13 Businesses Making +$1,000,000/Year With 0 Employees

Sam Parr

I was

Shaan Puri

"Like, have you done any deals that I would have heard of?" And he's like, "You know Disneyland?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "A lot of windows in Disneyland. We do all the windows in Disneyland." I was like, "Wow!"

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

Okay, they bought a window company and got them a Disney contract. We do all the windows at Disney. Alright, what's up? We are talking about something pretty special this episode. This is going to be different from our normal episodes, which are, you know, freewheeling and freestyling. Today, we have a plan. The plan is we're going to talk about companies that crush it with only 1 or 2 employees. The reason we thought about this was there was some news, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, that a company I had never heard of called Wargraphs sold for $54,000,000. Yeah, that's obviously impressive, but the most impressive part was that Wargraphs was just one dude. So, one guy sold his company for $54,000,000. And I don't even... do you know what Wargraphs did? Are you...?

Sam Parr

familiar with it no is it a a gaming thing

Shaan Puri

It's a gaming thing. Yeah, so he built basically a companion app for League of Legends. If you play League of Legends, this was a thing that would keep track of your stats and help you get better at the game. He built this little companion app, and it had gotten really popular. I think he had around 1,000,000 players using it, and it was generating serious revenue. So, he sold it for **$54,000,000** in cash. He was upfront; he said, "I got half of the $54,000,000 in cash upfront, and I have the other half as my earn-out that I have to leave if it hits our milestones along the way." This is just super impressive for a one-person company.

Sam Parr

how old was the person

Shaan Puri

I think he started when he was young but now it's been like you know 7 or 8 years so

Sam Parr

dude that's amazing

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna guess something like 30. But it got me thinking. Everybody talks about big businesses for good reason; big businesses are awesome. They are! But what about mighty businesses? What about the guys who are punching above their weight? So, somebody who has just themselves or just 1 or 2 people that does $1,000,000 in revenue profitably, flies under the radar. How many other war graphs are there out there? We did some research and we found some, and that's what this episode's gonna be about. We've kind of touched on this before. We've done some of our most popular episodes. If you go on YouTube, you'll see the episode of Peter Levels, which I think has a couple hundred thousand listens. The lesson... sorry, the episode about Amit Agarwal, the guy who builds G Suite, you know, basically like Google Sheets plugins. He does $1,000,000 in revenue as just one guy who is a blogger turned app builder. So those have been some of our most popular episodes. I think this is gonna be a good one. Sam, anything else before we jump in?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I want to give an honorable mention to this one person. Have you listened to Juvenile growing up? Remember the rapper, Juvenile?

Shaan Puri

of course you're giving him a shout out like he's listening

Sam Parr

Yeah, like last year, NPR did this thing called the **Tiny Desk Concert Series**. You know what that is? It's like they're in the office playing acoustic songs.

Shaan Puri

yeah those are cool

Sam Parr

They said, "Who should we have?" and this one guy goes, "You should have Juvenile." Juvenile replies, "What the... what the...?" He goes, "W.T.F. What the f*** is a tiny desk? Hell no!"

Shaan Puri

and you know what they got him to do

Sam Parr

It happened this weekend. In preparation for this one-man band show, I've been listening to that Juvenile concert from the Tiny Desk NPR series. It was awesome! Do you remember "Back That Ass Up" and "Slow"?

Shaan Puri

motion for me and all that it was so good it was so good

Sam Parr

I had to be inspired. Him and Manny Fresh did it, and it was awesome. It was awesome, awesome, awesome. So honorable. Alright.

Shaan Puri

So these are the Tiny Desk Awards, let's call it that. These are the Tiny Desk Awards, which are the businesses that can be run off of one tiny desk because it's just one or two people. Alright, and we're going to do this like an award show. We have a long list, but that'd be kind of boring, so we've broken it up into categories and we each have our answer for the category. For example, the first category is going to be **"Biggest One-Person Business"**.

Sam Parr

But we also have to set some rules here. Yes, some of these things—one person—it's a bit vague. One person oftentimes can mean like the founder and a team of contractors, or in many cases, it's going to be agencies that they work with. Of course, it started as one person and it was that way for a long time, and then they hired a team.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, it's more about the **spirit of the law** than the **letter of the law** here. They don't have T-shirts for the company because they don't have a lot of employees. You know, morale is probably low, and they likely won't have an office where a bunch of people go into. It's either one or two people who are kind of the core drivers, and maybe they use some contractors, vendors, or agencies for other things. But that's generally the way we're looking at this.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so let's get into it. So what's the first one? The biggest? Is it the biggest?

Shaan Puri

so if

Sam Parr

you go first

Shaan Puri

So, I'm going to do another gaming one that I doubt you know of. Do you know what *Stardew Valley* is?

Sam Parr

no what is that

Shaan Puri

So, **Stardew Valley** is this game, and if you look at the game, the art looks like it's almost 8-bit art. It appears to be a very simplistic game, and it was made by one guy, **Eric Barone**. He basically thought, "I get out of school, and I don't want to get a job." So, he decided, "Well, I'm going to teach myself how to code instead of going to get a good job." He thought, "Why don't I learn how to build a game in order to teach myself how to code? I don't want to just code for coding's sake; I'll try to do something with it." He always liked these games back in the day, like **Harvest Moon**. It's a kind of farming simulator game that had a very simple style and a cult following. So, he said, "I'm going to make my version of **Harvest Moon**, which was popular when I was a kid, like 15 or 20 years ago." He spent basically four years in solitude just building this game by himself before he released it.

Sam Parr

years his job did he have a job

Shaan Puri

He just laid off his girlfriend. His girlfriend had a grad degree stipend, and he had a part-time job as an usher. Goddamn, which is amazing! I mean, being an usher is terrible unless you're literally trying to be like a cover artist covering the artist Usher. You never want to be an usher; that's not the right direction for your career. So, anyway, he launches this thing, *Stardew Valley*, which has sold 20 million copies. It sells for $13 a pop, so you know he sold this thing. I think over time it has done $150 million in sales or revenue, and he's the only guy who built it—just by himself. This is honestly not that uncommon. *Minecraft* was largely built the same way. There's this guy, Notch, who's the developer behind *Minecraft*. If you've ever seen it, he'll get on Twitch and just code *Minecraft*. He'll stream himself for like 12 hours just building the game. I think *Minecraft* has more people overall, but one guy was really the driving force and the driving energy around it for many, many years. But *Stardew Valley* is my pick for the biggest success—$150 million off of one game developer.

Sam Parr

the guy notch when he sold I think he sold for like multiple 1,000,000,000 right

Shaan Puri

3,000,000,000 2,000,000,000 something like that

Sam Parr

And he, I think he bought like an... he outbid Beyoncé for like an $80,000,000 mansion in LA. He was tweeting out or sharing how everyone hates him now. He was like, "I'm so lonely, this sucks," but he's still in this fancy $80,000,000 mansion. Do you remember that whole ordeal where he was talking about how he didn't give equity to people? Some of the people he hired hated him, and he was lonely, but he was having all these huge parties and he was lost and all that stuff. Do you remember all that?

Shaan Puri

no I missed all of that

Sam Parr

dude he like went through this whole spiel on on twitter about how like he hates his life but

Shaan Puri

oh wow

Sam Parr

you know

Shaan Puri

I mean this house is I'm looking at this house this house is insane

Sam Parr

was it 80,000,000

Shaan Puri

70,000,000

Sam Parr

yeah it was like a it was a fat I remember like he it was

Shaan Puri

I would love to see Beyoncé getting the news. It's like, "Oh, who did it? Who outbid me? Was it Spielberg? Who was it? Oh no, it must have been Lenny Kravitz. Who was it? Who outbid me on this?" Like, not notch. Yeah.

Sam Parr

got them

Shaan Puri

you got them

Sam Parr

Alright, mine is StreamYard. I have to remember when they launched, but I think they launched in 2019, right before the pandemic hit. It was basically a way to stream events online and stream interviews and things like that. These two guys scaled it to **$30,000,000** in revenue in one year, or 18 months or so. This mostly happened because of the pandemic. They ended up selling it to Hopin for **$250,000,000**; it was a mix of cash and stock. Hopin ended up laying off a bunch of people last year, but I've heard rumors that it's killing it. Have you heard these rumors about Hopin?

