Best Businesses To Start In 2022: Vending Machines, B2B Newsletters, Virtual Study Rooms & More

Sam Parr

A 25-year-old, I used to work in banking and M&A. I made like low six figures, and it was a cool job. But I recently quit after listening to you guys. Now, I own a bunch of vending machines, and it's allowed me to make $10 a month and do a bunch of running. He said, "Do memorable things," which is what you guys talked about at the end of the pod. This is pretty amazing. Alright, I think we're good. We good? Dude, Sean, thanks for dressing up. You look nice.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so for those who can't see the YouTube video right now, Sam is in some kind of... I don't even know where he's at. He's in some kind of LA, some kind of Playboy mansion podcast studio. I don't even know what's going on. Not a single wall is normal. One of them has a 3D texture, and one of them has a plant from, you know, the Amazon jungle. He's got like five people there. He's got a movie crew. Somebody just came and powdered his nose. I don't know what's going on. I'm still in my bedroom, and I recently woke up. So, you know, we got a little yin and yang going under the lights.

Sam Parr

**Explain what you're wearing, Sean.** "I'll say a sleeveless hoodie."

Shaan Puri

No, Sam calls it "shirtless." If Sam sees a shoulder, he has like a minor panic attack.

Sam Parr

it just you know I've it's something dude we can't

Shaan Puri

all dress like arthur

Sam Parr

So, I was hoping that if I came here... I came here the other day to record a podcast with this guy named Danny. I called Ben right when I was there on FaceTime and said, "Ben, book this for like in 3 days. This is where we're gonna record from now on." I was like, if we do this here, maybe it would inspire Sean to record with more than just one AirPod in his iPhone and a plant in the background. Maybe we can make something happen. So hopefully, I'm gonna wear off on you and you'll do it right on your end because I think we'll get more views on YouTube finally.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the last time I felt this much peer pressure, I ended up, you know, on shrooms. So hopefully, this just ends better. But I do feel the pressure now. I will find... you know, I don't even... what is this place that you're at? You give them a shout out. What is the name of it?

Sam Parr

actually called

Shaan Puri

w say their name but

Sam Parr

What's it called? WF Media? WTW? WTF Media? I can't... that guy, you know that guy? That guy, Danny. You're on his thing too. He's been...

Shaan Puri

emailing to work for me

Sam Parr

Oh really? Okay, cool. Well, I came on his thing and I came here, and it was awesome. I think we paid a couple of hundred dollars—I don't remember—to be here. I think this is actually the same studio that Andrew Schultz and Charlamagne record their thing, right? Yeah, and it's pretty easy. So, I just rode my scooter here and did it.

Shaan Puri

Just like Charlamagne tha God does. Yeah, alright, let's jump into some stuff. You have some topics, I got some topics. Where do you want to start? We got a bunch of different ways we can go.

Sam Parr

wait we gotta do this did you see this email that I got from this listener

Shaan Puri

no where

Sam Parr

Okay, so I forwarded it to you. Basically, we were talking about adventurous stuff last time, and this guy emailed me. Let me pull it up. So, he said, "Alright, you guys talked about living an adventurous life. I wanted to write you and fill you in on what's going on. I used to be 230 pounds and pretty overweight, but then I started running. I started listening to you guys the whole entire time while I would run. In fact, I did a 50-mile race and I only listened to MFM the entire time. I've lost a ton of weight, and now next week I'm doing a 100-mile race, and I intend to listen to you guys the whole time as well." He continued, "I'm a 25-year-old. I used to work in banking and M&A. I made low six figures, and it was a cool job, but I recently quit after listening to you guys. Now I own a bunch of vending machines, and it's allowed me to make $10,000 a month and do a bunch of running." He also mentioned, "Do memorable things," which is what you guys talked about at the end of the pod. This is pretty amazing! I forwarded it to you. That's a good story, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, that's my version of torture, though. Having to run 50 miles while listening to my voice in my head? That would be worse than waterboarding for me personally. But dude, props to this guy! This is amazing. You know, fitness got influenced by you listening to the pod. He got influenced by both of us. He did the vending machine side hustle that we had talked about, reached $10K a month, and now he has the freedom. He's thinking about doing short-term rentals. I think this might be your best friend. I think you might have just found an adult best friend.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this is my little brother, man. I like this guy. His name's Jack. So, I saw that email and I was like, "We gotta bring that up. That's a good one."

Shaan Puri

This is... he ended it with the hashtag "Do Things," and I like that. I like "Do Things." That's the serious version of "No Small Boy Stuff," which is the official motto of *My First Million*.

Sam Parr

no it's good

Shaan Puri

I like that

Sam Parr

alright where do you wanna go which one

Shaan Puri

do you want jack jack

Sam Parr

yeah good job

Shaan Puri

Jack, Jack Narmer, good job. I want to tell you about an idea that I saw recently. I'm thinking I'm gonna invest in this, but it's kind of just like one of these really low-key, doesn't even seem like a business things. But I think it's gonna be kinda big. So, have you ever been on YouTube and seen this thumbnail of like this kinda anime character wearing headphones and it says "Lo-fi chill beats study music"? Have you ever seen that?

Sam Parr

Kill it. They run it on live, like YouTube Live, and there'll be hundreds of thousands of people on it. I think the other day it was paused for a few minutes or something like that, and it was in the news, right?

Shaan Puri

It got banned and then it got unbanned after 133,000 people signed a petition to "unban this right now."

Sam Parr

that's crazy but okay and what about it

Shaan Puri

So, let me tell you about it. Lo-fi, basically, the channel has 10,000,000 subscribers. It's one of the most-watched channels on YouTube because people would just sit there for hours studying, using this as background music. They have a Discord with 700,000 people. They have their own community.

Sam Parr

what do you want to talk about

Shaan Puri

well it's just people that are chilling it's people that want us people that are trying to study they're trying to focus and they just wanna be in a group of other people doing the same thing it's like a virtual study hall so this is kind of like an emergent behavior it's just a thing that started happening it's not what youtube was trying to do it wasn't you know some company that started right away it's just kind of like this thing that people wanted like oh you know like I had this when I was in college my buddy would like oh hand him the aux plug because his music is good for us to just chill do nothing to it's not gonna be distracting that sort of thing and he would kinda be the dj so this is like a thing now and I found but but it's still like kind of informal it's on youtube it's not really like easy to use in that sense like you don't you know you don't know who these other people are you can't do a private room that sort of stuff so there's a startup called study verse that is trying to do this what they did was they basically turned this into like its own experience so me and me and ben use this now when we work we basically go into study verse and you go in and there's like a jukebox basically so you could just put on yeah like chill hip hop style music or chill electronic style music or whatever and both people are hearing the same thing at the same time you could turn your camera on or off if you wanna just be there microphone on or off and you can like put your to do list there and other people can see it and as you knock them out it makes a little sound so you can see other people knocking off their to do list there's a little chat and so and you can just set the background so you could be like let's just give them yeah well yeah we're working remote we're you know like I'm in this little home office here nothing too grand but you could just set the scene like now what if we were by the beach or what if we were you know in space or wherever you want so it's just a cool little product and they're going after this use case of virtual study hall people getting together to study hang out or work but it's really around studying I believe and this is like a big deal there are millions of students every day who do this and they do it with strangers they're not they're not necessarily hanging out with their friends they some do but a lot of people just wanna feel like they don't wanna feel kind of alone and bored when they study and so just having any other people chatting or they see their screen names they see their profile pictures it just makes them feel less alone when they're doing it how does

