Reddit Blackout: 8476 Subreddits Are Offline... Here’s Why (#464)

Shaan Puri

So, that was the other thing that sparked drama. Now you've got leaked phone calls, you've got the CEO calling a guy crazy... It's a "he said, she said" situation. And so that raised the profile of what was otherwise kind of a small thing. As is the case on Reddit, small things can turn into big things. That's like part of the beauty of Reddit, and that's what was happening here.

Sam Parr

Dude, alright, first of all, your energy is giving me sight. This is a great story you can...

Shaan Puri

get fired because I have a little more for you here are you ready this is the part that that's the background

Sam Parr

okay

Shaan Puri

now let me give you some foreground right let me give you a little future future play here

Sam Parr

some foreplay

Shaan Puri

Let me give you a little foreplay. Alright, what's up? We're here, dude. Have you seen this Reddit revolt that's happening? Are you aware of this?

Sam Parr

I am aware of it. Is it going to matter, really? So basically, what happened is there's this app called Apollo, right? Apollo.

Shaan Puri

Yep, here's kind of the zoomed-out version of the story. So, what's happening today is if you go to Reddit right now, the whole site is down. They broke all of Reddit. What they were trying to do was a bunch of subreddits—these communities on Reddit—were trying to protest some new Reddit policies. It started with a few of them that said, "You know what? We disagree with this policy change that's going on. We're going to do this 48-hour blackout. We're going to go private; we're going to go dark." They called it "Reddit Go." This subreddit is going dark, and more and more started joining to the point where 7,000 subreddits, including some of the biggest ones on there like r/funny and r/pics, joined in.

Sam Parr

and I believe that's 30% of reddit that's what I read

Shaan Puri

yeah it's basically it's a huge amount like you know there's there's there's this couple of cool websites that you can go to in fact we should go to to one of them right now so go to this site so it's reddark so reddark.untone.uk very strange site but you can see in real time this thing's almost like this this tool's even almost broken because so many are going dark at the same time and ben if you could share your screen so it says 7,240 out of 7,806 that's like 90% or something right 7 40 out of 7806 93% of subreddits have gone dark which is just an insane number and if you do it you can if you click the large thing there's like a live feed and it'll be like animals with jobs has just gone private 5,000 members music music hoarder has gone private 5,000 members krusty windows has gone private and they just see like in real time and I've been watching this since yesterday it's crazy when I when I opened this up yesterday it was at 2,000 and now it's basically all of them it's 7,000 out of out of 7,200 out of 7,800 so almost every subreddit has decided to join this protest and so you say well what's the policy what's what's so bad and what happened is reddit wants to ipo so reddit wants to go public in the future reddit is not currently profitable they make about I don't know somewhere between 400 $500,000,000 a year roughly and they're still not profitable and these apps that other people have made called third party apps were just used to like you could browse reddit and they built like special features into them that made them maybe easier to use for certain types of people power users or moderators things like that so that's why people loved apollo is because they had some power user features that were great for moderators and the reddit made the mistake of not they were thought they were picking on apollo but in fact they were pissing off moderators and that was a really really big issue I'll tell you why in a second so reddit goes and says hey look we can't keep giving these third party apps full access to reddit this has a couple problems first they're hitting our servers with a bunch of requests that cost us he he said what the ceo said was tens of 1,000,000 per year in server requests the second thing is those server requests are now serving reddit content onto someone else's app so that person could monetize their app and reddit doesn't get a piece of that so they were like alright we wanna cut costs we wanna increase revenue and they had a third problem which was they didn't want their data going to all these different places because basically openai and chatgpt had the scraped reddit reddit was like one of the key sources to make chatgpt so good and reddit kind of was asleep when they did the first scrape but now they're like oh no no no no if any other ai company wants our data you're gonna pay us a huge amount of money for it so to do that they needed to to basically paywall the data they needed the data only to live inside their own their own walls so they upped their api pricing they basically said for every server request you do it's now gonna be whatever 10¢ and a fake number but but the result was that a app like apollo which is made by this basically this one dude who made it you know as a passion project out of at a college he would have to pay 20 something $1,000,000 a year just to maintain apollo and so he's like dude that's unfeasible I he's like I have 50,000 paying users they pay me $10 a year so he's like I make 500 k on this now I have to my costs are gonna in 30 days my costs are gonna go to 2,000,000 a month and he's like that obviously kills my app and it kills not just my app all of all the third party apps and reddit's answer was basically like shrug like you know alright well sucks to be you and and then the way that they kind of responded

Sam Parr

Well, so wait, hold on. I'm going to ask you a question about how the word got out, but first we have to get some background here. Even though... I just looked it up, Reddit is like the 9th most popular website in America. And it's like, you know, it's like when someone says...

Shaan Puri

what you know says they use it

Sam Parr

Well, it's like, you know, no one goes to that restaurant anymore. It's too crowded. It's kind of like that. So, Reddit is basically... I don't even know how to describe it, but it's essentially 100,000+ forums all on one website. The reason why this matters is because each forum, which is called a subreddit, covers virtually any topic you can ever imagine. Most viral news in America or viral memes start on Reddit. Subreddits are forums that are owned by volunteers. So, someone comes up with one and they create it.

Shaan Puri

and they run it

Sam Parr

And then they run it. I didn't realize how much autonomy they are given. The reason why this is important is... now, like, this has happened before. Apparently, Reddit fired a woman named Victoria like 8 years ago, and she was a community moderator. Everyone loved her, and so all these other subreddit forum leaders did the same thing, where they shut it down a little bit now.

Shaan Puri

But by the way, the result of that was the CEO got fired. They got, back then, 200,000 people to sign a petition saying Ellen Pao needs to get fired. So she stepped down, like, I don't know, a week later or days later after that happened. So they, you know, they do wield a lot of power.

Sam Parr

They yield a ton about... So, but here's what's crazy: Reddit doesn't make that much money for how large it is. It's... if you look at the top 30 websites in America, I bet you (I'm not researching this, but I would make a bet) that it's on the very, very low end of revenue or even value created per user.

Shaan Puri

per user

Sam Parr

And part of it's because people are anonymous. Redditors are typically horrible with clicking ads and things like that. The other part of it is that they're kind of in a weird way. This guy, Steve Huffman, and Alexis Ohanian created this company, Reddit, and it's amazing. Their users own the platform a little bit. What we're seeing here is that these people basically set their channels or subreddits to private, so you can't access them. That's what's happening. My question to you is, when this guy—let's call him Apollo—announced that he was going to shut down his app, how did he get the word out that it happened? And how did all these people rally around this?

Shaan Puri

Well, again, the people that use this app were power users. When he said, "Hey guys, here’s what’s going on," it actually happened in multiple steps. The reason this got so much heat is because it happened in multiple stages. They announced that they were going to update their pricing. He said, "Hey, we're going to have to keep an eye out for this, but I'm optimistic. I'm sure Reddit's not going to just do something that doesn't make any sense." Reddit responded, "For sure, for sure. We're obviously going to take everybody's needs into account, but we will have to update the pricing." He said, "You know what? That's reasonable. I can't wait to hear back what you guys have in mind." That was like post...

Sam Parr

1 and he shared that but where did he share that

Shaan Puri

He shared it on subreddit on Reddit and maybe in the Apollo subreddit, plus some others. He also shared it on the mods subreddit because, again, a lot of moderators like Apollo. It helps them do their job faster because this guy does [likely referring to the Apollo developer's efforts].

Sam Parr

their subreddit owners make money

Shaan Puri

No, they make nothing. Reddit has this huge fleet of moderators that are in the dark. I think right now there's 28,000,000 moderators... I think that was the number that are participating in this. Some insane number, let me see.

Sam Parr

I had a subreddit. It was called "Apartment Hacks," and I was trying to get people to join it. It very quickly got about 1,000 people, but I quit working on it.

Shaan Puri

sorry I got the number wrong 28,000 moderators on the 7,000 subreddits so that are participating in the in the in the blackout basically so these moderators basically they're constantly fighting spam so when you have a site that's as popular as reddit there's this huge amount of people that are trying to get you to buy their crap that are trying to get you to subscribe to their onlyfans that are trying to get you to click this link and install this virus and or just doing clickbait like just making it where they post something super outrageous just to get clicks and engagement up votes and a big battle in the comments but then it kinda turns off people who were there for like you know they wanted they wanted the entertainment without it getting ruined without the party getting ruined and so the moderators were the people that were keeping this house party working where it's like yeah we want people to come here and have fun but no dude you can't bring 17 kegs in here no you can't just come here and flyer your own party inside my house like no no you can't do all that crap and they're fighting this constantly and they do it as a giant unpaid thing now what they pointed out during this protest very reasonably was that dude we're reddit is one of the only networks that's all run by unpaid volunteer moderators so for example facebook has a huge moderation program they spend about 200 or $300,000,000 a year just on moderate content moderation twitter spends a bunch of money in content moderation and so content moderation can be a very big cost center and so the moderators are like hey you're trying to save $10,000,000 by shutting off these 3rd party apps have you thought about what happens when we stop doing all this free work and like now you have to pay for content moderation or this whole site goes to shit like what's gonna happen then maybe you should listen to us and so that's the that's where this is escalated to but I'll but just to finish the the story so he goes he he says up front okay redout announced this change it's gonna affect us but hopefully it's all good and some people in the comments were like dude you're being naive these corporations are they're like just like twitter killed all the 3rd party clients reddit's gonna do the same these guys wanna go public they're gonna wanna own all they're they're gonna wanna you own the user experience for all all all users of reddit they're gonna kill you and he's like no no no no they've they said like you know they said they're gonna be fair k a couple months later it comes out and they're like here's the pricing it kills you and it takes into effect in 30 days and he's like what like first of all ridiculous pricing 2nd of all 30 days like I couldn't possibly try to like change my app to maybe make less requests to your server like I couldn't do anything in 30 days like you're just gonna kill my whole business and I took yearly subscriptions so not only am my app gonna die I'm gonna have a refund like 250 k to people who paid for a year subscription because my app's no longer gonna work so he was in a world of trouble so he contacts reddit and he does a call with the team from reddit and he records the call and after the call they come out

