in your bio that you have **13,000,000** monthly active users. I remember seeing you because you did a community—a nomad community, a Slack community—really early on, like when Slack had just come out.

Pieter Levels

yeah

Shaan Puri

And I was like, "You guys... guys like charging $10?" I think it was $10 a month or something to get into this thing. I was like, "He's got like 1,000 people here. Wow, this is actually... this guy's making good money doing this!" Like, just by making a Slack group. You just do a bunch of small experiments like that. That's what I... you know, Sam, what did I do? This...

Sam Parr

I'll give Peter, let me provide the outsider's perspective that's a little more holistic. So basically, there are two things that are interesting to you. The first one is your businesses, which are actually the lesser of the two interesting things. You have roughly seven different businesses. Ranging from **Nomad List**, which made **$2,100,000** in the last 12 months—that's a job board. You have another job board called **Remote**, which is making **$115,000** a month. You also have **Read Make**, which looks like it's an ebook or something like that.

Pieter Levels

yeah it's an ebook yeah

Sam Parr

yeah 60 ks a month then you have got like a bunch of really simple

Shaan Puri

sam you're seeing these numbers because he publishes them where do you publish these

Sam Parr

He publishes all of them on... like the URL. Go to his Twitter profile, and we'll let you talk, sorry Peter, in a second. But go to his Twitter profile, and then click off. It's like "Open Revenue" at the very bottom. I'm reading off of our notes, so... and then you have like a QR menu creator. Then you have like an inflation chart, which doesn't seem like it makes money but tracks inflation. And then you have Rebase, which is a platform to help people become citizens of Portugal and help them relocate to Portugal. So, the first part is those businesses. Like I said, you have those that are interesting. I would narrow it down to say you have a series of job boards for nomadic or remote work that are pretty profitable. But the second thing that's even more interesting is the way that you do these things. You do a few things that are interesting. The first thing is, I think you're the only full-time employee, right? And you use a team of contractors. And second of all, you have this unique personality that's very embedded in everything you do. So, that's kind of like my big intro of what you do. Does that sound accurate?

Shaan Puri

I could see a website, and I could know you built it without you having an "About" page, which is kind of the ultimate copyright.

Pieter Levels

it looks a little no

Shaan Puri

it's like no it's kind

Pieter Levels

of an anime story I guess yeah

Shaan Puri

it's it's not a

Pieter Levels

designer yeah no I think it's accurate description it's like like I'm not very nomadic anymore like I'm slowly settling down right but I started very nomadically I was like moving around every month I started like in 2014 I started nomading and I went to all these places and I started building these apps these little websites little products to validate and I remember I mean I told this story so many times but I was following patrick mckenzie patio11 on hacker news famous hacker news guy and now he works for stripe and he would do he would share his revenue on his blog about all his little products he made and it was like appointment reminder for barbershops so you got a sms just before your appointment so you don't forget it that kind of stuff and I was really inspired like okay this is not like some big vc funded guy this is just like an indie guy who's just on his laptop kinda building stuff and I kinda mixed that with the nomad thing where like building from your laptop from your backpack moving around I think also getting inspired from different places because if you move around you I mean I know sam moves around a little bit as well you your life becomes very unique because you meet different kinds of people you you're in different kinds of places you see different kinds of products like in shops like if you're in asia you see some futuristic shit you don't see in europe and america and all that stuff kinda it helps for inspiration for creating products in some indirect ways as well so that's pretty much what I've been doing and I think it's I've been trying to be like radically honest like I know this this american guy who pushes the radical honesty movement so I'm trying to do that in my personal life I'm trying to do it on the internet I'm not perfect but I'm trying to be as honest and open as possible because I don't like this fake corporate stuff and it's because I started business administration and I have a master's degree in it so I know all the management consultancy bullshit you know I've been there I've done that I know this is where my friends work I know investment bankers and I hate that that a lot of that world where it's like fake and not real and I wanna be very open and honest and I think it's also a little bit of a european thing not to slack off americans I love america but like in europe people are very a little bit more direct and a little bit more straightforward and I think that comes across in my in the stuff I do a little bit

Sam Parr

So, what's the total size of all your projects in terms of top line and bottom line revenue? And isn't it true that you're the only full-time person? How many contractors are you using?

Pieter Levels

Yeah, so I have one customer support contractor, part-time, Isabelle. She works for all my projects. I also have a moderator for the Slack group because, dude, Slack groups can have some drama in there. I've had some crazy drama in these Slack groups and communities, so you need to have a moderator. You need to have rules, and you cannot just automate this moderation away. I tried that, but you need a real person there to check on messages and stuff. Then, I have a DevOps guy, my best friend Daniel. He works kind of like an SLA (Service Level Agreement). If the server goes down, he gets a message, you know, if I'm sleeping or something, and he brings it back up. But the problem is, it never goes down anymore. We haven't really had that for years. So, he does security updates and stuff. I have a VPS; I don't use Amazon. I use a VPS on DigitalOcean and Linode, and he kind of keeps that stuff safe, you know? So that's good.

Sam Parr

and how big is the business top line

Pieter Levels

So, how big is the business? Remote OK is the job board. It's the biggest business and makes the most money. Normally, this is starting to grow though. It's past, I think, $100,000 this month—almost like a $1,000,000 business. Remote OK is $1,600,000 a year, I think. Rebase is a new business; it's an immigration agency. I want to help remote workers immigrate to countries that want to attract remote workers with beneficial tax incentives. Portugal is one of the first ones to do that. So, those are the three businesses where you make money. The rest doesn't really make a lot. For example, the book makes about $4,000 a month.

Shaan Puri

so but everything you do is part of one flywheel so I've looked at your kind of like system and I've looked at a bunch of people because I got into a little pickle where I was like god I'm doing so many things and I wanna do all these things I'm interested in all these things but shit you know am I gonna be able to juggle 5 different things I got a podcast I have a vc fund I have my ecommerce business I have a newsletter business I have you know I don't even know what else course business I got I got other shit right so it's like am I gonna be able to do this and what I saw that you did I I I have this kinda like mental model of a solopreneur and a solopreneur nobody's actually solo everybody's got like a little support team around them that's like helpful some some in a big way some in a small way but basically it's like somebody who builds a personal brand and then builds a bit builds a a successful business and lifestyle around that and what I noticed was that you had this formula which is I don't know if it's intentional or unintentional but I'll say it out loud because here's my my read of your business it's basically you it starts with the red pill so a red pill is like you know that scene in the matrix where morpheus is holding out a blue pill red pill is like you know do you want do you want the truth or do you wanna you take the blue pill you could just go back to your normal life just as everything was you could forget this ever happened and neil's like no I need to know the truth what's the truth he takes the red pill and basically it's like every great solopreneur I think starts with one truth so like tim ferris' truth was basically that like the 9 to 5 work in a cubicle for 40 years model is like effing broken and you don't need to do it that way like you could work 4 hours a week and live like a millionaire and so I was like tim ferriss is red pill and yours was basically like this idea of being a nomad a digital nomad which is like hey yeah you don't have to you know prescribe to the subscribe to the the normal way of living you pick a a place that's where you are from that's where you live and you pay you know you just kinda stay where you grew up and like and you go to an office every day and like you have to wear shoes and whatever you like no I wear flip flops I walk around on beaches I just kinda go wherever I feel like whenever I feel like and I carry a little like backpack and that's my life yeah so you start with the red pill then you then you create content around that red pill so it's you talking about that lifestyle and sharing everything from like hey people always ask what I keep in my backpack for the day here's what it is it's like yeah there's every bit of content you can come up with that's like poppy that's like fits that red pill so then you that bit gives you authority on that subject so you become like authority and so you know pompe became an authority around bitcoin and tim ferriss became an authority around life hacking and you've become an authority around nomadism and then you take that and then you basically spin off one of many businesses that can come up with it but every one of those business either it's a big money maker or it's just another funnel and more content more new audience that's gonna like get sucked into that same red pill lifestyle that you are like talking about and so it even though you're doing 6 things they're all actually part of 1 flywheel and every one that you do is gonna feed it either because it's gonna give you a bunch of cash that lets you fund this lifestyle in a better bigger and better way or it's gonna give you new content new stories new things to be known about that fit that lifestyle as well that's how I see it I'm curious is that a good is that traffic is

Pieter Levels

Really accurate. My journey started when I was blogging, just like you said. I was blogging about nomading, but I was blogging for my mom. Back then, in 2014, you had travel bloggers, and I was going to travel and become a nomad. I wanted to write about every place I went, sharing how it was to live in that city and all the crazy things that happened to me. My mom was reading that, but I wrote it in English because my mom is obviously Dutch. I thought, "Okay, she can read English, so it might be easier to get more traffic and a larger audience." It wasn't a super big idea; it just kind of happened. Those blogs started showing up on Hacker News, and I began writing more about bootstrapping startups as a nomad in Thailand or in Asia. Those posts started gaining a lot of traction on Hacker News. I think it was around 2013 or 2014 when I noticed that developers in San Francisco, working for all the startups, were also realizing, "Okay, maybe I can start doing this remotely." Remote work was not cool back then, and being a nomad wasn't cool either. You had the Tim Ferriss wave in 2008, which was like the first nomad wave. I love Tim Ferriss, but there was something about the followers and the businesses that were created during that time that felt kind of shady. I came across a lot of shady situations in Asia, particularly in Thailand, involving Americans and Europeans.

