3 Underdog Stories That’ll Get You Inspired This Week

Shaan Puri

In most areas of life, you shouldn't be hoping for the miraculous save. You know, the one thing that's going to turn your business around or the person who's going to meet you and just give you that opportunity, just hand it to you. But there is an exception.

Sam Parr

Alright Sean, I want to make you feel good. I want to make the world feel good. I saw an inspirational story this weekend and I want to share it with you. It's going to involve some audio and it involves pop culture, which you don't know anything about. So... I think that some of our listeners might know about the story, but I think it'll be particularly cool for you. Alright, so there's this singer-songwriter guy I love. His name's Noah Kahan. Have you heard of Noah Kahan?

Shaan Puri

Noah Khan? I can't say I have.

Sam Parr

He describes himself as the "Jewish Ed Sheeran." He's a good singer-songwriter, a great singer. He's got a little folk in his sound, almost like Mumford and Sons meets Ed Sheeran, but based out of Vermont. Do you know anything about... do you...?

Sam Parr

Do you know anything about New England folk music?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm into that kind of music, actually.

Sam Parr

Like the Lumineers type of deal. He graduated high school and decided not to go to college. He was able to get a small record deal right out of school. The record deal was only okay. That sounds like a big deal, but it's like you just kind of barely get by. They're almost like buying an option on you that you're going to be a big deal. He has a couple of songs that are kind of hits. I think one time he got to go on "The Stephen Colbert Show" and play one of his songs. But again, that's pretty awesome, but if that's all you're known for—doing it one time—you're still kind of like, "Shit, I gotta go get a job. I'm not sure if this is gonna work." So, the pandemic hits. He's living in LA at the time, trying to make it big, but he's like, "Shit, what am I gonna do? I guess I'll just go back home to Vermont where my parents live and I have a little bit more space." He kind of gets depressed, where he's eating bad food and smoking weed all day. He's like, "What the hell am I gonna do with my career? I can't go out and play; I'm a nobody right now. What am I gonna do?" So he's like, "Well, TikTok, I guess seems kind of neat. Let's try that." He starts posting some of his songs on TikTok, and a few of them do okay. I think he gets like 50,000 followers or something like that. So again, it's like a mediocre success. But then one night, it took him about 20 minutes, and he writes a verse to a song called "Stick Season." He plays this one verse on TikTok.

Noah Kahan

I see you when it rains. The doctor told me to travel, but there's COVID on the plane, so I'm fucked. I'm fucked, and I suck. You suck. The fence sucks.

Sam Parr

**Fuck. Alright, so this is just a 22-second video that he posts on TikTok. It's good, but he posts it, and like 2 or 3 hours later, no one replies. He's like, "This sucks, I'm just gonna delete this thing." But let me finish... kinda getting high because he said he was eating an edible when he posted this. He's like, "Let me finish getting high." He ends up passing out and sleeps through the night. When he wakes up, this video gets like 200,000 likes and about 100,000 comments. He's like, "Shit, I better finish this song and actually complete this song because it sounds like people like this verse." So this all happened in about 2021. He finishes that song, it blows up. Now, 2 weeks ago, this guy's from New England. Last week, he sold out Fenway Park, the stadium, for like, you know, whatever, 50,000 people. He brings his parents on stage. So he writes that song, puts it out, it blows up, it goes viral. The guy, in a matter of 3 years, goes from just a dude in his parents' house playing on TikTok, posting a verse of a song. What's funny is that in 2019, right when he was doing this, he tweeted out, "I'm probably not gonna ever sell out Madison Square Garden. In fact, I'm probably not even gonna sell all the shows that I have for this tour. But as long as you'll have me, I'll keep writing some songs." And he played Fenway Park and sold it out. Actually, a few days ago, he sold out Madison Square Garden 3 nights in a row. I wanted to share this story with you because it makes me feel awesome. It also shows that if you put your shit out there—this is what the internet's for—if you put your stuff out there, even if it's incomplete, people love seeing progress.

Shaan Puri

Dude, that's right up my alley! I have two or three things that this reminds me of. The first is, I forgot who it was we were talking to recently, but I was having a discussion and the idea came up that in most areas of life, you shouldn't be hoping for like the miraculous save. You know, the one thing that's going to turn your business around or the person who's going to meet you and just give you that opportunity, just hand it to you. However, there is an exception in content. In content, you're really one hit away. Just because your earlier stuff hasn't taken off doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. You get a lot of false negatives, but then sometimes you get these breakout positives. This is an example of that. The guy goes to sleep with no comments; he's basically planning to just delete the video, thinking it was a bust. Yet, he was just one hit away from his entire life changing. There's something pretty magical about that when it comes to only a few areas of life. I think this is true in all the arts—movies, music, content—but also even games. When we had Dan Porter on, he was talking about his company, which was failing. He basically had a few weeks left, and he said, "Let's make one last game." He made it this time, even though he wasn't a game designer, and he just created Draw Something. This was a stupid simple app that just took off like wildfire. So, being one hit away is sort of like a last bullet in the chamber that you can think about and continue to operate with some hope. I think that's pretty powerful.

Sam Parr

Which implies, by the way, that you're taking lots of shots.

Shaan Puri

Dude, so my most viral Twitter thread was that Clubhouse thread when Clubhouse was, you know, all the rage. I came out and I posted this really long thread, like 30 to 40 tweets long, about how I thought everything with Clubhouse was going to take off or was the next big thing, but I didn't think it was going to work. The very first comment was from this guy who worked at Facebook. When we were getting acquired by Facebook, he was the principal engineer who was vetting all of our team. I post this thread, and you know when you push send? It's like that Mailchimp GIF where the finger is shaking right above the button, and you're like, you know, you're putting yourself out there a little bit. His first thing was, "Dude, this is way too long. Nobody's going to read this. This is too much." He said it in a way that wasn't even like a hater; he was just concerned, like, "What are you thinking, man? This is ridiculous." I was straight up about to just delete the whole thing, but I decided to let it ride for a couple more minutes. Then it started to just immediately get a bunch of other positive replies. I was very close to deleting it right there, and that was a thread that went so viral that all of a sudden Malcolm Gladwell was following me. There were all these crazy things going on in the next, you know, three days of my life because 10 to 20 million people read that. So it's just a reminder: don't count yourself out too early if it doesn't have the initial success. That's the first thing. The second thing: you found my fetish. I am a sucker for amateur singing talent. I have entire folders on YouTube and TikTok. I don't want to see famous people on stage, polished. I like, you know, when it's like this seventh-grade boy and he just starts singing, and the rest of the class is like, "What? Jacob, you could sing?" There are all these clips on TikTok that are like that, and I'm a sucker for that stuff.

