He Made $3.5 Billion Using Statistics To Make Movies

Shaan Puri

Really, here's the hook. Okay, so this is my "Billy of the Week." We used to have a "Billy of the Week" theme song. I don't know if we still have it, but we should dig one up or get AI to make a "Billy of the Week" jingle for us. A $1,000,000 isn't cool. You know what's cool? A $1,000,000,000. Okay, so let me tell you how I got hooked on this. I read the story in *The Information*, and I don't really read *The Information* normally. In fact, I don't buy it; I don't pay for *The Information*. But you know, it gives you the preview, and then it starts to fade.

Sam Parr

By the way, the information...com, yeah. It fades and it totally gets you hooked.

Shaan Puri

It gets me hooked, but I'm reading the fading part and then as it's fading away, there's a line that just caught my attention. It goes: > Residents of this small town in Idaho were complaining because suddenly dozens of private jets were flying into this private airport. Basically, armored vehicles are showing up and they're wondering, "What is going on?" They called the mayor and they're like, "Did something happen?" And they're like, "Oh, it's just Thomas Tull."

Sam Parr

Who's that?

Shaan Puri

Exactly, who's that? And then it faded out. I was like, "Oh, I have to ask my friend who's got an information account to bootleg me a copy of this story." And so he did. This guy is, I think, kind of a legend. He is a stealthy billionaire. He starts off his career in laundromats—shout out to Cody Sanchez—then shifts to auto repair shops. After that, he moves on to buying small accounting practices and does what I call a "roll-up." He ends up with 500 worldwide locations for his accounting business, and they put it all under one banner, like "American Financial Services" or some shit like that.

Sam Parr

And no, like, private equity background. Just like a blue-collar.

Shaan Puri

He had worked... He first was blue collar, then at some point, he gets involved in private equity. I don't know if he did that as an internship or something else, but I'm pretty sure he quit college or was moonlighting while in college doing the laundromat thing. You know, he grew up with a single mom and didn't have a lot of money, so he basically thought, "I need to fill a need." He decided to start with laundromats. This is not a very good business, but it gets him going. The whole time, he's kind of a data nerd. Even with the laundromat business, he starts buying these washing machines that can do surge pricing. So, when there's more demand, the cost goes up. He thought, "Why wouldn't it do that? All the rush comes in at one time; that's when I need to make money." So, he's a little bit of a data nerd, and he ends up becoming famous because he takes that same data philosophy and applies it to a business that never had it, which is the movie business. He does what's called "Moneyball" for movies. The Moneyball strategy, which was famous in baseball, is about finding undervalued assets and constructing a team using data as an edge rather than relying on old-school scouts who are, you know, spitting sunflower seeds and looking at a prospect and saying, "I like his ass." You know, they might say, "He's got something; I always trust a guy with a big ass." It's like, what are you talking about? They might say, "Have you seen him? He gets on base a lot." And then the scouts would respond, "No, he's too fat. Never. He'll never make it." And they're like, "I don't know..."

Sam Parr

It seems like he's got some strong loins.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, or be like, "He's got a strong jaw." I think he's got star potential. It's like, okay, you'll be a leader in the clubhouse. Alright, great. So, *Moneyball* was basically like, forget that side of things, the qualitative. Let's focus on the quantitative. This guy does that for movies and he creates Legendary Entertainment, which is the movie production company and financing company that financed and produced movies like the Batman series—*The Dark Knight*, *Batman Begins*, *300*, *The Hangover*, and on and on. Now, recently, *Dune*. He builds this thing up and sells it for $3.5 billion to the richest man in China. This guy is just fascinating. The whole journey goes from laundromats, auto repair shops, tax firms, then he has a dinner with a guy who's like, I think he's a movie exec, and he's complaining about film financing. He asks, "How does it work there?" It was basically like the old baseball scouting thing: "Oh, this actor, you know, we like this plot, blah blah blah." He realizes they don't have the *Moneyball* side, but they also don't have just private equity. He's like, "The movie business is the largest industry that doesn't really have a private equity-focused firm, and that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna bring the capital. I'm not gonna have the full production system. I'm not gonna have the distribution rights. I'll just bring the capital." So, what he did was partner with Warner Brothers. To start this business, he raises $500 million, which he says is the hardest thing he'd ever done. Wow! He goes in and partners with Warner Brothers, cuts a deal like, "We're gonna co-finance 30 movies with you, but here's the deal: we're gonna basically build up a data team that's going to figure out which movies we should bet on and which ones we shouldn't, and more importantly, how we promote them." I thought this was interesting because in most of the articles I read about this guy, they're just like, it's like the hand-wavy thing: "And then he started Legendary Entertainment and sells it for $4 billion." Like, what? How did this guy with no background in the movie business create this company? How did they produce these hits? And like, what was he doing differently? Do you know what he was doing differently?

Sam Parr

No, no, keep going.

Shaan Puri

So, there were two or three insights. The first insight he had was that **bigger is actually better**. There's this romantic idea in the movie business about indie films and the notion of going back to quality—just real, genuine scripts and all that stuff. However, he's observed that most of the movies that fail are these mid-market films that cost a medium amount of money but don't have guaranteed appeal. They lack a "slam dunk" reason for people to watch, like having a superhero or an A-list actor. He pointed out that they often make the plot too complicated, which only appeals to an intellectual audience. He emphasized the need for movies that have **commercial appeal**. They should still be elevated; for example, he directed *Inception* and *The Dark Knight*. Both are great movies, but *The Dark Knight* is still about Batman, and *Inception* still features Leonardo DiCaprio. He mentioned that he needs to include elements that he can "take to the bank" to better underwrite these films. So, the first takeaway was that he needs to pursue bigger budget films that have a headline reason for people to pay to watch them. He leaned heavily into intellectual property (IP), such as licensed IP, and also focused on mainstream actors and directors.

Sam Parr

And he did a ton of great stuff: *Straight Outta Compton*, *Dune 1 and 2*, *Inception*, *The Hangover*, which was huge, *Watchmen*, and *The Dark Knight*.

Shaan Puri

Great movie! Still, it's a hard business. I think they've only ever had two consecutive years of profitability or something like that, like in the ten-year run. It's not like every year is just year after year of head bangers. But the movie business is a hit business. So when they hit, they hit really big. In those years that they hit, they might make $500 million or even $1 billion in net gain. However, in other years, they might lose $50 or $100 million. So, you know, anyway, it sells the business through the entire movie.