Shaan Puri

yeah no no I have not heard I've heard the opposite of those rumors but I don't know

Sam Parr

what have you heard

Shaan Puri

Well, just like when the layoffs happened, it was basically post-COVID events coming back online in person. So that's naturally going to hurt the business. Then they had massive layoffs, and I heard that the founders had taken a ton of secondary or something like that.

Sam Parr

I heard like a 100,000,000 + in secondary

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but maybe the business went well. I have no idea. I just heard, kind of like, generally though, when you hear those three things, it's like massive layoffs. You know, the crazy event that was driving your growth has stopped, and the founders took... and people start talking about how much secondary the founders took. It's usually because the business is going in the wrong direction. Usually, people don't complain about secondaries when the thing is exploding.

Sam Parr

I don't know. I heard it the other way around. I also thought that, and I heard the other way around. We talked about StreamYard right when they were getting going, and then we talked about them again when they were acquired. Did you say you knew these guys?

Shaan Puri

I think I had met them because back when I was doing video streaming, I met kind of everyone in this space. I don't know, I gotta look up who these guys are, but I do know that they got to $14,000,000 in ARR when it was just the two of them. Then it got to $30,000,000 when they had, by that time, hired up a team. So this is kind of like a hybrid. They got really far with just a couple of people, and then they hired up, you know, as they scaled it before they sold.

Sam Parr

And I remember going to their website when it was just them. There was the founder, and he was on the home page giving a tutorial video on how to use the product. It was just him, practically with the camera on his lap, and he looked exhausted. He looked so worn out. I remember this was during the pandemic when we were thinking about using them for something, and he looked super haggard. But it was very impressive that these two guys built this to sell for $250,000,000. Although it was cash and stock, so I don't know if the stock is worth anything. I heard it might be, so that might be one of the biggest ones that I've heard of, at least recent big ones. Another big one that happened a long time ago, so I have no connection, was Plenty of Fish. How much did Plenty of Fish get acquired for? Like $550,000,000?

Shaan Puri

think hundreds yeah

Sam Parr

And that was started by one guy named Marcus, who now I see online and he seems like he lives the most lavish life and just does crazy stuff. So, Plenty of Fish was basically one of the early dating websites. It was a marketplace, similar to OkCupid, but I think it was predominantly Canadian. That had to be probably the biggest exit that I've ever heard of for a really small team.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Plenty of Fish was unbelievable. That guy, isn't he like a nut? The Plenty of Fish founder... I feel like that's a whole other story we should do one day.

Sam Parr

I think it's a whole other thing. I don't know; I haven't researched it enough to actually verify the claims. But I've heard some grumblings, like little stories, that something weird is going on. However, I don't know the truth.

Shaan Puri

Also, I love the fact that you've met the StreamYard guys. They looked haggard, and you're like, "It's like in Silicon Valley when you see somebody like that. You put your arm around them and you're like, 'Hey, you alright? Is it because of too much traction or not enough?'" I just need to know how I'm gonna...

Sam Parr

treat you too much

Shaan Puri

Yeah, oh, it's too much traction. Okay, okay, okay, come here, come here. You sleep on my couch, let me feed you. Just take this check, put me on your cap table. You know, like there's really, you know, one out of ten of the haggard people, they're getting beat down by too much demand, and nine out of ten are...

Sam Parr

bad demand that who have you met like that who else have you met where you're just like dudes

Shaan Puri

Talking to a guy named Abder, I learned about an interesting experience he had. I met him after the fact, but he told me the story, and it always stuck with me. After hearing the story, I thought, "I should look for that." What happened was that Twitter started gaining popularity right when it was taking off in Silicon Valley. It became a significant platform. Abder and his team, who were data science-type people, thought, "Alright, what can we build that makes Twitter work better?" Twitter was such a simplistic product at the time; it was almost like a protocol. Anyone could build apps on top of it or use the data for something. So, he was trying to build something, but he didn't know what he was doing. He was sitting on a train and started coding this thing. He thought, "Oh, I've done this research on sentiment analysis." At first, I thought, "Okay, this story sounds a little boring. Who cares about sentiment analysis?" But he explained that you could figure out how people were feeling about a certain topic based on how they were talking about it.

Sam Parr

you tell him his story was boring right when he got going

Shaan Puri

My, you know, my chin started to drift. I did that. I was like, "Is there anyone else in this car I could talk to?" I was in a car with him in Ethiopia, you know, for four hours straight. There was nowhere to run. So I'm hearing, I'm like, "Alright, let me hear out the story." Your sentiment? Yeah, go ahead, tell me more about your PhD in sentiment analysis. What did this do? And he's like, "So I was on a train and I'm building this thing. I'm trying to analyze what people are saying on Twitter to see if I could get the sentiment, the current mood or whatever." He's like, "But then I realized actually what I'll do is instead of figuring out their mood, I'll just figure out what they are talking about a lot, a lot more than usual. That's kind of interesting." And he basically created trending for Twitter off of Twitter.

Sam Parr

oh cool

Shaan Puri

So, he's like, "Oh, I could figure out that the word 'Olympics' normally is only said this much, but it's being said 10 standard deviations more." So that means the Olympics is trending. It's above its par, and he's like, "This is super cool! I basically have the 10 things that people are talking about on Twitter. I can kind of get that signal in a way that you couldn't really get at the time on Twitter." He creates this and they create a separate website off of Twitter called Twitter Trending. I forgot what it was called—his own website. They start getting millions of hits on this thing, and he's trying to keep it up because he's basically drinking from the Twitter fire hose. He's got all this traffic, and so he's trying to keep both of them working. Eventually, Twitter buys them, so they become like employees 10 through 20 or something of Twitter.

Sam Parr

oh sick

Shaan Puri

And at the time, Twitter had the "fail whale." It was just like, constantly, Twitter's service was going down. It had so much usage, and it was in this Web 2.0 phase; it wasn't scalable yet. They hadn't figured out how to scale it. He told me, "For six months, I just woke up every day with an imprint of my keyboard on my forehead. I had just passed out. I was working, trying to keep this damn site up, pass out, wake up, where was I? And I just kept going." He said, "That was six months straight of my life. I've never experienced anything like it." At the time, I remember thinking, "Oh, there's levels to this thing." That's what it feels like when you really have one of the winners. If you talk to people who were early at Facebook and they describe what it was like working there, it's like when people talk about living in New York. They say, "Just the energy was just... the energy can't explain it." That's what you get when you're inside one of these generational companies at the early stage when they're scaling too fast.

Sam Parr

Dude, that's exciting! I love that one. I like hearing those old stories like that. I always read those old books, like *Hatching Twitter* and all that stuff. I love that stuff! Yeah, me too.

Shaan Puri

alright next let's

Sam Parr

go to let's wait let's go to a highest degree of difficulty we'll skip a category and come back to

Shaan Puri

It’s okay. So, this is the hardest one. The hardest example. The one that we’re like, “How the hell did you even do that?” There’s no way anyone else would have done this. You go first.

Sam Parr

Alright, I have one. It's called **TinyWow**. I think the URL is just **tinywow.com**. So, do you have that pulled up, TinyWow?

Shaan Puri

yeah got it

Sam Parr

Alright, so I met this guy. He's a member of Hampton; that's why I met him. His name's Evan Gower. He had another website called Tech Junkie. Maybe you've heard of Tech Junkie? They just talked about tech topics, whatever. It's a pretty normal website, but he ended up selling it for **8 figures**. On the side, he started this thing called **TinyWow**, which is a bunch of tools that include things like how to convert a PDF, but then also image editing tools that use AI. It's one of those websites where you Google "convert this file to PDF," and he's able to come up first. Right now, it has **6,600,000 visits a month**. The reason it's interesting is that right now it only does **$20,000 a month** in revenue because he says, "I haven't turned on any of the monetization." It just has little ads. He goes, "I'm gonna turn it on eventually, but right now I'm just enjoying the summer and time with my family." So, I haven't really dug deep and built it. So basically, this guy Evan, he was...