Sam Parr

Alright guys, really quick. Back when I was running The Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called **Trends**. The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and created a sort of playbook for researching different companies, ideas, and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses. Well, HubSpot did something kind of cool. They took this playbook that we developed and gave to our analysts, and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download. It breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends and identifying different companies that are going to explode and grow really quickly. It's pretty awesome that they took this internal document, which we use for teaching our analysts how to do this, and turned it into a tool that they are giving away for free. Anyone can download it! So, if you want to stay ahead of the game and find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea exist, this is the ultimate guide. If you want to check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now, back to the show.

Shaan Puri

And you know who has a moment like that? Justin Bieber. You know, he got discovered on YouTube. You know who else got discovered in a very funny way? Like you said, this guy is the Jewish Ed Sheeran—Ed Sheeran himself. Have you heard the story about how Ed Sheeran got discovered?

Sam Parr

I didn't know he was discovered. I know that he's been famous since he was like 16, so I guess it must have been when he was young.

Shaan Puri

So, there are a couple of interesting things. We should play this clip. There's a clip of Ed Sheeran on a talk show, and he's like, "Everyone's like, 'Oh Ed, you're so talented, blah blah blah.'" He goes, "Listen to me. When I was 14, I kinda started to blow up in my, you know, 17, 18, 19 age range. I got discovered. But here's me at 13, 14."

Ed Sheeran

When people say artists are born with talent, you know, you have to really learn and practice. This is me playing guitar and singing. I'm gonna put it into my mic like this, okay?

Shaan Puri

And it is awful. It sounds like if I picked up a guitar right now and genuinely tried to sing, it would sound that bad. He's like, "Yeah, I just... that's how I started. It was really bad." He kept practicing. So what ended up happening with Ed Sheeran is he knows he wants to make it. He has a small following because he's from the UK. He comes to LA and says, "I'm gonna just come to the mecca and try to figure out how to make it in this scene here." He gets a couple of fortunate breaks. He goes to an open mic night type of thing and performs on stage. You never know who's in the crowd. In the crowd is Jamie Foxx's business manager. He sees him and thinks, "Oh, this white boy is good." He's intrigued by him. So he tells Jamie the next day, "Jamie, on your radio show, I have a guest for you. I want you to have this guy come on for 5 minutes." Ed Sheeran comes on Jamie Foxx's radio show. He plays his 5-minute bit, and Jamie Foxx is like, "Alright, I'm interested. What's your deal, man? Who are you? Are you signed? What's your situation?" Ed replies, "No, I mean, not only am I not signed, I'm homeless. I just came out here to LA. I don't have money. I don't have anything." So Jamie says, "Come sleep on my couch." Yeah, and Jamie Foxx has actually done this with many artists who have gone on to make it. He would just say, "If you have talent, you got something, just come stay at my place. I got tons of extra rooms." Jamie Foxx is notorious for throwing epic parties. He's one of the most connected guys in Hollywood because he's a movie star, a musician, and a comedian. He's very funny. He would throw these almost like salons where he'd get people from movies, music, and comedy to all come hang out at his house.

Sam Parr

Neville Medora and Noah Kagan went to one of them, and they told me all about it.

Shaan Puri

What did they say?

Sam Parr

They said he has a piano there in the other room. People just slowly work their way towards the piano, and it's almost like an open mic night.

Shaan Puri

He'll just start performing, right?

Sam Parr

Yeah, and like, Jamie starts, and someone raises their hand. Then someone else pops in. It's oddly a salon—a great way to describe it. It's like a place to discover one another.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, Ed Sheeran's there, and I think he plays at one of the parties. People are like, "Oh, this is kinda cool." The next night, Jamie's like, "Alright, I'm gonna test this guy." He takes him to a club that's basically an all-black club. Every artist on stage is either slam poetry, rap, R&B, or hip hop. Then, here you have this redhead, freckled teenage boy holding a ukulele. They're like, "Ed Sheeran?" Ed Sheeran comes up on the stage with his ukulele. Jamie Foxx is in the crowd, and his guy is like, "Jamie, come on! Why you gotta mess up the vibe? Who is this guy? Why you gotta put this guy on the stage?" So, Ed improvises. He starts off doing his own song, then reads the room a little bit. He transitions into a freestyle version of 50 Cent's "In Da Club" while he's on his ukulele, basically playing an Ed Sheeran version of a 50 Cent rap. The crowd just gets lit! There's a video of this online if you want to see it. The first performance has kind of poor quality audio and video. During his performance, people get so hyped that the emcee, who was pretty skeptical, just gets on stage with him and starts performing. This girl gets up on stage and starts performing with him, and it just turns into this whole thing. Jamie goes, "That's when I knew if he can win over this crowd, he's gonna win." Then he made introductions and ended up getting him signed.

Sam Parr

Dude, I love those stories! Doesn't that make you feel good? Yeah, that makes me feel so good. I love those stories. Do you have another inspirational story about my favorite thing on earth, the Olympics?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so the Olympics is going on right now. The opening ceremony just happened, and I saw this story that I hadn't heard before. You might know it because you're an Olympics guy. Have you ever heard of Eric the Eel?

Sam Parr

No, I haven't heard this one.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so there's this guy, Eric. Eric is from Equatorial Guinea, which I guess is a country. At the 2000 Olympics happening in Sydney, there's this footage. Let me just work through this. I don't know who this guy is; I just see this footage. The footage is from the Olympic swimming trials. You see a guy, a Black dude, with goggles on and trunks, and he's just feeling nervous. There are two people next to him, and they're at the starting blocks, about to say "go." The two other guys false start; they just jump in too early. This guy doesn't move. Now, this is the qualifying heat, and his two competitors are disqualified. So you're like, "Oh, well, this guy gets a free run." But what you don't know is that this guy, Eric, who's about to have a free pass into the event, it's not a free pass because this guy basically doesn't know how to swim.