Sam Parr

this make money

Shaan Puri

I think this is gonna be big. So, the lo-fi thing on YouTube... I don't know if they just run ads or if they monetize that way. I'm not 100% sure. I know they also have their own music; they have lo-fi records, so it's all copyright-free, which is kinda cool. That would be the other problem if you tried to do this commercially. But for these guys, I think they'll probably have some premium version or some upsell. I don't know what they'll do to make money. The main thing right now is, can they get to like 1,000,000 students a day who are studying with this thing? At that point, it's pretty valuable to be the hub where 1,000,000 students a day are spending multiple hours. They raised funding; they raised money now. Yeah, so I'm investing in this thing.

Sam Parr

you're doing it a

Shaan Puri

A lot of time, yeah. I'm going to do it this right. It gives me heavy "Twitch" vibes in a way where I'm like, it's kind of a behavior that doesn't really make sense until you start to think about the use case. And like, yeah, that would be fun actually.

Sam Parr

but there's thousands of them I just googled it there's so many of them

Shaan Puri

what like virtual study halls

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there are... I don't think there's thousands of them. There's one serious competitor that's been around for a little while. I forgot what it's called, but they have...

Sam Parr

study together

Shaan Puri

They're close to that. Yeah, I think it's studying together. I think that's the one. They have a million people in their community, and so, you know, these guys are trying to build like a better user experience than that.

Sam Parr

so this this I think

Shaan Puri

that this could be big

Sam Parr

Study together. It says that there are 34,000 people concurrently online. So, at the hustle, we are getting, let's say, 2 to 3 million monthly uniques. Basically, that means that, which is like 2 to 3 million a month, is pretty good. If it's the right niche, you can make like a million a month off 2 to 3 million people a month if it's the right one. At any given time, we would have 2,000 people online. It really would never get to maybe occasionally 3,000 or 4,000, but virtually never. The fact that this has 33,000 is pretty insane.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's right. Now, I mean, I don't even know if school is still in session. I think it's like summer for people who are not even in school right now. If you are in high school or anything else, you're just in the middle of the day; you can't be doing this while you're at school. So this is only going to be for college or summer school right now. I bet this number could be three times as high for them during peak seasons, you know? Definitely. So, I think that's kind of amazing. Whether they sell little emotes like Discord did—Discord makes millions of dollars off of just their super emoji that you can have. Really, you know? Yeah, that's Discord's business model. You pay $6 a month or something like that for Discord Nitro, and all it gives you is that your group can have its own emoji. You can upload your own emoji and use the premium emojis that they have. The same thing goes for Twitch. People subscribe for $5 or $6 a month to a Twitch channel. It's not like they couldn't just watch it for free; they can watch it for free too. They do it to get a little badge that says, "I'm a paid patron of this person's channel." Secondly, they get to use the custom emoji of that channel. Really, the only perks are that sometimes there's subscriber-only chat, but that's not usually the case. So, yeah, I think you could get pretty big with something like this. But I think it's one of those under-the-radar niches that most people don't even really recognize. I think this is a cool idea, and I'm excited!

Sam Parr

To see how it does, we talked about it before. Alright, let me run something by you because you just actually have been talking about this. So, you know who Scott Galloway is, of course? The professor G, Professor G. Yeah, for those who don't know, there's a dude named Scott Galloway, popular on Twitter for making all these tech takes. He gets made fun of for being wrong a lot, but he takes a lot of swings, so he's going to be wrong a lot. But basically, he started this company called L2, which I think he sold for like $200 million. So he's really successful already, whatever. And he's got this new thing called Section 4, which I think is just like courses. But dude, check this out. The New York Times said, "Mr. Galloway, who was already wealthy from selling two companies and taking a third public, also makes more than $5 million a year from speaking gigs." He said, "largely from corporations and industry groups that pay him $50,000 for a virtual event and $250,000 for an international event." "I should be broken up," he joked, which is pretty funny. But that's a ridiculous amount of money for speaking. That is huge! How does that work? Because I know that you were talking about how it has to all work from book sales, right? Or, you know, just like being a New York Times bestseller.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it's like a combination. It's like you're just in people's face enough with, like, you know, you sound polished. He has a podcast, and he's got his blog, which is pretty famous. He's been doing this for a long time. I feel like this guy's been publishing content for like 10 to 15 years, at least. Something like that, isn't it? He's not like some new guy, no.

Sam Parr

He's not just a guy. I mean, he's great, you know? He's good and he's hilarious. I listened to him when I was in Germany; he spoke and was very good. I've hung out with him, and he's a really nice guy. His shtick online? I don't always agree with a lot of his takes, and I think that sometimes he's unnecessarily a hater. But without a doubt, he's incredibly entertaining. When he talks, he's got a little bit of a comedy shtick. It's kind of like a little "F you," and he says hilarious jokes about being old and bald. He's hilarious; he's good. But that's so much—$5,000,000 a year from speaking is like the equivalent of having $50,000,000. $5,000,000 a year of income is astronomical, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

what let's

Sam Parr

tell me

Shaan Puri

About that, it really is... well, just it's true. It's funny that you're absolutely right; that is an absurd number to be making in speaking fees every year. Like, pretty...

Sam Parr

good nba player at that.

Shaan Puri

Yeah exactly but you're just like giving a

Sam Parr

a presentation on you're using powerpoint

Shaan Puri

and also by the way it's the same presentation

Sam Parr

It's the same one. You can do it for 15 years, you know what I mean? It's like in your free time, a little bit. This is crazy. I just... I heard that number and I was like, I couldn't believe it at first. It is... it's an astronomical number.

Shaan Puri

How much does someone like David Blaine make? Because Professor G is basically like inviting a magician to your conference. It's like, "Oh, here's the entertainment." We all know and love this guy Scott Galloway. He comes on, he kind of does his little routine, and he entertains you. That's what he's getting paid for: to be a name people recognize, add legitimacy to the event, and provide some entertainment. It's not like completely off-the-wall circus stuff. It's more like, "Well, this will be entertaining, but it's still relevant to this [event/topic]."