Sam Parr

Was Beer Fest... you're telling me that wasn't a hit?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so you know, the big thing was they found Christopher Nolan to be one of the best directors. He was kind of unproven at the time, so it's not all easy. The second thing he did was ask, "How do we make movies that have international appeal, specifically in China?" He recognized that China is a big market and there’s a lot of demand but not a lot of supply of American films that can crossover. So he decided, "We're going to be international, and that's going to be one of our edges." He thought, "Alright, I need a simple-minded plot." It could be well done, but the plot needs to be simple: good guy, bad guy. He realized that for most of these films, he needed something that would transfer into China, pass the language barrier, and have simple appeal. For example, Batman has simple appeal. Then, he partnered with a Chinese company to create a joint venture with China Film, which is a government-owned public state company for films. He said, "We're going to bring the movies, and we'll do a 50/50 joint venture with you over there." So he cut the right deal and secured the right distribution. The third good thing he did was the data analysis, the "Moneyball" side of things. I didn't fully realize this, but in both video games and movies, if it says a movie had a $200 million budget, that's the amount they might have spent on making the film. But then, guess how much they'll spend on marketing the film?

Sam Parr

I have no idea... another 30% more.

Shaan Puri

Another 100% more or 150% more. So if they spend $150,000,000 on the movie, they'll spend another $150,000,000 or $200,000,000 on the marketing of the movie.

Sam Parr

So, each movie is like a meaningful-sized company that lasts for three years. Well, sometimes longer, right? If it gets syndicated... if.

Shaan Puri

It has long-term benefits, like getting through the work.

Sam Parr

The work of making it and then marketing... I mean, it's almost like a presidential election.

Shaan Puri

Same thing with Grand Theft Auto. They'll spend like $500,000,000 marketing Grand Theft Auto.

Sam Parr

That's insane.

Shaan Puri

It's crazy! That's insane. Big video games, crazy. A triple-A video game will spend $100 million on their marketing. They usually double the amount they spent on making the game. You know what else spends that much money on marketing? Every D2C brand. What he realized, in the same way that D2C brands did, was they took the "Moneyball" approach. They said, "If Procter and Gamble is just doing these random sponsorships for the Super Bowl, let's take Tide or whatever Old Spice and run funny TV commercials. Is it working? I don't know." The old adage with TV commercials was, "Half my budget does nothing, and half performs. The problem is, I don't know which half." That's how brand advertising worked. Then, guys like Moyes came in and built Native Deodorant. They said, "Forget the Old Spice model. I don't have enough money to do TV anyway. I have to do the Moneyball approach. I need performance marketing where I can measure every dollar and attribute every single purchase to which ad I ran and how much I spent on that ad. That will tell me if I should do more of that ad, less of that ad, or tweak it." That's how he built a really fast-growing deodorant company on the back of Facebook. What Thomas did was the same thing with movie marketing.

Sam Parr

What's a direct response aversion for a movie?

Shaan Puri

That's what these guys do. They run Facebook ads. They run YouTube ads.

Sam Parr

To buy tickets to the movie.

Shaan Puri

To get you to not exactly go online and buy the ticket right away, but to get you to be like, "Oh yeah, I heard that movie's coming out. Oh, it looked good." So they'll do... let me just tell you some of the things that they do. I thought this was pretty cool. They'll take trailers. The trailer is the ad creative, right? The trailer is the thing that needs to get you to say, "Oh, I want to see that. That movie looks really good." They'll do like A/B tests. They'll create like 50 versions of a trailer and they'll take an audience of, you know, 100 people. They'll put them in a movie theater, play the trailer, and they have a scanner on the seat in front of you that takes a facial biometric reading. They also have you wearing a heart rate monitor, and they're trying to see how you react in a movie or a trailer.

Sam Parr

Or whatever.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like they're trying to see if you react and what part you react to. Does your heart rate elevate? Does it quicken? Now, I don't know if this is just PR, but the guy who was talking about this was their head of analytics. They basically coached this guy. He built a sports analytics company in the Moneyball era, sold it, and then he gets a call from Thomas and says, "Hey, do you want to do Moneyball for movies?" He said, "Come in," and so he became the head of analytics. He's like, "We have a 50-person applied analytics team, like an applied sciences team." He goes, "That's 49 more than every other movie producer." He's like, "We have like 50 engineers, data scientists... all of these people are hardcore data, computer science, engineering type folks." And he's like, "Nobody else even has this department. At least they didn't when we started."

Sam Parr

Do you think they make movies to... like, you know how sometimes when we create content we think headline first or thumbnail first or whatever? Do you think they think of the trailer as "What's a good movie that could be an awesome trailer?"

Shaan Puri

I think 100% they do. In fact, one of the films that flopped was this thing called *The Great Wall* or something like that. I don't know; I never saw it. But it's like they did a joint venture with the Chinese company. They were like, "Oh, let's make an American movie, but it's about the Great Wall." It's like, imagine if the Great Wall was actually built to keep aliens out, and that's what they discovered the purpose was. Something like that. Matt Damon's in it, and the movie flops. China didn't love it, America didn't love it. It was like, kinda neither. They tried to make something for everybody, but it didn't work; it was something for nobody. And what he's—the analytics guy—is like gonna die on this hill. He's like, "I don't know, man. The data showed that Matt Damon was... we're under-indexed on Matt Damon in China." I was like, "I don't even know what that means." But he's basically saying the price for Matt Damon versus the cachet Matt Damon has with that audience was a good trade. And he's like, "Nah, that was a good trade." And people are like, "The movie flopped, dude." He's like, "Alright, but that was right. That one part was right."

Sam Parr

Which is hilarious. So, why is he showing up to Idaho with armored vehicles?