Shaan Puri

a lot of brain supplements and

Pieter Levels

Shit, like, do it! Yes, yes, do it! Yeah, drug dealers online, drug dealers, and like spamdexing. There’s still shady stuff, but less. I was like, "I really hate this shady stuff. I don't feel like part of this scene." I think it would be cool to make it more like, you know, mainstream—like reputable businesses, reputable jobs that do it. So, I kept blogging about it, and it kept taking off on Hacker News. And you're right, I think. Then I went on Twitter, and I think I kind of organically started gaining followers. A lot of people went nomad; a lot of my friends went nomad because I was blogging, and they became my friends now. Yeah, and then I started all those businesses. But I think it's not like some... it sounds very constructive.

Shaan Puri

it's not a master plan

Pieter Levels

No, it's not a master plan. It's very organic. I kind of try... I'm like user zero. I try to build stuff for myself, and I always have new ideas. Like you said, the "red pill" is something that's a discongruence in society and what I'm thinking. Most people then think, "Okay, there must be something wrong with me." But I think, arrogantly, "There must be something wrong with society. Maybe this is like a new thing." So, I'll try and make a little website about inflation. Like, three years ago or two years ago, I was tweeting about inflation, saying, "This is going to go crazy with all the fat printing money." And everyone's like, "Nah, inflation is fine. Stop whining about it." I'm like, "No, I'll just prove you that the real inflation numbers are higher." So, I made this inflationchart.com website that shows inflation numbers are really high. It turned out to be true... kind of now.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's great

Sam Parr

What technology are you using to build those sites? Because they all do look alike, and you seem like you can spin them up really quickly.

Pieter Levels

Well, that's really funny because I get a lot of criticism for the technology I use. I use PHP because that's the language I knew; I was making a blog, like WordPress, so I knew PHP a little bit. I thought, "Okay, I just need to write with the language I know because I don't know other languages." I did that, and then I used JavaScript and jQuery. Everybody starts laughing now because jQuery is like way passé, but I still use it because it's so easy to, you know, make a button, bind an event to it, and use AJAX to communicate with the server. The PHP script does something with the database, sends it back, and it works for me really well. I think it doesn't matter what you use, as long as you have something that provides a really fast feedback loop and iterative process. I can make a new button in like, you know, 20 seconds and deploy it to the server. It's really fast. I know other developer friends of mine use a very big stack, all those, you know, Kubernetes and all this stuff, all these keywords I don't really know. For them, it takes sometimes like, you know, an hour or maybe even days to deploy a new feature. What we learned from startups and lean startups is that the customer feedback loop has to be very fast and iterative. You can really quickly change stuff, and it also makes your customers really happy because they see something. If they have a problem or a feature idea, you can build it quickly, and then they see it. That's how you get happy customers: you make something for them, and they're like, "Oh my god, I influenced this product!" So, that works for me—very, very simple stack.

Shaan Puri

Well, we won't laugh at you. Not because we're nice, but because we just don't know anything about it. I don't know what jQuery is, neither does Sam.

Pieter Levels

sachs I mean nobody these days is getting very positive

Shaan Puri

You're safe here. We're too dumb to call you out on any of your technical decisions.

Pieter Levels

it's a good podcast

Sam Parr

What do you think this whole thing is worth? Because if you go, okay...

Pieter Levels

so if you if you do 5 x sorry

Sam Parr

Sean, go to his sites and you could see it's like something... open. It's usually like the website... open, and then it says so many stats, most of which honestly are kind of useless. But it's just... it's cool. It's like, you know, how many...

Shaan Puri

70% of them are, you know, the equivalent of a step counter. It's like, "Oh, how many DMs did I get today? How many?"

Pieter Levels

you don't have mass

Shaan Puri

no you do you have

Pieter Levels

but it's collective it's like dm sent you know it's collective events yeah but whatever

Shaan Puri

Yeah, for example, I'm on NomadList.com, which you said is, I think, your biggest one [website]. On it, you see: - The revenue chart - CO2 removed from the atmosphere - The full P&L [Profit and Loss statement] - A bunch of other things And one of them that you see is my... Okay, so 73% profit margin. Your team size is 0.78, so I guess that's like part-time [employees].

Pieter Levels

yeah like full time equivalent like fte yeah

Shaan Puri

and then + 492 bots what is that

Pieter Levels

serverless yeah yeah yeah so on the serverless he do like

Sam Parr

he has a valuation too he is if you scroll on

Shaan Puri

it says

Sam Parr

if we sold for like x whatever the multiple

Shaan Puri

x profit if if it was 30 x profit this would be 6 17,000,000

Pieter Levels

So, I tried to take the P... I mean, it's not super accurate. I did business, but it's the P/E ratio of public companies that are similar in the industry. I try to sync it to that sometimes, but it completely depends on the multiples that someone's going to pay for it, right?

Shaan Puri

have you sold multiples

Pieter Levels

Are extremely low. No, I've sold nothing. Yeah, but I've been in selling processes with previous guests on your podcast, you know. So... but it kind of bounced off.

Sam Parr

I'm just

Pieter Levels

a lot

Sam Parr

of I think I'm just gonna guess it was andrew wilkinson because he loves

Shaan Puri

schminder schmookinson

Sam Parr

yeah because he loves job boards that that's just a guess

Pieter Levels

I can't say anything but 80%. I signed near 80% of the acquisitions; they bounce off, right? So right now, I'm like, I don't really care. I like that I have cash flow and my life is nice. But until recently, I was really obsessed with selling. You build a startup like in the movies—like, not the movie "Social Network," but in the big movies about startups. They're like, "Oh my god, grow big and then sell, and you're a millionaire." But then, if you become a millionaire yourself with your cash flow, you're like, "Okay, why does it actually matter?"

Sam Parr

Well, let’s actually talk about that because what's interesting about you is you have a few that you could sell. So, like Remote and Nomad List are both pretty cool. Have you calculated how much money you want and how long it's going to take you to get there via cash flow? And if it's better to, like, "Well, why don't I just sell one and I can get an $8 or $10 million lump sum?" But then I still own this other one that's making, like, $3 million a year. I mean, have you thought about that? Have you done that math? And what are you...?

Pieter Levels

The thing is, most of my revenue is profit. The margins are really high, especially for remote work. It's like a **94% margin** pretax, so it's very high. I'd say **10x**. After **10x**, it gets interesting. I think the problems with bootstrap companies is that you usually get **3, 4, or 5x** profit or revenue, not share, which is too low for me. It's like, I might as well wait **3 or 4 years** and just sit in this chair. The sites will probably keep running because they're fully automated, and I barely need to work on them. They kind of just keep going; it's heavily automated—like really heavy. It's just that I won't build new features anymore, and then the site will start looking a little bit old because, you know, design trends change. But generally, it will keep running. So it doesn't make sense for me to sell for **4x or 5x** if I might as well wait. Also, like, no man, this is like my baby. If I sell it, they're going to mess it up. I already know because they always do. Let's say a big remote startup buys it. Okay, I know VC funds and remote startups are cool, but they're also going to be bought by big boring companies later—like corporate companies, right? And they're going to shut this down. This is my contribution; this is my life's work. It's like a legacy. For remote work, I care less because it's a job board. A job board is not very interesting. But **Nomad List** is like this whole movement and culture, and there are tens of thousands of people on there. My friends are on there, and it's like this work of love, you know? So yeah, it would be hard to sell that because people are going to mess it up.

Sam Parr

are you the largest go ahead sean

Shaan Puri

Well, one thing I was going to say is that you tweeted out something that said, "A 10-year overnight success," which I think is a common idea that most people don't realize. By the time you hear about something, you don't know the 10 years of kind of toiling, tweaking, and iterating that it took before the big breakthroughs happen. My life was the same way. I started my first startup when I was 20 or 21, and I made my first million by the time I was 30 or 31. Right? It took 10 years.