Sam Parr

Here's the thing, here's the rub. His pod, it gets two times the size of ours. We get between 100,000, sometimes more, sometimes a little less, downloads per episode. He's at 250,000. So in my head, Swisher and him, or who is it? Yeah, I don't know what it's called, but it's like him and Kara Swisher. It's on... I don't even know what it is.

Shaan Puri

recode it was like recode or whatever

Sam Parr

Now it's something else, and in my head, I'm thinking, "I'll take half that." I mean, we gotta be doing this.

Shaan Puri

I'll do you one better. I'll take a third of that. I'll undercut Sam. It's good to write. I will. How often do you get...?

Sam Parr

asked to do this

Shaan Puri

the hell you want

Sam Parr

how often do you get asked to do it

Shaan Puri

I don't get asked that often. The number is always good whenever I do get asked, but I don't get asked that often. Also, I'm not really that interested in doing this because, you know, for this, you gotta travel a bunch to do it. I think to do it well, you gotta travel a bunch. I don't think people are gonna be...

Sam Parr

dude but you wouldn't take your kids with you on like a trip somewhere

Shaan Puri

not right now

Sam Parr

you don't wanna see kansas city bro

Shaan Puri

Exactly! No, I do not want to take my kids somewhere. The prices have already gone up, so I wouldn't want to do that now. But yeah, later in life, that would be great. By the way, funny you mentioned Scott Galloway. There are a couple of things people should know: 1. He's very entertaining and great at content. 2. His business takes are pretty awful for the most part. He's been famously wrong many, many times. In fact, somebody created the "Anti-Professor Galloway Index" or something. What's that website called? It literally just says that anytime he says to buy or sell something, if you just did the exact opposite, here's how you'd be doing. It's like he's down X%, while the S&P 500 is up Y%, and this is up like double the S&P 500.

Sam Parr

so you

Shaan Puri

have outperformed the market

Sam Parr

it's the website's bet against the professor introducing the anti galloway index

Shaan Puri

and what is the stats what does it say how has he done or how's the thing done against him

Sam Parr

So, his worst prediction was that he said that Macy's was going to outperform Amazon. Not that good. Then he also said that Tesla was a bad bet. I don't even know how to use it, so let's see. Since October 2019, tech companies that the professor predicted would fail have outperformed the S&P and seen a whopping 61% return. So, you would have made 61% exactly.

Shaan Puri

So that's really funny. Whoever did that, I do appreciate that. Last thing is... I just talked to a guy yesterday about this course business. He's got this thing called Section 4, and I was like, "Dude, how much money does that make?" He goes, "Actually, I kind of... I've been in that same niche, so I've been doing research on it. Here's what I think." So here's what he thinks. He goes, "I think Section 4 does like $14 million a year in revenue. They've raised like $37 million."

Sam Parr

that's nice

Shaan Puri

They just did some layoffs because, you know... yeah. And he's basically like, "That's an average of $1,000 a year per learner." You know, with a 30% discount, let's say it's $700. He has 21,000 people, you know, paying to learn or something like that. Maybe 2.1 is what that was supposed to be; I'm not sure. But yeah, that's kind of crazy. Then he was like, "You know, also Reforge..." You know, Reforge was like the... yeah.

Sam Parr

if I had to guess

Shaan Puri

4 is basically like some marketing school

Sam Parr

dude I would guess that reforge is in like the 18 to 20 range

Shaan Puri

for revenue

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

do you know how much money reforge has raised

Sam Parr

how much I have no idea

Shaan Puri

If this guy is right, Reforged has raised a total of $81,000,000. Not that...

Sam Parr

I'm just thinking just

Shaan Puri

Kind of absurd for what they're doing, but they did acquire some other marketing training company. So maybe they raised a bunch of money just to buy something that had established revenue and EBITDA. Anyways, these little marketing schools that people have created can be kind of big. If we wanted to monetize MFM, this would have been the way to do it. It's to just have you and me create our own marketing school. I'm pretty sure with our audience and what we've actually done—like we've successfully done marketing to grow our businesses, owned and exited multiple businesses, and brought multiple businesses to this 7 or 8 figure in revenue. If anybody should be doing this, it should be us, not these guys. But, you know, who wants to go do that? I don't know.

Sam Parr

so let me talk tell you about something that I question if I actually wanna go do that but I hear the numbers and they're amazing so b to b media so media companies that make content for other businesses I was talking to this guy the other day and check this out he's got this company called aging media okay they make newsletters for nursing homes so I guess people who own nursing homes and people who own hospice hospice care businesses and it's like I think only 3 years old it's or 4 years old it's not a very old company but he was telling me that this year they they'll do around 10,000,000 in revenue and like 3 or 4,000,000 in ebitda and completely bootstrapped and they have got 40 employees and if you go go to it's called ag media go to the website and look at their shit it is so simple it's such a straightforward business and I see this stuff and I'm like oh man I could totally do this for x y and z and that's a small example there's a bigger example there's this company called industry dive industry dive was just acquired like a week ago I think or 2 weeks ago they were acquired for $500,000,000 they do a 100 and let's see they were doing where is it they were doing $110,000,000 in revenue they're doing 110,000,000 in revenue with 30% profit 380 employees 53 newsletters across those 53 newsletters 2,500,000 subs and pretty straightforward like not not complicated not necessarily easy but not complicated and straightforward their content I think it's okay it's just like it's basically just bullet points it's an email with bullet points of what's happening in like the restaurant industry or whatever but these companies the bar I think to be good is so low for b to b media because it just like you know like it just mostly all sucks they like think that like you have to write a certain way but in the way they monetize and make money is so much better than a consumer media company because if you are a person who's selling software or whatever to a hospice care owner like you only have a couple places to go to and one sale gets you you know 100 of 1,000 or maybe even 1,000,000 in revenue like a pretty huge number and so like these guys basically what they do they have ads on their site but they do webinars with a sponsor and like 15 people sign up for the webinar or the talk it's basically like a podcast just like this but you gotta enter your email to get in they give that email to the sponsor and that sponsor hopes to go and email the 10 people that signed up and like hopefully they buy their shit and it's like 20 or 30 or $40,000 to charge for like getting those 10 30 50 leads it's crazy the bar is so low

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this thing is crazy. They have their big verticals. It's like they have Waste Dive, which is for the waste management industry. Then they'll have pharmaceuticals, finance, and these different sectors. I think their biggest one is Marketing Dive with **510,000** subscribers. Biopharma Dive has **275,000** subscribers, Construction Dive has **300,000** subscribers, and HR Dive has **450,000** subscribers. Then they have just a bunch of others, right? Utility Dive, Restaurant Dive, and Retail Dive is their biggest one with **700,000** subscribers. It's pretty crazy. This is not really a media company. Yes, they're a media company, but the game isn't about being good at making content. The game is about being really good at acquiring users and subscribers in this industry. I don't...