Sam Parr

you can you can you're allowed to do that in some states but not in every state did he do it the right way

Shaan Puri

Dude, in Neckbeard Nation, it's all good, baby. It's all legal. You're the little guy fighting the big guy; you can do whatever you want. So, first, he doesn't do anything with it. Then Reddit comes out and says, "This guy's crazy. He's making outlandish claims. He tried to extort us for $10,000,000 in order to keep supporting the app. We can't do business with this crazy guy." They basically slandered him a little bit. He's like, "What are you talking about? That's not what I said. What did I say that was so outrageous?" And he's like, "Here's the recording. People can listen to it themselves and decide."

Sam Parr

oh man did you listen to it

Shaan Puri

I even listened to the whole thing but there's a part in there where he's like look

Sam Parr

like do you sound reasonable

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he sounds reasonable. He's basically like, "Look, you know, obviously I'd love to just keep going independent, but you guys are saying it's too expensive. If you want to raise pricing, that makes it untenable for me. But people like this app, and they're gonna be upset when this app goes down." He's like, "You know, you guys bought Alien Blue back in the day and you made that the Reddit app. Have you considered just buying this app so that you don't have to pay for all these... it's not some external party. That way, you guys could own it, but at least it lives on. It's a win-win solution potentially for all of us."

Sam Parr

and so

Shaan Puri

He was like, "You know, he said something like, you're saying this will cost me $20,000,000 a year. You're saying this costs you tens of millions a year. Like, you could buy the whole thing for $10,000,000, and that's, you know, six months of my operating costs." And, you know, it could work out that way. Steve Huffman on the call is like, "Look, I don't appreciate the threat," type of thing. He says something about like, "That's a threat." And he goes, "Wait, what's a threat? What do you mean?" Because the guy said something like, "You know, if you don't want all this noise about this, like, you could just do this." He kind of took it as a threat, like, "Oh, you're threatening you're going to make a bunch of noise if we don't pay you $10,000,000." He goes, "No, no, no. I'm saying we have, like, you're saying I'm making too many API calls. So if you don't want all this server noise for the API requests, you could just own it and just use your internal systems to do it instead." And he's like, "Oh, sorry. Okay, my bad. I didn't realize you were talking about API requests. I apologize. I didn't mean to say that you were threatening us." And he was like, "Okay, no problem. I just want to collaborate. Clear on that." Then later, he comes out and says, "He threatened us." He's like, "Dude, even on the call, you apologized, saying, 'Sorry, I misunderstood you,' and then you took that out of context and tried to make me sound like a guy who's trying to profit out of this or like trying to make unreasonable requests." So, anyways, that caught... so that was the other thing that sparked drama. Now you've got leaked phone calls, you've got the CEO calling a guy crazy. It's a "he said, she said" situation. That raised the profile of what was otherwise kind of a small thing. As the thing on Reddit, small things could turn into big things. That's like part of the beauty of Reddit, and that's what was happening here.

Sam Parr

Dude, alright, first of all, your energy is giving me sight. This is a great story.

Shaan Puri

you can get fired because I have a little more for you here are you ready this is the part that that's the background

Sam Parr

okay

Shaan Puri

now let me give you some foreground right let me give you a little future future play here

Sam Parr

some foreplay

Shaan Puri

Let me give you a little foreplay. So, Reddit may have forgotten, but this is how Reddit started. Reddit began because the popular forum site of the day, Digg, made a big update that everybody hated. Digg said, "Screw you guys, this is better," and the users responded, "See you!" They then went to this little site called Reddit. Reddit blew up, and that's how it became what it is today. Digg fumbled the ball and released this anti-user update, and the users were still falling away.

Sam Parr

man yeah

Shaan Puri

They stuck it to the man. Well, who's to say that doesn't happen again? So I have a little proposal. Somebody should run with this idea. I bought this domain, and I think somebody should do this. If not... you know, this is what I would do if I was a little younger and hungrier than I am today. So here's what I think somebody should do. I think now is the perfect time...

Sam Parr

the the younger you the equally conniving just a little bit more ambitious you

Shaan Puri

Just my testosterone levels were a little higher back then. Yeah, I'm a mellowed-out dad now. You know, my daughter paints my toenails. I can't be doing all this kind of stuff.

Sam Parr

If you woke up at 10 AM this morning and you wear a hoodie all the time, you know this is for you. **Neck Beard Nation**, this is the call out. It's just on.

Sam Parr

sunday there

Shaan Puri

Okay, so I want you to just check out this little website here. Sam, I don't know if you know what the CEO Steve's handle is on Reddit. Do you know what his username is?

Sam Parr

I used to yeah if you said it I would remember it dark dark something what was it spez

Shaan Puri

So, **Spez** (S-P-E-Z). I don't know, I just woke up this morning at 6 AM and I looked at GoDaddy. I saw that **spezlist.com** was available, and I thought, "1 cent for spezlist.com? So I bought it." I said, "What's Spez list?" I think it's Reddit without Spez. Would you like Reddit without Steve? Well, here's what we're going to do: we're going to make a Reddit that looks very, very, very, very similar to this website, but with one difference. There's no Steve. There's no corporation that's going to...

Sam Parr

the dude the tagline needs to be same same but different

Shaan Puri

same same but different exactly

Sam Parr

right same but different

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, here's Ben. He threw this up while we were talking because I gave him a rant this morning. I was like, "Dude, here's what someone should do." I think he just bought the domain. He told me right before we went on air, he said, "I'm gonna buy the domain, I'm gonna put it up." So, he goes, "It says I love Reddit, I just don't like... don't like spes. So, I'm gonna create a new Reddit. It's called Spes List. It's Reddit without Steve." Here's the master plan: it'll be a very, very, very similar website to Reddit. It's gonna be a nonprofit, and any revenue that it makes will get funneled back into the communities or moderators. This blackout, like this 48-hour protest that they said is cool, it's gonna get headlines, but Reddit really doesn't care. They're gonna lose about $3,000,000 by being down for 2 days, and then they're just gonna move on with life. The protesters made a big error, which is they said how long they would protest for. They said, "The pain will stop in 48 hours." So, all everybody has to do is just ignore it for 48 hours. They're gonna keep doing what they want. So, when your voice doesn't work, you gotta exit. Here's a little exit vote for you: it's basically Reddit without the bullshit. There's a little email sign-up box, so if a million people sign up, then who knows? Maybe we can create something here. So, you know, why do this as a nonprofit? Your voice is already rich. We don't need to make a profit on this. We just create this for fun because it's fun to see something burned down. I don't even have a problem with Steve Huffman, by the way. I think he's... you know, it's just...

Sam Parr

a smart

Shaan Puri

Guy, I think he's fair in his opinion, but also this is the internet. On the internet, you really gotta know who you're pissing off. I think he's pissed off too many people with this move. I can't believe that nobody's making an alternative to this. The people that are trying to make alternatives are all trying to do it so differently. You don't want to do different; it needs to look almost exactly the same. Change the shade of red by like 2 hex, you know, just a little hex color over to the right. Then it needs to be the same site with the same structure. Everything's the same except for who decides what happens and how the money flows. If you just change that, you could do this as a nonprofit thing, and I think it would be very entertaining.

Sam Parr

In lieu of your morning cup of coffee this morning, you had a cup of rage, and I... I dig it, dude. First of all, a few beautiful things: Neckbeard Nation.

Shaan Puri

that was nice right

Sam Parr

that's our new

Shaan Puri

that's our that's our fan base

Sam Parr

So, we hired this woman to help us with some T-shirts. She's listening. This lady, by the way...

Shaan Puri

hilarious thing you did

Sam Parr

So, listen to this. This woman sent me this beautiful...

Shaan Puri

beautiful thing what does she do so you get something in the mail

Sam Parr

I get this thing in the mail, and it's like this beautiful 10 or 20-page outline. It's clever; it says what she's going to do for us to make T-shirts.

Shaan Puri

Is it beautiful? It looks like a giant PowerPoint deck that we just printed out. She knows, like, "Oh, he might not click the link," so let me just print the PowerPoint out on white and black paper and put it in an envelope for him.

Sam Parr

It's beautiful. Like when you see a neckbeard guy doing very neckbeard things, where you're like, "I'm just happy this exists." This is a beautiful display in that sense. It's beautiful. It wasn't physically beautiful, but clever. It was very clever. She said, "You can reach me at my first thought at gmail.com" or something like that, or "t h o."

Shaan Puri

t right

Sam Parr

Yeah, "thot," which stands for "that ho over there." She said, "You can just DM me." My first thought was, "This is awesome! Let's do something. We'll work together." It worked! I emailed her with you on the line, and I think I said, "Dear thot." She was like, "Great! By the way, you should look up what thot means." I was like, "I know what it means. I thought that you..."