Pieter Levels

that's really man yeah

Shaan Puri

And, you know, every year since then, a bunch of great stuff has happened. But it took a long time to get that breakthrough. I was looking at your chart, Sam. I don't know if you saw this tweet that he has, but the chart basically shows... I think you start, it's like...

Pieter Levels

the sum of all my revenue together in one chart yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's all your revenue from all your projects, all together in one chart. It's looking like it's from, I don't know, 2012 or 2013. Basically, if I go all the way up until, let's call it 2019, you're at maybe $600,000 to $700,000 per year in revenue. Only in the last, like, kind of pandemic boom, you know, let's say from 2020, you went from under $1,000,000 to $2,500,000 a year. Right? So you 2.5x'd. It sounds amazing! Wow, this dude's making almost $3,000,000 a year. It's like, yeah, but he's also been building that momentum and stacking these assets. It just really took off, which I'm guessing is pandemic-fueled. A lot of people wanting to be nomads, and you were there to catch that wave. You were the guy ready to catch it.

Pieter Levels

The wave was coming. I did this presentation in 2015 where I predicted there would be **1,000,000,000 remote workers by 2030**. Everybody laughed at me. Even in the comments, like YouTube comments, people were saying, "This is ridiculous. Where's your source? This is bullshit." Then COVID happened, and it suddenly seems very reasonable. But nobody could have seen this coming. I had no idea. I was actually kind of thinking...

Shaan Puri

like covid or what

Pieter Levels

Exactly. In fact, with Fauci, it kind of feels like if you look at the chart, it doesn't really go anywhere. I was thinking, "Okay, this is bullshit." I tried everything to make it grow, and sometimes it grew and sometimes it didn't. But generally, it wasn't very... it wasn't like a VC start where...

Shaan Puri

Well, it looks like there are these run-ups and then a plateau. A run-up and a plateau. By the way, that's how all progress actually looks if you zoom out.

Pieter Levels

part

Shaan Puri

Of it. I remember that during 2014, when I first moved to Silicon Valley, there was a small group of people like you. This is, I think, when you created that first Slack community that was like, "No, being a nomad is the way to go." And I have...

Sam Parr

but those people were like freaks you know they were crazy they were very weird 100%

Shaan Puri

Yes, and there were some people who took the red pill at that time. I think of Steph Smith, who also worked at the house. She met you in Indonesia, Bali, or something like that. I believe she probably defected around that time—2014, 2015, 2016, something like that. She was one of those people. Whereas now, there's like another wave. If you look at any lifestyle movement, it happens this way. It starts with something very niche, like crypto. It starts with the cypherpunks, exactly.

Pieter Levels

you're right yes they

Shaan Puri

don't they hang out in cryptography forums and they took the pill first

Pieter Levels

yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

and then came you know the next the developers then came the the finance pros and then came it's

Pieter Levels

The same goes for the next wave of music genres, like hip hop. I come from electronic music, specifically drum and bass, which was my previous career as a music producer. It's the same thing with EDM taking off in the U.S. around 2009 and 2010 with dubstep. That's what broke EDM in the U.S. These movements and scenes are almost dead, and then suddenly something happens. It's so unpredictable; you have no clue what's going on. You can only surf it. I think the metaphor of surfing is very accurate. It's better to surf these waves in general. I think in life, just surf the waves. Stop trying to control it; just surf it. It's kind of like pivoting startups—it's pretty much just surfing, like steering the surfboard over the waves. You cannot control the market at all. You cannot control society at all. You know... one of...

Sam Parr

The things that bother me about this indie hacker movement is, well, I really like it. I like it, but in general, what I don't like about it is that people think pretty small. They're like, you know, it's kind of related to the FIRE movement, which is like, "Oh, I just want to save a little bit of money so I can make $40,000 a year in passive income." I'm like, "Oh, that's cool. Getting your first step is cool," but that can't be it with life. You have to want more; you want to do more things and contribute to society. With a lot of these indie hackers, they kind of come up with silly stuff where it's like a small widget that they sell for $4 a month, and they hope that they can get to $1,000 a month. I'm like, "Man, that's neat if you're just starting out, but I think this could be bigger." You're actually one of the few people that I've seen go harder. Are there any others like you?

Pieter Levels

to do with the harder on it

Sam Parr

Your numbers are bigger. It's substantial. Your numbers are nice already.

Pieter Levels

could be survivorship bias right

Sam Parr

Well, yeah, definitely. But I still think that there's a mindset of... like, for example,

Shaan Puri

Their Twitter bio says your meter is going to 3,000,000. I would say most people who are indie hackers, makers, and kind of like the tinkerer community, they don't even have their meter to there. Their meter, you know, initially is going to start much lower, 60,000 or 70,000 for sure. Maybe yours did too, but then you're like, "Oh cool, I filled up that meter. I leveled it up." So what was your initial goal? Was it to make enough to not need a job? Where did you start, and when did you get more ambitious?

Pieter Levels

So, I mean, back when I started, I had a YouTube channel for the electronic music I was making and stuff. I was making like a few thousand dollars from YouTube AdSense, so I had some runway, some cash flow to live off, travel off, and work on mini startups. But it was very fast; it was shrinking because of the competition, like the copyright claims on YouTube in 2012 and stuff. So it was pretty much becoming below $1,000 a month. But I had that cash flow. To go to your question, I think it's a power law. You always have a few people in a scene who will make more money or get more successful. Also, there's a delay effect. I started in 2014, and this scene didn't really become cool until maybe 2018 or something, 2017. So these people that are going into it now are just starting, kind of. I think the widgets thing is interesting because you said it's only a widget if you make one feature really well that solves one problem. You can get some customers, and you get some cash flow, and then you can build a second feature. You can slowly scale up to a bigger, real business, a real product toolkit. Another thing is, you don't see a lot of people with multimillion revenue because they will quickly raise VC. Once you pass $1,000,000 a year, they will switch to, "Okay, let's go big. Let's become a $1,000,000,000 company." I think I'm the exception. I'm like, "I don't want to be a $1,000,000,000 company. I'm fine, like, this kind of chill." That's why you don't see those people a lot because I do know them, and they quickly disappear. Like this app we're using now, Riverside, I think it raised VC. It started bootstrapped, and then I think Oprah Winfrey used it. Because it's my friend Andav who makes it, he's like, "Dude, Oprah Winfrey used it." I'm like, "Oh my god, this is crazy." He's like, "Yeah, I think I'm going to raise VC." I'm like, "Okay, yeah, you should do that because they think this could be bigger than just a few million."

Shaan Puri

So, you tweeted something out the other day that's related to this. You said, "Not sure if people realize it, but if your app does $20,000 a month in revenue, you're probably already a millionaire." $20,000 per month times 12 months, assume you could sell for, let's call it, a 4 or 5x multiple. Yeah, that's a $1,000,000 selling price, right? You're sitting on a $1,000,000 asset. When you put it that way, I think that sounds—and it is—way more achievable than this idea of, "Oh, I gotta build a $1,000,000 business." Like, I don't know, do I have the big idea? Whatever. But getting something to $20,000 to $30,000 a month in revenue...

Pieter Levels

seems approachable right

Shaan Puri

It's approachable, and that's kind of awesome. I think that's amazing. You didn't do much; you just said something that was true out loud. I believe if more people heard that, it could be a pathway to millionaire status that does not require winning the startup lottery of inventing the next big thing. It also doesn't require working, saving, and paying your crazy W-2 taxes for 15 to 20 years to achieve the same outcome.

Pieter Levels

Yeah, exactly. I agree. I think it's reachable, especially if you think about high automation and very high margins. In a software business, you're not going to hire a big team of 10 people immediately. You work with part-time contracts, like I do, and you keep your margins very, very high. Because then you can sell for 5x, right? Then your revenue is almost your profit. So, it's the same. I think $20,000 is a version of that.

Shaan Puri

A business together that could get to $20,000. So what's an idea that you're not currently building but have thought of? I'm sure you're an idea guy and you think you can make a website that does "X," or you could create a Nomad List for this other niche, or you could make, you know, the immigration one for this other thing. So what's a business? Let's brainstorm our business together. What's a business that you think could get somebody to millionaire status?

Pieter Levels

Dude, I think what's... man, it's like, again, this is so personal. So, I've been living... I used to live in hostels, right? Like dorms in 2015. But then I had money shared with six people, like crazy. Then I started getting private rooms in hotels. Their rooms got a little bit more luxurious because I had more money. Then I started discovering apartment hotels. It sounds like bullshit, but it works so well with remote work. I mean, I'm in an apartment hotel right now in Europe, on the beach, and there's a kitchen. What's an apartment hotel?