Sam Parr

I think you have to be that good if you're like a D to C dork. You don't have to be that good at this because you're already pretty good at trying to acquire users for $2 so you can make $8. You're probably more skilled; you're just choosing a less lucrative game. Here's why this is interesting: the guy who started Industry Dive, his name's Sean, was previously the president of another company called Fierce Markets. They did this exact same thing, but they started in 2005 or like 2002. It was literally the same concept, but they just focused on slightly different industries. They had 1,200,000 subscribers and it sold for $100 million. The reason why this is interesting is that it's the same thing over and over again. They just kind of have a dartboard of boring stuff and they throw a couple of darts. They're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that one. Yeah, we'll do that one." I mean, obviously, I'm oversimplifying this, but it's incredibly fascinating to me because the bar is so low to be successful.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, one thing I have noticed, though, is that I agree with you. This is one of those blueprints that's like a good blueprint—really good. It doesn't take a genius; it doesn't take a ton of luck. So, in that sense, it's a good blueprint to go after. The downside is that now this game, which I think was really awesome over the last 10 years, is that the window is closing. The same thing happened to D2C (Direct to Consumer), the same thing happened to dropshipping. I think it's so cool. I think the blueprint is easy. When a company sells for $500,000,000 doing something, there are a bunch of sharks like you and me who hear about this, go study their blueprint, and you get 15 new aggressive people who now know how big the prize is for something like this and have a blueprint to follow, all doing the same thing. I still think you could win, and somebody will win, but I would say it's 10 times harder than it was over the last 10 years, in my opinion. You're going to have that set of people. This is exactly what's going on in D2C, which is that the cost of acquiring customers is going up. Why? Because people realized, "Oh, you could just do this with, like, you know, pick a product, run this Facebook ad blueprint, use Shopify, use Klaviyo." It's like this stack of just needing to do these simple things.

Sam Parr

There are so many more people doing that than this. There are so many more people starting deodorant and jewelry brands than there are in this boring stuff.

Shaan Puri

But for those, there's... they... there, you could have way more, right? You could have how many jewelry brands can the market hold? It can hold a ton, because people are going to have a bunch. Now, if let's say that the industry newsletter is a way to find out what's going on in your industry, how many of those am I going to read every week if I'm in the waste management industry?

Sam Parr

I don't know 2

Shaan Puri

1 or 2, right? Probably 1 or 2. Okay, Industry Dive is 1. Now, everybody else is going to fight for 2. If you're not going to go for waste management, you're going to go for the next best niche. Now, Industry Dive has already done 20 or 30 of these niches themselves. Other people are going to keep going for more and more of these niches. So, you're going to get to the less valuable niches or the ones that are harder to acquire subscribers for because you're all fighting for that same 1 or 2 slots. I think that still, somebody will win, but it is way harder than it was when the word wasn't leaked that all these industry newsletters can be that big. That's crazy, right?

Sam Parr

I think you're giving people too much credit. I don't think that many people are going to get involved in this. It's just so much cooler when you're 22 to, like, you know, what's that one kid who sells like sex chocolate? That's just so much more fascinating. What's that called?

Shaan Puri

tabs

Sam Parr

Tabs chocolate that makes you horny? That's so much cooler to everyone in LA than any of this.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, do you get some of that included when you rent the podcast studio space you're in? Because it seems like it should just be on the desk... of Freddy, of it. Alright, let's do another thing. Okay, so I have one. So here's another kind of like what I'll call "boring idea hidden in plain sight": **Aunt Flow**. Have you ever heard of this company, Aunt Flow?

Sam Parr

wait is it aunt or aunt wait you say aunt

Shaan Puri

I say aunt but it's also aunt

Sam Parr

okay whatever alright but I understand insect

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

yeah your mom's sister

Shaan Puri

like yeah mom's yeah exactly that time of the month it's it's the slang for that time of the month so what these guys are doing or these gals are doing I don't know who's behind it what they do is they go to a school or a company and they say hey you know your restrooms need to be a little bit more female friendly here so why don't we install this little like case that's gonna dispense tampons and you know other kind of like female menstrual cycle products any anything that you could think of that goes in that that that category we're gonna install this dispenser and now you're just your place is gonna be more welcoming for you know for for for females that that are attending your space so maybe girls at school or university or in your company whatever it is and they just made it sexy so they this this kind of hygiene products already exist in bathrooms but they're all like we all know what they look like they're that boring you know silver box that looks like you know if I open this up am I gonna get tools or a circuit breaker or like you know an what am I gonna get out of this thing it's hard to hard to really say they just made it look good and feel good and like really nice packaging and design and it's like it's like the tesla of these things that are in the bathroom wall and they're doing great so let me pull up their numbers so they have I think 900 I don't know if I have all these numbers correct but they have 900 orgs that are that are working with them and basically you pay $300 to install the thing and then you pay like a $1300 a year for tampon refills or pad refills and so that's basically like $9,000 for a school with 20 bathrooms and and think about that there's just a lot of high schools like there there are like you know I don't know 15,000 high schools in the country that's just high schools in the us then you have colleges then you have companies and they just made it like a sexy b to c product like the the logo looks cool the box looks cool and now states are requiring some schools like in california colorado michigan that you have to offer products for this and they do this like you know for every 10 that we sell we donate one to a menstruator in need like they have like a whole thing around it it's like kinda crazy

Hubspot

Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: "Grow Better." Last year, I was pitched like three different options when we did that vending machine pod. I had so many people reach out, like, "I'm doing smart vending machine things" or something like that. A lot of them were either tampons or hygiene products, or they were healthy food. I looked at all the numbers, and most of them were horrible. The ones that were the best just sold Coke and M&M's. Just like normal! Everyone wanted to do this one particular thing, but it's like, man, America just wants Coke and M&M's, and that crushed it. What are the numbers on this one?

Shaan Puri

On track for $10,000,000 in 2022. When did they start revenue? So, it tripled from last year. I don't know when they started, but now they're doing Princeton University, every Apple retail store, offices like Netflix, Disney, Twitter, and Quicken Loans. They have a 4-year contract for all K through 12 girls' bathrooms in Utah. Like, why am I not investing in this? This is such a defensible business. Once you get the contract, they're not going to have two of these in the bathroom. So, if you're the brand that looks good and you can sprint into market, something like this will get, I think, to like $30,000,000, $40,000,000, or even $50,000,000 in revenue pretty quickly.

Sam Parr

did they raise money

Shaan Puri

I need to chase this down yeah they're they're raising money or they're they've already raised some money

Sam Parr

did you you ever seen those dick pills at like the counter at 711

Shaan Puri

can't say I had

Sam Parr

Yeah, surely you have like... it's like a goat. It's like a toad. I forget what it's called.