Shaan Puri

talking about the weather put on adsense what are you doing evan this is insane

Sam Parr

Dude, that's the cool part about these one-person businesses. This is another guy I'm going to tell the story about who said the same thing. He goes, "I felt like taking the summer off, so I just let it ride for a little while." So this guy, Evan, he basically had a history as a developer. He says he doesn't do any development now, but he has a team of three people who are helping him, or one contractor who helps him overseas. This contractor has actually helped him build and implement it. He basically just draws it and designs it. But the reason why this thing has taken off is if you Google... or do you remember, like, have you ever seen those videos on TikTok that say, "Here are five websites that should be illegal but aren't"?

Shaan Puri

so good that they should be illegal

Sam Parr

Yeah, it was like a stick. So that is basically how the website got popular. It's gotten popular from those videos. The reason why this is really hard to create is that getting traffic to a content site or any type of website like this is very challenging. Oftentimes, building the product is not the hard part; it's getting users. Getting 6,600,000 visits a month, mostly from social media, is quite challenging. We'll see if he's able to turn this around. I asked him, "How big can this get?" He said, "Well, I think of something like Canva." So I'm like, "Can we?" I think it can make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue because we have this traffic. We can have a feature that says, "Hey, you can edit this picture using our platform," and we'll charge a small fee. I think this actually could be a big business, but right now it's really tiny. He told me it costs $10,000 a month to run, and it's making $20,000 a month in revenue.

Shaan Puri

Wow, yeah. Do you know how much Remove.bg makes? Have you ever used Remove.bg?

Sam Parr

no what is that

Shaan Puri

Oh, that's... I mean, that was the old way. It's like if you need to remove a background from an image - like you need to just cut out the object and remove the background - Remove.bg was this website that was like just the go-to.

Sam Parr

to traffic

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was just the go-to. Oh my God, 50 to 60 million monthly visits! It's just insane. Remove.bg had a stranglehold on me, at least, for doing this. It was super quick; you just drag your image in, it removes the background, boom, there you go. Then they charge for things like, you know, if you want it in 1080p or whatever. They started charging for little things like removing the watermark. I'm sure this thing crushes it. I don't know how much revenue they do now, but I'm sure this is one of those mighty businesses where it's a very small team.

Sam Parr

here we go googled it

Shaan Puri

canva acquired

Sam Parr

Canva acquired them. It says that they had at least **100,000,000** people coming to their website last year. Yeah, that's crazy! So, it's acquired by Canva. I don't know if Canva has gone public yet; maybe they have. I think actually they just did it last month. You might be able to dig through their numbers and see if they got acquired and for how much. But that's crazy! That's so much traffic. This site, Tiny Wild, definitely could be something like that.

Shaan Puri

They started this in 2019. It's a company called Kaleidio. They sold it in 2021, which is two years later, for roughly $100,000,000. Wow! Do they have funding? I think the parent company looks like it's a side project of the parent company. The reason why I said this is...

Sam Parr

The hardest part is getting that scale of traffic that fast. It's so challenging. You know, there are a lot of software products that we could name as one-person companies. That's challenging in the sense that you have to put in a ton of hours, and you actually have to invent stuff. However, getting traffic, to me, is more of an intellectual challenge. It's like I have no idea where to start. With software, it's like, "Alright, I'm going to make this one feature, then I'll do this other feature, and I'll talk to my users." It involves a little bit of luck and a little bit of skill. But getting a lot of traffic to your website early on? I think there are fewer people who know how to do that. That's why I believe this is one of the harder things to start.

Shaan Puri

So here's my answer for the highest degree of difficulty: **Photopea**. Photopea is very, very similar. Basically, it's one guy who recreated the entirety of Photoshop in a web browser for free.

Sam Parr

so oh my god

Shaan Puri

Photoshop is one of the most complicated products in the world. He recreated it by himself, gives it away for free, and made it work in a browser, which Photoshop doesn't. You have to download the app in order to make it work. It's just remarkable. The guy barely monetizes it and doesn't want to sell it. If you go and just search his name, like "Fotop" on Reddit or "Founder" on Reddit, he talks about why he built it, how he built it, and how he thinks about it. It's pretty insane. I think, traffic-wise, it gets around **13 million** visits per month according to SimilarWeb. At the time, this was a couple of years ago, he said that he was making **$100,000** a month off this thing. It was literally from the most basic, absolute most basic of ads. This is the one guy, Ivan, who made it, and he just puts a very simple banner ad on the site and makes like **$100,000** a month.

Sam Parr

He did a post on Hacker News on April 11, 2021. He goes, "Hey guys, I'm Ivan. I'm the creator of Photopea. I made almost $1,000,000 in the last 12 months—90% from ads, and the rest is from premium users who pay to hide ads. So it's not even much of a premium." "When you start your own project, you never know if you'll make $250,000. But if you get hired, you can be quite sure that you will never make more than $250,000. And so that's why I started it." As for this company, Photopea, I don't know how big it is, but depending on how many users it has, I could see this getting sold for 9 figures—over $100,000,000.

Shaan Puri

So, he did an AMA on Reddit, and they asked, "Hey, have you hired your first employee yet?" This was a year ago. He said, "Oh, after I did my first AMA on Reddit, lots of great people got in touch. I did end up hiring one guy from Prague who went to my university, but it'll take some time for him to get familiar with the code. He hasn't done anything yet. It's pretty crazy how this guy operates."

Sam Parr

so why do you think this is the most challenging

Shaan Puri

Just like, technically recreating Photoshop feature for feature is absolutely insane. I think that's just an insane endeavor. Then, making it work in the browser—like making it performant in a browser—is not easy either. So, for one person to do this, I think it's...

Sam Parr

Crazy! That's insane. Yeah, the cool thing about these, like, what I think the downside of these one-person companies is that everything relies on you. You don't have anyone else to ask for help. You can't hire anyone, and you can't have anyone better than you doing something because you're the only person. In order to do this, I think a lot of these people have a handful of traits that we'll talk about in the end. But I don't understand how he could grind that hard for that long with all this pressure on him.

Shaan Puri

By the way, this guy says he put **7,000 hours** into it before he made any money from it.

Sam Parr

That's insane! I think that just takes so much will. Do you remember Viral Nova? It was a guy named Scott DeLong. Viral Nova was basically an Upworthy clone. It would say things like, "Here are 10 reasons why you don't want to go swimming after eating. You're not going to believe number 7!" This guy would talk about how it was just him writing 10 articles a day. He said, "The pressure of all this traffic and all of the success is killing me. I feel so worn out all the time." I don't understand how some people can sustain that for a really long time, like this photopea guy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this is like, you know, when you go to someone's house and they're like, "Oh, do you want to see my model train set I'm building?" You're like, "What? Yeah, sure, why not? I'm here." Then they take you down to the basement and it's just like they've recreated the city of Vienna. They're just tinkering on this one thing. You ask, "How many hours? How long have you been doing this?" And they're like, "Oh, I just come here every night. I love it, and this is what I do. It makes me feel so good." You're like, "Holy shit, this is like the most intense hobby!" That's how I...

Sam Parr

feel about it I'm not that type of person are you you're definitely not I think right

Shaan Puri

Come on, I'm not... yeah, I envy those people. That's amazing willpower. Alright, let's do another one. Let's do the other end: easiest to recreate. So, which of these one-person or two-person businesses do you think are easiest to recreate? That is the opposite of the highest degree of difficulty. Go ahead.

Sam Parr

So, mine would be anything that sells information or services. I put just any course creator, but you and I know a bunch of these people, of which you and I are both included. You know, we make hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year from like a course or two. I think they're fairly easy to recreate. Another one is this company called Design Joy. Do you know what they do? I believe that it's...

Shaan Puri

a design subscription basically it's him

Sam Parr

He's a designer, but the way that he positions it, it seems really hard to imagine that that's the truth. Basically, it's just this designer that you pay **$1,000** a month for, and you ask him to make small changes to different design-related stuff. He claims that it's just him, but I believe he claims that, yeah, but he...