Shaan Puri

what does that mean

Pieter Levels

An apartment hotel is essentially a hotel. It is a fully serviced, furnished hotel room with a nice interior. However, you also have a kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room. It's very big—pretty much like an Airbnb—but you pay per...

Shaan Puri

month or per night or what

Pieter Levels

you pay per month well you can pay per night you can pay

Sam Parr

per month it's just like a hotel it's like sean it's like

Pieter Levels

that guy who

Sam Parr

whatever yeah it's like sonder and it's like all I forget the other one the guy was supposed to come on the pod they canceled us in

Shaan Puri

a minute

Pieter Levels

so you

Shaan Puri

did one of these in nashville right or something where you're like this is awesome

Pieter Levels

it looks like a lobby

Shaan Puri

where everyone's working

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like a... it's basically just an apartment that you can rent for 5 days, and they're pretty cool. I do them all the time. The problem that I've experienced is with New York. It's like $10 a month and it's like 600 square feet. So that's why I tend to go with Airbnb. But when I'm in smaller, less expensive cities, you can get like a 1,000 square foot place for like $6,000 a month. It's just... it's basically an apartment building that has one floor or all floors dedicated to Airbnbs.

Pieter Levels

Yeah, the problem with Airbnb that I've noticed is the quality. It's very, very high, but there's a big range of quality. There are problems, like there's no daily cleaning. It feels too unexpected; you don't know what's going to happen. The water stuff might break. If things break here, you just get a new apartment, right? I've done this in Europe and I've done this in Asia too, in Thailand. I spent about $2,000 to $3,500, so it's a lot of money. It's more than normal rent, but the cool thing is that it solves a lot of problems you have in your daily life because of the service and stuff. It's a huge thing in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia, even in Korea and Taiwan. I think that's going to get bigger because of remote work. You have remote workers, even families with kids, and you don't want to live in a hotel room. Hotel rooms are very depressing. I go insane in hotel rooms; it's just like a bed and you can barely walk around it. There's no space. I need to cook food. I need to buy steak from the local butcher and cook it with broccoli and spinach with my friends and stuff. You can do that in an apartment hotel. I think if you target the high-end market of remote workers who make a lot of money, like $200,000 or $100,000, you can make a lot of money because it's serviced and furnished. So, what?

Shaan Puri

would you build do you actually build an apartment hotel or you build a digital product

Pieter Levels

That's a big question because I'm a software guy. I don't want to own stuff. I don't want to have all this. I don't even want to buy land or a house. I want to be a consumer, a customer of these kinds of things, right? But I want it long term. I want to be able to rent for like 6 months, you know, or 12 months even. I want to be guaranteed to stay.

Sam Parr

So, my wife and I are at the point where we're going to start having kids soon. I live not entirely like you, but a little bit similar, where we spend half the year in one place and half the year in another. What we're going to do next year is just rent a 12-month lease in New York and not be there all the time. I'm looking to rent all of my furniture, and I've been looking into that.

Pieter Levels

at a

Sam Parr

I was at a place where I was like, "Alright, I just want to book this one place, and I want to pay someone like $3 a month." But they have to show up before I arrive. They've got to completely set it up.

Shaan Puri

yes and they gotta be 100%

Sam Parr

Furnished for me... I've been looking at these, and there's a few startups in the space that are doing furniture rental. Furniture rental is not popular right now, and I tell people all the time, "I just want to rent all my furniture. I don't want to own any of it." They think it's nonsense and they think it's crazy, but if you run the math, it's significantly... it's about the same in terms of price. But in terms of headache, I think it's 1000 times better. And that's another...

Pieter Levels

Yeah, yes. So, it's all about the headaches. If you can afford it, you can reduce the headaches of ownership. Ownership sounds so privileged, though, but whatever. Ownership is a big hassle. Things break all the time. If I spend my time on my laptop building these apps, it's probably a better use of my time than managing all this stuff. If a company can specialize in managing this and renting it to you, it's much better. I think that's a real business. Imagine you can go to a website and say, "Okay," and choose different sets of furniture, different interiors, and stuff like paintings on the wall or whatever. You can just click, and when you arrive, it's already done for you. Like you said, I think that would be really interesting. Yeah, what else?

Sam Parr

interests you

Shaan Puri

Yeah, things that you're interested in, either kind of niche categories or aspects of your lifestyle that you're like, "I do this lifestyle thing differently than people." This could be something you could build a business around.

Pieter Levels

I think the biggest problem with the digital nomad concept is that there’s a perception that people travel really fast. However, data shows that they don’t travel fast; they travel every few months. In fact, I think the average is about 7 months now. It’s very slow. So, the term "digital nomad" is a horrible word. It has so many connotations. But it mostly refers to remote working people who want a different lifestyle and wish to see different places. They have boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, and even kids. There are families doing this as well. Moving around every week doesn’t really work; being very slow is significant. If people are more aware of that, they can find a lot of products built for this long-term, slow mad market, which most of us are. We’re mostly slow mad. Also, think about education. Homeschooling is taking off because of remote work. If I have kids, I don’t know if I want to put them in a regular school. Maybe, you know, Elon Musk built his own school—that’s kind of cool. But you can do things in a different way. Right now, this remote work thing is still niche, but it’s going to get bigger. There will only be more and more people doing this once physical jobs get automated. So, if you make products—I don’t know, specific products—but if you can build products for those people, that’s a high-end market of tech workers who are remote.

Sam Parr

So, if you don't... but you said that you don't own stuff, or you kind of said like you don't like owning stuff. You said that you don't want to own real estate. So, if you're making $2.5 million a year in profit, this is a question that Sean always asks, and I'm stealing it: What do you do with your money then?

Pieter Levels

Yeah, so I'm heavy in ETFs. I read a blog post by, what's his name, the guy from Google that does SEO. He's like, "I just put everything in ETFs." So, Vanguard ETFs, S&P 500. But also, I'm heavily invested in Asia because I believe in Asia. I believe in the future. I know the West has a lot of things about Asia that are good, but it's still very futuristic. I also invest in crypto; I hold Bitcoin and Ethereum. I was always scared to say those things on the podcast, right? But it's all like very secure and stuff, so...

Sam Parr

it's not exactly the most shocking thing to to explain to you

Pieter Levels

Every tech guy, every tech hero has crypto. Yeah, exactly. But I mostly... you're actually.

Shaan Puri

Not allowed to have that haircut if you don't own like three. Yeah, what do you mean? You can't have a high fade like long top hair?

Pieter Levels

yeah yeah yeah if you

Shaan Puri

don't own 3

Pieter Levels

I spend about $4,000 to $5,000 a month or something like that. Most of it is just... I do need to pay taxes, but after that, most of it goes to ETFs and stuff. It's scary to invest now because it's a scary time. But generally, I'm like, "I want to do this for 20 to 30 years," investing in ETFs and sometimes stocks. I did a benchmark, and my S&P 500 ETF outperformed all my stock decisions over the last two years. So, I'm stupid, just like most people.

Sam Parr

sean do you wanna tell them what you did recently

Shaan Puri

What? Oh, selling your stocks? Yeah, yeah. So, I sold not everything, but pretty much everything. I sold maybe 70 to 80% of the stocks that I hold.

Pieter Levels

I get that. I mean, yeah, but I'm scared. They always say, "Don't try and time the market," so I'm like, okay, I'll just sit and just crash with the, you know...

Sam Parr

the whole market why didn't you do that why don't you just like chill

Shaan Puri

Two reasons. One, I didn't want to risk a margin call because I borrowed a little bit against my stock portfolio. I felt it was extremely safe, and it still is. But I was like, "Look, if this drops another 20%, then all of a sudden I'm having a headache that I don't want to deal with." I don't want to have to deal with freeing up a bunch of cash just to buffer this. So, I noticed that every morning I was waking up and checking it. I was like, "Okay, logically I know I'm in pretty good shape here," but the stress of having to think about this is taking away from my day-to-day quality of life. It's like that's the opposite of what I want money to do. I don't want money to give me stress; my money is supposed to take away my stress. So, I want to do the opposite with my money.

Sam Parr

what did you do with it where is it

Shaan Puri

It's just... it's in cash right now. I might do some short-term, you know, fixed income type stuff, but for now, I was like, again, I don't care. I don't need the 2%; I needed the peace of mind. So that was the first thing. The second thing was, I thought, "What will I regret more? What do I believe more? Do I believe that this is the bottom, or do I believe that this is kind of like actually thinking that this is the bottom?" You know, six months in, and that it's all gonna get better soon. Basically, there are three paths: either it gets better now, it stays at this bottom but we stay here for an extended period of time—1, 2, 3, 4 years—or it has further down to go. I basically thought that things going up soon seemed like the least likely outcome. I would actually be betting against that heavily. So I thought, okay, I have nothing to lose here in terms of upside because I just fundamentally don't think that stocks and everything is just gonna rip back up again. We're all gonna pretend like, you know, that was it. We just had a few months of pain, and then it all went right back up. And remember, things are all green again. So I thought either it's gonna be flat, boring, and sideways for a...