Shaan Puri

go into 7 I don't leave the house I definitely don't walk into 711 to look at the well

Sam Parr

They're in these vending machines. It's like Viagra or something like that. It's some type of herbal supplement, and I actually have no idea what it is, but it's...

Shaan Puri

like your wife was telling me about this gotta it keep going

Sam Parr

You could have that one. And have you ever thought about who makes those and what their business meetings are like?

Shaan Puri

you know what I mean is it

Sam Parr

Just like a bunch of dudes serving Monster Energy drink, sitting around... you know what I mean? Have you seen that?

Shaan Puri

have you seen that movie is just done over xbox live

Sam Parr

"It's just like we'll be serving Mountain Dew and Monster in order to get this meeting started." I've always wondered what those things are like and how you could be proud making that crap. This is way better than that. It's not the same thing, but... I've been thinking a lot about that.

Shaan Puri

define a lot how much have you been thinking about this

Sam Parr

Well, like, you know these... So we talked about Milk Boys and like the "send it" thing, or what's it called? Full send.

Shaan Puri

full send

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so many people reached out to me after that. They said they make money because they're sponsored by this crypto poker thing called... what's it called? Roblitt? You know what I'm talking about?

Shaan Puri

rubet and jake yeah

Sam Parr

And I saw this video where they were talking about it, and it does like tens of millions a month in sales. It's just astronomical, it's just huge. I was thinking, "That's pretty cool," but I think that gambling... I'm okay that it exists, but it's just not for me, you know? It's like what I always say about cornrows and sleeve tattoos: it's cool that other people have them, [but they're] not for me.

Shaan Puri

By the way, that's catching on. I did a meeting with somebody and they... I was like, "Oh, nice tat." They go, "Yeah, you know what Sam says: cornrows and sleeve tattoos. It's not for him, but he's glad something..." Yeah, it's like, "Wow."

Sam Parr

I respect its right to exist, but you know... it ain't for me. These businesses that do, let's say, gambling - I'm like, that's kinda... it's most likely a little bit shady. It's definitely not legal in America, but there's definitely... it's related to shadiness. Like, it's in the same family. I just wouldn't be proud doing that on a daily basis, you know what I mean? And that's why I was thinking about this.

Shaan Puri

As somebody who spends a lot of time gambling, did I ever tell you in college how we used to drive from North Carolina, where I went to school, down to South Carolina? It was a 3-hour drive to board a riverboat casino that would sail into international waters, turn off the engines, and then let us gamble for 4 hours before driving back. That's what I was doing as a 20-year-old. How did I lose? Well, I was playing poker once, and the guy next to me either fell asleep or died. I was like, "Oh my God, what am I doing here? Why am I hanging out with these lowlifes?" This guy looked like one of those people whose nails grow so long they start to corkscrew. He hadn't moved off that boat in like a century, and I thought, "I shouldn't be here," but I couldn't resist.

Sam Parr

sleep or dead

Shaan Puri

I don't know. I just left the table. I was like, "I'm not gonna tap this guy and find out." It's like Schrödinger's box: is the cat dead or not? I didn't want to know, so I just left. But yeah, I lost a bunch of money doing that. I like gambling; I think it's cool. But for sure, it's not a business I would start because I feel like I don't want to start things where the end is me in a Netflix documentary. It's like, what is the percentage chance I have to be on the run at some point in this business venture? I don't really want to flee the country. I'm not looking to find out that we have a huge amount of child pornography or money laundering in my app. It's like, dude, I'm not here for the stress. I'm not trying to do all that, and I don't need to make a billion dollars in a year doing this. Like the state guys, I told the story about them on the pod. They need like $40 million a week in revenue.

Sam Parr

no way

Shaan Puri

they issued I I think a but how much of a recession

Sam Parr

what's that like in net revenue versus gross

Shaan Puri

This is their take: They... 40 a week did a... I heard they did an $800 million dividend to their [shareholders]. Why? Because they can't sell the business. So I heard that they distributed like $800 million, and this could be wrong, but I don't think it's wrong by more than 30%. So that's pretty crazy. These things... these guys are printing cash. These are the guys who bought that... like they didn't know who was behind it until some guy...

Sam Parr

$40,000,000 home like a

Shaan Puri

$36,000,000 home. Yeah, and they were like, "How did this 26-year-old afford this?" They were like, "Oh, where's the source of your wealth?" He's like, "I own stake.com."

Sam Parr

did people just

Shaan Puri

we're based in correct

Sam Parr

did people just message you

Shaan Puri

about what

Sam Parr

and they told you that number whenever we talk about any of this crap I can

Shaan Puri

Tell me about many messages. My same friend, who told me about them in the first place when I featured them here, was telling me about their dividend and stuff like that. Roobet is also big. These things are really big. Basically, it's an online casino. You take one of the best business models in the world—a casino—and you strip away the biggest costs, which are the giant building and all the labor. Since all the games are digital and the casino is digital, all you have left is the marketing cost to acquire customers. You can acquire customers from around the globe, in their bedrooms, and they don't have to fly to Vegas to do it, right? It's kind of an amazing model, and it's pretty obvious why it's huge. But yeah, you know, that's not for everybody.

Sam Parr

what do you got

Shaan Puri

Okay, I got another one. I have a framework, and actually, I have two frameworks. I have one quick one and a long one. I'll do the quick one first. I realized this the other day. I was like, so yeah, Brian Armstrong, the founder of Coinbase, went on Lex Fridman's podcast.

Sam Parr

that's good

Shaan Puri

Was like, "So, what is your startup advice? What is your advice for starting a startup?" It's one of those questions that, as you know, as an entrepreneur, you kind of hate because you're like, "Well, it's like saying, what is a good life?" But he gave an answer and kind of broke it down. He said, "Well, there are two separate eras: pre-product market fit and post." I was like, "I agree with that 100%." The way life is pre and post is important. But then, okay, for Lex, you have to define what product market fit is. It's kind of hard to define product market fit. I don't know how you felt it at The Hustle because you kind of went from events to...

Sam Parr

I feel like we never had it

Shaan Puri

flashy blog posts to the newsletter you don't think the newsletter had it

Sam Parr

I mean, we have 2,500,000 people a day reading. So, I guess there's definitely something there. But when my friends talk about it, they're like, "Oh man, it just started working." It never felt like that for me; it felt like a slog the whole time. I mean, do you feel that way with the Milk Road? It just seems like... I guess maybe technically there's exponential growth because it's growing like 200% or 300% a year, but it wasn't like, "I can't keep up," you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. So, I'll tell you the frameworks I've heard about this. One is Emmett, who's the founder of Fushy, said this once, and I was like, "Oh, that sounds right." He goes, "In a startup, there's a big... where it just feels like you're pushing a giant boulder up a hill. You're pushing and you're pushing and you're pushing." He's like, "And then there is a... if it works, where all of a sudden you're not pushing anymore. The boulder starts to roll down the other side of the hill, and now you have the opposite problem. You're running, chasing to try to catch up with it because it's rolling faster than you can keep up with." This is what other people say too. Like, you know, your customers are demanding. You know, you basically run out of inventory. People are flying off the shelves. These are the phrases people use to describe this feeling. It's where it starts to feel like the market is pulling you rather than pushing.