Sam Parr

Yeah, yes. And like some background: basically, in most cases to qualify for the Olympics for the running or anything that's timed, there's a qualifier. So you have to hit a certain time. But for some countries... I don't know how they decide who they just get to have [participate]. Like...

Shaan Puri

Just... there's a wild card draw, so it's like a lottery raffle.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and then they go to the country. They go, "Just send us your best."

Shaan Puri

So, he wins this thing and he has **8 months** now to prepare for the Olympic Games. Could you just imagine that? You randomly win this draw, and in **8 months**, you're going to be swimming in front of the whole world. This is a guy who's never left his home country. He's never swum before. He gets access to a hotel, and in the hotel, there's a pool that he can swim in for **1 hour a day**, from **5 AM to 6 AM**. The pool is **13 meters** long, and he's training for the **100 meter freestyle**. So, he's training in a **13 meter** pool, but he's going to have to swim **10 times** that distance in the real Olympics. Pretty quickly, Eric realizes that **1 hour a day** is not going to be enough. He starts going to rivers and oceans, just trying to learn to swim. He doesn't actually know how; he doesn't have a coach. When he's swimming in these rivers, there are literally fishermen watching him. They're like, "Son, you gotta use your legs! What are you doing?" They're trying to teach him how to coordinate his body and how to float. Fast forward **8 months**, it's go time. He shows up at the **Sydney Olympics**. It takes him **3 days** to travel there, and he's never flown before. When he gets to the Olympic facilities, his jaw drops. He sees the pool size and thinks, "Oh my God, I've never swum in a pool this large." As he's preparing for the event, the other coaches and swimmers are wondering why this guy is so nervous during practice. He's not even going in the water; he doesn't know what to do. The South African coach starts helping him, and these other guys begin to assist as well. They ask him, "Do you need goggles?" He replies, "Yes," and they give him goggles. They're trying to teach him the day before the event, and he's cramming for the exam.

Sam Parr

Cramming for the exam for a language that you just learned two weeks ago.

Shaan Puri

And everyone in the world is watching you take the exam. If you fail the exam, you drown and you're dead. That's the problem because when the other two guys start, he's going to get a free pass. All he has to do is finish, but he's never swum 100 meters consecutively. He's trained in a 13-meter pool. So he jumps in and he starts. Okay, he's going and he's going, but he starts getting really tired before he even hits the turn, the 50-meter turn. He finally gets to the turn and at the turn, he stays under for so long that there are literally gasps in the crowd. They think he's drowned; he's just caught in a riptide basically. Finally, he comes up and he's going so slow it looks like he can't make it. He is so exhausted, and the crowd just starts going nuts. They're like, "Go! Go! Go!" They don't know why this guy's going so slow. Why is this Olympic athlete struggling? They don't know, but they know something's wrong and they just want to get on his side.

Sam Parr

It's like a Jamaican bobsled moment.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. He finishes in a minute and 52 seconds, which is like an extra minute past what it should have been. That's a very long time for something like this. You know, these races are decided by tenths of a second. So, he qualifies and gets to the actual Olympic trial. He obviously then loses, but this guy embodies that Olympic spirit that anyone, anywhere in the world can do something amazing. The crowd goes nuts. He ends up becoming the national coach for his country decades later. And that's the story of Eric the Eel.

Sam Parr

Did they ever produce any legit swimmers?

Shaan Puri

Well, let's keep the story inspirational. So, I'm going to no comment that one. I don't know if there's ever been a medalist from Equatorial Guinea.

Sam Parr

That's awesome! No, I remember watching this years ago, and it is inspirational. Do you want to do your sleep ad thing, or do you want me to tell you about a car thing?

Shaan Puri

Let's do your car thing.

Sam Parr

Alright, so I'm buying... I want to buy a new car, and I want to tell you about two interesting things that I've discovered. We'll start with **CarEdge**. It's a pretty genius business idea, and these guys have been quietly building up a pretty epic business. The story of this business is that it was started by a father and son duo. The father's name is Ray, and the son is Zach. The father managed car dealerships for years and thought, "Oh, I know the ins and outs." His son, who was around 24 or 25 at the time, always wanted to start an internet business. He also liked YouTube and said, "Hey Dad, what if I just asked you some questions on YouTube about how to properly negotiate at the car dealership or how much profit car dealerships make? This way, we know better what to ask for." You know, things like that.

Shaan Puri

Love it! Gonna work.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and within something like 8 weeks, they got 13,000 followers on this YouTube page. They were like, "You know, we're gonna buy all these fancy cameras," but then they just got their iPhones and made it kind of janky. People kinda liked it, and it was during the pandemic, so people were watching a lot of that stuff. They parlayed that into starting a business called CarEdge. So if you go to CarEdge.com, what's it say? Do you see the headline?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it says, "Your personal car shopper is here. No hassle, always fair prices." So basically, they will help you buy a car.

Sam Parr

So, the way it works is there's this thing called an auto broker or a car broker. I think you got your car now from a friend of ours who's a car broker. The industry is typically like mom-and-pop businesses. A lot of times, if you Google "car broker New York City," you're going to find kind of a mom-and-pop website. You get on the phone or send an email to this person, tell them what type of car you want, and they have relationships with tons of dealers. They know the ins and outs of the car business. You pay them a fee, which can range from $500 to $2,000, and they typically will go and buy the car for you. The savings you get in the price of the car is usually better than the fee you pay them, so it's no big deal. They do all the negotiating for you, so it's not uncomfortable for you. What these guys did is they took a kind of startup-y, internet vibe and created a nice website. You go to their website, and you can search for different cars. They have a variety of products. For example, one option is about $80 a month or $50 a month, and they provide tons of information, like a database on what the profit margin is on different cars. This way, you can negotiate yourself. Alternatively, you can spend $1,000, tell them the car you want, and they will go and buy it for you. They'll even organize the shipping to you and handle all the logistics. If you don't save at least $1,000, you just get your money back. They built this massive business because, if you go to their YouTube page, I think they now have 600,000 subscribers. It's this really cute dynamic between a father and son.