Shaan Puri

you said it was wanted to be called

Sam Parr

Yeah, you said it first to me. That was your Twitter handle. I'm not trying to disrespect you; you said it, not me. I'm just repeating. I'm just playing the game here.

Shaan Puri

yeah and no no by the way the funny thing is you go alright thought let's do this

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

and she was like

Sam Parr

I don't think you know what thought means otherwise you wouldn't have called me that

Shaan Puri

She goes, "LMAO, I'm being addressed!" My first thought in your email was the Urban Dictionary below for your amusement.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I immediately replied. I was like, "I'm sorry, I thought... I thought this was a shtick. You're right, I'll call you your real name. My apologies." So we didn't get off to the... It started right away.

Shaan Puri

alright thought let's do this

Sam Parr

so dear thought we're gonna

Shaan Puri

This is only because I have 4 female listeners. It's due to this type of behavior I was trying to...

Sam Parr

I was trying to relate. I was trying to show that I read. Yeah, it didn't work out well. Yeah, it's like when...

Shaan Puri

You hear someone call their friend, and they're like, "Oh, Nikki!" Then you're like, "What's up, Nikki?" And they're like, "It's Nicholas." You're like, "Oh, okay, just because he's Nicholas." Yeah, Scott, sorry.

Sam Parr

I was just kidding. I was in LA this weekend and I went to the LA Tech Week event. There were about 300 people there, and I'm not exaggerating. I had 30 people out of those 300 come up to me and say, "Hey, I love MFM! I'm a total man." So, two episodes ago, or maybe one episode ago, Sean came up with this idea of the "total man." We got a lot of flack for it; I don't know if you saw it, but people loved it in general. I had literally 20 or 30 people in a row come up and say, "Dude, I'm the total man, by the way."

Shaan Puri

You're doing it wrong. It's not "total man" with like a space in between, because then it's like, "Yo, I'm the total man." It's "I'm a totalman." It's like one word. It's a thing, you're a noun. It's a different type of noun. You got, you know, mammals, you got humans, and you got totalman. It's just like a separate species of... a [human].

Sam Parr

Kind of get rid of the space, it's cleaner. I got you. Yeah, we're gonna get rid... and so, total man, that's a hit. I think **Neckbeard Nation** with you being the mayor... I mean, that or you being the president. That's our new thing.

Shaan Puri

that's that we did it we got a new thing

Sam Parr

Yeah, I totally agree. Question: which side are you on? I think I'm team red on this one, but they screwed up. They shouldn't have done it this way in the first place. You know, they're a venture capital company. They've got hundreds of employees, probably around 1,000 at this point. They fumbled the bag here, not on the PR front, which they did, but like letting this get out of hand the way it has in the first place. I mean, you've gotta pay the bills. Why are they letting people build this stuff on their land? Right? You know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

I mean, yeah, I get where they're coming from. I think they, like many tech companies, fumble the communication and execution. But I'm also horrid at that, so you know, I would have done this twice as bad if I was in their position. I'm very much a "rip the band-aid off" type of person. Also, because I'm very far on the spectrum of not easily offended, it takes a lot to make me feel mad or upset. I severely underestimate how easily I can make other people mad or upset. So, I get their position. I think, you know, most likely, unless Bezos becomes a thing, they're just going to be like, "Cool, nice protest. We hear you, we'll take you into account in the future. Continue using Reddit." You know, life will just go on and nothing bad will happen from this unless literally somebody seizes the narrative. That's the thing; there's a narrative right now, and somebody could come in and they could surf that momentum on the narrative.

Sam Parr

that's hard though

Shaan Puri

we are the thing

Sam Parr

That's hard. Uber had the same thing. Do you remember when it was trending, "Delete Uber"? I think these things come and go.

Shaan Puri

This happened in the crypto world. The crypto world is like the most ruthless... it's like knife fighting in the streets. OpenSea had some policy issue or change. Do you remember what it was? It was like a fee change or something. Why did people get mad at OpenSea? I forgot what it was... they changed something. They changed something about royalties, yeah. They changed like the royalty take rate.

Sam Parr

Or something... Worst podcasting etiquette ever is to ask the guy in the room who's sitting like 10 feet behind you, with no mic or headphones, to ask him his opinion.

Shaan Puri

Have you seen Joe Rogan? If Joe Rogan does it, anyone can do it. So basically, OpenSea, which was the big NFT marketplace—by far the dominant one with a 100% market share—changed something in their policy. People didn't like it, and literally, within about 48 hours, somebody spun up a competitor. They did what was called a "vampire attack." In crypto, you can do this thing where you can say, "Okay, who are all the wallets that use OpenSea?" I could find them; they're all public. Then I can airdrop them tokens that say, "If you come over to our platform and claim them, create your account here, you get free tokens." People think, "The token might be worth something," and so they just... they basically like vampire tech; they just sucked the blood out of one network to another. This has happened several times in crypto where they've tried to do this. Now, it's not always 100% successful, but to go from not existing to having 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 users with a shot at delivering a dope user experience... you know, this can work. That's better than nothing. In crypto, this has happened a couple of times. A couple of the DeFi tools have had this happen where, "Oh, we don't like your policy. We're going to fork your source code, rename it, and we're going to incentivize all the major players on yours to come over here and get a bonus token if they claim their thing here," which builds the momentum in the narrative.

Sam Parr

Well, I don't... I mean, like your energy... I don't know how to "one up" you here. You know, like they say when you're supposed to meet people, you're supposed to match their energy to make them feel comfortable. I don't know what to say. I feel like we're... I feel like we're trying to go to a monster truck rally: "*Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!*" I feel like you're Gravedigger right now, and I'm just in the stands trying to keep up with ear plugs, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! That's so on fire. How do you even remember or know that? That's like their radio ads, right?

Sam Parr

monster jam

Shaan Puri

have you been to a monster truck rally in the last 700

Sam Parr

days is the pope catholic of course I have yeah I go to monster truck all

Shaan Puri

the time

Sam Parr

I've gone like 5 or 6 times, dude. They do backflips now! I'm not *not* gonna go see a big-ass truck do a backflip. Alright, let me talk to you about something that you actually know more than me about, I think, because you're friends with them. Yeah, and then I wanna talk about that...

Shaan Puri

a lot of stuff okay

Sam Parr

And then I want to talk about the second thing regarding Milk Road. We'll leave time for that.

Shaan Puri

turpentine is that

Sam Parr

what it's called a turpentine turpentine I think tyne

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

So, basically there's a guy named **Eric Thornburg**. He's been in the game for a while; he's done a bunch of stuff on the internet, including founding a company called **OnDeck**. He launched this new thing called **Turpentine**. It was very nice, he gave us a little shout-out. But basically, what I believe it to be is just a podcast network for business content, particularly some type of startup-y related stuff. So there's like one [podcast] on media...

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, tech... There's one on media, I think there's one on fintech, a few other things. And he announced it. Have you seen this? What am I missing here?

Shaan Puri

I've seen this. So Eric Thornburg's behind this? Eric's an awesome guy. Did he talk to you about this before he did it? Because I feel like if I was gonna do something like this, you're my "phone a friend," right?

Sam Parr

no you didn't talk to me

Shaan Puri

so you're my phone a friend on that

Sam Parr

I've never talked to him

Shaan Puri

Oh, you never talked? Okay, so you don't know each other that well. Gotcha. He's in our friend group, I guess. So, I'm curious what your take is on this because I think you know a lot about this.

Sam Parr

I have a strong opinion but I want you to explain it

Shaan Puri

I mean, I think you said it well. He's trying to create, like, what I would say is the easiest analog: the Ringer. The Ringer was started by Bill Simmons, a kind of famous, notable guy in the sports journalism landscape. Basically, he was like, "I'm gonna create a network of sports podcasts. I'll have my show, I'll have this guy do NBA, I'll have this guy do NFL, I'll have this guy do pop culture, I'll have this guy do whatever." So they created a network of podcasts and ended up selling it to Spotify for a few hundred million dollars—around $200 million. That was mostly because Bill had the number one sports podcast and he's very influential. Spotify had a strategy there. So, Eric's trying to do that for tech. He's like, "How do I be the Ringer? How do I be Barstool but for the tech industry?" Can I basically create intellectually entertaining but also highly intellectual conversations about things that people care about in tech? Then he's looking for shows. So, like, basically if we were not the badasses that we are, we could be like, "Hey, let's join Turpentine. We're gonna get their back office, we're gonna get them helping us sell ads, we're gonna get help with production, and we'll get cross-promoted amongst their network." It's very similar to Workweek, which we've talked about here before. Workweek is doing this kind of thing with newsletters, and Turpentine is trying to do this with podcasts, newsletters, and other things. That's kind of the thing. He says his tagline is "where experts talk." So it's a network podcast covering tech, business, culture, and trends that are driving the future. He's got, I think, three or four shows right now—oh, looks like maybe five: three that he's doing and then a couple that other people are doing. But they're all, like, very fancy-schmancy, like "The Cognitive Revolution," "Media Empires," "Moment of Zen," and so they're kind of, I would say, highbrow compared to what most podcasts are.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so here's my opinion: I don't think anyone that you mentioned, or anyone out there, is really doing it perfectly. But this is beautifully done. You go to his website... wow. I thought you...