Shaan Puri

He says it's just him. He does $100,000 a month, so he makes around $1,200,000 a year, or roughly in that range. Basically, you buy a subscription plan. You pay around $4,000 to $5,000 a month, and then you get one request at a time. That's it. You can say, "I'd like this design thing done," and then he turns around. I don't know what his service level agreement (SLA) is or how long he takes to do this, but it's cheaper than hiring a full-time designer, probably unless you're in the U.S. But yeah, that's the...

Sam Parr

I think that's the easiest to recreate, but also the worst to run, which we'll talk about later. That's probably the easiest one. Do you know any of the course people? I know Sam Ovens does $10,000,000 in revenue and $5,000,000 profit, and for a while, it was just him.

Shaan Puri

I met a guy recently who does a product management course, and I was like, "Oh my God, who's taking a product management course?" He goes, "No, no, no, it's how to ace your job interview as a product manager. It's about how to get a job as a PM at one of these tech companies." I think he was doing about $2,500,000 a year in revenue, roughly with 80% margins. What they would do is give away free content, like how to get a job as a PM, how to interview as a PM, and how to prep for this interview. They would share what it was like talking to a Facebook PM, and so on. They give away this free content to get you on their email list and to drive traffic to their website. Then they say, "Hey, do you want to get a job as a PM, which will pay you, let's call it, $120,000 a year? If you want that job, buy this course and join this cohort or whatever." They basically sell this course for a couple of thousand dollars that's going to help you get this job that pays over $100,000. That's just a very simple value proposition for someone who wants to pursue that career.

Sam Parr

and it was just him

Shaan Puri

It was him and three others. It was three PMs that kind of got together and made this thing.

Sam Parr

Another example of an easy one to start: I think I told you about this. It's called **Cyber Leads**. You go to **getcyberleads.com**. So, it's **Cyber Leads** at **getcyberleads.com**. It's run by a guy named **Alex West**. Basically, it's a newsletter that I think costs between **$400 to $1,000** a month, depending on what you get and what you do. He goes and handpicks different companies that have recently raised money. Based on a bunch of attributes, he thinks these companies are about to hire an agency. Then, he gets all these agency owners to sign up for his service. He emails this list out once a month, along with the contact information of the hiring decision-maker or whoever is managing the ad spend. You can just contact them.

Shaan Puri

on your face and quote as a testimonial do you use this

Sam Parr

No, I don't use this. But I talked about it on the pod, like, two years ago. I've never used it. I've never... I

Shaan Puri

you've never used it I'm not but he sure used you he is using me

Sam Parr

I don't know. Is there anything you can say about these people who do this? I talked about it on the podcast. I said it's so freaking simple; the value is so clear. I guess I said that on the podcast, and he uses that as a quote. Yeah, is there anything I could do to stop it?

Shaan Puri

people doing that take them down you can always say that

Sam Parr

Oh, sorry. Let me wrap up my thing on selling information. So, anything that you sell information on, that's the easiest thing to start. Yeah.

Shaan Puri

I think so. I went the same route, but I'm going to give more detail because I think when you tell somebody that selling information is the easiest way, they're like, "Cool, what? So what do I do?"

Sam Parr

bitch I gave 3 examples

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but I think you have to break it down a little further. So, you know this guy, Lenny... Lenny [Russian last name].

Sam Parr

I like lenny rogowsky or

Shaan Puri

rudrash sativisky something something along those lines

Sam Parr

I like lenny

Shaan Puri

So, Lenny, I think, used to work at Airbnb or something. He was like a growth/product guy. He’s got Lenny's Newsletter, Lenny's Communities, and Lenny's Job Board. Basically, he was like, "I'm gonna become... I'm gonna put out tons of free thought leader content on a specific, super niche topic that only certain people are gonna care about, but they're gonna care a lot." And that's kind of the key with this stuff: How do you put up free content to establish yourself as an authority in a niche so that you can then monetize that through either consulting services, a job board, a paid community, or paid content, like a paid newsletter? That's the formula. You can look at the DesignJoy guy; he does exactly this. He puts out free content, examples of design work, and then says, "You can hire me for design work." Lenny does the same thing. He puts out free content; he's got really good stuff, like, "How did these 10 huge marketplaces get their first 1,000 users?" He goes deep and he's like, "I'm gonna interview them, I'm gonna talk to them, I'm gonna get the real answer on this specific 0 to 1 question that's gonna be highly relevant to other people going through that same challenge."

Sam Parr

I think he has a podcast too

Shaan Puri

He's got a podcast, like, at one. His job board was doing a couple hundred thousand. I'm sure the newsletter does a couple hundred thousand in sponsorships.

Sam Parr

I think talking about monthly or annually

Shaan Puri

annually at least so this is more these are

Sam Parr

minimal this is way more

Shaan Puri

Like, I know at the beginning his job board was crushing. I don't know what they're doing now, but I would bet his entire roll-up of job board content sponsorship—so podcast plus newsletter—and then he's got a paid thing, right? Ben, he's got like a paid community. What do you think Lenny's total thing is? $2,000,000? $3,000,000?

Sam Parr

2 to 5 yeah for sure

Shaan Puri

To about 2 to 3 million a year, and he did that, I would say, in a period of like two and a half to three years. It seems like... I think he...

Sam Parr

I think he has a a fun too

Shaan Puri

He kind of put his foot down on the content side. He appeared on the scene, I would say, about two years ago. Obviously, you’ve got to know your stuff, right? So, he spent time learning—about a decade—being awesome inside these companies in order to do so. I don't mean to make it sound overly simplistic, but there are people who did it without that too. Another example is Harry Drei, one of my favorite content creators in the whole world. He's a guy I tried to recruit like a hundred times to do something with me because I feel like...

Sam Parr

me too I'm gonna

Shaan Puri

do something great

Sam Parr

me

Shaan Puri

He keeps bullshitting and not saying yes, but he's going to say yes eventually. So, he's got *Marketing Examples*. He does a great job with this blog called *Marketing Examples*. Now, I don't know how much *Marketing Examples* makes. I would guess it's between $250,000 to $500,000, just him making content there.

Sam Parr

I think he's young he's very young 20 years

Shaan Puri

He didn't do the "put in 10 to 15 years" to become an industry expert. He didn't think he needed to "do the job, cut your teeth, then go make content." Instead, he was like, "No, I'm pretty sure I could just look at what's out there, give my opinion on it, and it'll work. I'll study this stuff." And that's how I feel a lot of people can approach it. You can be the curious novice tackling these topics and become an expert just by studying them intensely. So, I think Harry Drey would also be one of the easiest to recreate. Not because he's not talented—he's super talented—but I think that's something anyone can do. Anybody could just say, "Yo, I'm going to study what makes TikToks go viral, and I'm going to put out content about viral TikToks. I'm going to become the expert at breaking down TikToks that go viral." Then brands are going to know me as the guy they should talk to about TikTok consulting or advertising on TikTok. You could just build your niche audience and your niche authority in that space. A lot of people are trying to do this with AI right now.

Sam Parr

And the thing about Lenny and Harry was that people were doing... So first of all, newsletters, community podcasts—those have existed forever. It's not a unique business model. Also, people have been talking about that type of stuff for a long time. But what's interesting is that they were both early-ish, where there were only maybe... I don't know how many, but they felt like they were early-ish talking about it to this customer, to this community, on this platform. So both of those guys, I think, got popular on Twitter right before the pandemic started. I think I remember seeing Harry in 2018 or 2019, which I wasn't even really using Twitter as a power user back then. But they all seemed a little bit early. So I think timing matters for a lot of these things. Speaking of which, that Facebook Threads thing... no idea if that's gonna be a thing or not, but that's an example of like, "Hey, there's this new thing right now if you want."