Shaan Puri

All the pictures on the site, by the way, are like the dad giving the son a noogie. It's just wholesome... just so wholesome.

Sam Parr

And that father and son dynamic for the brand... it makes you like them a lot. They're... you know, there are a bunch of car podcasts, but we basically... what they described, what they wanted to do, is... they probably have no idea who we are, but it's what you and I do. I'm just kind of like riffing, a little less professional.

Shaan Puri

You’re the father, I would assume? Am I?

Sam Parr

You're older than me. You can be the dad.

Shaan Puri

You know how there was this big viral thing where it was like, "PewDiePie versus T-Series"? Like, who can have the most subscribers on YouTube? Yeah, so these guys currently have **533,000** subscribers. Your boys have **529,000**. We are **4,000** subscribers behind Car Edge. I'm just going to leave that there for our loyal army who doesn't want to see us lose to this father-son car buying duo. Go to YouTube and subscribe! Alright, yeah, back to us a little bit.

Sam Parr

This business is now doing... He has a video where he breaks down the revenue. He pulls up their QuickBooks and you can see it, but he blurs out the numbers. I messaged them and I was like, "Hey, I have this thing, this podcast..." and he goes, "Yeah, you know, I've heard of it." I go, "Just can you tell me the numbers and I can talk about it?" And so he did. So this business is now doing roughly **$10 million a year in revenue**. I think it's only 2 years old or so, and it seems like a great business. These things could be really cool, I think.

Shaan Puri

Honestly, I thought it would be almost bigger because looking at the traffic, they get almost 2,000,000 visitors a month to their site. That is a huge amount of traffic for this thing. So, I am extremely impressed that this is only 2 years old.

Sam Parr

It could be 3, but yeah, something like that.

Shaan Puri

Is this something you'd normally do when you buy cars? Do you use car brokers?

Sam Parr

I haven't, but I've heard of them. We actually talked about it years ago, about people who... you know, I brought this up in one of the early episodes. I've never actually used it, but I remember last time I bought my car, I was in the dealership for like 4 hours just signing paperwork, wiring the money. It took forever, and I was like, "I'm never doing this again." So I just started googling car brokers. I was like, "I'm gonna try one," and that's how I found these guys.

Shaan Puri

And were they YouTube first? So it was an audience person, right? Yeah, YouTube first. Did they even plan to launch this as a service, or did it start as just "let's make a YouTube channel"?

Sam Parr

The kid, Zach, has a blog where he's been blogging since he was 22. Previously, he ran a small information business that was doing about $150,000 in revenue. It's cool to see him blogging as he goes. He mentioned, "I've always wanted to learn how to make money on the internet and start an internet company." You can see that he had two or three businesses that weren't huge or anything, but it was very promising for a 21-year-old. I have a feeling—I kind of clicked their LinkedIn profiles and looked around—that the mother passed away from cancer. I think there was a feeling that Zach, the kid, was like, "You know, I want to be with my father more. Let's see if we can do something together."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's got some cool blog posts. Getting your first customers is really hard, and he talks about getting their early customers for this. Then another one is "From 10 to 14,000 Subscribers in 3 Weeks: Here's What We Learned." Here's what happened and here's what I learned. I haven't read these yet, but I'm just looking at the titles. These are cool, I'm gonna check these out.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this is a cool kit. I think he's only 25; I think he's young, and it's just a really promising business. In some of the blog posts, he talks about how he's like, "Now I have to project financials so we can decide when to hire people." So you're actually seeing him do this in real time. But he's not in you and my world, and so it's a really fun business to pay attention to and see what this guy is going to build.

Shaan Puri

Isn't it cool how there are father-son businesses, or just parent-kid businesses, but not in a succession or hand-me-down type of way? A couple of examples of this: We had Al come on and talk about Missouri Star, the biggest quilting store on the internet. It's Al and his mom, and he's like, you know, I think her name is Debbie. He's like, "Yeah, same thing with the YouTube channel where she makes content and she's the star." Al was like, "Cool, I'll figure out the internet and e-commerce part of this, and let's make this a thing." This is a nine-figure business that sells quilt supplies to other moms across the country. It's amazing that Al and his mom run that business together.

Sam Parr

And Al does a thing that I love. When he refers to his mother, he doesn't say "my mom." He goes, "Yeah, I was just hanging out and mom wanted to quilt." You know, like when they use "mom" as a proper noun? I love that! Whenever I hear someone do that, like when they just refer to them as "mom" and not "my mom," it really stands out to me. Yeah, Jenny.

Shaan Puri

So, it's Al and Jenny. They basically create it, and her YouTube videos are great, by the way. I've randomly watched them, even though I have no interest in quilting. I'm interested in her videos because she's so wholesome and she's so good on camera. I think that's a great example. We had the guys from FarmCon and Ag Swag—same thing, father and son doing business together, but not in a legacy way. You know, you could take over my business, but they started new businesses together. I just think that's so cool. If my kids want to do something like that, that'll be a blast.

Sam Parr

I would love that more than anything. I think if I had to bet, more often than not, it turns negative. But if you get the right parent-child relationship, it's like magical. It seems like the greatest thing on earth.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but they say that about everything. Like doing business with your friends - "Oh, don't mix business and friends or family." I've done both. I've done business with my wife, with my sister-in-law, with my best friends... I've done businesses with all of them and...

Sam Parr

**But it's high risk, high reward.**

Shaan Puri

When it works, it feels like a cheat code because the trust is there, the fun is there, and it's like, "Why wouldn't I want to do life with these people?" Of course! And when it goes wrong, you're like, "What the hell was I thinking?" Well, do...