Shaan Puri

So now he's shifted into selling Legendary to the richest man in China. He still owns, I think, like 10 or 20%, but you can't own 10 or 20% of a Chinese company as an American. That's a big Chinese company. So they gave him phantom stock, which means he gets only a profit share; he can't own any equity in the company. Now, what he does is take that money and invest heavily in defense tech. He invested in Anduril, he invested in Shield AI, and a bunch of other defense tech companies. That meeting was basically a gathering of entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley who are building defense tech, along with people from Washington—like lobbyists, senators, congress members, generals, and defense contractors. It was a meeting of minds, and they were probably getting together to discuss how to stop China. He's got this flywheel, which is amazing. The flywheel works like this: you start a defense company, then lobby for increased defense spending. When they increase defense spending, it goes to your companies. This flywheel of wining and dining Washington while funding the companies that will win the contracts is a very lucrative model. I'm not saying he's doing it in any malicious or nefarious way; I don't mean that at all. It's just interesting how that can work. It's smart if that's your model. You can actually influence spending through PR and other means. You'll see a guy like Joe Lonsdale, and I think he believes this, by the way. He's got defense tech companies; he started Palantir and a company called Epirus. He's also starting some underwater drone company and a bunch of deep tech defense tech companies. But then he also spends a lot of time building relationships with public officials. He'll go on CNBC and say, "We gotta stop TikTok." I don't think he's doing it just for his own financial gain. I think he genuinely believes we shouldn't have TikTok brainwashing the American population while being owned or controlled, or having data siphoned off to the CCP. I think he genuinely believes that, but it also happens to be a very strong flywheel. If you can shift public perception or the government's perception to increase funding, it will also benefit the companies you started to serve that need it. By the way, Thomas Tull looks like a movie villain.

Sam Parr

If you Google and look at...

Shaan Puri

Photos of him cameo in *Batman*. He is actually in the owner's box. You know that scene where Bane blows up the football stadium? He's there because he owns a piece of the Pittsburgh Steelers too. So, the team playing in the movie is the Steelers. He's in the owner's box as a partial owner, and he gives himself a little cameo.

Sam Parr

This guy looks like a stealer. He's huge; he's like a big guy.

Shaan Puri

Former college football player, I think.

Sam Parr

This guy is impressive.

Shaan Puri

Hey, real quick. You know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual $1,000,000 businesses and made their first million off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy! That's wild! That's why we want to do the show, and we want to see more of that. One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, "Is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about?" Well, the answer is finally yes! The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50+ business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free! You can click the link in the description below to get the database for you. Alright, now back to the show. Let me tell you a couple of other random things. One, he's like, "I don't live in LA," so he built a Hollywood company without living in LA. He's like, "I just want to make great movies that people love. I don't want to figure out... you know, I don't want to make sure I have a dinner table at Spago tonight." He's like, "I don't want the Hollywood status stuff. I just want to make great movies." And so that's why I don't live there. I just do my thing from far away.

Sam Parr

Where is he based? Is it Pittsburgh? Is he based there?

Shaan Puri

Not sure. So, at one point, he bought like 150 acres of farmland and was like, "I'm gonna live off this land." What he did was say, "I want to use this to learn all of the advanced farming robotics companies, and we'll use this land to try those." He said, "I want to learn the tech and see if we're rebuilding the future of food. I want to be living in a self-sustainable way, and I'm gonna try that." I don't know how long he lives there or if he does it full-time, but this guy's pretty fascinating. I don't know, he's just done a lot of things in a lot of different places, and the through line for all of it was just like "Moneyball for X," which I thought was pretty fascinating.

Sam Parr

Great! This was really good. This guy is so fascinating. We should get this guy on. Does he do interviews or is he really private?

Shaan Puri

Stealthy, but he went on Lex and he also went on Farnham Street back in the day. I’d love to have him on to talk because you can tell he’s a business guy. He’s very practical; he just comes across as very real. I watch some of his interviews, and he seems very straightforward. He’s like, “Well, I just thought, you know, like I just thought X.” He was like, “That’s it! And then I just did it.” For example, he invested in some company doing gene tech editing. These guys are trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. Have you heard about this?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I...

Shaan Puri

I mean, I've read about...

Sam Parr

It in headlines.

Shaan Puri

Their stated mission is to bring back the woolly mammoth. I loved how we talked about him because it's very real, and he was like...

Sam Parr

Which company? What's that called?

Shaan Puri

I don't remember their name. It's like "Colossus," I think. Colossal or Colossus, something like that.

Sam Parr

Okay.

Shaan Puri

And so he's like, they're like, "You invested in this company that's bringing back the woolly mammoth?" Right? It's like a very buzzy thing to talk about. Yeah, and he's like, "Well, look, I thought they were doing really interesting things with setting the genome and gene editing, CRISPR." He's like, "I think the woolly mammoth thing makes for great PR." Like, he was basically just like, "I don't give a shit about bringing back the woolly mammoth. I'm not doing this as some weird billionaire fetish thing that billionaires do, and they're just like, 'Oh, I need to resurrect... I need to summon a god.'" He's like, "The woolly mammoth thing is interesting, but it's like a headline. You know what I like? I met these guys, and they're really smart scientists. I just thought these guys are so smart, I need to be around them, and they're going to do really interesting things. So I'll back them, and if they want to work on this woolly mammoth thing, okay, great." He's like, "But I just think the science they're doing is really fascinating." And he goes, "Also, I like their ethics." Because he goes, "The more I met with them, it was clear that, okay, these guys are in the top."

Shaan Puri

1% of intelligence, but there are people like that in China and all around the world. He's like, "But they don't all have the same ethical code that these guys do." We're like, "They're gonna use this for good, and they're not just gonna be cloning random things or editing things in a pretty reckless way." And he's like, "So..." I just thought it was good these guys needed the backing because I *really* resonate with their moral code, basically. So, I don't know, I like this guy.

Sam Parr

I always find it almost romantic, but also very intoxicating, when I read about people who don't have a ton of education but dominate a certain area. For him, the fact that I don't know entirely what his background is—I could be off here—but it seems like he's sort of a blue-collar guy who kind of kicked ass at finance and deal-making. He doesn't have that traditional New York City, you know, big boat background.

Shaan Puri

He didn't buy auto repair shops because he thought, "Oh, I can do a PE roll-up, get leverage, and raise prices." He said, "Well, I live in Pittsburgh, and I lived in a part of Pittsburgh that didn't have a lot of money. People aren't buying new cars." So, it's like, if you have a car and it breaks, you can't really buy a new one. The auto shops were a good bet because people were going to try to fix their cars. It's like, "If I can get another year out of this beater, I'm going to do it." He realized that auto repair was going to be a thing there because that's what the community needed. That's how he discovered the defense tech stuff. He was doing movies and thought, "Oh dude, I want the fight scenes and the military scenes to be realistic." So, he said, "Let's bring in advisers from the actual military to tell us what the weaponry is, what would be cool, and what would be the cutting-edge stuff that, if we put it in the movie, would be interesting." While talking to them, he kind of thought, "Damn, they really don't have as much cutting-edge tech as I thought." The Navy and the Marines kind of wish they could do X, Y, Z, but they couldn't. That's when he started funding more defense tech. He thought, "Sounds like there's actually just a need for this." So, obviously, you don't know how much of this is like reverse PR, where you go back and make a nice, wholesome-sounding story. But I don't know, I bought it. I usually am pretty skeptical about this stuff, but I bought it here.