Shaan Puri

to get the accounts on better be there yeah just go go be around there see what's going on

Sam Parr

yeah that's one of those things people did with clubhouse I don't know if that worked out or not but there's the

Shaan Puri

The way I say it is like this: most entrepreneurs are actually surfing waves. You don't get to create the wave, but you do have to paddle out. You gotta be on your board out there in the water. You gotta paddle out, you know, which takes effort. Then you gotta wait. Sometimes it's a dud; sometimes it's just a small wave. You're going to have to paddle back out again. Well, when you catch a good one, that's when you get to see how good you are at surfing. You might wipe out the first couple of times you try it. But that's your job as an entrepreneur: to paddle out, be out there, and start trying to surf these waves. You need to get a sense of where the big waves are and how to avoid wiping out when you do find one.

Sam Parr

So, in this episode, you're giving a really in-depth surf analogy. Last episode, you gave us a fat pitch in baseball. What did you say? A fat... a slow... I don't remember.

Shaan Puri

love the fish

Sam Parr

fat pitches it was fat pitches

Shaan Puri

I mean have you ever played baseball addiction

Sam Parr

have you ever played baseball or surfed in your life

Shaan Puri

Bro, I was the starting right fielder for my high school team. Which, anybody who knows baseball knows that means you're the biggest scrub on the team. That's who they put in right field—the guy who's, you know, the one the ball never comes to.

Sam Parr

but didn't you play baseball in china like they were just learning

Shaan Puri

I might have been in china I I might have been in china player

Sam Parr

You went to high school in China? Yeah, I mean, or Australia. It was the scrubs. It was like...

Hubspot

We play the ball as it lies. I got a golf analogy for you too. I was in China. Well, that's where I'm going to be. 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. Let's go to the next one: the most fun one-person business. So, the one that seems like the most fun to work on. I'll go first: Joe Rogan. I'm pretty sure Joe Rogan's media enterprise is bigger than all the late-night talk shows combined. So forget "The Tonight Show," Letterman, and any of these guys—whoever the new guy is, Conan, whoever these guys are.

Sam Parr

dude letterman's the retired to 10 years man

Shaan Puri

Jimmy Fallon... I don't know, bro. Who's watching this stuff? His audience is bigger. He makes hundreds of millions, and he's made hundreds of millions doing it. I'm pretty sure it's just him and young Jamie.

Sam Parr

I've heard from a few of my friends who have been on it how it works. So basically, they told me that it's Jamie who produces it, and it's Joe, and then they have one other guy named Matt, I think. I forget his name exactly, but I think it was Matt. Basically, Matt sends Joe a list of like 30 people. They're like, "Hey, I can get these 30 people. Let me know who you want." Sometimes he just ignores it. Every once in a while, he'll say that person and that person, and that's all he says. I've heard that it's just those three people.

Shaan Puri

that's amazing so I think most people just think oh joe rogan he's just a podcaster yeah he is a podcaster but that thing is a juggernaut it is a media juggernaut so the you know spotify obviously paid him you know 100 of 1,000,000 to to be there for a couple years but even before that you know just off the sponsorships off of off of the alpha brain you know product that they build off of it joe rogan I think has the most fun probably of anyone on the planet this is my sense he took all of his hobbies he's like oh I like ufc he gets to be the ufc commentator doing exactly what he would want he gets to go sit ringside commentate for these fights and analyze the fights but he only does it for the ones in vegas that are an hour flight away from him he doesn't do any of the the ones that require a bunch of travel and so all the he does all the best ones he does none of the worst ones you know he was like I wanna do stand up comedy so he does stand up comedy sells out you know theaters all around the country and you know gets to make people laugh for a living does this podcast where he's like I'm gonna have conversations with the people I want and people are like oh joe 3 hours is too long he's like that's the type of conversation I wanna have so I'm gonna do it my way and it worked and so like I just think he just dictated how he wants to live life on his terms I think he has the most fun I think his business is absolutely a mighty business in that it's just let's say 1 2 to 3 people that is building a thing that does you know over $100,000,000 in revenue which is like if you just valued something like that you know traditionally which is not it's not apples to apples but like if you have a thing that can do a 100,000,000 a year in revenue for multiple years for multiple years typically that's a $1,000,000,000 property and you know obviously it's weird you can't really sell the you know joe rogan experience because you need him it's tightly branded with him but let's say at least he's built something worth a $100,000,000 I think we can agree on that because this generated a 100,000,000 of profit for him and so he's built you know with a very small team a multi $100,000,000 business at the minimum

Sam Parr

And he has this new thing called the **Comedy Mothership**. It's like a mile from my house in Austin, and there's always a line out the door to get to that place. Yeah, they built this on a comedy club.

Shaan Puri

why not why not

Sam Parr

If you drive by it at 6 o'clock, there's been a line out the door every single night to go there, and it looks awesome.

Shaan Puri

right who you got most fun

Sam Parr

alright so scroll up to the very top of this doc I put a link in there it sounds like I'm trying to like promote hampton I'm not it's just that when I had to prepare for this episode I just went through our database and like picked out people and we had just written a blog post about this guy his name's joseph mambre and he started this company called gym streak and this guy is super fascinating because he has all the attributes of like what a lot of these like tinkers have but basically he's from zimbabwe moved to england when he was like 12 or 13 that was the first time that he experienced the internet he taught himself how to code he taught himself design and then he launched this thing called gym streak at first it was just an app for tracking your workouts and then he what he did was he went and got his buddy to wear one of these like suits and that way he could do 3 d visualizations of all the exercises and what they need to look like so he has 100 of them and so his app it's free to use and they have some like premium thing and basically you track your workouts he uses ai to suggest which weights you should do for the next workout and if you don't know what the exercise does and they'll they'll suggest workouts and exercises to do he has hundreds of these three d models of like what a proper bicep curl or what this other type of exercise looks like in year 1 he did $300,000 that was in year 2021 in year 2 he did 2,500,000 and his goal he says by in the next 2 years I wanna get to 15 to $20,000,000 a year in revenue and he's the only employee I don't believe he has any contractors I think he he'd told me that he got most of his users from facebook and tiktok ads and he hired a consultant in an agency to help him learn how to do that and right now he said I'm taking the summer off so our growth this year might still only be 2.5 or 3,000,000 a year in revenue but I because I don't feel like buying ads or staying on top of that so I'm taking the summer off because we just had a kid but it's super fascinating to see a guy who basically came from zimbabwe didn't use the internet until he was 12 13 and taught himself how to do all this he's like one of those really cool thinkers and on that blog post you could see pictures of him like arriving from africa and like learning how to work the computer it's super fascinating you'll see pictures of him with his like iphone and a laptop at the gym filming people doing like the curls so he can use his ai or whatever to like get the 3 d imaging really fascinating company I think jim streak is awesome if this could get to 15 or 20,000,000 a year in revenue like he thinks that would be a monster business for one person

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's an amazing story! Wow, love that. Good for him! That's really, really cool. Next category: **business we most want to own**. I think this is specifically a good question because for us, a business we'd want to own would be the lowest maintenance business. Neither of us wants to really run an extra business right now. So, it's like, which business would you want to own? Because it is very much, you know, **autopilot**. So, it's not Design Joy. It's not people are paying you and you're providing a subscription. It's not one of those content or course businesses where you constantly have to create new content in order to stay relevant and get more customers. I think we both have the same one. Let's just do the same one that we both are really interested in. You explain it.

Sam Parr

go for it no you go first

Shaan Puri

Alright, **Milled.com**. So, most people don't know about Milled.com. It's a really simple website that compiles email marketing from different companies. If you want to see what your competitors are sending for their **4th of July** sale, you just go to Milled.com, search for the brand, and you'll see, "Okay, here's what Ridge Wallet sent for their 4th of July emails." The top one on the right side right now says, you know, you just click, and it shows you the exact email that they sent. You can see the design, the offer, and the copy. You could use that to get inspiration for your own email marketing. This guy built this site, I don't know how long ago, but he posted about it on **Hacker News** a little bit. It's a one-person side project, and he makes **$1,000,000** a year from it. He said, "I was doing email marketing for a brand, and I noticed two things: one, it took us several days to create each email blast, and two, I had to subscribe to dozens of other competitor emails just to do research for them." So, my hypothesis was that I could create a site that would just sign up for all the brands' email newsletters and make it easier for anyone trying to do email marketing. That's the core pitch for it. He's just been running it as a side project; it doesn't take much maintenance. He could just do nothing on it for a little while.