Sam Parr

You know who Coco Gauff is? She's the tennis player who was the flag bearer in the Olympics. I was reading about her last night because she's been inspirational lately. Her father was like, "Man, when she was like 9, we were like, wow, this little girl is very promising." So both the mom and dad quit their jobs and moved to Florida, where their extended family was, to help care for their kids. They went all in on trying to teach her tennis. The father, who I think was a college football player, didn't know anything about tennis. He learned about tennis and became her coach. She would say, "Yeah, it was really challenging, that relationship, but we came up with a really good solution. The center of the court was Switzerland. If he and I had an argument, we would come to the middle, and then mom would come and be the third party and decide who was right and who was wrong. She would help us figure things out." So, they built a good system where they could communicate effectively for the last, you know, 20 years, however long they've been coaching together. Alright, let me tell you one last thing about this car stuff that I found. There's this hilarious TikTok series created by a car dealership. This is Mohawk Chevrolet. Yes, it's called Mohawk Chevrolet. It's just a normal Chevy truck dealer.

Shaan Puri

Is this like *The Office*? What's happening?

Sam Parr

Listen to this. They hired this young woman to be a social media person. She's 23, from Kentucky, or she went to the University of Kentucky, something like that. Within six months on the job, she films a video where she places a bunch of random rubber ducks all over the dealership. Everyone's trying to figure out who put the ducks there because it's kind of annoying. She films this office-like series of her interviewing people and then shows cutaways of what's going on. It hits on TikTok, and eventually, she creates a 10-episode series about the dealership where they're all improving, but it is like an Emmy Award-winning series.

Shaan Puri

Wow, dude! This is such a good find. This is so cool!

Sam Parr

So, people... I think they've got millions and millions of views. The young woman who did it is, like I said, 23. Chevy, Geico, and all these huge brands are commenting and making jokes on the TikToks. So many people are saying, "For real, this should be on Netflix! I want to watch this." Some Twitter person, I guess, or maybe a Substack writer, her name's Rachel Carton. I want to give her a shout-out. She discovered this and interviewed Grace on her Substack. Then she did a really cool interview where she talks about the process. She's like, "Well, me and Ben, my partner, we just come up with interesting ideas. We don't write scripts. I just go into the corner of this, like, as if I'm Pam. I sit there like Pam and I just kind of babble. We find a few minutes of gold and we build a story off that. Then we go and make episodes every week." She is wonderful! This is the greatest thing I've seen. People are like, "Hey, what's going to happen next episode?" The characters are just other people in the dealerships, like the mechanics or whatever. The episodes will be like, "Today, my boss Jim, the owner of the dealership, wants me to make a video about electric Chevys because no one wants to buy them; they're afraid of them. I don't know what I'm going to do." And it's like the episode is her trying to figure that out. It is so good!

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! Yeah, I want to check this out. And also, Grace, you said her name is...?

Sam Parr

Is that her name? Grace Kerber? Yeah.

Shaan Puri

I haven't even seen a single video yet. I just heard about this literally a minute and a half ago. Grace, I'd like to make you a job offer: whatever you're making currently at the dealership, we're tripling it. Come work for us! You've got to do this at a different scale than the local car dealership, but that is... that is so impressive. I'm... this is amazing.

Sam Parr

She's a really good actress. She leans into it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I can just see from the thumbnail here. It's like so good.

Sam Parr

And the most impressive part is, imagine a 23-year-old coming into a truck dealership, which is probably all dudes, particularly like frat bros.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Sam Parr

And she's like, "Yeah, we're gonna do it this way. Let's just do it."

Shaan Puri

It looks beautiful because they're probably like, "We're not even doing TikTok. We have nothing to lose." Right? Like, you know when you have nothing to lose, you can try something new. You could never do this at, you know, the corporate account for Cadillac or whatever.

Sam Parr

Someone on Twitter was like, "Looking at the search traffic for Mohawk Chevrolet, and as expected, it's through the roof." So I guess it's working. Those are my two car stories.

Shaan Puri

That was a great segment! Good finds. Okay, I have a cool find for you. I want to tell you about a wellness and health app that's doing over $100,000,000 a year. You might think, "Is this healthcare? Is it AI? Is it biotech?" No, no. I'm talking about **Pokémon Sleep**. Have you ever heard of Pokémon Sleep? No? Just check this out. The Pokémon Company has created a sleep tracking app where you just take your phone and put it on your pillow right next to you while you sleep. Depending on how well you sleep and how long you sleep, you catch Pokémon in your sleep. You wake up in the morning, and it's a sleep tracker that catches Pokémon based on how well or how poorly you slept. It's gamified sleep tracking! Now, this app is blowing up. It is huge in Japan right now. I think like 40% of their users are all in Japan, and they've done over $100,000,000 in revenue on this app already. Isn't this insane?

Sam Parr

What? How?

Shaan Puri

Well, this is in-app purchases, basically.

Sam Parr

What do you buy?

Shaan Puri

Go look on Reddit. If you go look on Reddit, you can find people talking about it. So, I'm just going to read you a couple of Reddit posts. One says, "To be honest, my true intent with Pokémon Sleep is just to have a consistent bedtime, and it definitely helps with that. I was never the type to lay in bed with my phone, playing games, but this does help me just put away my phone, put it on the pillow. Even though it's not super accurate, it is helping me." Another post mentions, "I did move my bedtime from 2 AM to 10 PM daily because I was getting frustrated at having to wake up with so little sleep. I tried so many things; they all failed. Pokémon Sleep managed to make a lifestyle change that $2,000 in therapy has not. I'm even willing to spend money on occasionally buying bundles in the app because it's actually cheaper than what I was paying to try to improve my sleep before this."

Sam Parr

Oh my God, this is insane! Is this owned by, like, Nintendo or whoever?

Shaan Puri

The yeah.