Shaan Puri

were gonna be anti you're pretty anti most media things so I'm surprised you're oh no

Sam Parr

it's gonna come it's gonna come

Shaan Puri

so you're doing you're doing that sandwich thing yeah my bad

Sam Parr

I stopped you with the brand. Yeah, yeah, sandwiches always have... it's not... it's not "Love Your Logo."

Shaan Puri

hate everything else

Sam Parr

like a sandwich is not

Sam Parr

meat cheese bread it's bread meat cheese bread

Sam Parr

Okay, you gotta... it begins and it ends with that. No, I do like it. So here's the thing about these companies: I think if he doesn't raise money, I think it's awesome. So long as he doesn't raise money, I think this could be really, really cool. Owning this outright is amazing. I think that's really cool. When I go to his website, I think he borderline... like if it was done a little bit the other way, it would be really douchey. But the way that he's done it, it's actually quite awesome. For example, he quotes Pablo Picasso, and you know that could go either way. He went the right way. I think when you go to the website, the name is nice. It's all pretty slick, upscale, and it actually looks really good. I think that if you did that a little bit differently, it would not work. But he's done... what's the quote from Pablo Picasso on there? Do you see it?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it says when art critics get together, they talk about form, structure, and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. Cool.

Sam Parr

I think that's cool I think it's cool and it's got a nice little picture of pablo I think it's awesome

Shaan Puri

yeah dude on my next company I'm gonna get a quote from benny blanco

Sam Parr

what's he gonna say

Shaan Puri

just trying to know just he got pablo picasso I'm gonna get benny blanco on the on the side

Sam Parr

We can do Bugs Bunny next too. I mean, I think it's good, man. I think it's good branding. So, my opinion is, I think it's cool if you own it. I think it's cool if... So, I don't know if you know this. You probably don't because who cares, but Business Insider's writers are on strike. Do you know that?

Shaan Puri

yes well a a lot of like isn't hollywood also on strike right now

Sam Parr

I think they're totally unrelated, other than maybe they inspired each other. I think there was like a contract up and insiders formed a union or something like that, and they are protesting. They're doing this thing called a **digital picket line**, where they're telling all the customers not to click on Business Insider links. Now, which is great! I mean, someone who follows a Business Insider journalist is probably not also someone reading Business Insider, I would imagine. So, I don't know if that's gonna go well. But if you're going to start a media company, I think you have to be incredibly careful not to hire folks who will unionize. I think that is actually an existential crisis for a lot of media companies right now, and I think that that's real. So, here are the takeaways: **A.** It's awesome that you're going to do this. I think it's cool, and I think you should own the whole thing. **B.** Look out for union types. **C.** Going B to B (business to business) is 100% the way to go. And I want to give you an example.

Shaan Puri

Is this B2B? I don't think this is B2B. What makes you say this is B2B? Well, I think he just has... I think he has probably... he's probably going for like high-end customers more so than B2B, right?

Sam Parr

Yeah, but your ad salespeople can spin that nicely to Salesforce. It's not like true crime.

Shaan Puri

you know

Sam Parr

What I mean is, it's borderline. It's "kissing cousins" with the real B2B. It's close, but let me give you an example of a real B2B one.

Shaan Puri

b to b ish b to bish

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's... Bish, have you heard? By the way, did you see that guy who's getting in trouble? His name is George Santos. He's clearly, I think, from South America, but he was some type of elected official out of Long Island. He's getting in trouble because he did a bunch of fraudulent stuff, I think. But one thing that's funny is he told everyone he was Jewish. He goes, "Well, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jew-ish. Like, I'm friends with the Jews. I was Jew-ish." You know, like, I'm buddies with them. Have you not seen that?

Shaan Puri

all time all time excuse

Sam Parr

He like stole $500,000, so he's actually a crook. But the funniest part is he goes, "I'm Jewish," and you look at him and he's from Brazil or something. Like, what? So that's pretty funny. But anyway, I think that instead of going B to B, we gotta go all the way.

Shaan Puri

I can't find this client info

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform. It shares its data across every application, so every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. **HubSpot: Grow Better.** Have you heard of Aging Media?

Shaan Puri

no

Sam Parr

Okay, so type in "Aging Media." It started by this guy named John. John's a member of Hampton, but everything I'm actually about to say I just kind of stole from SimilarWeb. I have heard some rumors about them, but basically, if you go to Aging Media, what's the...

Shaan Puri

You mean on his Hampton application? We're here to write his revenue, profits, names of all his children, and social security number. You may have some info on this.

Sam Parr

he's in the meet look

Shaan Puri

I'm a help. I don't know. I clicked SimilarWeb on their site, but there's no info. So, I know you aren't getting anything from SimilarWeb right now.

Sam Parr

oh yeah yeah so here's why here's I'm gonna explain it to you

Shaan Puri

gotta be a pro you have a

Sam Parr

no listen aging media is their like corporate website so what's it say

Shaan Puri

They have brands like **Senior Housing News**, **Hospice News**, and **Skilled Nursing News**, that sort of thing.

Sam Parr

What’s the meta tag on there? Is it like "nursing home profession" or yeah?

Shaan Puri

media for the senior care industry

Sam Parr

Yeah, so click on one of their websites and you can go to SimilarWeb. Each website only has something like 50,000 visits. I believe it's not a lot, but they're doing something like $11,000,000 a year in revenue and around $3,000,000 to $4,000,000 a year in profit. This is a B2B, hardcore B2B site. They make their money through lead generation. So basically, I imagine they'll do a webinar or something, and if you are in the nursing home industry, you give them information. They also have ads, and I think... I don't know if they have podcasts, but they do have newsletters on their site. This is a hardcore B2B. This is... yeah, and I love it! I love it! I love this.

Shaan Puri

You just did this guy such a disservice by siccing 40 to 44 copycats on them by talking about how to get a business on here.

Sam Parr

well no so like I do

Shaan Puri

Have this podcast... are like if Sam or Sean say the N-word. I don't mean the N-word, I mean newsletters. If they say "This is a good newsletter business," they instant copycats, bro. They saw what you did with The Hustle, they saw what I did with MilkRoad, they're instantly looking for a new newsletter to close. And I... I apologize on behalf of whoever this guy is.

Sam Parr

I DM'd him on Hampton. I go, "Hey, don't tell me anything, but can I talk about your company?" I said, "Here's what I see on SimilarWeb."

Shaan Puri

he didn't know what he was saying yes to no I I got permission

Sam Parr

Here's what I see on SimilarWeb. This is what I'm gonna say: "Are you cool with it?" And he gave me a thumbs up... like, literally a thumbs up emoji. That's how I roll. I get that emoji, we're good. That's a hardcore B2B media company. So anyway, my... With this turpentine thing, I think it's cool. I like it.

Shaan Puri

I think it's cool I hope he pulls it off I've thought about doing this idea actually in the past I ruled it out

Sam Parr

for a bunch of reasons but

Shaan Puri

It's boring. That doesn't mean somebody else can't do it. I think it'd be great to do. It takes a lot of energy, and I'm totally with you that... I hope he didn't raise money. In his tweet thing announcing it, he didn't say like, "So happy to have Marc Andreessen investing in this." So I think there is... I think there's probably a good chance he raised money, but he didn't raise... Okay, he didn't raise money. So I hope he is taking it that way.

Sam Parr

Well, he probably learned from his other company, OnDeck. That's another company where I think they raised $100+ million. I forget, but I think the valuation was $500 million. So I don't know how much they raised, but I imagine it was in the 9 figures. That's another company where it's like... that could be cool if you don't raise money. Basically, screwing up your cap table is like one of the only mistakes in business that you can't really make up for.

Shaan Puri

Speaking of screwing up your money, can I tell you what I did post Milk Road with the money that we made?

Sam Parr

Well, I do know that you sent me a text. I would have to go look at when that came, and you said, "I've sold all my equities. I think it's gonna go to... I think the market's going down." And since then, do you... it's doubled. It's about doubled, yeah. A lot of the... So I know you did that with your money. So what else did...?

Shaan Puri

you do my next best decision yeah

Sam Parr

what else did you do besides not make money off your money

Shaan Puri

For the record, I've actually been about even from where I was with my equities on that because I kept a portion of it. However, the stuff I sold has not doubled. You just look at HubSpot stock because you're like, "I got HubSpot." But HubSpot is not the market. So, let me tell you about what I did. We got this money from selling Milk Road, and now I have this cash in a bank account. I have a couple of options. It's like, do we just buy treasury bills and make 4% on that?

Sam Parr

what bank did you use

Shaan Puri

what bank did I use what do you mean

Sam Parr

you use them chase or one of the other ones

Shaan Puri

that I got screwed up breach I'm not there's no upside in the answer to this question

Sam Parr

did did you use one of the ones you you they were using one of the ones that got screwed up

Shaan Puri

No, no, no, no. I didn't use Silicon Valley Bank. So, money's sitting there. I was like, "Could I buy treasury bills?" No, that's too boring. I could do what Sam does; I could just index into the stock market. I was like, "That's reasonable." But, you know, it seems like we're coming off of a 13-year bull market. I don't really need to put the full amount in right now. Let me just kind of wait and see what happens. Is there something that can do better than the 8% that I might be able to get on that? I thought, "Well, should I just invest in a new company we start?" I don't know. Maybe if we have a great idea, we'll do that. But let me just not do that. So, I started this process where I was like, "Can I work backwards?" Basically, can I get 30% a year compounding? Thirty percent a year sounds like a high number, but we have a few friends who have done it. The way that they've done it has been through buying private companies. They buy businesses and they own them. Andrew Wilkinson, I think, is the one that most people who listen to this pod will know because he's been on a bunch of times and talked about how they built Tiny from a few million dollars into, you know, $500 million by doing this sort of 30-40% compounding over time.