Sam Parr

and so as you've been

Shaan Puri

careful that I've experienced a little bit with our d to c brand where we were but it's not like it's not like this magical eden where it never feels that way it never feels hard again like that's kind of how it sounds in my head it's like oh at some. I'll stop pushing and it'll start like rolling by itself and I'll have to run and chase it it's like it's kinda like starts and stops of that it's more like like a mountain range where they hit you go up and then down and then you climb the next mountain it's a little higher then down then the next mountain and then down like that's how it feels like so for example with the with the with our e commerce company okay getting the product made and getting it to market and getting people to first hear about our brand that was pushing the boulder up but then literally as soon as they like I remember it went viral in like a facebook group people started sharing it and like the enthusiasts of that category they started sharing it and so we all of a sudden I remember like the 3rd day we did like $3,000 in sales without like spending anything on marketing and I was like where did that come from that was awesome I didn't do anything and like people started buying it and by our 2nd month we ran out of inventory and we had a we had a full our 3rd month our sales sucked because we just had no inventory so that was like what it felt like to pull but then to get the business to grow even more well that's you know like that magic you know sort of slowed down and sure people were still telling their friends but I wanted to hit a bigger goal so now I had to push again so it's been kind of starts and stops with milk road I said I feel like the growth is pushing the boulder up a hill but then I look at some numbers like the number of organic people who like people who have joined because they got referred the thing it's like a really healthy percentage I'm like okay so that means people are liking it if they're sharing with friends and the feedback like the replies we get are not just like oh that was a good one today it's like they like they're using our own language and sense of humor it's like they wanna be friends with us they're like they're like oh you know the milk was so hot this morning it turned into butter and like you know it's like who said who like goes into a product uses it that day and then comes up with a funny review just because you kinda wanna be boys with the people who are making it like that's that shows that they really care in some way and we get like hundreds of those a day so so that shows me it's working but still to grow and fill the revenue slots like that feels like a slog like that doesn't feel easy that feels like very very difficult and so so yeah I don't have a good answer

Sam Parr

I've seen it firsthand with 2 different people so the first is I used to share this office called founders dojo you know you it was dave grossblatt a bunch of us when I was starting the company the hustle and there was these 2 guys that were like the most stereotypical like silicon valley nerds it was like a skinny indian dude and then this white guy that looked like this jock he was like really good looking jock but he was like the dorkiest dude ever and they were partners and it was a hilarious combination and they created this technology that would basically I have no idea why they wanted to create this technology it's honestly kinda pointless but basically it would crawl the internet and it would find the most shared and most popular hd gifs gifs whatever on the internet that day and they built this thing and then they would spend hours making the search so if you just typed in one letter it would autofill with like things that you could search like gifs like if you typed in like the word c it would autofill cats and then like the search would just pop up and I remember we'd be like staring at the computer with them just showing like look how much faster it is and it was like you can't even tell like you know how much faster it was from the previous time but they would nerd it out over this and they launched this thing and it did okay it did okay it did okay and then one day we get into the office and they've stayed there all night and they slept underneath the table their desk I remember and I remember like dave had bought them pizza because like they were working the whole time and we were like what's going on raj like why is this why is this happening and their website was called the worst drug which is pretty hilarious it's called the worst drug dot tv I think basically some porn guys got a hold of it and the it like they he they somehow I don't know how it worked but the most shared gifs on the web are almost all porn and so they like disabled like the not safe for work feature and it was all porn and we get to the office and they had this fancy setup like this the a huge monitor and it was the highest deaf porn you I've ever seen and you click like space and it would autofill with like a new porn gif and and like

Shaan Puri

That was literally... Seriously, I used this, by the way. I remember seeing it. It went viral like in 2014 or something. It was like somebody shared it in our IRC. They're like, "This is a crazy website," and it was like full-screen HD, immediate... porn. And then you're like, "Woah!" You touch any key and it just reloads another one instantaneously. I was like, "Woah, what's going on?" It was like TikTok before TikTok.

Sam Parr

So basically, there were like 8 of us... 8 guys, and we were gathered around this computer. At first, we were shocked. It was like hardcore porn, shocking porn that would go viral or make people click on it. We got past the whole porn thing, and then we were like, "Wow, that's really high-def! Look at that!" And, "Oh, if you click space, it really loads so fast!" There were just 8 of us gathered around, and Tim Westerton [was there].

Shaan Puri

I can see the hair on his thigh yeah

Sam Parr

It was crazy. It was disgusting. Tim Westergen and his assistant—I forget her name—but I was supposed to interview them in preparation because they were speaking at Hustle Con. I told them to come to the office, and they walked into the office.

Shaan Puri

pandora

Sam Parr

Yeah, the founder of Pandora walked into the office, and there were eight of us gathered around this screen, just staring intensely at this... porn. Like, "Wow, good job, Raj! When you type in 'C,' it really autofills like really quickly. This is amazing!" They walked in and were like, "Oh hey, what's going on? You guys wanna see something? Check out this techno!" It was incredible. They had millions of people a day coming to the website overnight. They slept at the office for weeks trying to, you know, do something with the server to keep up with the traffic and increase the speed just a little bit. Eventually, something happened where someone in Romania offered to buy it. They flew there, and it turned out that it was like some gangsters. They all had guns on them, and they came back. It was a whole ordeal. But that's the one time that I really saw product-market fit work. I've heard stories like that.

Shaan Puri

Like when Instagram launched, it was kind of the same thing. They launched it, they put it out in the wild. You know, the first hour was pretty slow or whatever. The guys kind of went to sleep, and they woke up... or like, not even went to sleep. It was late at night, and it was early in the morning in Japan. The app had started to go viral in Japan. So they were like, "Dude, what are all these... why are there only pictures of tea?" It's like, "Oh, this is in Japan. People are having tea in the morning, and they're taking Instagram pictures of it." They had like 25,000 people download it that first or second day, and the server was basically melting. Pretty quickly, the only problem became, "How do we get more server capacity?" It's like, "Oh, you stop thinking about features. You stop thinking about the logo. You stop thinking about names. You stop thinking about hiring." It's like all I think about is, "How do I add more servers?" So actually, I started to realize that there is this... there's a test, the simplest test of product-market fit. Because people have tried to come up with these tests before. In fact, there's a kind of famous Silicon Valley one, which is you survey your users. This thing, which is, "If our product went away, if you could no longer use our product, how would you feel?" Very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or not disappointed. The idea was if 40% or more say "very disappointed," you have product-market fit. Sounds good in theory, it's sort of like...