Shaan Puri

It's owned by Pokémon. If you go to the site Pokémon Company International, it's like corporate.pokemon.com. That's the thing behind it. But it has 10,000,000 users, and only 17% are in the U.S. I think there's an opportunity to grow in the U.S. They are obviously going to try to expand, but I believe there's a chance to replicate the same idea. I've had this thought: health tracking right now is all quantitative, and nobody really does a remix of it that's fun. Step tracking is a super common thing; everybody likes it. However, step tracking has just been the same. Everyone just looks at, "Oh, did I get my 10,000 steps today?" It's just me versus me. Even the ones that try to make it social, where you might be able to add friends or whatever, it's not really a social thing to do. I had this idea years ago: why don't they just make it look like Mario Kart? Imagine me and my eight friends at the starting line each day. As we're taking steps, we each have our little car that's ahead or behind the other person. It would tell you if you get passed by somebody during the day, like, "Oh, Sam just passed you." Then you look at that map and think, "Oh shit, Sam's like, you know, 1,000 steps ahead. I'm going to actually go get some more steps in." You would have your car, and you could buy your skins or whatever. Make it look however you want. It's about taking the same idea but making it more fun and social, rather than just the hardcore data tracking version.

Sam Parr

A few years ago, my four friends and I did something for a couple of years in a row. I think it was every January we would wear... was it a Whoop band? We would compete, and the person who burned the most energy for the entire month won. It became this crazy competition where you'd think, "Shit, I can't go to sleep right now because John's beat me on calories. I gotta go burn some calories!" It was like, "John's winning," and it just became about who could exert the most energy in January. It is **so exhausting**. I think...

Shaan Puri

Joe Rogan does that with his friends, right?

Sam Parr

Yeah, we definitely stole that idea from him. What does he call it? Sober October?

Shaan Puri

Sober October? Yeah, yes.

Sam Parr

But when he started it, there weren't... the bands didn't really exist. And so once they came out, we took the bands and we did the same thing. Those competitions 100% work. There's a guy I follow on Twitter who walks 30,000 steps a day, and it's like... and then everyone else will post their steps, like their step counts that night just to compare it. It 100% makes you want to walk more, right?

Shaan Puri

So, actually, I had an interesting conversation at this event I was at with Nick Gray. Nick Gray, side note, might be my favorite person.

Sam Parr

He's a treasure.

Shaan Puri

He was talking about, he's like, "Dude, my first muscle challenge you guys did was so wholesome. It was so fun! I did it with my friends." He's like, "My buddy who I did it with, who didn't even listen to the pod before, started listening. He also now, if he's just traveling and needs a quick workout, like what can I do in 15 or 20 minutes? He just does that again and he texts me every time he does it." So, I think Nick created a version of that called "Done," which I love. He's like, "You should steal this. You guys should do this. Keep the momentum of my first muscle challenge." So, he has this thing called "Done." It's like a group of people that all agree, "We're gonna do X every day." I forgot what X is; it might be walking a certain amount of steps, might be cold plunges, might be whatever. Let's assume you set the bar. What he did was he made a WhatsApp group, and in the WhatsApp group, you can only send one word: "Done." That's it. Every day, people just say "Done" whenever they did the thing. You can't say anything else, but you get the momentum from other people saying "Done." You're like, "Shit, I gotta get mine in." Then he has his assistants in the Philippines who will go in, and if you haven't said "Done" for like 3 or 4 days, they'll DM you or they'll nudge you and they'll be like, "Come on, man! You can do this, you know? Stay in it." I just thought that was great. He's like, "You should definitely keep that alive in some ways, like do the Done group. It's amazing." So, I think we should come up with a new challenge like that and just do it the way Nick did—with one word. Keep it super simple: "Done."

Sam Parr

I think what we need to do is the "My First Muscle" challenge again, except this time we tell people when it's happening. I think people will... I mean, I know I would train to get ready for it. Because if you don't work that energy system, it's quite hard. Like, I would train for it. Did you... you were with Nick this weekend, right? Did you meet any other people at this event?

Shaan Puri

I met a ton of people. What would you like to know? Here's a fun way you can maybe do this. I came home and I brain dumped all of my notes into this document. I did it almost like a Twitter thread. It's not like a long blog post with one coherent message; I just bullet pointed about 30 points. So, I want you to just pick a number. Let's do 3 of them. I won't do too many. Pick 3 random numbers between 1 and 30, and I'm just going to read you whatever that bullet was. These are notes to myself, so I'll have...

Sam Parr

To add some context, but like, "Well, I can't see them." That's alright.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you can't see them. Just say the number. 1. The best advice is free by definition. Okay, so what does this mean? At this event, there's lots of talk, speakers on stage, that sort of thing.

Sam Parr

Are you going to say what the event is? We didn't actually say.

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, yeah, sorry. So, Andrew Wilkinson, our buddy Andrew, hosts an event called "Interesting People," and this is the second year he's done it. He invites a bunch of people out to where he lives in Victoria, Canada. It's supposed to just be a mixing of interesting people that either he knows really well—like some people he grew up with—some people he knows from the internet, and some people he doesn't know but they sounded interesting when they applied. It's probably 80 to 90 people. It's a super well-run event, and I had a blast. While I was there, I was thinking about conferences in general, and I realized that the best advice is free by definition. What I mean by this is that advice that is truly great is actually incredibly simple. If it would apply to you almost in a generic way, it's going to be simple and almost hilariously uncomplicated. Like, if I said, "Sam, you know nothing about me, but you know that I want to get in shape. Tell me what to do. You have like 15 seconds. Go ahead, tell me what to do."

Sam Parr

One gram of protein per pound. Lift weights 3 days a week. Walk 10,000 steps a day.

Shaan Puri

Great! Now, if I said you wanted to create a course around that, maybe you could. But you'd have to make it complicated. You'd have to add a whole bunch of other things. The best advice in the world tends to be incredibly simple—so simple that you couldn't charge for it. The best advice is free because either the great advice is so simple that you couldn't possibly charge for it, or it would be laughable to charge for something like that. For example, to say, "Well, yeah, eat whole foods, try to get enough protein, walk, and get good sleep," right? Or whatever. Exercise three times a week, do weight lifting—these are such simple things that you can't create a whole course or program around it in that simple way. On the other side, advice that is non-obvious, like that non-common sense advice, is hard-won. Wisdom usually comes from people who are so successful that they would be willing to give it away for free. The advice from the real winners of life—they're not charging you for it because they've won. They're fully abundant and happy to pass on what worked for them. So, I realized that the best advice comes at either end of that barbell. It either comes from people who are so successful that they wouldn't think to charge for it because that'd be beneath them, or it's so simple that you couldn't possibly charge for it because it takes a minute to tell you the answer. After that, it's about you following it. I think that is a general way that I'm now thinking about advice. Anything that falls in the middle is the "midwin." It's basically advice that is overly complicated. You're paying for it, and ultimately, you haven't actually found the most useful version of the advice.