Shaan Puri

Of time, or it's gonna go down more. I thought, well, in either case, then I won't regret being in cash because, a) I don't have to sweat it every day, and b) I'm not losing anything during, you know, by doing this. So that was my thought process. I figured, okay, there are going to be these little bear market rallies, so just sell at the top of the next bear. That's what I did. Everything rallied 5%, and I just sold. I kept, like, I don't know, 20% still in the market, and I just left the other 80% in, you know, not thinking about it as cash. But I held my crypto; I didn't sell my crypto.

Pieter Levels

That's good! Yeah, are you guys mostly invested in the American stock market or worldwide? Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Like you said, I believe in Asia. I'm like, "Yeah, I believe in Asia too," but I don't know what the heck you're talking about. How do I go invest in Asia, and where would I invest? I don't even know what that means. Are you buying the equivalent of like an ETF for...?

Pieter Levels

japan or something

Shaan Puri

what are you doing

Pieter Levels

Dude, I had a Vanguard ETF for China, and then it suddenly disappeared from my broker app. I'm like, "What the fuck is happening?" I get this message saying that Vanguard left China in March or something because they were like, "This is too crazy." So, I have...

Sam Parr

to buy

Pieter Levels

a different etf

Shaan Puri

I I don't know that

Pieter Levels

the government did

Shaan Puri

Some shit... no, for sure. Or did some shit? Yeah, Jagd, my private companies, public or something.

Pieter Levels

Yeah, no, they definitely messed up Jagd Mah for sure. There's a lot of weird stuff happening, but I still think I should be invested in those markets.

Shaan Puri

sam have I told you about the jack ma thing

Sam Parr

how it's crazy that the 3rd richest man in the world that they were just kidding was like fuck

Pieter Levels

hey dude

Sam Parr

jack shut up and he's like yes sir

Shaan Puri

they just took jack

Pieter Levels

off the line

Shaan Puri

Yeah, my brother-in-law calls me. So, we had one moment where, like, a month in, when people started noticing Jack Ma is missing. My brother-in-law, in the car one day, was just like, "Where's Jack Ma?" It's as if he was in the car, but he's like, "Bro, why aren't we talking about this? Where's Jack Ma?" We just started laughing. Like, how crazy is that? That Jack Ma is just not around. What if you just couldn't find Elon Musk because he said something, you know, that Biden didn't like? The idea is crazy.

Sam Parr

they did it with a tennis player too

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I saw that, dude. My brother-in-law still calls me. He'll just call me out of the blue. It's been like a year now. He'll be like, "Yo, where's Jack Ma?" and then he'll hang up. That's the whole call. It's so good. They'll just be yelling, "Where is Jack Ma?"

Pieter Levels

But dude, that's the thing with Asia and China. Like, all this stuff is accurate; there's some crazy stuff happening. But the other thing is also accurate: there's a lot happening in Asia. I think in the West, in Europe and America, we have a blind spot because we get so much negative information about Asia, especially about China. I'm not a China spy or something; my friends call me a China spy because of that. But I think it's a little bit of a blind spot in the West that we're going to miss out on. You know, China is going to be the biggest economy in 2030, I think, by GDP. It's already the biggest economy by purchasing power parity or something. Ignoring that, just you know, because there are a lot of arguments for why we should ignore China, it sounds like a blind spot in the West to me.

Sam Parr

Do you... well, I'll do it. We'll do an easy one. Do you actually like tweeted out your calendar and it was like free for a week or something like that? I know Sean does that too, and I kind of like that sometimes. I don't like that because I'll do that for three days and I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm so bored." Is it real that you just don't plan anything?

Pieter Levels

Yeah, so this is the only planned thing, and it gives me stress because I'm like, "Oh shit, the summer's coming up." But I mostly like... I spend my days living with my friends. My friends are my neighbors now. I brought all these nomad friends to Portugal and Europe, and we kind of live together. A lot of them are in the city near here, or whatever. Everybody's kind of near, so we just have dinners outside, we cook food, and watch the sunsets on the beach. It's just this nice, chill life that I never had because I was always alone in hotel rooms. I had friends, but they were always around the world, and now they're all kind of here. So I mostly do that. I don't want to do calls about... like, what am I going to call about? I like having calls with you guys, but what am I going to call with other people about? Like, new business? I don't know.

Sam Parr

don't you get bored like

Pieter Levels

No, because I can... I work on my websites, right? I open my laptop, make coffee, and then my friend and I code a little bit together to create a new feature. You know, then we go to the gym, we go to the sauna, we go swimming. They're kind of like... but that's a very chill life, right? I don't get bored as long as I ship a little bit on my websites. I don't really get bored.

Sam Parr

You're like the only rich person. So basically, it's almost always the truth that no matter how hard you try, the more income you make, your lifestyle gets inflated. Maybe sometimes not as much, but then other times a ton. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to fight it. I can't imagine spending more than $10,000 on a car or whatever." Then you make more income, and you're like, "Ah, whatever, who cares?" You said you spend $4,000 or $5,000 a month. You're one of the few people that has acknowledged that your lifestyle actually doesn't seem lavish at all. It's 100% on purpose.

Pieter Levels

Like, it's very... and it's not making sense. Incidentally, sometimes you spend more. Right? Like last month, the hotels were really booked, so we had to pay a lot of money. But now it's chill again. I think it's on purpose how much I try to follow. Like, last one was like $10K or something for a hotel that we were in.

Sam Parr

we're in lisbon you're making $3,000,000 a year

Pieter Levels

Yeah, but paying $10,000 for a hotel is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. For me personally, the max should be like $2,000 or $3,000. I've seen a lot of people experience lifestyle inflation. I know from corporate experience, and from studying business, that management people get paid more and they get "golden handcuffs." They can't leave. A lot of my friends are like that, and I don't want that to happen to me. I mean, it can't happen to me, but you get what I mean. I know that material goods don't really make me happy. If I buy a new shirt or something, or I buy a new iPhone, within two weeks I'm used to it. There are studies on this; there's research about this stuff. For example, if you buy a new car or even if you get married, after six months you're at the same level of happiness. If you buy a house, after six months, same happiness. So if you know that stuff, you realize that you don't really need to spend money so much. You don't need to buy stuff, essentially, and generally, it will probably make you happier.

Shaan Puri

what do you what do you think you would wanna spend more on let's say that like you know

Pieter Levels

Food... like good food. Like, okay, organic, you know, free-roaming. I mean, it's cliché, like Joe Rogan, right? But free-roaming, grass-fed cow beef, you know, that are happy animals. Organic vegetables, you know, that kind of stuff. Like, not goods, you know? Experiences, right? It's on purpose. I do this.

Shaan Puri

what what are some experiences that you think are worth

Pieter Levels

the money what is what sorry

Shaan Puri

what are some experiences that are like worth the money that you know when most people experience

Pieter Levels

that are good don't even ask money right like

Sam Parr

you think you'll just

Pieter Levels

life coach what

Sam Parr

no do you do you

Pieter Levels

Fly coach? Sorry, no. So, that's... yeah, you're right. Man, you got me. Like, you're trying to find stuff, right? Yes, I fly business class. Because, no, exactly. I'm done with it. I can't sit. I only do it long haul, and I only flew once in the last 16 months. I flew business with Qatar. It was really nice; you can lie down and sleep and stuff, but that's about it. One thing I noticed: I was in Bangkok in this luxury kind of apartment hotel, but it was a little bit too luxurious for me, you know? I was there for a month, and you start noticing that you don't meet as many interesting people. I met one interesting person who had this giant wheat farm—the biggest wheat farm in Thailand—because they just legalized it. It was kind of cool. But generally, it's a very different crowd. It's more like a socialite kind of Paris Hilton audience, you know? In the hostels, you would meet crazy people. You would meet backpackers, but also researchers and entrepreneurs, and fledgling entrepreneurs. You generally met more interesting people because you were more in those areas. And I think the problem...

Sam Parr

Yeah, sorry. Did I tell you about... Did I tell you guys? Listen to this. Sean, did I tell you about Sam Khorkos from Levels? Level... other levels? What's the... oh yeah.