Sam Parr

did you read the tiny annual report we'll have to talk about it next time

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I read his annual letter. So, I've had a few other friends that have been doing this as well, but they are less public about it. I said, "Okay, well, let me do that." I said, "But I don't want to buy these companies and operate them." So, I thought, what if I bought a 30% stake? It's sort of like, can I buy a minority position in companies so that they keep running them, but I give them capital? Basically, the founder oftentimes was not taking a lot off the table, or they were kind of always worried, like, "Should I put this in my pocket and spend this?" Well, I don't know. What if the company needs it? Even if we're profitable, they were kind of worried about that. So, I said, "Here, let me give you some money, and then could I help them grow?" I went through this exercise. I don't think I've told you about any of these, but I talked to about 25 companies in the last, I want to say, 6 months.

Sam Parr

Dude, every company that you talk to DMs me and they say something along the lines of, "I was talking to Sean and now we're not talking anymore." But they message me to talk to you, and I just ignore it.

Shaan Puri

yeah they're like the wing man who refuses to wing

Sam Parr

you you you you don't have to tell me which companies I already know probably half of them

Shaan Puri

My funnel was this: I was just doing a review of it, and I thought it was kind of interesting. I talked to about 20 to 24 companies. I think "got serious" means I did due diligence. When I say "talked to," I mean I was interested. We looked at it a little bit more than that, but "talked to" was like, "Oh, this could be interesting. Maybe you could kind of squint and see a possibility." Then I got into more serious talks, either negotiating numbers or doing due diligence with about 9 companies. I got to the Letter of Intent (LOI) stage with 3 or 4 and ended up doing one deal in the last, I want to say, 6 months post-sale. This ranged from everything: newsletter businesses, OnlyFans businesses, journal apps, virtual events, bookkeeping companies, merch companies, and then a bunch of random stuff that I know nothing about. There were companies that sounded interesting, like one that does something called laser peening on machines to make the parts last longer, and their clients are companies like Boeing. There were also autism clinics that seem to make a ton of money, but I thought, "Okay, I don't really know how I would add any value to this." In each case, I was like, "Alright, can I find a good operator where I can acquire a minority stake in the business at a good deal? I could help them grow, and ideally, they're the category winner for what they do." So that was kind of my process. Before I tell you about the deal that we ended up doing, I want to hear any thoughts or questions on my approach here because there are a bunch of learnings.

Sam Parr

yeah there's no way you're gonna get 30% for that long right do you actually think that's possible

Shaan Puri

what do you mean for that long that long means what

Sam Parr

I don't... I mean, I don't know anything about markets. I'm not... I haven't read like a Warren Buffett biography, but like, what's he compound at every year?

Shaan Puri

oh oh yeah he's been at 20% for like 50 years or something like that

Sam Parr

but if he but if you got a pretend 10 years that'd go

Shaan Puri

putting 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars to work and that's very different

Sam Parr

right okay I think that's smart do you think you're gonna enjoy this I think you'll enjoy it right

Shaan Puri

I'm not sure. So, this was a test, basically, to see, like, is this fun to do? It's definitely fun on the learning side. Now that we made the first acquisition, or the first kind of, I would say, not acquisition, but kind of minority investment, it's different than startups. Like, we've done startup investing. Startup investing is very, very different. You look at a business and you're trying to figure out, "Are these three dudes in this bedroom going to be able to build a multibillion-dollar company?" Right? Like, is this husband and wife couple going to be able to pull off this gargantuan exit? And like, right now, they usually have nothing—just an idea, a product, maybe a little...

Sam Parr

bit of a contract it's way more of a lottery

Shaan Puri

It's a lottery. You put in $100,000 and then you do that with 40 companies. You know that 38 of the companies are going to be kind of like just a write-off or cost of doing business. Two or three of those 30 or 40 companies are going to be your winners. Hopefully, they're winning at a 100x or 1000x or more returns. So, it's very lottery-like. You spend very little time with them. They don't want you advising them. You answer questions when they call. You could proactively nudge them a little bit, but you're mostly hands-off, I would say, as an angel investor. Whereas if you buy 15, 20, 25, or 30% of a business, you're a little more involved. You know, you're...

Sam Parr

they care

Shaan Puri

A little more active. These businesses are not like all-or-nothing businesses. They're like, "Oh, this is already a good business. It's profitable and it's already growing." So the question is, can we accelerate the growth? Right? So, like, the one business we bought is, I don't know, super profitable. It makes $1,000,000 a year in profits. It's, you know, more than 50% margins. We were able to buy a piece of that, and I think that that's just so different from every startup investment I had ever done. You know, it's probably not going to become a multibillion-dollar business; I would almost guarantee that. But it doesn't need to. It's not supposed to. It's a cash flow business. And so, it's funny how...

Sam Parr

You have mocked me for like the last 8 years about my slow and steady approach. And now you're, you know, look, you're still at first. It was like laughing at 8%. I'm going for 10x every year or whatever, right? Now it's coming down. Now 30% is really attractive, which I agree, that is really attractive. Before you know it, you're gonna say...

Shaan Puri

No, dude, that's not true. Even in a startup fund, even when you have your winners that become billion-dollar companies, the overall fund... like a great fund is doing 30% IRR or 20% IRR. Just saying you're getting more boring? It's still the same way boring? No, no, no, no, no. I reject that. I reject that premise. I would say...

Sam Parr

You used to make a live streaming app, and now you're looking at a company that sells parts to Boeing.

Shaan Puri

But cash flow is always interesting. It's always been interesting, and now it's more interesting than it was in the past. I really didn't have a lot of exposure to these types of businesses. I lived in San Francisco, and when you say "cash flow," people think you're talking about, you know, like a leaky faucet. Nobody knows what the hell that means. Once I started doing this podcast, we got a lot more exposure. Most of the people who listen to this podcast are entrepreneurs from all around the world. When they reach out about their business, it's like, "Oh, this guy in Minnesota with this marketing agency that does this per year," or "This person sells parts," and "This person does whatever." You know, they're rolling up bookkeeping services. So, you learn about different types of businesses more through this. I've been getting my MBA on non-Silicon Valley businesses.

Sam Parr

The past few years, look, the cool thing is that we research stuff. If I really dive deep into a topic, I'll research it for 8 hours. That's not enough to make an investment, but it's enough that I say to myself, "Oh wow, this space is really intriguing. I could see myself doing this." You're doing that, but instead of 8 hours, you're doing weeks. So it's oddly in a similar vein a bit. Of course, you have to do more due diligence and actually look at the numbers and get to know the people. But yeah, it's like getting used to the space.

Shaan Puri

So, the most interesting thing is what happened between the four deals that we signed Lois on and the one that we closed. I'll try to do this without giving away any information about the companies that we didn't do the deal with. I can talk about the one we did, but I can't talk about the ones we didn't. The reasons for the mistakes we were making along the way... Here’s trap number one that we already experienced: "I can fix him." It's like the classic girlfriend mistake. You know, "He sucks, but maybe I could fix him." It's basically like saying, "Maybe I could fix this business." When you do minority investing, you're not the majority. You're not going to be able to fix anything. So, that was trap number one—getting really far down the road with a business that I thought had a ton of potential, only to finally realize I'm not going to be the one to fix it. Fixing it is the wrong approach when going into a business like this. That was mistake one. Mistake two was thinking, "I can totally see this working, but only at a small scale." You have to remember, as you play the game, it's kind of like how I felt about your Airbnb. You do one Airbnb, but you basically can't do just one. You can only do one as a test to see if you want to do a bunch. One Airbnb is like a bunch of headaches without the size of the prize being big enough. So, we had looked at one business that was like, "Yeah, this could be..."

Sam Parr

is what I have by the way

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was... we all make this mistake. But I think you were at least looking at it the right way, where you were like, "Maybe I could do a bunch of these." You talked to people that had 50 of these in their portfolio, and you have to do one to know if you want to do 50. So we got really far down the road with this one that, like, if it all worked, it's like, "Dude, we could be making $200,000 a year off this." It's like, "Wait, what are we doing? Why are we doing this?" Like, yeah, it's a great deal and it's highly likely to work, but it's highly likely to be very small and, like, not worth the mind share of even doing this. So we pulled out on that one. The one that we did was basically a company people probably know, so it was in a... so this one was not...

Sam Parr

are we gonna name it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can name it now. It's official. So we first looked at the category. I was super bullish on companies that let you hire internationally, specifically like how to hire in the Philippines and LATAM [Latin America]. And you know this... why?

Sam Parr

why were you interested in that what insights did

Shaan Puri

You have like, kinda scar tissue... Like dude, you came to my office. I remember you. You came to my office in San Francisco when I was doing Bebo, and you're like, "What's your burn rate?" Which again is like a question nobody asks somebody else out loud. It's like, you know, that's like asking somebody... asking a woman their weight. Like, ask a founder their burn rate and see how...