Sam Parr

Were there any people who you met who were shockingly amazing or interesting?

Shaan Puri

Nick Gray, Greg Eisenberg. So, Greg... Greg.

Sam Parr

A lot of people know.

Shaan Puri

Greg, because he's on Twitter or whatever, is ten times more fun in person than he is online. You might even like his online content, but I'm saying he's that much better in person. He is just like a walking vibe. Whenever I'm around him, it's just fun. I'm laughing, and it's very interesting what's going on. I guess the way I approach these events is that I'm just looking for two or three people that I think are amazing. I've been looking for people who have a certain energy about them, a certain way of being that is good to interact with. I already have a day-to-day life routine, and if I'm getting out of my routine to go to something, I don't want to just spend it with people who are the same as my usual routine. So, I try to make an effort to hang out with people who maybe I don't hang out with all the time or to interact in a way that is not just like my normal zone.

Sam Parr

Was there anyone else that fell into that category? Or any insight that you got?

Shaan Puri

Okay, I'll give you one note here. It's not necessarily something that changed my mind, but something I thought was pretty insightful. So, Patrick Campbell did a breakout session. His talk was basically about what happened after he sold his company. Patrick has been on the podcast before, talking about how he sold his company for, like, I don't know, $200 million to $250 million. During the session, I asked him, "If your brother sold his company now, what advice would you give him for the year after selling? What should he think about now, knowing what you just went through?" He said, "Well, the first thing is probably to not make any major moves for like 6 to 9 months. No major purchases." I think you did this too, right? He emphasized that you don't have to be in a rush; you have the rest of your life to spend this money. The next thing he mentioned was that he hired a guy named Coach Jack Skeene. Jack helped him do a kind of life 360 review. You know how people do these 360 reviews where they interview about 10 people around you? Andrew's done this too. When Jack stood up to introduce himself during the event, he said, "My name is Jack, and when I was 30 years old, I found the thing that I could do better than anybody I'd ever met. I realized that that's the thing I should be doing with my life." He then added, "You're not going to ask me what that thing is, are you?" He explained, "I look into people's eyes and I can see their soul." Basically, he can meet people, talk to them, ask questions, and figure out who they really are and what they're all about. Patrick said that Jack asked him a bunch of questions. He really interrogates you and the people around you to try to figure out who you are, what you love, when you're at your best, and when you're at your worst. What Patrick said was that he took a very intentional approach to this introspection. He mentioned that he and his wife did it off-site. They talked about what they wanted out of life—the material part, the emotional part, and the lifestyle. They made a list and discussed it together. He said they compared their lists. He would share something he wanted out of life, and it would either be, "Cool, go for it," or "I want to do that with you, let's do it together," or "I'm not down with that; I don't think that's congruent with what I want." He also mentioned that he made a scorecard for himself. One thing on the scorecard that I really liked was that he checks in every 6 months or so. He thinks about accomplishments he's proud of, his wins, things he's bad at that he's accepted, and things he's working on. The last category is losses he will no longer live with. He said these are the losses he's no longer willing to tolerate—things that are not okay in his life that he needs to change but isn't already making that change. I thought it was very useful to do this bucketing exercise. When he mentioned these categories, none of them sounded surprising, but I had never really asked myself those questions. What are my wins? What are the things I'm bad at that I've accepted? What are the things I'm bad at that I'm not accepting and working on? And what are the areas of my life where I'm no longer willing to tolerate losses? What I like about this approach is that it normalizes having these highs and lows in your life. Most people try to bury things. For example, there are areas in my life where I don't feel great, but I don't want to address them because when I do, I feel ashamed and guilty. Because I feel bad about myself when I address these issues, I tend to stash them away. I thought this was a very useful way of thinking because it brings everything to light. It acknowledges that, of course, there are these buckets, and it would be silly not to have anything in one of them. Of course, I've got to have some wins, some things I'm bad at, some things I want to change, and some things I feel like I'm making progress on. Every bucket should have something in it, and that's nothing to feel bad about. I thought that was just a very useful exercise that I think more people could benefit from.

Sam Parr

I think a takeaway that I've had from hanging out with people like Patrick and others who may be looked up to by those earlier in their career (of which Patrick should be that type of person) is this: You might think that when you "make it," you don't have doubts and you don't spend money on frivolous things like Life360. But in reality, you spend even more on that type of stuff because it's still incredibly necessary. Do you know what I mean? I'm more...

Shaan Puri

Necessary than ever.

Sam Parr

I'm reading this Jack Skeen website, and this is something that previously I would look at, back out on. I'd be like, "Who needs that? If you're gonna kick ass, you're gonna kick ass." Now I'm reading it, and I'm like, "I want this. I need answers. I have no answers. This man has the answers."

Shaan Puri

I mean, the headline says, "Discover your true life purpose and direction with the roadmap." If I hit that, normally I'm bouncing, but when you hear about it in the context of a story, and your friends have done it, and you're at a certain time in your life, it makes total sense to invest in things like this.

Sam Parr

This is awesome! Well, that's good. It was a good trip.

Shaan Puri

It was a lot of fun. It's also, I mean, it was cool because I would say 60, 70, 80% of the people there listen to MFM, which is great. You're popular! Well, yeah, but more than that. I mean, a lot of people had cool stories about stuff that we've talked about. They would come up and share, "Oh dude, like whether it was just like, 'Oh, I hit my first million,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, cool! I'm like a genie. I appear when you hit your first million. That's it! You just say the words and it happens.'" Or there are people who are like, "Hey, you guys talked about this, and I went and did all these things, and here's what's happened since." Normally, you don't get that feedback loop, right? When we get on here, people don't realize I just treat this like I'm hanging out with you. I'm trying to tell you interesting things, you're telling me interesting things, and I get excited. Then we get off, and that's kind of it. Only now we're starting to be involved even with the thumbnails and the titles to be like, "Hey guys, like can we just, I don't care if it gets less clicks, just make us look less stupid, please." You know, like that's kind of our level of involvement post-episode. But we definitely don't really get as much feedback as there is. So that was, I would say, the most fun part—people coming up and having stories that branched off of something that we talk about.