Sam Parr

I also like people, and this is really easy to read about and to think about. But basically, alright, so you explain his idea: "I'm gonna do Moneyball for movies." You think about it and you go, "Okay, cool. I guess that makes sense." Even at the time, you could be like, "That's neat. That's interesting." But to have the courage and confidence to believe that you are right, even though you don't really know too much about something and you're a total outsider, to have the courage to do it and to go that big, I find incredibly intoxicating and inspirational. I mean, how many people do you think have told him, "You have no idea about this industry. We've done it this way for a hundred years. What are you talking about? That's not how it's done." But just to be like, "Look, it makes sense that it's this, this, and this." Warren Buffett has that. A lot of great people, I mean anyone who's great typically has that where they believe in their own logic and their own reasoning. They believe that their decision is the right decision, even though most everyone is like, "That's insane." I have so much love for people who are that courageous and confident in their own decisions. I think that's very admirable.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, conviction is attractive. You know, one of the things they talked about with the "Moneyball" concept is that it's cool. You can set up an analogy like "Moneyball" for movies. Then you sit down and think, "What are we going to 'Moneyball'?" In sports, all of the data is public. It's all there; everyone's stats are available, and everything is filmed on TV. So even if you didn't have a stat, you could go back and create it. But what are you actually going to do for movies? It's not the same thing. One of the things they did was have an analyst who made a great statement. He said, "I take this population of people. On the left side of the bell curve, there are people who are never going to watch the movie, no matter what we do. We don't want to spend a dollar marketing to them. My goal with that population is to not spend $1 on one impression for those people who are never going to watch." Then you have the people who are going to watch no matter what. I also don't want to spend a dollar on them. They are "Dune" fanatics; they have a "Dune" poster in their bedroom and grew up reading the books. They're going to watch "Dune" no matter what I do. So then there are the people in the middle. Those people are our swing voters. They might watch it, and I need to figure out how to reach them. I start slicing and dicing that audience. I figure out that this mom is going to watch because she loves that actor, and this guy is going to watch because he loves a badass action scene. So we need two different trailers that we're going to run in social ads for each of those. He said, "Then we need a data set that tells us who actually goes to the movies. We basically need a map between the email addresses that we're advertising to and the email addresses that are used to buy tickets. We need to create these clusters and try to figure out what's actually converting." Movie folks weren't doing this, at least not in a serious way. I don't know, maybe there are other producers who are kicking the wall right now, saying, "God damn it, we all do this; that's not special." I don't know the business well enough, but these guys told the story better than anybody else. It seems to have worked. This is awesome! I mean, the track record is also there, right? They built a really big thing in a really small amount of time, coming in as complete outsiders. So, you know, that's pretty impressive.

Sam Parr

This guy's fascinating. I want to learn more about him. Yeah, he's cool.

Shaan Puri

I think it's interesting to consider where else "Moneyball for X" could be implemented. I don't know if you've read about Obama's data team.

Sam Parr

Or, well, I've read a lot about Trump. It is getting into election season, and I hate it because I get so many texts and emails. I mean, they are intense about their marketing. I know that Jared Kushner kind of hired a bunch of tech guys, and they crushed it. But even before Trump, Obama raised something like $1.5 billion, and they spent most of that, I would imagine, on marketing. I mean, what these politicians do in basically a year and a half is pretty phenomenal in terms of deploying money for marketing, and they're savage about it.

Shaan Puri

Dude, the presidential election is a marketing contest between two agencies. They each get to pick their front man, and then they run a marketing blitz. They spend between $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 on marketing over the course of the election.

Sam Parr

Of 9 months.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and like that's it. So it got two presidents elected. It was the Moneyball for X. They used it in politics. It helped the Red Sox win the World Series, you know? It worked in baseball. It built tons of D to C brands. The Moneyball approach is also in finance with all the quants, quant funds, or hedge funds that are using this, or Renaissance. So it's pretty interesting to see how you can use Moneyball in any industry that is still not data-first or not data-driven. If you ask, you know, "How do you guys make decisions?" it's basically some version of gut, eyeball, you know, taste. There's probably a Moneyball-like variant there.

Sam Parr

I know a guy who is doing it with HVAC. He has an HVAC business generating about $150,000,000 a year in revenue. He constantly tells me about all the data stuff that they're doing, and he's like, "No one... people don't do this in our industry. No one is doing this." It's as simple as, you know, we're looking at the data of what we can send and how many emails we can send to get more Google reviews. But they just change their data. It's like they're running it like a tech company a little bit, where they have a small data analytics team. He says that very rarely is anyone else in the HVAC industry doing something like this.

Shaan Puri

Dude, Sam, I gotta ask you. I already know the answer to this question, but I gotta ask you: Did you watch UFC 300 on Saturday?

Sam Parr

The full 5 hours or 6 hours... yeah, I sat the whole time. It was amazing.

Shaan Puri

Did you make like a 7-layer nacho dip and just sit there for 7 hours watching it?

Sam Parr

I watched the entire thing. I think it started at 6 o'clock and ended at 1 o'clock my time.

Shaan Puri

So, I want to talk about it because, a, we're both UFC fans and it was amazing. But, b, there's actually a great business CEO lesson in it that I want to get to. But first, can we just explain for anybody what Max Holloway did? I think the Max Holloway thing alone, if you don't even watch the fights, you need to know that this happened.