Sam Parr

they feel in my head I was like that's bubbly you had a bubbly burn man

Shaan Puri

And I was like, "$3,000,000 a year." That's what we were... We were basically a startup that was burning $3 million a year pre-product market fit. Because that's what it cost - we had... We basically had a team of engineers. So we had, like, you know... I don't know.

Sam Parr

10 to 12 engineers it's like 200 a month 204 I

Shaan Puri

think we were doing like 240,000 a month in burn so you get like and that's net burns

Sam Parr

does that mean no does that assume no revenue

Shaan Puri

We had revenue from one of our projects, but I was just saying like the overall bill. So, we basically hired 10 people at $200,000 each, which totals $22,000,000. Then you pay rent, your cloud bills, and whatever else. That was really expensive, and those were all Silicon Valley engineers. They were below market. Those people, if they were working for us for $200,000, could have been making $400,000 or $500,000 at Facebook. But they wanted to be a part of a startup. I did that, and it was very stressful to have a very high burn rate for a company. I just didn't like it, but I didn't know any better at the time. Afterwards, as I became a little more savvy, with our e-commerce business, we'll probably do somewhere around $20,000,000 this year in revenue. We're profitable because 65% of our team is overseas. We have our data analysis person in Argentina, our designer in India, and our customer service team in the Philippines. The person who's running our whole wholesale channel built it from scratch; it did not exist, and now it's a new revenue unit in the Philippines. We did the same thing with Milk Road. We were profitable with Milk Road from day one. I remember coming to your office at The Hustle, and you had, I don't know, 15 people running around there in San Francisco. That's a bunch of San Francisco issues. They have to go home and pay $6,000 rent, so you have to pay them money. For us, we had one person in the U.S. for Milk Road, and we had everybody else in the Philippines. It was, again, a lean, mean, profitable machine. I realized that not only is this cost savings, but if you hire somebody in the Philippines, they're basically 10 times cheaper than in the U.S. You can hire someone in the Philippines for $1,000 a month, which totals $12,000 a year. That same person in the U.S. will cost you $80,000 to $120,000. These are skilled people. For example, the guy we have doing our data stuff has an MBA. These are highly educated individuals. He's like a wizard with tools like Power BI and Looker, which I couldn't even start to use.

Sam Parr

do you get to know

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm talking to him all the time. The one good thing is, especially with the Philippines—and this sounds terrible, but I'm gonna say it anyways because it's honest—I hate managing people, and I love hiring people in the Philippines because they need so little management. Like, I...

Sam Parr

why does that sound horrible what did I miss there

Shaan Puri

Because I think what people want is for you to be like, "I'm a good manager and I talk to my employees." And I'm like, "Dude, it's fucking great. I only talk to my assistant on Fridays." People are like, "Well, that's kinda mean." But it's great! They don't want one-on-ones and career trajectory coaching. It's not like in San Francisco where I had, let's say, 8 direct reports. That's 8 weekly one-on-ones I had to do.

Sam Parr

well dude I've had

Shaan Puri

That's essentially 8 hours out of the 160 hours a week that I have that I'm spending doing basically... touchy-feely stuff. Which is fine, I understand it, but it's really nice when you don't have to do that because it's not the baseline expectation.

Sam Parr

There's a bunch of roles where you don't want someone who's entirely ambitious. Like with a totally an assistant, it's like you don't want someone that's like: "No, I don't want to give you all these other opportunities. I want you to be great at this thing and not bail." I don't... this is what I need. This is the tool that I need, and I want you to be that. I don't want to have to promote you tons and tons and tons. I've hired a couple [assistants like this].

Shaan Puri

Of people for like our holdco basically. They're cool; they live in San Francisco. They're awesome and super motivated to work with me. I'm like, "Great! What do you want?" They're like, "I wanna be you." And I'm like, "Wait, what?" Then I'm like, "Cool, like, you know, someday?" They're like, "Yeah, but I'm also spinning up my own news, my own podcast, my own investment arm." I'm like, "Okay, well, that's great. You could do that, but that makes for kind of a shitty person to hire onto my team." Because part of being on this team is being down for our mission, not your own mission necessarily. I totally get it if you wanna go do your own mission, but you gotta go do that on your own. You don't get to have both, you know, at the same exact time. You could do one and get mentored for a bit, and then go do your own, but you can't do it at the exact same time. So it has been very nice to have people that are just like... they literally, like, our management style is: they log in, they say, "Logging in. Here's what I'm doing today." If you have any adjustments needed, you say something. If not, you just don't say anything. At the end, they say, "Logging off. Here's what I got done today. Here's everything I did. Here's the files. Here's the info. Logging off."

Sam Parr

so how much are you spending now on on these on these folks

Shaan Puri

I mean, dude, I have like in my own companies probably almost 15 to 20 people that are international now.

Sam Parr

and so and what's the average salary

Shaan Puri

It ranges, so like on the low end, $800 a month. I think about it monthly because that's when I push payroll; that's what it says. So, like, $800 a month would be the low end, and that's, I would say, the most common. Customer support, personal assistant, things like that could be that low. Then the higher roles would be like $2,500 to $3,000. There's one guy who's just amazing. I've promoted him up twice now, and now he gets paid like a U.S. employee because he makes the impact of somebody who's driving a ton of growth. So I'm like, "Oh great! You keep getting rewarded." You're at some breakthrough where if you're driving growth, you get rewarded for driving growth.

Sam Parr

and you also I got an email you you have a course on this now too

Shaan Puri

I have a course on the personal assistant side. Yeah, I just created it. It's not even a course, actually; it's just a system. It's like, basically, the best hire I made this year was I hired my personal assistant. I had thought, okay, a personal assistant is, you know, for rich people. It's like for Jeff Bezos—it's for the mega busy, mega rich. I also was like, I don't want to have to tell somebody what to do all the time. That sounds like its own pain in the ass—to come up with things for them to do. Then I heard a few friends talk about their personal assistants, and I thought, maybe I'm wrong. Let me open my mind to the possibility that I'm wrong about this. Three people that I trust told me that it's been a huge game changer for them. Let me...

Sam Parr

try it send it to me I wanna use it I I I wanna

Shaan Puri

Use it? Yeah, I want to use that. So I basically created the whole thing last week and I was like, "Here's my system." For example, here's my email system: I used to be terrible with email, and now my email system's super organized and on top of things. Here's exactly what I do: - Here's the exact scope of work - Here's how it works

Sam Parr

I just texted ben I go I said send it to me

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and so, by the way, there's a funny offer we did with it, but I'll explain the company that we ended up investing in. So, I looked at all the ways you could do this. I've done all of them. You can hire directly if you want to hire somebody in Nashville. You basically have three options: 1. **Hire Direct**: You hire somebody on a job board like Upwork or an online job site. The upside is that it's basically free; you just pay the software subscription, which is like $99 a month. So, you know, you pay $1,000 for the year to be a pro member on there. The downside is that you have to do all the hiring, vetting, training, and sifting through candidates yourself. If you put up, "Hey, I need a customer support person or a personal assistant," you're going to get 200 applications, and good luck trying to find somebody good. 2. **Managed Service**: You could also go on the high end and use a managed service. This includes companies like Growth Assistant or Athena. They're great; they do the vetting for you, but there's this huge upcharge. Those guys charge you $3,000 a month for somebody that actually costs $800 a month. So, you're paying three times the price or more every single month, forever.

Sam Parr

and how big are those companies how big's athena I heard they're huge

Shaan Puri

They're big, and they're big because this is like a huge AR (augmented reality) thing for them. People don't really know about it. They don't really realize that you don't have to pay triple the price every single month. So that's one path, and they're good at what they do. I've tried them. Yeah, I've tried a bunch of these. The one I like the best was the one we ended up investing in, which is Shepherd. So people have probably heard of Shepherd before. I think the URL is supportshepherd.com. Why I like Shepherd is that it's kind of the best of both worlds. They do the filtering, screening, background checks, all that stuff. So basically, you just say, "I want a personal assistant," and they present you with three great candidates. They present you with five great candidates, and they're filtered, they're checked, and they're basically the best of the best. So they save you a **ton** of time, which, as any business owner knows, you kind of need. On the other side, you don't have to pay the monthly upcharge. They'll say, "Great, here's... you can make the hire directly, and all you pay is the one-time finder's fee for us having found you the candidate." So it ends up being 10 to 20 times cheaper than these other ones in the long run because you just pay the one-time finder's fee. I like that model the best. I think this is the most sustainable long-term because if I'm making, in my business, like I did 15 hires internationally, I don't want to be paying this bloated cost every month from there on out, nor do I want to do all that work myself. So that was the business we ended up investing in. I'm super excited about it.

Sam Parr

It’s the branding on their website. So, it’s supportshepherd.com. Yep, you have to be one of the testimonials. You need a testimonial on there, but it looks good. It’s cute branding. So, Marshall Haas is the guy who started it. Marshall, I’ve known Arnold since 2012, maybe. He’s the type of guy who, whenever he does something, it’s awesome.

Shaan Puri

it looks cool

Sam Parr

so like if you follow him on instagram and on twitter

Shaan Puri

he's got showmanship

Sam Parr

He's got showmanship. He's got the juice. He's got *the juice*. So whenever... For example, I think he just bought a new house, and I'm following the build of that house. He also likes cars, so I saw him redecorate his garage.