Sam Parr

and it makes money through ads

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so they use ads on the left side. Here, you can see I have it open. He's basically got a link to the brand itself, and then he's got a cybersecurity ad popped up below it. He's also got a skincare ad. Yeah, it's just display ads.

Sam Parr

So, here's another way how he makes money. Basically, you're a marketer. You go to Milt and you want to see, like, it looks like some shoe brand. They ran this campaign and you want to check out the email. You read it and get inspired. Whatever, you click that ad and it takes you to the shoe company. It's using an affiliate link. If you buy some of the shoes...

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

This is a horrible way to monetize. This is a really amazing product under a monetized website for sure. But good for him. Forget the traffic in the first place, but that's a horrible way to monetize.

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah I agree but I think the guy doesn't care he's just like this is easy

Sam Parr

that's cool

Shaan Puri

Low maintenance, which is why I put it in my "one I'd want to own." It's low maintenance, and I think it still has a lot of upside left.

Sam Parr

I'll do one for one. I want to own something that is like a marketplace. Sometimes, if you do it right, those don't run themselves entirely, but the community kind of handles the business. BuiltWith was started in 2015 or 2016. BuiltWith is like the most niche thing ever, but it's a really big niche. You go to BuiltWith in order to see which plugins a website is using if they are using WordPress. The reason why that's important is that you go to a website that you like and you think, "Oh, I love this feature they have. Let's go and see what they're using."

Shaan Puri

using wordpress shopify also

Sam Parr

That's new. It started with just WordPress, I think. So you're like, "Just tell me the plugins and tell me everything that they're using." Shopify and BuiltWith Shopify have something like tens of millions of people going there a month. At the time when I first found them, I think in 2020, they were doing $14 to $15 million in revenue with just one person. I think that would be a really cool company to own because I think it's super valuable. Once you get all that traffic and those people coming back to you all the time, I think it's a really valuable site. Do you know anything about BuiltWith?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, just what you told, what you said there. I've been using it for a long time. Basically, if you see a website and you want to know what they use for whatever, just go to BuiltWith. It's pretty great. It's kind of like a data index, right? It's more like a database than it is a marketplace in a way, but I agree, it's kind of amazing. Alright, let's keep going. We have a couple of categories left. We have "Rookie of the Year," so a new one that we found. I think you might have already covered yours in here, but I don't know if it's boring.

Sam Parr

I didn't want to say the same thing twice, but this guy, Joe Mambre, or Joseph Mambre, I love his story. I think this guy's going to be a big deal. I take a lot of pride in trying to find people before they're really popular. I think he's read the blog post that I have linked up there from the Hampton site. It's really good. I think this guy's going to be a winner. So that's my rookie of the year. What's OnlyFinders?

Shaan Puri

OnlyFinders is mine. This is one that I don't know how old it is—maybe a couple of years old now. So, OnlyFinders is a search engine for OnlyFans. If you want to find a type of model on OnlyFans, you know, if you're into blonde agents or, like, good-looking midgets—whatever you're into—you can search on OnlyFinders, and it'll give you a list of top-ranked profiles for that category. As you know, I've been down the OnlyFans rabbit hole, where I think there's a lot of potential in the OnlyFans world for businesses, and this was one of them that I found. OnlyFans is run by one guy; he's awesome. He listens to the pod, and he crushes it. He dominates the SEO game for OnlyFans. If you search for a bunch of different popular searches, in fact, what he did was smart. He didn't want to just rank for general searches like "best OnlyFans" or something like that. He wants the high-intent ones. He wants the person who's searching for, like, whatever... I don't know what people search for, but you get the idea.

Sam Parr

like redhead

Shaan Puri

yeah redhead

Sam Parr

If you go to his site, you can click the button on the right-hand side, and it says what the top searches are. So, it's like "Indian."

Shaan Puri

girls with boyfriend

Sam Parr

I don't know what whatever yeah I don't even wanna read half of those stuff

Shaan Puri

Stuff that people are into... So, it's about categories. What he did was rank really high for the categories that people are into. That's clearly people's thing. I don't know what your thing is, but if you have a thing, I got it for you. Because of that, those are really high intent searches. On the other side, he goes to OnlyFans models and agencies and says, "Hey, if you want more traffic, I have tons of people searching for your exact thing. Pay me per click for every person I send to you." So, he's basically recreated Google. It's a search engine where you get paid per click to send somebody with intent to your site. He does a really good job of it. OnlyFans does not have a discovery section on purpose. They decided they don't want to be in the discovery business; they want to focus on the underlying tools for these creator profiles. This is insane, and it's just been surfing the growth of OnlyFans, which has grown exponentially. A few years ago, OnlyFans was very small—about 4 or 5 years ago. Then it got bigger and bigger. The growth curve looks unreal. OnlyFans is now bigger than Twitch and some of these massive websites. It generates a lot of money; they pay out $1 billion to creators on the platform. So, if you can be part of that ecosystem, it's valuable.

Sam Parr

that's insane

Shaan Puri

I have now met multiple people on OnlyFans that you've never heard of. Girls that are doing between $12,000 and $1,000,000 a month on their profile.

Sam Parr

no way it's all profit a month

Shaan Puri

Because their body is the cogs. So, it's all profit basically. They usually have an agency that manages it. As you get bigger, some of them will have that.

Sam Parr

So, what are they doing with this money? They just have huge income. How long do you think they can do it for? Five years? Three years?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and it's funny. Some of them kind of exit; they burn out and they'll just sell their name, likeness, and photo library. They'll be like, "You run it and just give me a rev share. Give me 50%."

Sam Parr

It's like Bruce Springsteen. That's what he did. The same thing. The Boss. This is insane! I don't know much about this stuff, but this is absolutely insane. The engagement on these things is wild.

Shaan Puri

If you have an OnlyFans business, reach out to me at [email protected]. I want to invest in OnlyFans businesses that are just cash flow.

Sam Parr

are they cool like when you met these

Shaan Puri

They're cool. The problem is, they're very hard to sell and they're very easy to be killed. So, they need kind of a strategy on how to... no.

Sam Parr

I mean the girls

Shaan Puri

oh I don't know I don't know

Sam Parr

you said you hung out with a a couple of them

Shaan Puri

I hang out with them I just talked to them yeah they're they're nice people I don't know

Sam Parr

that's insane how did you get in touch with them

Shaan Puri

It's the internet, bro. What do you mean? You know, how many times on here have I talked about OnlyFans? Then people basically are like, "Oh, you're into that," so then they email you and then...

Sam Parr

They probably have about a million Indian guys like DMing them. I mean, that's insane. This is insane.

Shaan Puri

I don't go through... You know when you see a big line at the front door, you don't wait in that line. You have to go find a side door. The side door is generally, you know, some dude who listens to our podcast that runs their business or is their manager. That's kind of like the way it is.

Sam Parr

Alright, let's see. If we do... Alright, the last category is "Worst of the Best." I have a different one, but I would have to say OnlyFans would be up there. But what if I... I have another one? The worst one is up.

Shaan Puri

These are all cool businesses, but which one is our least favorite? So yours is going to be OnlyFans.