Sam Parr

Well, let's explain UFC 300. UFC has been around since the nineties and they've done thousands of events. For major events, they number them: UFC 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... This past weekend was UFC 300. Typically, a card has 5 main fights, and before those 5 main fights, there are 10 prelims, which are no-name fights featuring up-and-comers. This time, however, they had 15 fights, but all of them featured famous, great fighters. So, it created about 5 hours of epic fight cards.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was crazy! One of the fights was for a made-up title called the "Bad Mother Effer" belt, the BMF title. It featured two guys who are popular but currently not at the tippy top of their game. One guy's name is Max Holloway, and he's fighting Justin Gaethje. Justin Gaethje came into the fight as a big favorite; people thought he was going to win. Max Holloway, on the other hand, has kind of been looking like he's on the back end of his prime or maybe on the decline a little bit. So, two things happen: First, Max Holloway starts to win. Okay, that itself was cool and remarkable, but nothing compared to what happened at the end. In a UFC fight, there are typically five rounds. Each round gets scored, and if you're winning, you have it locked up. For example, if you're winning 3 rounds to 2 or 4 rounds to 1, your corner will tell you, "Hey, you're way ahead. Just play it safe. The only way this other guy can win is if he knocks you out. Just play it smart." That's the advice 9 times out of 10. However, this is fighting entertainment, and some fighters understand that while others don't. Max Holloway understands that. He wins all five rounds, so he's not just up 3-2 or 4-1; he wins all five rounds. By the end of the fifth round, he's basically broken this guy's nose and has him battered and bruised. The only thing this one guy can do, being a power puncher, is knock him out. In the last 10 seconds, while most guys would just circle around, raise their hands, and try to tell the judges they won, Max Holloway points to the middle of the ring. He points down and says, "Stand right here. Neither one of us backs down. Let's swing as hard as we can and try to knock each other out for the last 10 seconds." Now, this sounds very savage, but what this actually is is incredibly courageous, brave, entertaining, reckless, and stupid all at the same time, rolled into one. They both start swinging absolute haymakers at each other, and in the last second of the fight, Max Holloway knocks the other guy out cold. I feel like I can't even do it justice. If you watch the fight, you already know what happened. If you don't watch the fight, you probably don't care about this, but it was remarkable to watch.

Sam Parr

It was probably the best UFC moment I've ever seen. Maybe, yes, for sure top three, probably number one. I would actually say it was one of the best moments in sports that I've ever seen.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly.

Sam Parr

It was like I felt so much adrenaline watching this. I was in the middle of the night, my baby was sleeping, and I yelled as loud as I could. I was in awe. It was so adrenaline-inducing; it was amazing.

Shaan Puri

It would be like in basketball if LeBron James was about to win the NBA Finals. Normally, they're just trying to hold the ball, you know, stall, let the clock run out. Instead, he handed the ball to his opponent and said, "No, come here, you have the ball. Come to the middle of the court. Everybody get off the court. 1 on 1 right now for the game, for the championship, for the glory." And then somehow, he risked getting knocked out in the process. So, for the insane moment, Mark Zuckerberg...

Sam Parr

Way was sitting ringside, and every fighter would run up to him, pointing at him and talking to him. It was awesome! It was so exciting.

Shaan Puri

By the way, don't you think that Zuck should lean in more to this? I feel like this is the best PR that Mark Zuckerberg has ever had. It's his own, you know? He'll turn into becoming a fighter, being at the UFC court ringside, hanging out there, and all the fighters really love him. We're going into the tough man sport, right?

Sam Parr

He looked cool. He had a little afro and he was wearing a baggy white t-shirt. He looked like a cool guy.

Shaan Puri

He did, yeah. He has like the oversized tee now. He went on TikTok shops and bought the oversized tee from some 18-year-old who was doing a dance video.

Sam Parr

And his wife looked cool too. It's called **mob chic**—what she was wearing. It was all black; she looked cool. They both looked cool. I googled that and read a Business Insider article. I learned that word, **mob chic**.

Shaan Puri

So, you know what he should do? By the way, this is a little PR lesson for him. I think that he should create his own "Zuckerberg Bonus." He should have the "Zuck." That's a...

Sam Parr

Great idea!

Shaan Puri

The Zuck 500 is an initiative where he gives $500,000 to whoever had the most badass performance. It should have just been like Max Holloway; it's about whoever really puts it all on the line, win or lose. It doesn't matter. It's about someone who shows the most heart, like an underdog bonus. These guys don't get paid, and Zuck has all of the money. If he did that for every pay-per-view, I feel like it would create its own storyline. He'd gain so much goodwill; it would be like gladiator stuff that you couldn't buy. By the way, the singer Sia does something similar for Survivor. The winner of Survivor wins $1,000,000, and Sia is a superfan of the show. She called into the reunion one time and said, "Hey, I just love that guy. He didn't even come close to winning, but I want to give him $50." So it became this Sia bonus, where whoever wins her heart gets extra money at the end. It's pretty genius.

Sam Parr

Dude, that's so funny! That's awesome. Alright, so Max knocks out the guy. What happens? What's the business angle here?

Shaan Puri

The press conference at the end is always entertaining. Dana White is a very unfiltered guy. Dana, please come on the pod! He goes on the press conference and somebody asked him, "Dana, you know, on a night like this, UFC 300, you try to build a card, but after that, it's out of your hands. Then it's up to the fighters. How happy are you that it just turned out that way? Such a moment and such a great overall night." Dana responds, "You know, people ask me what I do for a living. I don't... he's like, I don't organize fights. I sell holy shit moments. And tonight, I sold millions of holy shit moments." Basically, it's like he sold a holy shit moment to millions of people. I thought this was a great little lesson: What are you really selling? What are you really selling in your business? Is he selling mixed martial arts contests? Is he selling an event? He says, "I'm selling holy shit moments." I thought about this, and marketers for a long time have known this: there are levels to marketing. I want to give you my five levels to marketing based on the Dana White principle of selling holy shit moments. Okay?

Sam Parr

Ready for this?