Sam Parr

it's like astrology

Shaan Puri

It's like giving you a way to have this answer to this mystical question. Mark Andreessen said this thing: "Product market fit is like sex. If you're asking if you have it, you're not having it." I think that's more real. There isn't this 40% survey number; you can't survey your way to finding out. You'll know because it kind of hits you like a punch in the face. What I've seen is that the people who really have it, like their thing is going to go supernova, only care about two things. Those two things are, if it's a tech product, hiring more servers, and if it's any kind of product, hiring customer support people. Anytime I meet a founder now who's like, "Yeah dude, I just really need any good customer support people. Where do I find more support people?" or "Hey, do you know how I can get AWS credits? I'm running up a crazy bill," I'm like, "Let me invest first, and then also yes, let me help you with that." Because I know when that happens, that is almost the truest sign of product market fit. It is the survey you don't need to go do with your customers. When a founder stops thinking about features, stops thinking about future plans, marketing, company culture, and everything else, and they're like, "Dude, the shit is melting." So I asked Michael Birch, who was my former boss and then became my investor at Idealab. Michael had basically sold Bebo for $850 million, and I wanted to know what it was like before and when the turning point happened.

Shaan Puri

Happened like did you were you just feeling like so good once it once it clearly started to work he was like well he kind of described the boulder pushing up the hill thing he's like well before when I was like I quit my job we had 2 kids and a third on the way we had mortgaged our house and like I had told my wife give me 6 months to try this and now I was 3 years in and I still hadn't figured out anything that worked but I felt like I was getting closer and closer he's like that was hard I felt like I was pushing the boulder up the hill then with bebo we like I finally put together all the pieces I knew that social networking was a good product like a good category like this is before facebook like I knew that social networking was gonna be big people were gonna talk to other people on the internet they were gonna have profiles and comment on each other's pages I felt like that was true and then I knew how to grow it which was like these viral like kind of fill in your profile quizzes and share it with your friends I knew how to grow it and like so I I I launched the thing he goes in 9 days we hit a 1000000 users and he's like back then a 1000000 users was like so huge on the internet he's like he's like you know 9 days later none of them came back I had a retention problem but he's like I knew that I had like something that could light fire so I turned it off I started working on the retention to like give you a reason to come back every day he's like I knew this is gonna work he's like and then when it worked he's like I didn't feel like this immense joy like yay I finally overcame it he's like I felt even more pressure he's like dude now this is act you finally did it don't f this up like this can actually be valuable don't mess this up he's like that became a whole new level of pressure and like burden that I felt and he's like I worked so hard and I think after they sold like whatever 4 years in or something like that I think he had like major heart surgery like 5 months later because he had been like so working so hard and under so much stress and pressure that whole time I'm sure that could contribute to something like that but when he described that I was like okay so I've never felt that like I've never felt anything that you just described that means I've never felt the like the violent version of product market fit when that like a $1,000,000,000 company feels

Sam Parr

so what did brian

Shaan Puri

Armstrong said he didn't define what it feels like. He basically mentioned something along the lines of, "You know you're making something that people want." It's somewhat general, and I've been thinking about how you can know for sure. It's so general that you might be optimistic and think you have it when you don't. Because, God, it would feel so good to have it, and it really sucks to not have it. So, you're always kind of squinting and looking for evidence. What Brian said was, "My lucky thing was that I wasn't a big analyzer or a big thinker. I was just like, action produces information." So, I would just do a thing and produce some information, like, "Oh, people want this," or "They don't want this," or "They want it, but there's something wrong with it." Take the Bebo example: it grew, but people didn't stick around. Okay, but that produced information. That first nine days produced a lot of information. He realized, "Okay, I built this wrong, but now I know what's wrong with it." So, he would do another little round. He emphasized that "action produces information." As a founder, just focus on the action part. It will either hit for you or it won't, but action is really the only way you're going to get to it. And by "smart action," I mean you take action and then accurately assess what's working and what's not, so that you're not taking blind action.

Sam Parr

Have you ever thought about the logistics of that? So, Coinbase... there was this article a couple of years ago written about them. When they were, I think in 2018 or 2019, when like the first cycle was happening, they were saying how they had torn down walls at their office just because they didn't have enough space. People needed to be in the same room to shout at one another. Then they were also just taking meetings in the park. I forget where their office was, but it was weirdly near where you and I lived in San Francisco. They'd be like, "Yeah, we're taking meetings in the park because there's just physically not enough space." If you think about the logistics of it, you basically have this idea and this small thing in 2015 or '16 or whatever. Right now, there are, I think, 4,000 employees, which means they've probably hired 6,000 or 7,000 if you count for turnover. If there are, you know, 360 days in a year, whatever it is, 350 days a year, that's like you're basically adding 10 to 20 people a day in headcount every single day for 3 years. It's pretty wild, right? In order to add 10 or 30 people a day or whatever, and that's not even like that much compared to like Facebook or Google. But like, that means that you've got to talk to...

Shaan Puri

a 1000 people

Sam Parr

a day

Shaan Puri

5 times 10 times more yeah

Sam Parr

yeah it's if he says

Shaan Puri

He goes, "We have, I think he said, 3,000 people now." He goes, "But..." and I... He's like, "I personally, I think, was involved in the hiring of maybe the first like..." I forgot what he said, like 300 or 500. He's like, "But then to hire those 300 or 500, I had to talk to maybe 3 or 5,000 people." So he's like, "So I've done a lot of interviewing now, and I have a good [sense]." [The word "crazy" at the end seems to be a transcription error, likely meant to be "sense" or similar]

Sam Parr

if you think about my

Shaan Puri

interview he's like I got totally burnt out from it

Sam Parr

If you just think, like, "Alright, how are we gonna get everyone a laptop?" or "How do we make sure that everything breaks?"

Shaan Puri

everything breaks

Sam Parr

it's crazy have you ever experienced that firsthand

Shaan Puri

Not that, but I've heard stories. That's how I know I didn't have broad hub, even when I thought I had it. Growth is happening. I've only ever felt it one time with Blab when our servers kept melting down. It was during a period where we went from about 0 to 2,000,000 users in like six months. We just kept... our vendors' servers were going down. Then we're like, "Shit, what do we do?" Like, "Dude, how is TokBox going down? How is Cloudflare, you know, going down? What's going on here?" It was like... and we were also getting DDoS attacked and stuff like that. But basically, yeah, that was the only time I sort of felt it. But that was like, you know, a very brief window of time. There's this guy, Dan Rose. I don't know if you follow him on Twitter. He was like a very...