Sam Parr

no I mean it would be but I already had something else kevin van trump so kevin van trump I met this guy sean likes him a lot now I met him in 2018 I was at a conference and kevin van trump is like 6 feet tall and he's like really big he's like a very very large overweight guy and he walks up to me and he's got this super thick accent he goes hey what's up my no idea like and he just starts talking to me and I'm like this guy is so confident and he got started talking about all my newsletters and the hustle and all this stuff and he's got this thick accent he's wearing a ramones t shirt and he's got like converse on he just looks like a like a like a like a walmart guy and then like he dropped he drops like 1 or 2 lines where for some reason we talked about art he was like oh yeah that picasso I got one of them some bitches like he said something like that I was like what so I let it slide and then I go how many subscribers are on your your newsletter and he goes like 60,000 and he goes hey how much do you guys charge for yours and I go oh it's free we make money on ads you charge he goes yeah we charge like $300 a month I forget exactly what it was and I'm like do the math in my head and I'm like wait that's $20,000,000 a year he goes yeah something like that I don't even know and I started hanging out with him and he and he basically this guy's name's kevin van trump he's got this newsletter where he talks about agriculture and like how it impacts commodity prices and he's brilliant and I get to know him a little bit more and you're like oh no you just have a southern accent he like was a wall street like trader the guy's brilliant he's amazing and he lives in kansas city and I've done a zoom call with him and you see he's got these custom built motorcycles in the back of his house and he's got all these picassos and shit the guy's killing it but that same day when I hung out with him I was like hey do you wanna go get dinner he's like yeah I can go get dinner we we hang out at 8:30 he goes hey man I gotta run I gotta go write tomorrow's newsletter yeah and I was like what he goes I do it every day I've done it every day for 10 years I go what do you mean every day he goes 6 days a week I send a newsletter and it's 2,000 + words it's really long he does it every day and he was making all this money I don't think I would trade lies with him though just to have all that money

Shaan Puri

I had the same answer. I think he's amazing. You put me on to him. I met him and his son; such awesome people! So, like, they're awesome.

Sam Parr

they're so

Shaan Puri

Awesome! Just fun to be around, smart, really nice—just kind people. There's no pretense about them. The same thing happened when he was hosting PharmCon. I went because you had told me about him and introduced me to him. When I got there, he was...

Sam Parr

he has a conference called farmcon

Shaan Puri

he's got farmcon which is like the biggest farming conference get together so I go to kansas and I and was it awesome yeah it was amazing and I'm there and we're talking it's like 11 at night it's like the the whole event's done everyone's at the bar every single person is drinking a beer every single person is drinking a beer and he's like I gotta get up gotta get up to the bedroom I've gotta I gotta go back to my room real quick write the write tomorrow's edition and I was like wait you write it yourself still and he's like yeah I write it I've I've written it myself by hand every night and he started this thing more than 10 years ago like I think he'd said like almost like 20 years basically that he's been writing this thing 18 years or something insane every day almost yeah and it's long too it's not like just some cookie cutter like mhmm here's 3 links that are interesting it's like now jerome powell came down said this but then he said this said that you know here's how this is gonna affect corn futures and here's what I'm I'm betting over here and blah blah blah and then there's a bunch of memes it's amazing it's basically his market analysis for like crop you know crop and commodities and then it's a bunch of memes underneath it and he's like nope never do ads isaac I just wanted to build as much trust as I can in this community and so I never advertise I I charge for it and that's why we have farmcon so everybody shows up is because you know they they I build a lot of trust over the over the years and I learned more about business from that guy in like 1 hour than I did in my entire like 4 year education at duke like he said to me he sent us a bunch of things that I that I loved I put this in my my my newsletter I did a feature on him that I wrote a bunch of the lessons but one of them that he said was he goes yeah content's cool but he's like being an he goes being an investor is the best job in the world you kidding me he's like and he he just said it so matter of fact that he's like there is no better job in the world than being an investor it is is the best and you sort of think about that you're like alright well that sounds you know whatever I guess kinda obvious and it's like okay if that's true then how do you get into that job like if if that is true for you how do you architect your life to get there because he was basically just like look this newsletter is great yeah crest makes a lot of money but I wish I was just an investor it would have been a better better better choice blah blah and he talks about investing because he I think he was on wall street before he started doing what he was doing yeah and he goes he goes you know one thing I he goes I was early into bitcoin I was early into facebook I was like really and he's like yeah he's like I wasn't as early as I could have been he's like but there's always he's like I got into bitcoin like in 20 he's like we started hearing about it at farmcon like in 2013 2014 I didn't buy it till 2015 2016 I should have been in it right when I first heard it he's the same thing with facebook he goes one one lesson I learned in investing he goes he goes 2 two lessons for you in investing number 1 the best trades are gonna be 1 where ones where you buy them you put them in the drawer you never think about them again he's like he's like that was the best thing I did about bitcoin I bought bitcoin I put it in the drawer never thought about it again heard all the news didn't care it's in the drawer and I was like damn in the drawer that's a cool concept of like what investments can you just have the conviction in you put in the drawer you say I'm not gonna react to the daily news cycle about this investment I'm gonna let the 10 years play out on this investment because it was a let's see what happens on the long term type of bet second thing he said was he goes you always get a second chance to get on the train with the best investments there's always a second chance on the train he's like with bitcoin you know you think you missed it and then the price will come down that's your chance to get back on the train and most people by that time you know they spend the whole way up wishing they had got on the train train comes back around and they get scared they don't get back on you know same thing happened with facebook facebook you know we had our chances when it was private then it goes public it goes up up up crashed back down to $19 I got back on the train you know that train came around I got right back on and he's like yo that will happen for the best investments and I sort of look for this now of like how do you override the psychology that most people have which is when it's going up you wish you had gotten in earlier then when it crashes down you're too afraid to buy in because you feel like oh shit did it is it over did it pop is it did I miss it was I wrong and it's like well then you lose lose you you know you wanna buy on the way up and you don't wanna buy on the way down that's that's a recipe for being poor right like you know buy high don't buy low right that's not gonna work and so those two little lessons were were ones that stuck out for me but this guy's business is amazing

Sam Parr

He's an amazing guy, and the reason he's amazing, among other things, is that he breaks all the stereotypes. You'll think that he's just this hick guy, just like people used to think about me. I grew up around people just like him. Turns out, he's brilliant. You'll be like, "You're going to talk to me about Facebook?" and he knows way more about it than you do. He probably knows all about Bitcoin. I mean, the guy is brilliant, and I love hanging out with him and his friends because it teaches you that I'm a *fucking idiot* for judging people a certain way. These guys are all badass, and they're fun as shit.

Shaan Puri

I did a call the other day with another guy. So, one other guy from FarmCon, same sort of guy. He's this white guy, maybe in his fifties or something like that.

Sam Parr

was he super rich because so many of those guys

Shaan Puri

are rich and I I think this guy I don't know how rich this guy is

Sam Parr

private jet rich

Shaan Puri

I don't know how rich this guy is but the guy who introduced me to him was just like yeah this guy is worth you know $300,500,000,000 personally and I was like wow okay that's crazy because I was like I was like do his deals like he's always talking about these deals like does he actually make money on these like has he had a track record of success he's like yeah he has so this guy this guy's got phrases for days so I I have this doc that I keep on my phone today I call phrases anytime somebody says something that's just like funny or worded well it just sticks out to me it's a punchy phrase I write it down at farmcon I filled out my phrases thing like because there were so many so this one guy I I don't wanna say his name to put him on blast but he he was at a dinner with so it was kevin van trump and then this guy was at the dinner it was like a private dinner at the at farmcon and he stands up and he goes and it was everyone everyone on the table is doing introductions and so there I'm like oh how I am sean and yeah I work in tech and just fucking kill me I guess I'm boring like you know like that's exactly like how I felt during the introduction this guy stands up he goes yeah my name is so and so he goes you know he goes exactly what he said he goes he goes I don't know who won the world series he starts I don't know who won the world series I can't tell you how to get 6 pack abs hell I don't even know where the remote is in my house but I know one thing I know how to structure deals and today I'm a tell you guys about a deal that I'm doing anyway gave this intro and I was like what an incredible intro what an incredible way to introduce yourself I don't know where the remote is but I know one thing I know deals and I was like that is incredible then he's he's talking about how old he is he goes you cut me in half there's gonna be a lot of rings that's the best nice and then he goes and then I I did a call with him the other day and I get on the zoom call and I had just finished my workout and my trainer was like insisting because I was like dude I gotta run I gotta be on this call he's like alright like yeah I'm gonna show him what's going on so I'm I'm like sorry if sorry this looks weird I'm doing like some stretching he goes so he's a big dude he goes okay cool if if it looks like I'm stretching call 911 because I'm having a stroke

Sam Parr

dude why would you take a call like that

Shaan Puri

Incredible win! I like to have that line immediately ready when I say, "If you know that I'm stretching... if, sorry, if it looks weird, I'm stretching." I was like, "Wow, that was literally so funny to me!" I was blown away. I was like, "I don't even care what else happens on this call; that was so impressive. So good!"