Shaan Puri

Level 1: You sell a product. This is every **shitty startup website**. You go to it, and it just says, "We are a healthcare CRM using AI." They're just describing some product, and it's not compelling because I don't care about your product; I care about myself. Your product is some abstract concept, you know, "We're a blockchain-based, web 3 arcade side scroller." It's like, what? If you go to most product websites, to be honest, they're just selling a product. That's Level 1. This is what failing companies do. Level 2: You don't sell a product; you sell a solution. This is effective, but it's competitive. For example, **Head and Shoulders** says, "Hey, are you tired of having that dandruff on your shoulder? Use Head and Shoulders; it gets rid of the dandruff." So, selling a solution to a pain. I would say that if 50% of companies just sell a product, another 45% are going to sell the solution to a pain. Now we get into the championship rounds, where we're going to have more interesting ways of doing things. Level 3: You sell a lifestyle. This is **Lululemon** and **Slack**. If you don't believe me, go read **Stuart Butterfield**, who is the CEO of Slack. Go read his post called "We Don't Sell Saddles Here." I'll spoil it for you: he says, "Imagine you're a saddle company; you make saddles. We could just describe the product, the saddles. We could describe some solution, like, 'Oh, your butt won't be sore on our saddle,' or we could sell the lifestyle—the joy of horseback riding. Get people to want to be on horseback, to feel free, to have the wind blowing through their hair." You make that lifestyle aspirational, and then when they're like, "I got to do that," they're super motivated. They say, "Well, what do I need?" You're like, "Well, you need a saddle, and ours are the best." He says this is how the yoga companies, like Lululemon, got popular too. They didn't say, "Here, we have the best yoga pants," which was a small market of people looking for yoga pants. They got people into the idea of doing yoga. Once you get into doing yoga and the benefits of yoga, you're going to want to invest in buying better gear as you go. Lululemon will say, "Well, we have the best gear." This is how you create a category.

Sam Parr

Or you just want to make your ass look dope. Yeah, but yeah... the

Shaan Puri

**Lifestyle of being a big booty queen.** If that's the lifestyle you want to be a part of, then we are the fans for you.

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri

The MFM merch store will soon have... soon, soon have fat margin bottoms and the real bottom lines. That's pretty good. Alright, 45... 4 is where I thought we stopped. There's actually 5, but 4 is where I thought we stopped. This is the Dana White level. You sell a feeling. I'll tell you that line that somebody told me once. I hired this consultant, and I was talking about my content. I did the lamest thing; I hired a consultant for my personal brand just to know what these guys know. I didn't ever end up implementing really anything, but I did take away this one thing. He said, "You've worked with all the big names. You've worked... you know who I don't want to name out of my guess, but you've worked with a bunch of big names." I said, "What do they do differently than what I'm doing?" He goes, "You make content; they give out a feeling." I said, "What?" He goes, "As any content creator, you are the merchant of feelings. If you give someone a feeling more consistently and more powerfully than anybody else, that's what makes you box office." I was like, "Oh man, I love using the word box office. That's great." This is what Dana White was saying, right? We sell "holy shit" moments. We give you that feeling that you can't really get anywhere else. Like in your life, can you really get... there's a reason you love the UFC. My buddy Julian Shapiro loves the UFC like none other. He's like, "I can't watch other sports. I can't watch TV or movies. UFC has ruined it for me."

Sam Parr

Well, Dana White said something amazing. He goes, "Think about this: you're at the Super Bowl. It's the final down; it's the greatest moment in NFL history, and a fight breaks out a few rows down from you. What are you gonna do? You're gonna stop watching football and you're gonna go and pay attention to the fight." That's what people do. And that's the business that I'm in. That's why I knew this was gonna be the greatest sport ever.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. The greatest brands, let's say Disney, are amazing at this. Disney doesn't say, "Come to our theme park! We have the fastest rides or the shortest lines." No, they tell you about the **magical family experience**. They emphasize that this is going to be a lifetime memory for you. This experience will give your kids a magical feeling, a magical moment. All of their movies are the same way. You watch a Pixar movie because it's going to give you that feel-good moment. They provide feel-good moments more consistently than anybody else. The best brands do this. Louis Vuitton gives you a feeling of **status** and **importance**. The UFC gives you that "holy shit" feeling. Nike gives you a feeling of greatness. When they advertise their shoes, they don't just promote the rubber shoes; they show you someone striving for greatness. It's that **inspiration** and **motivation** that they sell. Now, level 5. I realized that this is the highest level. You don't sell a product, a solution, a lifestyle, or even a feeling. You sell an **identity**. This is what religions do; this is what political parties do. They give you a tribe, a label, a purpose, and a sense of belonging. It's almost like buying a Subway franchise. They say, "Here, wear this uniform, put this logo up, here's the packaging, and here's a portrait of bread. Put that on your wall." You now have an identity. They give you a brand to have because you didn't have one on your own. They provide you with a purpose and something to do. It's **identity in a box**, and I think that is the highest level of what you can do: you sell an identity to people.

Sam Parr

First of all, very good! This was a really good monologue. You tied in some of my favorite stuff. Congratulations! Second of all, were you just watching the UFC, taking notes on this stuff?

Shaan Puri

Like, no, I heard him say that in the press conference, and I go, "That's exactly what he does." That's why I watch, because I can't get that "holy shit" feeling from anything else. What else is as real as that? Once you know the stories of the fighters, right? That's really what works. If you're a personal investor and you understand the stakes, you understand what's in it for each guy. There's like, you know, it's pretty hard to compare that to really any other sport. Maybe boxing is the other one.

Sam Parr

No, boxing doesn't even come close to what these guys do. They're in a league of their own in terms of giving me a feeling. I wore a heart rate monitor one time to see what would happen because I noticed that going into the fight, I was so anxious. I was so emotionally invested that my heart rate went up like 20 beats per minute before this fight. It was insane! I get so into this that I find myself tired the next day. It's one of the very few times that I've felt this in sports. It's the best! I feel a little bit of this in the Olympics because I get into that, but no, I mean what he has done and what the UFC has done in terms of, what did you say, selling emotions? It's the best.

Shaan Puri

I mean, if you go look at the old cigarette ads, you can see this. If you look at an old cigarette ad, they are obviously not selling the product. They're not selling a solution to a pain. They're not saying, "Hey, your lungs need a little more tar." They're not doing that. It's all about a feeling and an identity, right? They give you a feeling of greater self-importance, a cool self-image. So, all of the marketing around cigarettes was about a cool self-image. It's a cool guy, and in this cool moment, he takes out the cigarette and lights it up. Or the woman doing the same thing. Go watch the Dos Equis commercial, right? The most interesting man in the world is sitting in a bar surrounded by women but not paying them any attention. He’s looking at you dead in the camera, making eye contact. He's a man's man. He's done this, he's done that, and when he drinks beer, he just does this, does that, right? He's trying to give you a cool self-image. That's what a lot of luxury products and a lot of commodity products have to do. Once you realize that, you're like, "Oh!" I love this because in our world—the tech world, the business world—most people are like absolute beginners, rookie white belts at real marketing. Even the best in class are just saying, "Sell a solution to a pain."