Pieter Levels

I know the

Shaan Puri

levels health yeah

Sam Parr

The levels of health... the thing that goes in your arm. So this guy, he raised... yeah, that's right, he raised. He has a startup that makes 8 figures in revenue. It's worth, I think it was $400,000,000. So let's just say that he's worth $150,000,000 on paper—not real, on paper. He came over to my house with his girlfriend, and she made a comment, jokingly, like, "Oh, you know, he always gives me a hard time because it takes me forever to pack." But that's ridiculous; I only have this one carry-on. I was like, "Well, how long does it take you to pack?" Sam goes, "Well, I don't pack." I was like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Well, he had a drawstring bag." You know what a drawstring bag is? It's like a bag... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You put like...

Shaan Puri

in the kitchen conferences

Sam Parr

Yes, he... that's all he had was that bag. He goes, "Well, you see, I only own the clothes that I'm wearing right now," which is a white t-shirt, a pair of pants, socks, underwear, and shoes. I only own that, plus another pair of underwear, a jacket, and this bag, and my laptop, which I have right here on me. That's literally the only thing that I own. I was like, "Wait, what?" He goes, "Yeah, I've been doing this for like 8 years now or something like that." I only live in... like, I do what you do. He's like, "He does what you do, Peter." He lives in these Airbnbs and hotel-style setups, and he's been doing it for years. That's all he owned, and I thought that was the craziest.

Shaan Puri

he just laundering every day I don't understand how's he living in

Sam Parr

A funeral... I was like, "So, what if you have to go to a funeral? What if you have to do this?" He goes, "Well, I just go to a thrift store when I need to go, and I buy stuff. Then I just bring it back." He does it partly out of, I think, convenience—of not wanting to worry about stuff. I also think there's like a philosophy, a very philosophical thing going on here because it's extreme. But have you ever heard of anyone, Peter, being that crazy?

Pieter Levels

Dude, yes! Exactly! Actually, like in 2015, I was in Chiang Mai, and there was an Australian guy who would fly from Australia to Thailand to Chiang Mai with only his MacBook Air and the clothes he wore. Not even a bag! He would buy everything he needed on the spot, and he would be there for like 2 or 3 months. He would donate the clothes he wore to charity, and then he would fly back [to Australia] with his MacBook Air in his hand. That's amazing! [Abrupt change of topic] This data is wrong every freaking time...

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Sam Parr

hubspot grow better

Shaan Puri

That, see, that's cool. I would do that because I think that actually adds to the experience of traveling.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

traveling fully light and then when you get there oh that

Pieter Levels

makes it so yeah I always carry on

Shaan Puri

With need and then giving it away when you leave. Like, I'd actually get down with that. But, like, I rotate two pairs of underwear and I put my underwear in my bag. My bag looks like... I don't know about that.

Pieter Levels

Yeah, yeah, no, but I think it comes down to philosophy. I do think it sounds pretentious, but I don't care. It comes down to constraining your life in a certain way. I think constraints are good in creativity and life. They make you focus on the really important things in life for you personally. It must be different for everybody. You know, for me, that's like girlfriend, friends, health, food, happiness, all that stuff. And creative work, meaningful work, is very important. I need to be able to have something to do in my day. I need to feel like I'm contributing something, like Sam said.

Sam Parr

so what do you own

Pieter Levels

So, I have a backpack. I have a rolling suitcase, though, like a small one. I have clothes, an iPhone, a MacBook Pro... what the heck? I have a toothbrush. So, minimum... like, you don't have a lot of money if you...

Shaan Puri

can name all the things you own I'm looking around

Pieter Levels

Right, I have two Stadia controllers, like gamepads. You can use Stadia here; it's kind of cool. Yeah, that's about it, I think. I mean, I have backup phones and stuff because, you know, two-factor authentication and all that, but it's not...

Sam Parr

A lot of space to do this. You mentioned you could talk about your family or not, if you want. But do you think you're going to do this when you have kids?

Pieter Levels

So, what does "doing it" mean? Because I'm mostly settled down. I'm mostly in one place. I'm just trying to not buy stuff from...

Sam Parr

Amazon, as in not owning stuff? I mean, like... I think your life is cool, but you have to acknowledge that it's alternative in the sense of, like, you know, 1% of the...

Pieter Levels

Population does... Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I think it's interesting that the stuff I do may or may not become a thing. A lot of things I did 8 years ago are now normal, right? So, it might be that the things that I know...

Sam Parr

become I mean if you're happy who cares if it it

Shaan Puri

becomes safe

Pieter Levels

Me, it's more like... yeah, it's more like it might become a major [concern]. I think even if you have kids, you can do it in an alternative way. You can, you know, go to thrift stores and get second-hand toys or something, second-hand clothes, that kind of stuff. But it all doesn't have to be so consumerist and... buying, you know what I mean? It can... we can do it in a different way. And I'm just trying to figure out like how I... yeah, want to do that and...

Shaan Puri

well we've tried to keep

Pieter Levels

the focus on yeah

Shaan Puri

A nomad list style red pill before briefly, which was my... I forgot what it's called. Sam, do you remember the name of like the "Zero Waste Project" or the "Zero Project" or something like that? So basically, my wife told me about this. She was like, "Yeah, you know, there's like in the city, in the little town we live in, there's like this Facebook group." What they do is, it's just like... it's like a barter. It's not even a barter economy; it's like a giving economy. So it's like if you have stuff, you just give it into the giving circle, and other people can take it out. Then they can give stuff in. It's basically like, "Oh, your kid... I think it's a lot around kids' stuff. Like, my kid's grown out of this." But that's it.

Pieter Levels

it doesn't make sense to buy new right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Craigslist randos. It's like, yeah, amongst this trusted group of people who believe the same thing, the Buy Nothing Project. Yeah, and I think I might have butchered exactly how it works. Sam, do you know a little bit about how it works?

Sam Parr

But like, it's just the idea of instead of "reduce, reuse, recycle" for consumers or for plastic and stuff, they're like, "No, no, no, let's just reuse everything." So instead of buying a new toy, we're going to get one for free and then we're going to give it away when we're done. It's just a mindset. There are a bunch of companies in this space, but the big one is like this "Buy Nothing" series of Facebook groups where it's just like, "I'm giving away these children's clothes, come get them."

Pieter Levels

Yeah, I figured. I mean, that's nice. I like it. It doesn't make any sense. You have a baby, and it grows out of its clothes every month or something, or every two months. So why would you buy everything new if you can ask your family for clothes they already wore or whatever, right? It makes more sense to me personally.

Sam Parr

who do you wanna be like who

Pieter Levels

who who do

Sam Parr

Who do you admire and who do you want to be like? Because the reason why people buy stuff for their kids is because they want their kids to have Jordans so they look cool for other people. They want to impress other people. Who do you want to impress and who do you want to be like? Think about it: - Who do you look up to? - Who do you admire?

Pieter Levels

I I like derek sivers I don't know if you know derek sivers

Sam Parr

yeah

Pieter Levels

he's a indie

Sam Parr

tell me about it who is he

Pieter Levels

He's started a company called CD Baby in the nineties, I think, or in the early 2000s. It was one of the first indie music distributors where you could send your music as an indie musician. They would press the CDs for you and send them to your customers and stuff. They're also now on Spotify and everything. He sold it for $30,000,000. I interviewed him for my bachelor's thesis, actually. He's a really nice guy—like the nicest guy in startups, I think. He writes a lot; he writes a lot of books now, and he's very philosophical. He's also kind of nomadic; he's lived in Singapore, New Zealand, the U.S., and stuff. If you go to his website, like derekservis.org, I think, he writes about many of the same concepts that I talk about, like living a simple life. It's hard to describe him, but I think he's a very inspirational guide to me. I don't really need to impress my parents; they're already happy with me, so it doesn't really matter. I want to try and maintain a stable happiness because I've been depressed a lot. I've been anxious, especially when traveling. You go crazy in these hotel rooms alone. Traveling can bring you very deep into your own self. I think the most important thing for me is to impress myself by just being stable and having a happy life with the people around me. I want a kind of wholesome life, you know? And that's my goal.

Shaan Puri

What part of your life are you not impressed by? For yourself, or Derek Sivers, or any of those people you just mentioned before?

Sam Parr

like the lifestyle you mean

Shaan Puri

Yeah, what part of your life is not at that? Where do you feel like it's not impressive in that way?

Pieter Levels

You're like, "I wanna have a family too, like you guys," and that's what I'm working on. Yeah, that's more of a focus now, you know? It's pretty easy.

Shaan Puri

by the way you just gotta do one thing

Sam Parr

yeah I'll tell you

Pieter Levels

About it, find the right girlfriend, you know? Then you need to see if they're not crazy, and you need to connect and all this stuff. I think, yeah, that's it. Don, dude, Sean, you have a... yeah, go ahead.