Shaan Puri

He owns a boutique hotel and did this e-commerce thing that was super simple. It was actually a really good, successful e-commerce business that was just a phone case. When COVID came out, they introduced this little hook thing, like Captain Hook. You could use it to open doors without having to touch the knob, like a peasant. I thought, "Dude, this guy's great!" He just likes these simple little businesses. The reason he did this is that he ran his businesses using international hiring as his workforce. He partnered with a guy in the Philippines and opened up an office on the ground there with a bunch of recruiters to do all the vetting locally.

Sam Parr

is he going to the philippines now

Shaan Puri

His business partner lives there and has the office open there, so that's how you... You gotta commit if you're going to do these types of things. He basically partnered with the guy who was doing that, and that's how they created Shepard. It started off just like, you know, solving their own itch, but it turns out a lot of people have this itch, myself included.

Sam Parr

So, if he did, I filed... I've not used it, but I will. I would like to use it. I'm gonna... I literally just texted Ben. I really actually want your course. I want to figure out how you do this because I want this. Maybe I'll use these guys, but if his business is going so well, why would he sell a portion to you? Like, my head is... I'm greedy. I'm like, "Get the fuck out of here!" Because, I mean, obviously, we're gonna drive him a little bit, or a lot of bit, of traffic in the pod. Is that the only reason why he would do this?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, basically, they don't spend any money on marketing at all. The way that it spreads is just through word-of-mouth—people coming back. The other way is through entrepreneurs who have an audience saying the words. They first did this with Nick Huber, and Nick has driven them a ton of business because he uses it for all of his businesses. When he talks about it, they get a bunch of traffic. I think he saw the success of that, and basically, we have a large audience now—like through Twitter, through this podcast, and through other things. There's obviously a benefit of, I don't know, like the brand association, as well as the ability to reach a large audience. I think that was appealing to him. But I bought in; I didn't get free shares, right? I bought into the equity pool. I agree with you that when you have a really good business, you're always hesitant. It has to be the right fit. The other benefit was that he listens to the podcast, so he's seen, you know, if you listen to this, you know how we think. You could agree or be like, "This person's great," or "This person's an idiot." If you want to do business with them, if you listen to the podcast regularly, you have a very good idea. There's no hiding our personalities on this.

Sam Parr

do they have a mfm like coupon code is it coupon coupon

Shaan Puri

So, if you go to my website, chamfuri.com/remoteassistant, here's what I got them to do, which is better than a coupon. I was like, "Alright, if you want to do the personal assistant thing the way I did, here's my system. It's $250. You get all the templates and everything." But I was like, "I only want to make money from people who don't take action." So, here's how it works: basically, if you just buy the course and you don't actually hire an assistant, I keep your money. But if you actually go to Shepherd and hire your assistant, then Shepherd will give you double the money back. So, basically, you pay $250, and you'll get $500 if you actually take action and hire. I was like, "That's kind of a no-brainer offer." I told Marshall, "We gotta do this! If people want their own assistant and they actually take action, we should pay them back not just what they paid for the system, but double." Because I bet a bunch of people are just not going to take action, but who cares? I want the people who will take action to be rewarded for doing so. So, that's a pretty sweet deal. Basically, it's like you essentially get my system for free, plus you make an extra $250 if you actually go forward with it and make your hire.

Sam Parr

So first, I want to say, if you're into this stuff, I have no stake in this, by the way. But go to Support Shepherd. I do want them to sign up because here's what I want: I want you to report back, and I want to hear if this whole influencer buys companies thing actually is good. I want the results to be reported back in like a month. I am curious to see what the demand is. I bet it's going to be quite good. Number two, what I'm curious to see is if you like this. I don't know if you're going to like it or not. I could see it going 50/50 either way. So far, how do you feel? I mean, look, if this deal works, then this is like the greatest thing I know.

Shaan Puri

well this

Sam Parr

one is in my brain right now hard part

Shaan Puri

This is already easy. This is already a successful company. I'm already religious about hiring internationally. Anyways, personally in my own businesses, I didn't have to be convinced that this is a good idea. I already knew this is a good idea. The question was, am I going to start my own of these, or should I invest in one that's already working, one that I like and use? I was like, "Okay, cool. Let me just do the second one. That seems like way less work," you know? So I think this one is kind of a no-brainer in that it's a proven business. I am a genuine believer in it. Whether we actually drive extra traffic to them or not, I think it's sort of like... I don't know. Obviously, for them, they want that, and I would like that too. But for me, it was already... do you?

Sam Parr

Say, if it was already your business, what percentage are you? Is that too much to ask or to remind?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I want to disclose that here because I think, you know, it's their business. I don't want to give that away too much, but you know, it's a good chunk.

Sam Parr

I think do you think they'll ever sell the company or do you make your money just through dividends

Shaan Puri

Yeah, just dividends. It's a profitable business; it just pays out dividends. I got our first dividend check yesterday.

Sam Parr

awesome you did you got one already

Shaan Puri

yeah it was fantastic

Sam Parr

This is gonna be your See's Candy. Maybe... I mean, if this works out, that's exciting! I'm curious to see if you're gonna like this because, on one hand, I can actually see you loving this. You get to spend time seeing how things work, and you get to use your skill set, which is content, to tell people about it. Like this segment that we just did. I'm actually interested; I want to keep talking about this just because I want to hear the story about it. I think that's interesting. So, it's kind of a win-win in that regard. I'm curious if you're gonna enjoy all the due diligence. When I talked to Andrew Wilkinson, he actually... I don't think he does a lot of the due diligence. He's got a team to do that. If you are able to pull that off, I think you'll be in a win situation. So, as long as you like doing that... yeah.

Shaan Puri

Let me try with two or three. This one I knew was a slam dunk because I'm just a total believer in it. What's going to be interesting is what happens with ones that aren't perfectly in my zone of like, "I get it, I used it, I believe in it." This one was like a bullseye. I don't expect every business to be exactly a bullseye. So the question is, what happens when it's not exactly? Is it still fun? Do I still believe? Am I still willing to talk about it? Like this one, I'm willing to talk about because I literally wouldn't have my e-commerce business work the way it does or Milk Road work the way it did if I didn't use this strategy. So I'm like, I could talk about that. Now, what happens when it's like one degree separated from that? Am I still going to want to tell a story on it? Maybe it's not even that interesting of a story. I'm not going to come on this podcast and bore everybody with a story that's not that great. So I can't commit to that yet. But I don't know, if somebody wants me to buy, you know, a minor mistake in their business, hit me up. Let's see what happens. I'm going to try two or three of these and see how it goes.

Sam Parr

Was there anything that you learned looking at the 24, other than what you said about the "fix me" stuff? Were there any other revelations, not necessarily about what they had wrong with them, but maybe what they had right with them? Any commonalities between the winners?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, definitely. I would say that the businesses I was most interested in were ones that had a clear sales model. They knew how they were going to get their customers now and in the future. I don't want to say "moat" because it feels like I'm just trying to be Warren Buffett. It's not that they had a moat, but they had either recurring revenue or they were the category leader—the go-to leader. There was some reason why they weren't just going to get copied into oblivion by everybody else. Maybe they had an operational advantage or something else.

Sam Parr

What’s Shepherd's? I mean, I think branding is actually what separates them here. I think that they look cool. Is there anything else?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think Shepherd's real advantage is that they picked a business model that's actually more customer-friendly. Like I said, if your two other options are to spend a bunch of time, have a bunch of uncertainty, hire somebody unvetted, and save a little bit of money, or pay a 3x monthly upcharge, you're kind of nuts to do the 3x monthly upcharge for a long period of time. Especially if you're going to hire multiple roles eventually in your company, it's just not a sustainable path. To me, supporting Shepherd's choice on the business model separated them from the current competitors. Now, somebody else could try to do it, but what are they going to have to do? They're going to have to set up boots on the ground in the Philippines and in Latin America, and really be good at recruiting recruiters who are then going to recruit the talent to actually deliver on these roles and hire high-quality people. The money's not made in your first hire; the money's made when you see the light and come back to them for your next six hires. What I did with e-commerce is that I started with customer support. I was like, "Cool, I need somebody who could do inventory forecasting." People in the U.S. are really expensive for that—$140K for that role here. Could I find somebody overseas that could do inventory forecasting? Can I find somebody who could run our Amazon ads? Can I find somebody who could do wholesale as a channel? Can I find people that do influencer marketing? You start to realize, "Oh wait, this isn't just about what it used to be, which was like VAs equal low-cost labor." Now it's like, "Dude, there are pretty talented people that could do these things." They have three or four years of experience doing that at another company, and so you're able to just pluck from the remote talent pool versus just your local talent pool.

Sam Parr

dude I'm excited to see how this turns out at hampton do you

Shaan Puri

guys have any overseas people yet or no yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, for sure. We have the guy who made our website; he's overseas and on staff. We have our accounting folks, who are called Fuel Finance, and they're overseas as well. If you go to our website, we have this whole back-end system built where people can log in. It was developed by a guy in Hong Kong. We have a ton of overseas resources, and Marshall's a member. We're actually thinking about starting to use them for some data analytics stuff. So, yeah, it's like...

Shaan Puri

the funny thing all

Sam Parr

of a lot of overseas stuff

Shaan Puri

When I was using [an agency for e-commerce], a lot of e-commerce people use agencies. I’ll hire an agency and then they’re like, “Great! Can you add these three people to Slack?” And all of the agents go to...