Shaan Puri

Sell the benefit, not the feature. That's like level 2, and they just stop there. Nobody really goes beyond that. I like taking what is best in class when it comes to marketing and branding, and actually doing something that gets people to move and take action. How do I bring that into our world? Because then you have an unfair advantage.

Sam Parr

And it's not always about violence. So if you're listening to this and you don't know anything about the UFC, go to YouTube and type in "UFC Rose." One of the best moments from the UFC features a young woman named Rose Namajunas. She's about to fight, and she clearly is scared. You see her mouthing to herself, "I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best." I remember distinctly where I was when I saw that. She looks...

Shaan Puri

Like your little sister and the person.

Sam Parr

Across the room from her looks.

Shaan Puri

Like the Terminator. You could just put yourself in that person's shoes. Oh man, they're about to fight somebody who's clearly bigger, stronger, and faster. Everything. And she's mouthing to herself, "I'm the best." It's like she's walking into the lion's den, and she's got to believe this; otherwise, she doesn't stand a chance.

Sam Parr

And she knocks her out in the first round or something like that. It was one of the great sporting moments. So, the two other moments: first of all, there were two Chinese women fighting, which is the first time it's ever happened for the championship. One of the ladies chokes out another woman, and she goes unconscious right when the bell rings. So, they’re able to keep fighting. She doesn't really wake up until she gets punched again in the second round, which was just epic. Then, the third thing that happened was in the last fight. Alex Pereira gets kicked in the groin. The referee goes to stop it, he waves him off, and then 10 seconds later, he knocks out the other guy. It was just full of badass moments. This whole thing was just epic; it was an epic event.

Shaan Puri

And by the way, let's just tie this principle back. I did this with the podcast. I was like, "What are we really selling here on the podcast? Is it ideas? Do people show up because they want a business idea?" That was kind of lame. Sure, it's fun to hear ideas and fun to talk about them, but if you're really like, "You know what? To be successful, I'm going to go to this YouTube channel and find a business idea that these random guys are going to say out loud," that's honestly a bad plan. It might happen, but don't do it for that reason. The same reason applies to topics like the UFC or something else; that's probably not the most effective thing for you to do every day. So, it's not our product; it's not a pain point. One thing that I figured out was, when I talked to a bunch of people, I tweeted this out: "What is something you remember, and what's the reason you actually listen to the pod regularly? What keeps you hooked?" The number one word that kept coming up was, "Oh man, I feel so inspired after I listened." And they said, not in a cheesy way, but literally, if I'm driving and I'm listening, I sometimes will pull over because I gotta write something down. You guys said one phrase that really stuck with me, and I was like, "Oh, that's going to be an unlock for me, either personally or in my marketing." Or it's, "I heard about this idea. I'm not going to go do that idea, but I'm inspired by that idea." Or you tell the story of some "Billy of the Week," some guy who's really crushed it, or some business that's under the radar that's crushing it. All of a sudden, I feel like success is abundant. I'm inspired to go make my stuff happen. I'm not going to do what they did, but I'm going to go make my stuff happen. So, we sell inspiration. That's the first thing we actually sell. One secondary thing, which is, have you ever seen that meme of the kid eating cereal next to his TV box? It's like three friends on the TV box, and he's just cozied up next to it. It's like, "Me and my four friends," but it's just like...

Sam Parr

Oh, that's awesome!

Shaan Puri

The other.

Sam Parr

One's a photo.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and it's basically about companionship. People have posted before, "This is me when I listen to podcasts." It's like you're hanging out with your friends, except they're not there. But it feels that way. So, that's the other thing. For a lot of people who listen, what I learned was that even more than the inspiration, the ones that are super sticky, it's companionship. It's basically that my real-life friends aren't as nerdy about business as I am. I live in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, or I'm in Belize, or I'm in, you know, wherever. I don't know six other people that I can hang out with twice a week and just nerd out about business with. So, you guys are basically my substitute for what I don't have or don't have the time for in my day-to-day life.

Sam Parr

This was an A+ segment. Good job! I dig that. Let me tell you about something. I launched something a couple of weeks ago, or a week ago, and I think there's only a 30% chance of it working. But I thought I could reveal some of the numbers behind it. I launched this thing called "Sam's List." It's samslist.co. Did you see when I shared that online the other day?

Shaan Puri

Yes, I did.

Sam Parr

Alright, so let me explain the background. I was at the airport in January and I had just received an email from my accountant. It pissed me off that they didn't catch an error that I thought they should have caught. So, I tweeted out, "Who has an accountant that they love?" I got about 300 responses and I noticed that tons of people were bookmarking that tweet as if they were going to come back and hire an accountant, which was mentioned in the tweet. I thought, you know, I think I could make a thing out of this. So, I hired a developer who works on Bubble. Do you know what Bubble is? Have you ever used Bubble?

Shaan Puri

The website builder.

Sam Parr

Yeah, man, it's awesome! It's like a whole app builder. So, we built this website where I wanted to create something like Yelp for accountants—a place where you can identify a good accountant based on your friends' recommendations. I thought this could be a good idea because when you hire an accountant, you don't really have a place to see reviews. You mostly hear about accountants through word-of-mouth. If you hire the wrong accountant, it's basically a year that you have to stay with them before you find out that they kind of stink. So, I was like, "Alright, I'm going to create this thing. It's called Sam's List. We're going to build this out; it's going to be awesome." I spent about $15,000 to build it out. Here’s what I did: I got 300 replies to that tweet. I called all of them, so I got most of them on the phone or some of them via email. I asked them all types of questions. I asked them how much they charge, who their perfect client is, who their not-so-perfect client is, what services are their specialties, and things like that—as if I was going to hire them. I think you had told me one time when you went to hire an accountant, you created your own data room and sent it to people, asking, "Who can handle this best?" Well, I kind of did something like that. I put them all on this website, Sam's List. It took me a few weeks to get it going, and then I shared it. I want this thing to work, but I don't think it's going to.

Shaan Puri

Why are you saying that? Is that like some weird humble... No, are you just doing some reverse thing where it's like, "If only the community would rally," and they're like, "What are you doing here?" Is this reverse psychology?