Sam Parr

go ahead go ahead I wanna hear what this answer is

Pieter Levels

No, I mean like a little bit... You said, "I think about Elon Musk." Every time Elon Musk presents something, you're like, "Oh, fuck! That's so cool!" You think, "Why am I building shitty internet websites? This is my only life. I have to do something bigger." But then I have to bring myself back to, "No, it's cool what you're doing. It doesn't really need to be bigger." I mean, everybody wants to make space rockets, I guess, but it's just so hard to do that, you know?

Sam Parr

sean you you have a you have a dog right a little dog

Pieter Levels

yep

Sam Parr

I've got a big dog

Pieter Levels

how do oh do

Sam Parr

You love dogs? Yeah, yeah. So you like animals? I love owning animals, like big aggressive-looking dogs. That's my thing. It's like I'm a weirdo, but how do you live this? I want to live a little bit more like you. I can do it now because I have a little bit of money, so I can just pay for fancier Airbnbs that are pet-friendly. But I can only do it basically in America. Doing this lifestyle abroad with an animal is tough. Even in America, you either have to fly private or you have to drive most places. Yeah, I drive most places. How do you live this life with an animal?

Pieter Levels

I don't have animals, but I want them. I had two cats with my ex-girlfriend, and it was actually interesting. We went to Bangkok to this luxury apartment hotel, and they were cat-friendly. It was like this high society of Bangkok people with cute cats and cute dogs. In Asia, all the dogs are small; they like small dogs. I like big dogs too, like Yusam. They walk around in the hotel, and it's super cute. They have cat and dog ice cream and food, and they have little beds for them to sleep in. Everything is service-oriented. That's another big market, I think. You know, tech people with pets and stuff—they want to travel as well.

Sam Parr

Dude, Sean, have you looked into flying in America with an animal? So basically, if you're...

Shaan Puri

why do you think I don't go places dude what am I supposed to do with my dog

Sam Parr

your animal's under £20 right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, she is. But that also means she's not tough enough to do all this stuff. We're like, "Oh God, how is she going to handle this experience?" You know, of going on a 7-hour flight or whatever.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but she... Yeah, she's able to [bring the dog]. So, in terms... I don't know if she's physically able to, but she's allowed to. You could put it in a carrier and put it on your lap or like in the above... whatever the suitcase thing [overhead compartment] is. And if you have an animal that's above 20 pounds...

Shaan Puri

who's putting their dog in the above thing you could put your dog

Sam Parr

down it's

Shaan Puri

not that far

Sam Parr

I don't know, dude. It's like putting a blanket over a birdcage. It's alright... I don't know, that's just what... Or you put it underneath, you put it underneath your... whatever you fucking do. I don't know, I don't even have one of these things, but that's what they say on the directions when you look online. But like, if you have an animal above 20 pounds, you basically cannot... This whole emotional support animal thing is kinda nonsense. It's kinda getting phased out.

Pieter Levels

there it go

Sam Parr

You cannot bring an animal... a dog on a flight. I'm always amazed that for popular routes they don't have like a once a month or twice a month animal-friendly route.

Pieter Levels

Dude, it's gonna happen. It's absolutely gonna happen. It's a huge growing market. I think because a lot of rich tech people are not having kids. Sorry.

Shaan Puri

Right, I was going to say I read something that one airline is like, "Yeah, we'll fly pets." I think they do a lot of pets in the cargo or whatever because most airlines have been phasing that out. What I think is Southwest—I forgot which airline—some airline is making bank because they take all the pets. It was like a differentiator. It's like, you know, "Bags fly free," but it's like, "Hey, we let you fly your pet," and everybody else is saying no nowadays.

Pieter Levels

Man, I think you can do it. I believe it's all about *slow moving*. If you move, let's say, every six months, it's not that bad for the dog or the cats. You give them a stable life in the new place, without too much chaos and stuff. I think it's okay. However, I don't think it's okay if you keep moving every week or every month. That might be a little stressful for the dog and the cat, right? But six months? Yeah, that's okay. And especially if you get the... wait, it was a what?

Shaan Puri

You had a great tweet. It was, "If you don't have a dog in your profile picture on Twitter, are you even trying?" That's a great fact.

Pieter Levels

it's the biggest grow fact right

Shaan Puri

sam has one right you have a facebook picture I think

Pieter Levels

Yeah, dude. You guys use this on Tinder, right? This was a Tinder dating trick. Like, you... because they swipe right for the dog, not for you, but they still swipe right.

Sam Parr

So yeah, I've noticed there are like two hacks when I was single: 1. If I were to walk around with a niece, nephew, or like a kid, that's an automatic door opener to meet women. 2. The other one was having an aggressive but nice-looking dog. It's like, "Oh, doors open!" They're disarmed, we're good, you know?

Shaan Puri

And why does that mean aggressive? But aggressive looking, but nice? Is that one of those things where it's like dog owners look like their pets? And so if your dog lives a certain way, they'll think that about you?

Sam Parr

They want to heal you, you know? Like women want to heal you sometimes. It's like seeing a guy with sleeve tattoos who smokes cigarettes and has a tattoo under his eye, who just wants to spend time and cuddle. You know, it's like... you're eclectic. I don't know, it just works. Don't ask me why, that just works. Yeah, so dude...

Pieter Levels

I love summer, yet dogs... by the way, the big white polar bear dog, right? I think it kind of brings me a little bit of joy. It's so fluffy, it's like... that's it.

Sam Parr

a very asian move of you that's they're very popular in asia right

Pieter Levels

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Sam Parr

things like

Pieter Levels

I've seen him here too yeah

Sam Parr

But yeah, what are some things that people assume about your life, your lifestyle, and your businesses? For example, with the hustle as well as Sean's Milk Road, a lot of people are like, "Oh, that's it? It's just a fucking newsletter. You just write these words and you just hit send. That's so easy; anyone can do it." And it's like, well, no. It's actually a user acquisition play. You gotta know how to do that. And then it's also like, you're just not good at writing. You have to be good, and that's just talent. You either have it or you don't. So that's like some misconceptions about our businesses. What about yours? Is there anything that people always assume, and you're like, "No"? Because, like, anyone can copy you.

Pieter Levels

Yeah, I think generally people believe that every website, app, or company they are a customer of is simpler than it actually is. You can't see behind the hood, and it's actually way more complicated than you think. There are so many edge cases in every business that you need to code "if" statements for or build little scripts for special features. It's much more complicated than people realize when they start. People always clone you, right? They make a copycat of your website, and somehow it doesn't take off. They've been able to copy the outside aesthetic, but they don't know what's happening under the hood. For example, a job board is much more complicated than you think. How do you explain this? There are so many little parts that companies want. They want invoices for every little thing they add, and the pricing is dynamic. I change job post pricing based on how many people post jobs on my site, for example. There's so much happening behind the curtains that you don't see. Yeah, it's much more complicated. I was a big... and the misconception about... yeah, sorry.

Sam Parr

And a lot of your stuff is automated to where you don't have to be involved. It kind of runs itself. You said everything's automated, I think 99%, and to post on your job board, it ranges from $100 to $1,000. I think... whatever, the huge range for sure. Yeah, yeah. How would you... for the... I'm tinkering with something that costs many, many thousands of dollars a year. Is there... how would you figure out how to do that? Like, and so in my head I'm like, "**Fuck, I gotta hire a bunch of salespeople**." That sucks.

Pieter Levels

do you

Sam Parr

think that you could automate most things even that are high ticketed items

Pieter Levels

Oh, for sure, dude! I sell job post bundles for like $50,000 via Stripe, which is amazing for me. I'm like, how do...

Sam Parr

you do that

Pieter Levels

That works! So, you make a page called "Buy Bundle." You can go to remoteokay.com/buy-bundle, and you'll see a slider where you can make your own bundle and get a discount based on it. It's all automated. You add your credit card, and then you pay, you know, $50K or $40K, whatever. And how many people do that? Oh yeah, it's a lot. It's like 30% of the revenue, I think. Bundles? No shit!

Sam Parr

so someone's use yeah using a debit card or whatever for 50 k

Pieter Levels

Yeah, dude, these company cards... this is what this is: lagging information. People don't know the company cards have been upgraded. I think it's because they're using them for much more these days. Really, like, it's a lot of money, and I have no idea. I never thought... like, I'm not hiring people; I don't know how this works. I just try it. Like, okay, maybe I think companies ask me, "Can we buy a few job posts for the future?" I'm like, "Okay, I'll make this thing." A lot of companies use this, so you figure out the features that people want based on talking to them, of course.