Sam Parr

he was

Shaan Puri

like number 3 number 3

Sam Parr

guy at amazon or something yeah

Shaan Puri

He was very early at Amazon, maybe like the first 50 or 100 people, I guess. Something like that. But it was the early days. He was around when the dot-com bust happened, around 1999, 2000, 2001. Then he went to Facebook and he ended up being like the number 3 guy at Facebook, behind Zuck and Sheryl. He shares these war stories from back then. He says things that, again, you don't feel unless you're building one of these "thunder lizard" type companies that are just like these Godzillas. He's like, "Yeah, at Amazon, we used to just do meetings in the stairwell because we ran out of desk space. We started putting two people at every desk, and that didn't even work. I was just working out of a stairwell for like three months." I was like, just imagine! He's like, "Yeah, I just took my laptop, sat there on the top stair, and somebody would be walking by and be like, 'Hey, for that thing we're launching tomorrow, it can wait.' Then I just walked with them down the stairs while we talked, and that was our meeting." He shares these stories about what it was like. His Twitter is a good follow for sure. Did I...?

Sam Parr

Did I ever tell you about the Airbnb cafeteria? No? So, when Sarah, my wife, worked there, I used to go to the office because my office was right next door. During dinner time, I was there all the time. They had this beautiful office, and every office or meeting room was made to look like a popular Airbnb listing that you could rent. It was like this stunning office. You know, Brian and Joe, they're designers, so everything in their office looks exactly like that. Their cafeteria could seat or feed 3,000 people, or however many people they had there. Their whole shtick was that every single item was made right there at the office. So, the Red Bull, the ketchup, the mayonnaise—they made everything 100% on-site, except for the beer. I think that's the only thing they didn't make. Besides that, if you consumed it, you couldn't get Doritos or a Coke in that office. It was all made right there on the spot. I remember thinking that this company, just that in itself, is a pretty amazing feat. And that's not even close to being like their main thing, you know?

Shaan Puri

I mean yeah yeah that's exactly that's like

Sam Parr

that's not their that's not their thing

Shaan Puri

this is all logistics you know that's their version of

Sam Parr

Of lunch? Yeah, it's just table stakes to get people to work there. I remember thinking, "How on earth do you pull that off?" Because literally just 5 years ago, or maybe 3 years ago, I had interviewed there and it was 200 people. It was like an okay office, but... I remember seeing that and I was like, "This is just amazing. This is absolutely ridiculous, dude."

Shaan Puri

I had the same experience. I went to Zynga's office back when Zynga was, you know, still...

Sam Parr

airbnb used to share an office with them I believe by the way I went to that zynga office as well

Shaan Puri

And that office is crazy! First, you walk in and there's like a tunnel to enter. You remember that tunnel? The lit-up tunnel? So, it's like you walk in, it's an LED tunnel, and you feel like you're entering a spaceship of some kind or like you're walking out into a stadium. Then, there are just dogs everywhere! I was like, "Oh, do people have allergies here? How is this allowed?" They say, "Oh yeah, no, we're just... it's like this free land." I met the chef, this guy Matt, Matthew, I think it was Du Trumbull was his name. Sounds like a chef name! He was like, "Yeah, let me give you a tour." He was the one who brought us into the office. I was like, "Okay." He said, "Yeah, I'll give you like the kitchen tour." I was like, "Okay, cool. This will take like, you know, 2 minutes and then we'll go see the other thing." The kitchen tour took an hour because it was the exact same thing. He goes, "So this is our staff. Everything that you eat here is made on premise." I was like, "Okay." He said, "See that?" I was like, "You guys have like a..." He said, "You want a drink?" I was like, "Yeah, I'll take like a sparkling water or whatever." He said, "Cool, it's on tap here." It was their fizzy water! I was like, "You make your own fizzy water?" He said, "Yeah, we make our own seltzers, ciders, beers. They made everything." He said, "Yeah, this salad here, we grow all the... like we have a micro farm on the roof."

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Shaan Puri

And so, like, this mushroom was grown here. This arugula is grown here. It's all a circular system. I was like, "What?" Then he's like, "But what about the... you don't have animals for, like, you know?" He's like, "No, no, no, we do get animals, but we get the full animals." So he opens up the walk-in fridge, and there's just cows hanging upside down—full cows. I was like, "What is this?" And he's like, "Yeah, we break down the entire carcass and we, like, you know, use every bit of it for our things." I was like, "You and what army, dude?" He's like, "Oh, we have 45 people in our chef."

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Shaan Puri

I'm the executive chef, and we have 45 people on our team. I was like, "You have 45 people in your company?" You have 45 people on the lunch team! I was like, this is just absurd. It was insane, and I was like, wow, the arms race for pampering tech things and building this culture of "you're building something special" was, you know, kind of amazing. To be honest, it was really amazing. I was blown away by that.

Sam Parr

I have cows on my ranch, on my Airbnb property. We have like 18 of them or something like that. You know, they butcher them, so every year they send away like 4 or 5, and then I see the new ones being born. I thought it'd be cool to get a freezer out there and you could pay $20 and get a steak. You could be like, "Yeah, this cow is... you know, like the mother of the one that you see right in front of you." Because you could sit on the porch and watch if the cows would come.

Shaan Puri

up to you that's too sad for me

Sam Parr

and it was too sad for me I couldn't do it

Shaan Puri

I need distance from it. I need to... ignorance is bliss for me when it comes to eating meat.

Sam Parr

I didn't end up doing it because I was like, "This is just TMI. I can't handle it." I see these guys playing, and I get to know them, and they get to know me. I was like, "Oh, fuck."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

I'm not nearly as tough as I thought

Shaan Puri

I know, alright. Should we wrap it up? Because they're... yeah, like, are you paying by the minute now? Your surcharge here at your studio? Because I'm free here in my studio.

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, you know, Ben's still getting used to the logistics of this, so I'll just leave it at that. But I think our time is up. What do you think? Are you inspired now to look better, or do you still not give a shit?

Shaan Puri

I'm very inspired. The inspiration isn't the problem; the skill to do it is the problem, like upgrading my own space.

Sam Parr

it's not gonna give it's gonna like do it do you use that room for anything

Shaan Puri

I use it for for this and my wife works out of here too so but but we can use it for however

Sam Parr

It's an office though, right? It's like, yeah, it's an office. Well, like, just like it'll look like a CNN newsroom. Just have her in the background, like, working. It'll look fine. They just make it look a little pretty. They'll put some of this stuff on there.

Shaan Puri

dude send them I'm open to it the door's open ring the doorbell

Sam Parr

Alright, well I guess that's a pod. We'll see if this actually changes anything, but it might.