Sam Parr

It's not reverse psychology. I'll explain why this will be hard to work. So here was my math: if I can get 500,000 people a month to come to this website, 3% of them would contact an accountant somehow. I could charge the accountants $100 per person I sent to them, per lead. If that were the case, that would be something like $1,500,000 a month in sales. I figured that would take years to get to, but if I could get to that, that's like an interesting thing. Well, I shared it online, and in the first week, I got 13,000 visits. We made this really cool quiz where you could say how much revenue you have and whether you want this for your business or personal needs. Then we would recommend 3 or 4 accountants that you might like or that could fit your needs. We had 6,000 people answer the quiz. We also created this feature where you could schedule a meeting right there on the website with those accountants that we referred you to. However, very few people scheduled appointments, and very few people even submitted their information to the accountants.

Shaan Puri

What's very few?

Sam Parr

So, we had 6,000 people take the quiz in one week. I think we had about 100 or 200 people submit information to the account. But that's not the issue. The issue isn't the users; the issue is that accountants are not clamoring for these leads. My big learning was that there's a massive shortage of accountants. There is not a shortage of people looking for an accountant; there's a huge shortage of people who are becoming accountants. Not only that, the people who are accountants don't really want to grow their business to be that large. I thought they would be dying to get more customers, but they're really not, which shocked me. That was a really big shocker. When I launched this business, I basically copied—or I didn't copy, I used—have you heard of smartasset.com? No? So, smartasset.com, I bet you've seen them if you've Googled things like "California's taxes" or "California tax calculator." The reason why they have all that stuff is they're actually doing well. I'm doing what they're doing, but they're doing what I'm doing for Certified Financial Planners or Advisors. What they do is you take this quiz, and they ask you all sorts of questions about, you know, how old you are, if you're retired, if you're not retired, what you're trying to do with your money—are you trying to invest it or just live off it, whatever. Then they recommend about three or four people who might fit your needs. But what I found on that website is if you click around, they have to tell you how much they're paying per person, per lead. They actually say if a person has between $1,500,000 in assets, this adviser is paying $700 per lead. If it's over $5,000,000, they're paying $250. It gives you a range for the cost per lead based on net worth, and it tells you how they do their business. I thought I could just replicate it, but it turns out CPAs aren't dying for business. It's the exact opposite; they're actually overwhelmed with business. So, that's why I don't think this is actually going to work.

Shaan Puri

A lot of money. I think you're wrong. I think there's a need for this. I think that it will do well. I also think you know that, and I think you're wrong.

Sam Parr

I don't... I'm gonna shut it.

Shaan Puri

I think you're playing us. Just gonna put it out there.

Sam Parr

I'm going to shut it down on May 30th.

Shaan Puri

I'm going to shut it down on May 30th.

Sam Parr

I can't figure it out.

Shaan Puri

No, I went on you for a second.

Sam Parr

That was good. If it doesn't work, if I'm losing money right now on this, and it doesn't start working by May 30th, I'm shutting it down. I'm not going to invest more money in it.

Shaan Puri

Doug, just give it to me. I'll make this work. This is so easy. You're just being impatient, and it's going to fail because you have a much better business that you're busy with called Hampton, and you should focus on that. That's why this is going to fail, and that's why this is a bad idea. But otherwise, it's a good idea. Let me point out a couple of the product details that I like, and I'm going to tell you some of the things that you should do differently. Alright, you could screen share this. I love when I go to the sites and it pops up. Normally, there's an email pop-up, but it's like, "No email, no BS, no something, let's go." I was like, "Okay, alrighty." I think you should just actually call that out a little more and be like, "You know, we want to help you. We don't need your email address." Then just have a button that says, "Thank God." When they hit "Thank God," it takes them down the funnel. I love this part that you did where you wrote, "I have this many Twitter followers." I asked if they have a CPA account that they love. Then I called all of them and asked them how much they charge, blah blah blah. Why would I do this? Because I'm a nerd, and I needed an accountant. I thought, "Well, how about I make this useful for others?" Blah blah blah, that's great. I love how you do that. I love how you put everybody's Twitter profile attached to their name. Nice touch! Like, your name here, every accountant, you can go see their Twitter, which for our market is actually a good idea.

Sam Parr

You know, most people in the world see.

Shaan Puri

Their bio on Twitter... but for us, it's cool. You should put the prices on the front page because I think that adds a lot more value for the person coming in. It's like, "Oh good, these people already went and found what the rates are for these." You also said, like, I asked them who their sweet spot customer is and blah blah blah. What I can't tell is, you know, when you go to Cars and Bids and Doug DeMuro has the Doug speech bubble, and Doug's like, "Here's what I think." I think you kind of need to lean into that.

Sam Parr

I agree, that's a good idea.

Shaan Puri

I don't trust reviews. I trust *review*, and I really just trust you. So the question is, can you not just call them, but call like 10 of their clients and be like, "Tell me everything." And then end up with one speech bubble that Sam's saying: > "Talk to them. Talk to their clients. Here's roughly what they charge. People are either screaming endorsements or they're like, 'Yeah, it's pretty good.' So I think they're solid, and they seem to specifically help out this type of customer." I think that would make it better.

Sam Parr

I think that's a good idea. The reason why we haven't... I haven't done that yet is I would have to hire someone to help me call those people. And I was like, "I need to figure out does this thing even make money in the first place in order to justify all this work."

Shaan Puri

**Build your dreams, baby. If you build it, they will come.**

Sam Parr

Did you see? So, a few things. The design—I liked our design. I just ripped it off. We made it look like old Microsoft. Then the image, I just copied Clippy. You remember Clippy from Microsoft Word? It's *Clippy*.

Shaan Puri

This doesn't make any sense.

Sam Parr

It's AI, and on the calculator face, it's only 4 digits: it's a 2, a 5, a 9, and a Q.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and putting the "Q" in as the last letter is... the AI knows something we don't.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so anyway, I thought I'd fill people in on this. I think it's hard. I don't want to be in the business of selling leads to small accountants, having hundreds and hundreds of different clients paying me. Instead, I think in order to make this work, you actually need to get someone's information. For lead generation, you usually only have a small number of very large companies who pay you a large sum per month for a certain amount of leads, versus one-off clients. You know what I mean? So, I'm still trying to figure this out, but we'll see if it works out.

Shaan Puri

Alright, you got anything else, or are we done?

Sam Parr

No, I'm... you did great! That was good—22 bangers.

Shaan Puri

That's what I tell my wife when I go on stage: "How was the pod double banger?"

Sam Parr

A double banger? Oh, what? Alright, that's the pod.