Sam Parr

Dude, I'm looking at the sales page, which is "Buy Bundles." Buying a $25.25 job is $22,000. You do something interesting on your sales pages. You just pack it with information, and that's totally the right move. But you pack it with text. You use icons to kind of break it up.

Shaan Puri

do the

Pieter Levels

Emojis? Yeah, I use emojis a lot. Yeah, no, it looks like a circus, right? But it kind of works. It's not like well-designed, right? It's not like minimalist design. I just add stuff every day, and it just keeps growing. But it works, kind of.

Sam Parr

what's the biggest purchase someone has made I can scroll it

Shaan Puri

All the way to the other... I got another call. I gotta run to Peter. This has been amazing, but I gotta go.

Pieter Levels

nice to meet you sean

Shaan Puri

see you

Sam Parr

What's been the biggest purchase that you've had? This scrolls all the way up to $150,000.

Pieter Levels

I think 50 k or something around 50 k maybe 49 k

Sam Parr

but that happens that happens a lot

Pieter Levels

of time yeah yeah yeah yeah

Sam Parr

This is crazy! Yeah, I'm working on this thing and it's like $10,000 a year. I'm like, "Oh man, I'm gonna have to get on the phone all the time." But yeah, seeing you is quite inspiring.

Pieter Levels

But I get annoyed if I need to use, like, I want to use these location service APIs to figure out where people are traveling to, for example. It's always like, "You need to do a sales call," or "You need to contact us," and stuff. I get so annoyed with it. I know people on Twitter get annoyed with it too, that they can't get a price directly and sign up, you know? Yeah, I think it's much easier to do it like this, like a sales flow.

Sam Parr

I think it's easier. I would argue maybe it's easier for me. Yeah, it's easier for you, but I would actually argue there's a world where it's not as effective, though. Because I'm in the same boat as you; I don't want to have to do all this crap, and I'm not naturally a salesperson. But when I hired a sales team, they were shockingly good at drumming up demand. I remember a cool podcast with the founder of Squarespace. I think it was him, and he was like, "You know, I'm an engineer. I don't want to leave my room. I don't like talking to people. I like freedom, this and that." And he goes, "The biggest mistake I made was I looked down on salespeople and I looked down on this type of pricing."

Pieter Levels

I think I got that

Shaan Puri

get them

Sam Parr

On the phone, he was like, "I looked down on it, and I was wrong." It was effective. They created demand for a product, and that surprised me the most. So, like, yeah, I don't know. I think no.

Pieter Levels

I think you're right. I think my problem is that it's very hard to meet good salespeople or to find them. It's unclear for me how I can hire them. You know, how can I rate a person to hire them as a good salesperson? I don't know what a good salesperson is. I've almost never done outbound or outreach, and I'm scared that if I hire salespeople, I need to manage them. They might mess up; they might start spamming everybody on LinkedIn. Then it becomes like a screenshot thing on Twitter, like Luke Peter levels of spamming with his website and stuff. So it might turn bad. But I think you're right. If you get the right salespeople, it can work. I just have never been able to find those people.

Sam Parr

It just matters what you're optimizing for. If you're optimizing for happiness and a... well, if you're optimizing for happiness and like a good life, do it your way. Your way is working really well. If you want to grow at a certain rate per year and you want to really push it, I do think a salesperson is... you do need a sales team. But that's not what you're optimizing for. You're optimizing for freedom and happiness.

Pieter Levels

Yeah, and I also think there are different types of companies. For example, some companies ask for a lot of forms. They want things like a W-8 form and all the U.S. IRS forms. They want you to sign everything, including an NDA. On the other hand, there are companies that just have you enter your credit card on Stripe, and it's done. These are different types of customers. The customers that ask for a lot of questions via email generally convert less for me. They pay less money and are more of a hassle to deal with in terms of customer support. So, if you do it all automatically, you tend to get more modern customers who are easier to deal with, I think.

Sam Parr

is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about

Pieter Levels

No, I think we maybe need transparency. The reason I'm so transparent is that I think it's very important. Like I said before, I believe it's crucial to be honest and to show other people that you can build a nice indie company like this by sharing every aspect, the ups and downs of it. Instead of everyone else only sharing the good things—like "we're growing so fast," "we're hiring," and "we're funded," blah blah blah—I think it would be cool if we did business in a more wholesome way. We should share everything, the ups and downs. Yeah, maybe we won't grow super, super big, but we can do it in a more wholesome manner.

Sam Parr

I have a few critiques. The first is, yeah, I think that if you're high... So, you remember Buffer? Buffer did that; they did the whole shtick.

Pieter Levels

joel yeah

Sam Parr

they did it even more well equally as extreme as you I would say but they revealed

Pieter Levels

everyone's my expectations for sure

Sam Parr

Yeah, but they revealed everyone's salary, and they did that. I think they did it as a marketing shtick. They did it because they're like, "Well, you know, our product's okay. It's good enough, but let's come up with a cool shtick so we stick out, and it aligns with our philosophies." Great, and it worked really well for them. But I actually think that it probably hurts them after a while. It's really hard to do that after 100 or 150 employees. I don't know what the number is, but at some point, people are like, "Dude, I don't want my stuff all out there." When we sold our company, I didn't exactly reveal how much I made because I'm like, "Man, I don't want to be a target. I don't want people to take advantage of me. I don't want to be judged in a particular way. I don't want that type of attention." So I'd rather just say round whole numbers instead of exactly.

Pieter Levels

what I do there's a real security risk for sure

Sam Parr

yeah like you don't wanna talk about where you are right now

Pieter Levels

and yeah yeah

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

part of

Sam Parr

it is because I yeah for sure a 100%

Pieter Levels

yeah yeah yeah 100%

Sam Parr

Yeah, so it's accurate... part of the downside. But at the same time, it's marketing. Maybe it agrees with your life philosophy, and also it's a pretty sick marketing shtick.

Pieter Levels

Yeah, thank you. I think it's hard to stop because I've been doing it for so long. It's become part of my identity. It would be hard to hide all this stuff now. They're like, "Where does this open page go? Why are you not sharing anymore?" I'm like, "Ah, I'm just done with it now." I do think it's this recurring marketing machine that is a big part of why my business work became successful and why I gained a lot of audience on Twitter. I cannot deny that, so it's very hard to quit that once you've been doing it for so long.

Sam Parr

yeah that's why I'm nervous about even doing it in the first place

Pieter Levels

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, you know, it's kind of like I haven't gone hard on YouTube or any other social platform because I'm like, "I don't want a commitment." You gotta keep up with it.

Pieter Levels

I wanted to do YouTube as well, and I have the same problem. Yeah, I'm like, "This is going to be a new recurring activity I need to do every week." I need to upload a video and make a video.

Sam Parr

I think there's a world where you could do seasons, you know, like a TV show has a season. I think there's a world where you could do seasons and do quite well, but the majority of people do it regularly and I'm like, "Oh man, I don't wanna get on that treadmill." That's scary.

Pieter Levels

No, I think it burns you out. Look at all the YouTubers burning out; it's extreme. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an extreme schedule. I think it might be interesting if I just sit in front of the laptop like this and I just tell the stuff I know and think. Instead of writing it down, I could just make little videos. Derek Sivers also did that. He makes little videos about small topics, you know? Five minutes to explain something, and then the next video.

Sam Parr

And so yeah, Alex Hormozi was doing it. The guy on our... he came on our podcast. Alex Hormozi, he's been doing it lately and he loves it. And it seems... it seems like a lot of kind of work, but not that much work. No more work than this podcast, and I don't consider this podcast to be too much work, but it works well. But dude, thanks for coming on. This has been fun. I hope you will come on more often and we'll do a little more brainstorming next time.

Pieter Levels

yeah dude it was super fun thanks for having me super fun

Sam Parr

hopefully we didn't you you said you were nervous because we were gonna ask no

Pieter Levels

but no it's

Sam Parr

not it's not asked anything we didn't ask anything crazy

Pieter Levels

yeah cool

Sam Parr

there's not much to ask when you tell everyone on the internet about everything you do yeah

Pieter Levels

This is always when the good part of the podcast starts, right? Because you end it and then like the real stuff.

Sam Parr

hopefully not the the real stuff I I hope was was going on the whole time

Pieter Levels

no it was great but

Sam Parr

yeah dude thanks this is awesome you pimp out your stuff so it's at levels

Pieter Levels

Yeah, it's [twitter.com/levelsi0](https://twitter.com/levelsi0), so L-E-V-E-L-S-I-O. All the links to my websites are there, so you can click from there.

Sam Parr

thanks dude thanks for coming