Sam Parr

they need to talk about their names yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

I'm just like... so, for example, Design Pickle. I think it's like a $10,000,000 a year business that basically offers unlimited design on demand. We tried them out for a little bit. Every single designer is in the Philippines. Then I hired this email marketing guy. I was like, "Oh yeah, just do our email marketing at Flows." He's based in Colorado, and every employee is in the Philippines. I was like, "Okay, that's another one." I hired a web development shop. The owner is in the U.S., but the entire team is in India. You know, another one did the entire thing in Ukraine. It's so funny that people are basically using this as a business model. It's like the owner is in the U.S. doing sales, and fulfillment is all done by teams overseas. And they're good! I'm not even saying this in a bad way; they're talented. But I'm like, "Wow, this is a whole business blueprint, a template that they could use to basically make the margins work."

Sam Parr

When are you going to the Philippines? When is Neckbeard Nation going to the Philippines?

Shaan Puri

we should host the next live pod there

Sam Parr

do we have a following there I I have no idea

Shaan Puri

unfortunately I don't think we do I don't think they give a shit

Sam Parr

dude you gotta go there I've been to

Shaan Puri

the philippines it's awesome very hot

Sam Parr

Tonight, and I've never been... I'll go tonight, and tomorrow I'm taking a 15-hour road trip in my Tesla. It's my first time doing it. We're gonna see if I love it or hate it, so I'm gonna report back on Wednesday.

Shaan Puri

15 hour you said

Sam Parr

it normally takes 12 but you add 3 hours for charging

Shaan Puri

yeah I did a charging retro

Sam Parr

it was horrible where are you

Shaan Puri

going from where where are you going to how what's the distance

Sam Parr

austin to saint louis okay I'm gonna visit my family

Shaan Puri

would you get the x or the y which one do you have

Sam Parr

x long distance 350 miles

Shaan Puri

Is it a new one? Because the thing I screwed up was the one I rented on Turo. It was like 5 years old and it just needed charging every 90 minutes. It was an awful experience.

Sam Parr

well how fast do you go

Shaan Puri

I mean it's like highway right so you're going like whatever 75 miles an hour

Sam Parr

I mean I speed usually I mean I'll I'll go 85 or 90 so we'll see what's gonna happen

Shaan Puri

Crushes the battery. Absolutely crushed the battery, at least that one that I had. It absolutely crushed it. We had a terrible... We did a 7-hour ride [that ended up] self-driving [for] 14 hours because we had to charge so many times.

Sam Parr

wow and by the way you know

Shaan Puri

The charging thing... it's not like you can't just charge. There are certain charges that are fast and some that are slow, you know?

Sam Parr

like don't you just use the thing on the screen that like tells you what to do

Shaan Puri

or like tells you where

Sam Parr

to tells you where the tells you

Shaan Puri

Where the chargers are... I'm saying some of the charging stations and some of the spots are fast chargers and some are slow. It's like a gas pump where one will fill it up at twice the speed as the other. So make sure when you do it, you know that. You go only to the fast chargers and none of the slow ones. The slow ones are like... you had to be like, "I wanted us to go watch a movie so that I could do this slow charge."

Sam Parr

No, I use... there's this app called "A Better Route," I think it's called. This guy has built this whole thing just on routing out people's electric charges, and so I'm going to use that.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

But my wife's flying, and I was like, "I'm driving." I want to drive, but I also want to see what it's like. So, I'm driving, and I'm going to report back on Wednesday to see how it feels. I did it, so I'm going to leave tonight. I'll get a few hours in, and then tomorrow, that way I can plan my life around this podcast. I was like, "We record at 11 my time." I can't arrive that morning; otherwise, I'll be tired and won't have time to do research, right? So, I have to plan it so I get there Tuesday night, but I need a full night's rest so I can wake up and do research and stuff. Do you plan your life around this podcast?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, to an extent, right? Like, you know, this is the one unmissable appointment on my calendar. Everything else is flexible. This is the one non-flexible thing.

Sam Parr

it's no days off I think I mean we've recorded on

Shaan Puri

we missed last week ago so I guess we can't really say that right now

Sam Parr

well wasn't there like an issue

Shaan Puri

yeah we we had a sound issue but we were like no days off people are like you missed last the last number

Sam Parr

That was like a technical error, but we've done, like, whatever the most recent holiday is. We were recording whatever. I think we've done Christmas Eve before. We would always record.

Shaan Puri

Big thanks to everybody who listens! This is a fun thing for us to do. Thank you for listening. Yeah, this is like one of the dope parts of our life, and I think it's attracted a bunch of... I mean, "Neck Beard Nation," right? So it's attracted a bunch of people whose brains are weird the way our brains are weird, and I think that's a lot of fun.

Sam Parr

I want to end with this. I was at this... I'll tell you a very, very, very quick story. I was at this LA tech meetup. First of all, our fans are... that sounds weird, but our listeners come in all shapes and sizes, man. All colors, all... I love it! Like, I... what?

Shaan Puri

does that mean what are you trying to say there

Sam Parr

Dude... I had this guy that looked like he was 7 feet tall, like a basketball player, and I thought he was some famous guy. He comes up, goes "Total man!" and he gave me, you know, like the black guy handshake. I'm like, "Dude..."

Shaan Puri

that's what

Sam Parr

I'm saying

Shaan Puri

black guy you are a total man like you didn't even need to say it bro we know yeah

Sam Parr

He gave me that type of handshake, you know what I'm saying? Then I had this 55-year-old woman who was with her kid at the airport say, "What's up?" I just want to say, first of all, if you're a fan, thank you. Second of all, I can tell, like, walking by if someone listens or not. If they're wearing Lululemon ABC pants or if they look like they go to Columbia University and they make eye contact with you in a particular way, I can tell. I would love for you to come and say, "What's up?" So long as it's a quick, like, "What's up?" Total man, like you could say something.

Shaan Puri

Here's the etiquette: You come over, you fist pound—not handshake or hug. So, let's do knucks. That's the way we do it. We're not trying to dip too much; we're not trying to be palm to palm with anybody. So, give me the knucks. You can reference it; you can know small boy stuff, total man. You could use any of the isms that you want. That just means I know you, and I'll give you the head nod back like, "Yep, you're one of us." Take the selfie together, and then we kind of, you know, keep the show rolling from there.

Sam Parr

But here's the shtick that I need to announce to people, and we gotta put this in every episode: Often times, if they see me with my wife, they'll say "What's up." If they see me with my in-laws or out to eat with friends, they won't say "What's up." And every once in a while they will, and it makes me feel so cool.

Shaan Puri

My God, yeah. The more people I'm with, the more I need you to be over the top with it.

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

My wife doesn't listen to this podcast. She's never heard a single episode, so she doesn't think this is cool. She thinks this is me playing video games up in the bedroom right now. Only when she sees someone come up in person... and even... you know, I was with her mom there and they were like, "Wow!" My dad was there and he's like... he... my dad literally goes, "He must have thought you're someone else."

Sam Parr

we are famous enough that like

Sam Parr

our friends and family actually understand

Sam Parr

and so if you see us out there please

Shaan Puri

give us one say hi yeah give us one

Sam Parr

particularly if

Sam Parr

we're with friends you

Sam Parr

have to do it that will make my day as long as

Sam Parr

it's a short thing I was out to eat

Sam Parr

And like, three different guys... when I was out to eat with my coworkers, I said, "What's up?" I played it off like, "Oh man, can't go anywhere," you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

and in my head I'm like

Sam Parr

I hope there's a 4th

Sam Parr

I hope there's a 4th

Shaan Puri

and so I'm

Sam Parr

and my coworkers were like does this happen all the time I'm like

Shaan Puri

I gotta say, the most embarrassing version of this... So when we were selling the Milk Road, I went to meet up with the guy who bought it, Kendall, at a coffee shop. We're at the coffee shop for a bit, and I see someone kind of looking like they recognize me, but I'm not sure. And I'm like, "Come over, just come over right now," because he [Kendall] doesn't listen to the podcast. I'm trying to do this deal, and I'm thinking, "I think it would help if he felt like I'm a big deal." I was like, "I think that'd be a nice little nudge."

Sam Parr

yeah yes

Shaan Puri

The guy doesn't come over, right? So we go outside. I say bye, and he starts walking away. Then the guy comes over and he's like, "Sean." I'm like, "Yeah?" He goes, "Hey man, you're not Kendall. Come inside." I literally go, "I was like, I'm Kendall. I want you to be my..." I was like, "Hey, have you met Kendall?" He goes, "No." And I was like, "Kendall, yeah, this guy just listens to the pod. I just wanted you to..." I knew it didn't even make sense, and I was like, I forced it so bad, dude. So bad.

Sam Parr

validate me please

Shaan Puri

"Validate me." How do you take a cruel moment and make it the most lame? It was me being like, "Hey, wait! You didn't hear that he recognized me? Come here, have you guys met?" He's like, "No, of course not."

Sam Parr

Oh my god! I've said that before where I'm like, "Hey, say what you said again, but do it in front of my lungs." So, I just want to make this a public service announcement: If you think you know us, or if you think it's us—even if you only think it's kind of us—just take a chance and say what's up! Feel free to be over the top, like, "Yeah, you know, it's awesome!" We love it! It makes me feel good, and it more so makes me look cool, which is what I care about more than anything. So anyway, that's awesome! That's the pod. Good episode!