Sam Parr

what state did he live in

Shaan Puri

he's in tennessee I think

Sam Parr

what the hell is a deal struck I don't even know what that means like he

Shaan Puri

Like, he does things like private equity. He buys companies, but he's like, "I just know how to find a great deal, how to put the financing together, and how to structure it so that I get the maximum value out of these deals." That's kind of like what he does. So, I was like, "Have you done any deals that I would have heard of?" And he's like, "You know Disneyland?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "A lot of windows in Disneyland. We do all the windows in Disneyland." I was like, "What?"

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

Okay, they bought a window company and got them a Disney contract. We do all the windows at Disney. I was like, "Okay, do what with the windows? Like, clean them?"

Sam Parr

we gotta have to stand the pod

Shaan Puri

this guy's incredible

Sam Parr

what's yours for world's worst of the best

Shaan Puri

I had both DesignJoy and the Kevin Van Trump newsletter just because of the time commitment. I love that Kevin Van Trump has built this amazing power niche in the farming industry, but I would not want to be the guy who has to write the newsletter every night. The pressure is intense; it's got to go out tomorrow morning. I felt that during Milk Road for a month, and I was like, "Nope, not doing it this way." Although, I think if I were him, I would just find a way to hire somebody to do that. I can't believe he hasn't done that yet.

Sam Parr

does ben thompson still do I haven't read this

Shaan Puri

For a while, Ben Thompson is my version of that. He does Stratechery, and every day he writes a newsletter about basically the same four things. I don't even know how he does that. He talks about Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix, and discusses the kind of business and strategy of what they're doing.

Sam Parr

they're so long these are so long

Shaan Puri

And he does this daily long form. His audience has the highest bar; his audience is like the smartest people in the tech industry, you know, VCs and all that. That's who reads him every morning. So he's got to come up with original content that's super smart about the same topics. He's been doing this for like a decade, and he makes roughly $3,000,000 a year doing this. It's all paid.

Sam Parr

and he only charges a $120 a year

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think he upped his price. Out of the footage now, he raised his prices at some point. It was $100, and now it's $120.

Sam Parr

oh my gosh

Shaan Puri

Like, he is... it's $1,000 a month for this thing, you know? But he's, you know, I think Ben's awesome, so I don't see it as a knock against him. I'm saying I would hate the pressure of the daily, super insightful thing that I have to write every morning. Original content about the same kind of 10 companies... I literally don't even know how he does it. If somebody told me they were going to do that, I'd be like, "What are you saying? This makes no sense." And he does it every day, sitting in Taiwan.

Sam Parr

This is the worst. It is amazing, but yeah, I would never want to do this. So, what do we think? I wonder what the listeners think. Do they prefer these in-depth discussions on one topic? Do they dig this award category style or the award style? What do you think?

Shaan Puri

This is an experiment for us, like doing a few focused episodes—themed episodes. Today's theme was these 1 or 2 person businesses that crush it. Do you like this, or do you prefer the freestyle? Freestyle is a lot easier; this one takes a lot of work. But if people love this, you gotta go in the YouTube comments and show us if we should do more of these or not. We're cool either way, but this is an experiment, so let us know in the YouTube comments.

Sam Parr

Dude, I stressed out for so long doing this. These are emotional for me. Can I get stressed out?

Shaan Puri

give some takeaways because I don't think we did that I think we should do some takeaways alright so here's my my quick takeaways the most common industries you see these 1 to 2 person businesses that crush are just like thought leader on on social media so just putting out free content on social media ecommerce we didn't do any ecomm ones in this but like there's a bunch of ecommerce business that could do like you know a $1,000,000 a year in profit that are run with 1 or 2 people and then you can do agencies for everything else games so we talked about stardew valley minecraft there's a bunch of games that are built like this apps and plugins so plugins on top of things like a figma plugin a Google sheets plugin a gmail plugin that sort of thing and then data aggregators like built with which are basically compiling data like mil.com compiling a bunch of things that are of the same thing so it's you go search and you find what you want because they've aggregated everything only finder same thing it's a data aggregator strategy so here's a couple strategy points you need to be either amazing 100% awesome at distribution meaning you're the influencer you're the content creator or you need to be a 100% awesome on product you're the guy coding the game and and and you'll you'll hire a publisher to do the publishing and so I think that if I was gonna do this if I was gonna try to make this happen I would say where can I be either an incredible at distribution or incredible at product and I wanna just like put all of my emphasis on that in order to make this happen the next one you need attributes so a lot of these we made sound simple but you gotta have some attributes some skill copywriting design you know the ability like investment judgment market analysis like you gotta be expert on one of these things if you're gonna make this happen and so you know you gotta get to that expert master master of your craft level if you're gonna do this the last one it's all about leverage so the way you can get a 1 or 2 person company to get to 1,000,000 tens of 1,000,000 or even some of the examples we gave were 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars was leverage so you need to be using code build it once and then it runs as software you need to use media like podcasts or newsletters or whatever or you need to use capital because you're not gonna use labor right like most companies use labor that's why they have hundreds of people working for them but if you're gonna not have hundreds of people working you gotta use these other forms of leverage code capital some money or media are are your tools of choice so you gotta figure out which of those 3 can I use and that's how I'm gonna do it and the beauty of it is because of the internet if you're the best at x you now get to sell to the whole world so like we didn't give an example miss excel so miss excel is this girl who goes on tiktok and she in a high energy way dances and tells teaches you how to use excel like Microsoft excel better and she's the best in the world at teaching excel it turns out the best in the world at teaching excel is you know how to do the pop you know the the useful stuff and you can dance turns out that's what the best teacher of excel looked like and she now gets to teach the entire world excel like the best of anything gets to just to provide that product service or education to everybody that's the beauty of of the internet and so you need to figure out how to become the best of x because and then just make it available to everybody

Sam Parr

And the last thing I was going to say was, it's **fucking lonely**. The best times I have at work are when I'm in the trenches, whether it's a **shitty day** or a **great day**, celebrating with coworkers. These jobs are lonely. I'm actually surprised when I hear about how others are able to push themselves. I push myself because, oh, I have mouths to feed or I want to be held accountable by these other people and make them proud. It's really hard to push yourself this hard and to think big when you're by yourself. It's just hard to do this every day alone. So hopefully, you have a good spouse or a significant other or something because this is just challenging your personality.

Shaan Puri

I, when I started this, was like, "Oh, I want to be a solo entrepreneur. I want to be a solopreneur," or they call it a solo capitalist. I raised a fund and it's like, "I want to be a solo capitalist." Then I realized, "Oh, this isn't fun at all to do this by yourself."

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And not only is it not that good to do things by yourself, because you know, a little bit of help could go a long way. A complimentary person who's good at the things you're not good at is really, really useful. But on top of that, it ain't no fun. Most of life is the journey, not the destination. You don't want to have a shitty journey for this awesome destination. So very quickly, I was like, "Yeah, this is a duopreneur." This is me and Ben doing this, or in the fun, it's me and Ramin doing this. I basically immediately was like, "I'm gonna do this." Even my e-commerce business, I gave a chunk of it to a guy who was smarter than me and had done this before. He would give me some money, and I was like, "Why?" Just because I don't want to be reporting into myself and only have myself as a thought partner to be sparring with on ideas about this. I want to have somebody awesome just to do some idea jousting with. So I think doing it by yourself is honestly a terrible idea, and you should definitely try to get one other person to do this. I think two people is the sweet spot where you get the most autonomy and the least management headaches. You still get the most done and have a lot of fun along the way.

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod. Whether you're listening on iTunes, Spotify, or whatever, go to search "My First Million" on YouTube. Go to the comments on this video and actually let us know. We'll read them and see if we should keep doing these. That's it.