Sam Parr

One time you and I talked about this World War II book that I was reading, and we discussed Hitler because he was part of the book. The headline that we had used, or somebody picked for the video, was something like "Leadership Lessons from the Third Reich." I was like, "Oh my God, no! Do not do that!" [gesturing urgently] Delete, delete, delete! That is *not* what I meant.

Shaan Puri

Oh dude, I also had a lesson learned. I gave two talks at this event. I had one good talk and one... well, let's just say it was a dog shit talk. That was a great lesson to learn—just eating shit and realizing five minutes into the talk, "Oh, I've made a huge mistake." So, the first one was just a breakout session. The organizer said, "Well, you could just do whatever you want," and I thought, "Cool! I'm not even going to have a topic going in. I'm going to talk to the people there, and we're going to figure out what they want to talk about. Then we'll improvise, we'll riff." I'll tell you about the good one and then the bad one. Actually, I'll start with the bad one first. Here’s what went wrong with that one—these are lessons learned in public speaking. I get up on the stage, grab the microphone, and I can't help myself but try something I've never done before and have not prepared for. I just want to see what happens. So, I go for that, which was actually okay. They had Matthew Dicks, the storytelling guy, give the opening talk at the event. He was the 9 AM speaker, and I was the 4 PM one. At the 9 AM session, he tells a great story. He’s a pro at this, doing speeches everywhere, so he’s ready to explain how storytelling can be super valuable in business. I'm writing a ton of notes and feeling inspired. I'm already a believer in storytelling, so you're preaching to the choir. It's like the Kool-Aid Man burst through the wall, and I already had my cup ready—pour it on in! He convinces us how important storytelling is, but the next five speakers or so already knew what they were going to say. They get on stage and don’t really tell a story. I'm thinking, "Dude, we all heard that, right? Storytelling is the shit!" So, I decided I was going to try to tell a Matthew Dicks story at the start of my talk. Fifteen minutes before I'm supposed to go on, there's a little break, and I decide to try to write a story that I'm going to tell. Probably not enough time to do that, but whatever—I gave it a shot. I was like, "I'm here, I'm going to get my reps in." So, I got my rep in, tried to give the talk, and at least I get credit for trying something new. Everybody understood why my story was not so great; it was obviously made up just a few minutes before. After that, I thought, "You know what? Conferences are usually like this: you get on stage and you're supposed to have the answer—'Here's how you do it,' right? You're supposed to be the know-it-all genius." So, I decided, "You know what? I'm going to be different." The thing about being different is that when it works, it's awesome. When it doesn't work, you're just fucking weird. I decided to go on stage and tell people about all the ways I have failed and lost money—specifically, the decisions I've made that have been the worst for me in terms of success in finance. I talked about how I've lost $100,000,000 due to these seven or eight really poor decisions. I get on stage, start giving the talk, and what I realized is this is a downer. This is an absolute Debbie Downer. Even though my information might be good and the principles might be solid, I am basically making everybody in this room state change downward. I should be leaving them on a high note. It's the end of the event; we should be lighthearted. Everyone's done a full day, they're tired, and they're not looking for something heavy. I came in like a weighted blanket on that crowd. Five minutes in, I thought, "Oh, this is a bad idea. I shouldn't have done this." I didn't have the skills to pull out of that nosedive and change my topic. I'm sure to them it was fine, but I know in my head what a good talk feels like when I give it. It could be electric—people are laughing, they're writing notes furiously, and they're feeling good. Afterwards, they're buzzing; they want to run through a wall. This was like the wall ran through them. I feel like that was a big mistake on my part.

Sam Parr

What was the winning one?

Shaan Puri

The winning one was basically the opposite of that. As soon as the talk happened, or as soon as they were like, "Alright, get your breakout sessions," everybody's was in the main room. People just stayed in their seats. It was like a 5-minute break, and everyone was kind of on their phones, checking their emails. I thought, "I gotta shift the energy first and foremost." It doesn't matter what I'm going to say; I have to shift the energy. I had the insight to do it at that moment; I just didn't have it at the other talk. So, I immediately said, "Alright, everybody come over here to this side of the room. Bring a chair; let's make a circle." Circles have a different energy in general than someone on stage with everybody sitting in a crowd facing them, not seeing each other. I had to move, bring their chairs, and quickly make a circle. Then, I did a little bit of crowd work, almost like a comedian. There was a guy in the group who I had known and had a funny encounter with before. He used to be in a mastermind group of mine, and I kicked him out because it was like four straight meetings where he would say the same thing and be stuck at the same plateau. I told him, "Dude, Alex, honestly, I think the best thing I could do for you is not even let you come here and say this same story again because you're just getting into a rut. Don't come back here until you've doubled your revenue." I kicked him out, and actually, he's 8x-ed since then. It's been like three years since that, and he's done incredibly well. So, I said, "I haven't seen you in a while. How are things going?" Any tension here? He replied, "No, dude, it was great. I'm next; it's all good." Anyways, I did this thing where people were like, "How do you do X?" I had us do a push-up thing to change the energy in that moment. Let's get the blood flowing because one of my principles is that good decisions come from good energy. If you are trying to figure something out, make a decision, or rally your team from a state where everybody's tired, stressed, or afraid of what's going on, or just literally half paying attention, that is not where great ideas or great decisions come from. The first thing you do is shift your state, and then you make your decision. You ask yourself the question of how you're going to make this happen. I showed people how quickly you can change your energy. I said, "Watch this: in 15 seconds, 20 seconds, you'll feel different than you are right now." That was a much better approach. It didn't really matter what I said, but the crowd work made it more interactive, keeping everybody on their toes because they didn't know when I was going to talk to them. Shifting the energy first and worrying about information later was the smart move there.

Sam Parr

So, it was a good trip then? I mean, it looked awesome. I saw the list of people going.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was cool. Tons of great people.

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod.