This Guy Went From $0 to Billionaire By Starting A Toy Factory In China (#372)

Shaan Puri

So, at age 18, he and his brother get on a plane. They go to Hong Kong and say, "We are going to start our toy factory here in Hong Kong." They get there, and on the first night, he literally sleeps in a bush because they didn't have a place to stay that night. So, he sleeps in a bush.

Sam Parr

right outside

Sam Parr

why wouldn't he just do a sidewalk

Shaan Puri

too hard bro he you know he don't wanna sleep on the ground you know so you wanna

Sam Parr

sleep on on a bush

Shaan Puri

so he sleeps on a bush outside of the area

Sam Parr

normal use a bench

Sam Parr

alright we live

Shaan Puri

I got something good for you I got a crazy story in fact this is a billy of the week

Sam Parr

a $1,000,000 isn't cool you know what's cool

Shaan Puri

A $1,000,000,000. You know, sometimes we get a little fast and loose with the "billionaire of the week," where it's not a real billionaire. This guy is a real billionaire. Okay, so have you ever heard the name Nick Mowbray? No? Okay, so Nick Mowbray... here’s my headline: "This university dropout from New Zealand becomes a billionaire with $0 invested." Okay, so what happened?

Sam Parr

I'll I'll I'll click

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you clicked. Alright, here's the next bit. Two brothers, when they were in, I think, middle school, entered a science fair. In the science fair, they created a hot air balloon modeling kit and ended up winning. So here's Nick, 12 years old, who wins the science fair. He decides, "Alright, people really like my hot air balloon kit, my model hot air balloon kit. I'm going to go sell these." So he starts selling them door to door and opens up a little factory on his family's farm to build the kits. However, he's having trouble scaling up because he's trying to do production himself and handle the sales himself. It's tough. At age 18, he and his brother get on a plane and go to Hong Kong. They say, "We are going to start our toy factory here in Hong Kong." They get there, and on the first night, he literally sleeps in a bush because they didn't have a place to stay that night. So, he sleeps in a bush.

Sam Parr

right outside why wouldn't he just do a sidewalk

Shaan Puri

too hard bro he you know he don't wanna sleep on the ground you know so you wanna

Sam Parr

sleep on on a bush

Shaan Puri

so he sleeps on a bush outside of the area

Sam Parr

just be normal use a bench

Shaan Puri

They ended up getting an apartment that I think was **$8** a month. That was their apartment.

Sam Parr

what year

Shaan Puri

They started a factory about 15 years ago, in a very small city in China. They were no longer in Hong Kong. They ended up creating a factory, and Nick ended up sleeping in the factory for 8 years. They had $13,000 to their name, which was what their parents loaned them to start this business. They were asking themselves, "How do we make this work?" They wanted to create a toy company. So, they started doing two things. First, they realized they only had a limited amount of money, and living in China, they had to make it stretch. They were doing all the hustle stories you hear about entrepreneurship. For example, they used to eat only off the dollar menu at McDonald's in China. Every day, for Christmas, they would go get a Big Mac, which cost about $2 and change. That was their celebration. Nick would eat half of his fries and then go back to the counter and say, "Hey, this isn't even full. Can I get a full container of fries?" That's how they managed. They had the $13,000 from their parents, and they had to make it work. Fast forward to today, they are doing about $1,000,000,000 a year in sales with their toy company. Nick is now a self-made billionaire.

Sam Parr

what's a dog

Shaan Puri

They created toys under the name **Zuru** (Z-U-R-U) and have developed a variety of toys that you may have heard of, like **Robo Fish**. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's a toy fish that swims around in a jar or a fishbowl. They've also created a product called **Bunch O Balloons**, which I have bought several times. You can put the hose in, and it fills up a bunch of water balloons all at once. They also have a **dart blaster** that they've sold 39 million of. Essentially, they built all these hit viral toys. Early on, what they did was knock off other successful gimmick toys. They would manufacture them themselves and try to out-execute the originals. For example, if there was a hot light-up frisbee, they would clone it and then work to get into retail stores. They crashed the buyer's dinner for **Dick's Sporting Goods**. One of their sisters showed up and kind of schmoozed her way in to get the account. They repeated this strategy over and over again. They would often get sued by the original companies, who would say, "Hey, you're copying our toys." Their response was, "Oh yeah? Okay, we'll create original toys." They brute-forced their way into retail and then started creating their original toys, like **Bunch O Balloons** and **Robo Fish**. They sold these at Walmart and other retailers. Their big focus was on how to manufacture these toys with no human involvement. They aimed to automate the process and make it ten times cheaper than everyone else. They claim that their factories, which use robots to produce these toys, have no humans on the line. I don't know if this is entirely true, as even **Tesla**, which tried to do this with their factories, was not able to achieve it. But maybe it's true, or at least mostly true, with very minimal human intervention. How did you find this?

Sam Parr

this guy

Shaan Puri

Someone DM'd it. Remember I talked about being known? Well, somebody was like, "You're gonna love this. This is a perfect Billy of the week." So, by the way, whoever...

Sam Parr

it is

Shaan Puri

I forgot your name

Sam Parr

And it looks like he and his brother co-founded it, and their sister's the COO. Yes, so it's all in the family.

Shaan Puri

Family-owned, they own the whole thing, I think still. They have 8,000 employees and 26 offices around the world. Last year, they tripled sales to $1,100,000,000 in 2021. You know, they're still not as big as Hasbro or Mattel or Procter and Gamble. Hasbro's sales are $6,000,000,000, Mattel's are $5,000,000,000, and Procter and Gamble is around $80,000,000,000. Now, they're launching new products and new brands. They dominate the toy business, which has made them billionaires. Then they thought, "Alright, what can we do next?" They ventured into other products. Now they're saying, "What does Procter and Gamble do? They have products in every category." So, they decided to go into the diaper market with a brand called Rascal and Friends. I think in the first year, Rascal and Friends is projected to do $200,000,000. Last year, they did $100,000,000, and this year, they're expecting $150,000,000. Next year, they're projecting $400,000,000. It's highly profitable and just prints cash. The toy business essentially prints cash, which they use to invest in these new ventures. So, how did the diaper business take off? They noticed that Huggies partnered with Disney, and Procter and Gamble partnered with Warner Brothers. That's why they could do products featuring Disney or Batman. These guys went and partnered with CoComelon, which is the YouTube kid sensation. They also have a haircare brand called Monday Hair, pet food with a brand called Nude, and a collagen brand called Dose. They're trying to replicate this success across all categories. The haircare brand is projected to do $60,000,000 this year. They're stacking these brands on top of each other, but the coup de grâce, the biggest one they're trying to do of all of them...

Sam Parr

nice work is this

Shaan Puri

**There's a thing called Zurutech. So what are they trying to do with Zurutech? They're basically trying to create a factory that can just build you houses. Robots that build houses is the big idea. They're trying to create the biggest factory on Earth—bigger than Tesla's Gigafactory, bigger than all of it.** **So let me give you the stats on this thing. Where is it? They're trying to scale it up to 1,600,000 square meters, 2 kilometers long.**

Sam Parr

can't even okay so 2 so that's that's about a mile and a quarter long

Shaan Puri

Yeah, 22,000... 2,000 K... and 2,000 meters. They're trying to hire 2,000 more people in the next 24 months, which is just insane. So, their idea with this factory for the Azure Tech thing is basically like this: You can design a home. They took a gaming engine, like Unreal or Unity, and they're like, "Okay, if you go into a game like The Sims, you can create a house. You can paint the walls, put a couch there, and make the floors different." In The Sims, you can design a whole neighborhood, a large house, a small house, whatever. So, they were like, "Why don't we do that, except it's real?" When you're done, you click print, and then the robots basically just make that house. This is what they're trying to do with this thing, which oddly sounds frankly bizarre, but that's what they're doing. So, that's the new venture they're spinning out of this called Zuyrtec. It's basically a way to use robots to build homes, which is just kind of insane. Dude, that is crazy—architecture software using a gaming engine.

Sam Parr

what do you think made him so special I mean

Sam Parr

this guy like

Sam Parr

I'm looking at him and he he just seemed like a have you ever met any new zealand guys

Sam Parr

yeah like that's

Shaan Puri

what you're saying

Sam Parr

The same stereotype of an Australian guy is that he is fun-loving, loves to get drunk, and is bad with money. He will spend all his money because he's like...

Sam Parr

they just wanna like be care like a

Sam Parr

A lot of Australians don't have a lot of savings because they just don't mind spending at the bar. They're fun-loving and always a blast to be around. That's what this guy is like.

Sam Parr

if I had to like just look at him

Sam Parr

and like oh this guy seems like he goes all in on things

Shaan Puri

Well, I think the key to success is... he's a redhead. You know, redheads have a chip on their shoulder from day one. They have something to prove, so I think that's a big deal.

Sam Parr

that's I

Shaan Puri

would say 80%

Sam Parr

for real though

Shaan Puri

20 the other 20% is hard

Sam Parr

work this is a great find this guy is cool and he's only 35 I think

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I'm going to read you some of his tips for success. You can give me a thumbs up, thumbs down, or a "meh," whatever you know, if it's just okay. So the first one: **Rethink your vocabulary.** I never use the word "employee" because we're a high-performing team and we're playing different positions. I'm coaching the team; I'm trying to get the best players in all the positions. We have team members, not employees, in our business. What do you think?

Sam Parr

Cool. I do the same thing. I hate calling them "employees." Sometimes I'll use the word "staff," but I hate using "employees." Right?

Shaan Puri

I thought you just say the help

Sam Parr

the I do

Shaan Puri

the same thing I also I'll never like when somebody

Sam Parr

like when they say it worked for for you I'm like no you work with me

Shaan Puri

That was exactly what I was going to say. I always correct people on that. "Oh yeah, you know I work for Sean." No, you don't work for Sean; you work with me. I never say I work for anybody. I work with them. It's an arrangement; it's a partnership. I do X and I get Y, and you do X and you get Y. And that's, you know, hold yourself to that. Okay, next one: **bullets before cannonballs**. He goes, "The first thing I learned, one of the things I learned early on, was to fire bullets before cannonballs." We're always firing lots of little bullets everywhere to see if those work. If they work, then we fire a cannonball behind it.

Sam Parr

love it that that's a good analogy

Shaan Puri

Alright, break the rules. I went to university and studied law and commerce, but I didn't like it. To be honest, there was a big, big hill I had to walk up every day to get to law school. I didn't like that hill either. I did it for a year and thought, "Oh, why not have a crack at just doing this work thing?" So, I moved to China. I didn't even make it to my second year of law; I missed out, which is probably a good thing—a blessing in disguise.

Sam Parr

yeah I don't really get

Sam Parr

the the the job title to move to china but didn't like a hill yeah

Sam Parr

did different strokes for different folks but I appreciate it

Shaan Puri

Alright, don't be shaken by competition. In the early days, we had this tiny production lab. We spent half our money on an injection molding machine. We started to produce our hot air balloon, which didn't sell many of because it didn't meet regulations globally. So, we went online and copied a couple of products. One was a frisbee, and we got sued after that. We went to a toy fair and got through day one, but the companies we copied came to our booth and yelled at us. Then we started innovating, and it was our journey that took us 6 or 7 years to become successful with our product. We lived off very, very, very little. We scrapped and scraped to find something that would work.

Sam Parr

awesome k

Shaan Puri

Yeah, fair enough. Alright, let me skip these. Let me see if there's another good one. Okay, "Don't lose sight." He says, "I remember when we made our first million." Hey, fan of the show! We did a big deal with David Beckham where we made a David Beckham Tamagotchi at Walmart. I was 21 at the time. We got a $28,000,000 order from Walmart, but we couldn't finance it. Walmart ended up canceling the whole order. We were stuck with half of the Tamagotchis. We were so excited because it was this awful amount of money. At the time, we had no money, but we got a little bit complacent. We were always checking how we were doing every month, and we ended up losing, I think, $200,000 that month. We lost a bunch of money. We sat down and we thought, "From this day forward, we are never ever gonna have a month where we lose money." We took that approach, and we never lost money again. We were always profitable.

Sam Parr

this guy's awesome what's his name nick mowbray

Shaan Puri

yeah mowbray I think

Sam Parr

Hey, if anyone knows Nick or can do the introduction to him, I would love to have him on the pod. This guy's awesome, right? This guy's so defined.

Shaan Puri

the redhead joe

Sam Parr

love redhead

Shaan Puri

Actually, my friend said something really funny. He goes, "Yeah, my wife... we're doing this deal and we were dealing with some people. I was like, I just can't tell if this person's all hype or if they're kind of like a charlatan or what." For some reason, they're just not getting along with this other person, and I don't know what to make of it. He goes, "Oh, I've seen this many times in business. Two charlatans can't be in a room at the same time together. They just combust; they can't stand each other."

Sam Parr

it he goes

Shaan Puri

He goes, "It's like my girlfriend. She's a redhead. She told me once, 'I can't stand being in the room with another redhead.' And I was like, it's the same thing with charlatans." And he goes, "How do..."

Sam Parr

you know if one

Shaan Puri

One is a charlatan. If you put one charlatan in a room with another known charlatan, they'll hate each other.

Sam Parr

that's so funny

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Shaan Puri

HubSpot, grow better. Our buddy Julian has this company called DemandCurve. He's like, "Hey, will you speak at this DemandCurve conference thing?" And I'm like, you know the rule: the rule is hell no, we don't do nothing for nobody, except if it's our friends, then we do it for free. Right? So it's either big money or big friend. Julian's a big friend, so I did it for free. So we go on there, and I'm like, "I don't know what this is." Oh, it's a conference to talk about audience building or content or something like that. You get that all the time, I know. So you go up there, and you're like, "Alright, I'm gonna do my spiel." But something really interesting happened. It was me and this other guy, Sagar, from the show called "Breaking Points." I bet you're familiar with it. Have you heard of this? Or Ben, you have to know about "Breaking Points." You know what this thing is? No? You guys don't know about this? Okay, this is basically like a...

Sam Parr

like a like a tv show like

Shaan Puri

A podcast show, you know, the Young Turks? That channel on YouTube that did their own business show. So, Breaking Points, which is...

Sam Parr

like I Google that

Shaan Puri

And Crystal, they do their own version of a political correspondence show or whatever. I don't even know what you call it—a political talk show, basically. They started off just doing it on YouTube, and it's kind of blown up. So, this guy was on the panel with me, and there were a few things he said that I was really taking notes on. I was like, "Oh, that's really smart." Also, what this guy is doing is actually pretty awesome, and I think it could get huge. On the surface, it looks sort of goofy; it looks like kids playing dress-up because they made it look like a talk show. They're at a desk, and he wears a suit and tie, you know? So it's like...

Sam Parr

is it like a a liberal news it's like a liberal young turks thing or is it like conservative

Shaan Puri

I don't know how they would call it. I'm not very political, so I don't really even want to say it. I don't want to misclassify it, but their shtick is that they cover the things, they say the things that the mainstream media is not covering or is either under-covering these stories or they're just spinning it for their own agenda. They're like, "We'll just try to say the truth, like what we think the truth is, and we'll just call it like we see it." Which, again, everybody says, but the question is: how close are you to actually doing that? It's like company values. Every company says, "Integrity is our core value," as they, you know, destroy the earth. And so that's what these guys do. They have this set, and it looks like you went to, you know, when you go to KFC in China and it's like...

Sam Parr

I I don't know when I do that kfc you've been you've been somewhere right like you know

Shaan Puri

I don't know canada where where have you gone sam

Sam Parr

You know, like on Friday nights when you're out of Domino's in Tokyo, you're like... you know that feeling? Sorry, I had to big dog you there with my international experience.

Shaan Puri

But, yeah, basically, they're this... I lived in China and they had this phrase: "NQR." I’d be like, "Yeah, I go to McDonald's here, but I don't really like it. I don't know why." They’re like, "Oh, it's NQR." What's NQR? Not quite right. And it's the perfect description, which is it's almost exactly right, but it's not quite right. I guess all of that.

Sam Parr

is the same all my asian friends say it's same same but different

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

exactly same same but different

Sam Parr

like this this knockoff nike shoe it's same same just different

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, anyways, that's like what these guys' show looks like. It looks almost like a knockoff of "The First One" show. That's kind of my initial judgment. Then I started watching it, and they got on Joe Rogan. I was like, "Wow!" This is impressive. Joe loves the show. Joe basically told me just now, "I go, how'd you get on Rogan?" and he's like, "Rogan was just a fan of the show. He just reached out and was like, 'Hey, I love the show, guys.'" They're like, "Wow, we kind of didn't think we were..." You know, early on, you kind of feel like, "Am I doing the right thing? I quit my job to do this." It's not big, huge...

Sam Parr

know something I'm trying to make on youtube

Shaan Puri

it was on youtube

Sam Parr

and how many

Sam Parr

views an episode

Shaan Puri

they'll have like I don't know they have like 800,000 subscribers something like that so they're doing a

Sam Parr

good job

Shaan Puri

now but this was like before that joe got on it joe was like into it when it was pretty early and he's like they're like wow joe rogan amazing if the number one podcaster in the world thinks this is like awesome maybe we're on to something so they just kept going and then joe invited them on the show and then they're they they have launched like a paid subscription because they're like hey look like if you go to their website it just says help us what is it so breaking. What does the the title say it goes like help us beat mainstream media or something like that like help us defeat mainstream media or like cover the stories that they don't cover some like it painted them as an enemy which is great like just a smart smart like marketing tactic basically but but basically they so so joe their first show the first paid show joe rogan came on and so you know they like had this like amazing way to like kinda kick off but that's because they put in a few years of like hard work before that it's like 4 years old now and and so he said a couple things that I thought were really smart I'm gonna share them here in fact I actually think we should just run the whole interview we just did with him like as a my first million episode if there those guys are down with it because I thought there's a bunch of interesting things one thing he go they go how did you get started like how what's how did you get your first 1,000 customers and and or or like subscribers or whatever and we all get asked this a bunch rarely do you hear something that interesting but he said a pretty interesting answer he goes well here's what I did I saw that in my niche there were these people that were already like popular accounts and so it's like I just went and looked at who are the top 1% of of like popular accounts already and then I just decided okay the first content I create is just gonna be content that they love because if they love it they'll share it they'll kind of endorse it and that'll drive a bunch of growth right away of the right audience and so what he did was he's like okay they they have this they need data they need visualizations they need charts cool so I'm just gonna do or they need transcripts like quick transcripts of like what trump just said they need to have like the edited well formatted transcript so he's like we weren't doing our own opinions and analysis no I would just sit there and I would live when trump was talking I'm transcribing it I clean it up I format it I have the first to post trump said this and then those guys would retweet it he's like and that's how I got my first like 10,000 subscribers he's like and after you get 10,000 there's psychologically this thing where you'll just start growing faster because people wanna follow popular accounts

Sam Parr

what what what what what was your advice though to these people on growing an audience

Shaan Puri

My advice was pretty simple. I said, "I don't think you should grow an audience for the sake of growing an audience." The audience is basically a byproduct of you doing something else you really want to do. If you just have that itch you want to scratch, like, "I want to create content," I've seen YouTubers, and I think I could do it. That's actually a better reason to go do it than saying, "If I can get to a million subscribers, then I'll upsell my merch to this percentage of them, and I can make this much money." It's like, don't do the calculating way to do it. Just be like, "I'm doing this because..." In my case, it was that I'm super curious about these topics. How am I going to justify spending nine hours reading about this topic that I have no agenda for? Well, if I had a podcast or a YouTube channel, then I could just make the content out of that. Then it has a kind of purpose to my curiosity. I have an endpoint to it. I have a justification for my curiosity. I get to be professionally curious.

Sam Parr

or like

Shaan Puri

When I originally started the podcast, I literally wrote this in a document. I've shared this before: I wrote, "Most likely, nobody's going to listen to this." But there's a hack. Really smart, interesting, successful people are willing to go on a podcast, even if they don't know how many listeners it has. So, at the very least, my main goal was to have an excuse to meet with 50 awesome people that live in San Francisco. I'm in the tech hub of the world, San Francisco, and I don't drink coffee. I didn't want to just invite these guys to coffee, so I thought, "I'll invite them on my podcast instead." That was my whole number one success criteria and agenda for starting this podcast. It was a great excuse to hang out with these people who are nearby, in my orbit. It’s better than saying, "Let me just get lunch with you, please, please, please." So, that was why I started the podcast. Dude, I have people ask me all the time how to build an audience, and I used to have like...

Sam Parr

An somewhat academic answer where I'm like, "Well, you just gotta find content that ranks well in other places and repurpose it, do all this, this, and this." Lately, I've just quit saying that. I just go, "Well, just be an interesting person, live an interesting life, and just be at least kind of okay at talking about it publicly." Right? Yeah, because the...

Shaan Puri

If you're interesting and you lead an interesting life, then all you have to do is share 10% of it.

Sam Parr

and you only have to be okay at talking about it

Shaan Puri

give people a peek into 10% of your life

Sam Parr

Yeah, and you don't even need to be that great. People often over-optimize for things like search. They say, "Well, you need all those keywords and do this, do that." I'm like, "Or I can just do dope stuff and write about it." People are just going to go straight to the website and look it up. That's harder, and I still think you need that other stuff. But I believe it's mostly a game of just being interesting, learning interesting things, and being kind of good at talking about it so everyone else can consume it.

Shaan Puri

Like, there are people that do it other ways. Like Trung, who used to work for you at The Hustle. You kind of discovered him; you set up, I think, his Twitter account. Now he's got like, whatever, I don't know, a million Twitter followers—something crazy. And I don't think Trung took that advice. I don't think Trung lives an interesting life or has this interesting business experience that's what he's sharing.

Sam Parr

well he he he learns about interesting he but yes that is true and so he didn't exact

Sam Parr

you could make the argument

Shaan Puri

picture right you could make

Sam Parr

The argument... yeah, but you could also make the argument that he's leading an interesting life in that he's learning and discovering cool stuff, right? So that's like, you could make the argument both ways. But I remember... I'm not, I hate saying this because I'm definitely not like a ladies' man, but I've come a long way from being like Napoleon Dynamite.

Shaan Puri

like a male's man

Sam Parr

Yeah, more of a "man's man." I'm a guy's guy, but not in the way that you think. Not in the way that it's usually meant.

Sam Parr

like I'm many guys' guy and

Sam Parr

But I've come a long way from looking like Napoleon Dynamite. I remember I had some 18-year-old ask me about meeting girls and...

Sam Parr

I was like shocked

Sam Parr

I was like, "Your bar for advice is quite low here." But let me give you some advice, if I could give anything. Basically, I'm like, you'll meet more women if...

Sam Parr

You just focus on yourself and have cool, badass hobbies. Then, invite people to come and do those hobbies with you.

Sam Parr

and I was like that's the that's the coolest hack ever for a young man you just do dope shit and then

Sam Parr

you just bring along people and it's kinda like that with content

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think there are a bunch of different ways to win. You could be like Ben, who has a method for taking over the world. I would say he's curious about these great men in history or these biographies. What he does is a service; he says, "I'll save you time." So, I call him a time saver because he packages it down into something concise. The Hustle's newsletter and Milk Road's newsletter are exactly that—they're time savers. So, what do you do? You curate, you package, you deliver. Then you have a remixer. A remixer basically takes maybe one or two unrelated things, spins them together, puts them together, and puts that out there. You have an original content creator, like Naval or Abhology. They're coming up with independent theses about the world, opinions, and analyses that really just originate from them, and they put that out into the world. Then you have what I'll call a lifestyle influencer. That's what you're talking about: lead an interesting life and share 10% of it. There are all these different play styles that you can use. It's like in a video game; you want to play tank, you want to play DPS, you want to play healer. You could play all these different roles, and they're all winning. You just have to know which play style you're trying to play. So, I see that with content, but the one use you recommended—living an interesting life and then sharing 10% of it—I think that is the most fun play style to play.

Sam Parr

and the most valuable

Shaan Puri

And the most valuable and the most unique, because honestly, no offense to Trung, but like many people do, and anybody can go read Reddit and Wikipedia and create a thread of, you know, "Here's the story of how whatever the dude created Starbucks." It's like the...

Sam Parr

The guy that's repeatedly done is the hot sauce guy. What's the hot sauce guy? The Sriracha guy.

Sam Parr

yeah everyone talks about that guy that guy is the king of the thread boys

Shaan Puri

Yeah, every thread boy at home has like a small bottle of Sriracha on a shrine. They're like, "I'll always remember the day I could tell people that Sriracha started in Thailand."

Sam Parr

or the peppers were so bad that the neighbors at the factory hated him

Sam Parr

and they don't even advertise that it's

Sam Parr

the same bottle since day 1 yeah the costco

Shaan Puri

hot dog is still a dollar 50¢ yeah like this this is like you know classic but the one you said was the most I think the most rewarding play style and my trainer had a great phrase for this because I was like I was asking about his business I was like I was trying to help him with his business and he ended up dropping like like I thought I'm I'm the business guy I'm gonna share with him this great knowledge and I was like you gotta think about your niche your audience who's your id you know who's your customer persona and I was like just looking back you know just cringe city about like trying to help him with these things and he just said I was like you don't have a website you don't have a business card blah blah blah and he just go I was like so who's your you know you gotta know who's your customer he goes my customers are people that love what I do and I was like okay that sounds like some smooth ass r and b lyric but what does that mean what are you gonna do with that he's like and I didn't understand at that time but he just he's like that's it he's like my customers are gonna be the people that love what I do and he's like okay well what do you do he's like I'll train you on your fitness and during that session I'll train your mind as much as your body right it's mindset and because the mindset's totally aligned with this stuff and that's what I'm into and I'll just share with you stuff that I'm doing with my own training with my own mindset training or my personal training I'll work out with you together sometimes and I'll come to your house and we'll just kick it for hours I don't I don't watch the clock right like that's how I wanna live and people my customers are gonna be people who want that and I'm not gonna try to go backwards and say what does the market want I'm gonna conform myself to it and so there was this real artist streak to it and I thought alright well that sounds cool but like that shit don't work in the real world sure enough how did it work I was his only client I think at the time and he and we work out like in my garage but we just leave the garage open and then people walk by and they walk by and he never he's just super friendly with him but never says like hey by the way you know if you're ever interested in my services here's my card never like they would walk by he would joke around with them sort of like just flirt with people and then he would just like you know go back and keep doing our thing he's just a happy guy by like the 7th day people are like man it looks like y'all are having fun the music looks fun the home gym they saw us like setting it up each day it would get better they saw us joking around they would see my you know I'm breaking a sweat they would see how we're using like we'd use our tree and we'd use all this stuff that was just around us because I didn't have all this equipment and it just looked like 2 people having a lot of fun and so my neighbor signed up

Sam Parr

there's a bunch of there's

Sam Parr

a bunch of sweaty shirtless guys hugging

Sam Parr

you know what I mean

Shaan Puri

hanging off the trees and just yeah

Sam Parr

tells me

Shaan Puri

To show body... and so guess what? People wanted some of that. My neighbor signs up, then her husband signs up, then the other neighbor signs up. My sister's visiting; she does a workout and signs up. My mom signs up, my brother-in-law signs up, and their niece, my niece, and nephew sign up. Everybody starts signing up! This guy now has a full roster. He still never had a website, never had a business card, never went and knocked on a door, or tried to do a sales pitch. All these people are confirming their schedules with him.

Sam Parr

he's not even a trainer he's just a guy who just comes in and hangs out dog

Shaan Puri

the best part is he's me there's no trainer

Sam Parr

He's just a prostitute who won't have sex with you. I don't even know what to call him. He'll just hang out with you. I got a guy. If you need a guy to come hang out with you, I got a guy.

Shaan Puri

But long story short, this phrase of "Who are my customers? The people that love what I do" is, in my opinion, playing business at the highest level because it is the most freeing. Imagine if that was true; that's the most freeing thing you could do, right? The same thing applies to content creation. "Who am I? How am I going to get subscribers? How am I going to grow my audience?" I'm just going to do the most interesting things and share it as I go. The people who follow me are going to be the ones who love what I do. I think that is a much better way to go than this, frankly, sort of desperate approach that I think most people take to building a business, getting customers, getting subscribers, all that stuff.

Sam Parr

Dude, let me show you an example of what I think might be the exact opposite of what we're talking about. I've been researching, and I think someone DMed me about this on Twitter. I found this thing called **Strongland**—like the word "strong" and then the word "land." Strongland Publishing's main thing is called **Life Math Money**. Alright, check this out. This guy owns maybe half a dozen to a dozen Twitter handles. I've found like 4 or 5 so far. One is called the **48 Laws of Power Bot** or **Quote Bot**, I believe. Another one is called **The Book of Pook** (P-O-O-K). The 48 Laws of Power Bot has a ton of quotes loaded into it and has maybe 200,000 to 300,000 followers. The Book of Pook quotes a pickup artist from the early 2000s who no longer writes. He owns a handful more of these Twitter handles that are just generic, and they're all basically focused on men. It's about getting laid, meeting girls, making money, and getting fit. He owns like 6 to 12 of these handles, which is obviously not the hardest thing to grow because they cover these cool taboo topics. It's one of those things where you don't talk about it with your friends, but everyone wants to be better at all those things, so they follow these guys. He has a circular thing where he retweets each one, and each handle links off to a Gumroad page that sells a document related to that. For example, the 48 Laws of Power one is like, "Here's how you get more power and influence."

Sam Parr

at your

Sam Parr

Job, which like, who doesn't want to learn that? He sells it for $89. Then there's another one, like, "Here's a bunch of lines to pick up girls," or "Here's a workout plan to get abs in 8 weeks," or "Here's the perfect way to eat healthy and feel good." If I had to guess, I would say that he's doing between $500,000 and $1,000,000 a year in sales just off these Gumroad things.

Shaan Puri

so you could see see the sales so basically

Sam Parr

not the sales the reviews I think

Shaan Puri

No, no, no, it's a sale. So, like for example, "Oh wow, Live Intentionally 90-Day Self Improvement Program." I think it costs $89, and it says 9,506 sales.

Sam Parr

how much is that is that 900 though

Shaan Puri

That's half a million bucks. I don't know how long... right? So maybe this has been out for years. I'm not sure.

Sam Parr

he's only been doing it for 2 years

Shaan Puri

And then there's, like, you know, his crypto one. There's his, like, you know, "Build Your Twitter Audience."

Sam Parr

how much is that how many how many did that sell

Shaan Puri

that has 5,400 sales so

Sam Parr

on how much dollars

Shaan Puri

let's see I want

Sam Parr

like a $100

Shaan Puri

How much is it? $179. So, golly! His Twitter one has generated $1,000,000. His next one has generated $500,000. So, I think it's pretty safe to say he's doing at least half a million a year, probably closer to a million.

Sam Parr

Isn't that funny? Is this hilarious? This little guy, and his name is Harsh Strongman, I believe. It's like an anonymous name, and his blog is called **Life Math Money**. If you go and look up "Who is Harsh Strongman," he says, "I'm a certified..."

Sam Parr

A financial planner in India, I guess he just has this blog and he talks about this stuff. I think it's cool.

Sam Parr

I think there's this anonymous blogger who only uses some type of free-looking website builder. Gumroad is just killing it, and I think it's awesome.

Shaan Puri

that's amazing that is this is hilarious

Sam Parr

it's awesome right

Shaan Puri

When I think about a harsh, strong man—a man who just embodies life, math, and money—I think about...

Sam Parr

like an indian

Shaan Puri

a mid twenties independent indian certified financial planner

Sam Parr

no like this is my cousin vikram like

Shaan Puri

you know this is my cousin vikram I just found out what vikram does for a living

Sam Parr

There's a reason "alpha" and "accountant" both start with "A." This guy's...

Sam Parr

this guy's as alpha as they can get the alpha accountant

Sam Parr

it's going to be his new thing

Sam Parr

and he's

Sam Parr

going to have a he's going to have a twitter and on like excel courses

Sam Parr

mick tack is your bitch yeah

Shaan Puri

that's hilarious

Sam Parr

the andrew tate of excel

Shaan Puri

alright

Sam Parr

dude I on air I need you to help me make a decision

Shaan Puri

alright

Sam Parr

Alright, so I am in the process of... I stopped in Saint Louis. I'm recording this from Saint Louis, but I'm driving from New York to Austin. I always stop in Saint Louis for 5 days to see family. I'm on the drive back to Austin. I miss New York. I miss Brooklyn already. I absolutely do.

Shaan Puri

you miss the energy

Sam Parr

there's something about this city this city

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you have to go *romantic* when you're talking about New York for some reason. That's why I refuse to go there.

Sam Parr

I love it I love it

Sam Parr

I like... I'm in grind mode. I love being there. But there's one thing that I'm currently doing that I told myself I'm not going to do, and that is **bitch about taxes** and let taxes decide where I live. I'm 100% doing that right now. So, I want to tell you some numbers. I currently live in Texas, which has no state income tax. I think the federal... what's the federal tax rate for the highest income? What's it, 36% or 37%?

Shaan Puri

36 ish yeah

Sam Parr

Alright, so I think it's a little above 36%. Hypothetically, on $1,000,000 of income, I'm spending $370,000 a year on taxes, or around $31,000 a month in federal taxes. Texas doesn't have an income tax, so that's $31,000 a month. If I move to New York, I would basically be giving away 51% to 52% of my income. The city of New York has a 3.8% tax rate, and the state of New York has a 9.7% tax rate. This means I would have to be spending an additional $11,500 a month in income taxes.

Shaan Puri

to live there new york rent that's the new york state rent

Sam Parr

that's just the idea

Shaan Puri

rent of your place yeah

Sam Parr

Yes, to rent a place, my current mortgage right now in Austin is around $4,000 to $5,000 a month. I would not want to purchase a place in Brooklyn; I would want to rent. My budget for renting to have a family there would be around $9,000 to $14,000 a month. Probably around $13,000, or maybe $11,000 to $12,000. I could probably get a place that I would want, and that's what I would spend. So, I'd be spending just... Let's say my income—this is all hypothetical; I'm not saying what I do or don't make—if my income is $2,000,000, I'm going to be spending around $280,000 a year in extra income taxes, plus an additional $150,000 a year in rent. This means my costs are going to be like $400,000 to $500,000 a year in additional costs just to live there. Not including the fact that, like, I'm in St. Louis right now. I just went out to eat for three people, and it was $51. If I'm in New York for three people for breakfast, it's going to be, you know, like... yeah, around $100—two times the cost. So, how would you justify making the move or not moving?

Shaan Puri

Well, I kind of did it myself, right? Because I live in California, and California has the same problems that New York has: high cost of living, high state tax, that sort of deal. Now, you know, I work remotely, so I can live anywhere at this point. It is very tempting, especially when you meet people who live in Texas or Puerto Rico. They're like, "You pay federal 37%? I pay 4%! I pay 0% on capital gains!" It's like, wow, alright, I guess that's also an option. So there's sort of no end to it. I used to live in Indonesia, and for $2,000 a month or $3,000 a month, you know, you're living large out there. I had a cook and a maid that lived in my house. I had a driver that drove me everywhere, and I didn't have to think about anything. So there really is no end to this idea of optimizing cost of living versus, you know, what you want to do.

Sam Parr

there is no end to it but maybe there are thresholds

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there are more rungs to the ladder than even what you presented. That's, I guess, what I'm trying to say. You could take it even further. I've always thought it sort of goes back to that question: "What advice would my 18-year-old self give me?" My 18-year-old self, which was a more simple-minded version of myself, would say, "Wait, I thought you were rich. Oh, wait, so you're moving to where you don't want to live to save money? That sounds not very rich." So, if it's all the same in terms of where you enjoy living, cool. Then obviously pick the difference if you enjoy one more. Now, the hard part is: how do you price that enjoyment? How do you price that energy of New York? How do you put a dollar number on it?

Sam Parr

we're we're gonna put a dollar on it

Sam Parr

We're gonna price it. We're gonna say it's around $400,000 or $500,000. But dude, for the same price, I can live in Texas for 6 months and in New York for 6 months. I could even fly private back and forth twice, actually like 2 round trips, and it would still be cheaper. But that's... yeah.

Shaan Puri

But it would also add hassle to your life, right? So there are some situations where the variety adds what you want. It's like a win-win. It's like, "Oh yeah, I don't want to be in one place all year anyways," or "I like the weather this time of year in one place and this time in another place." So I'm just going to move around the weather, and that happens to coincide well with my tax situation. But basically, my thought, my simple thought process is this: if you're rich, you can do tax optimizations, but make sure it's not driving the car. It gets to be in the car, but it doesn't drive the car. So I would do some things that are no sweat that are going to save you tax money. Oh great, I would do that. I would not move, which is like one of the biggest things that changes your day-to-day quality of life. I would not move to a different place just based on taxes as the primary reason. I would have to have another primary reason. For example, my reason for being in California is that my wife’s family is all here, and I just want to see them more often and have that be like, I prefer that lifestyle. I don't know how many years we all have left where we're all healthy, or my kids are little and they get to have this experience with the grandparents around. But that matters more to me than anything on the tax side. So that's my decisive reason. I made that one reason the priority, and then I'll live with the rest. I think that's what you should do. You should come up with your one decisive reason about where you're going to live, and I would guess if you're rich, that reason should not be taxes.

Sam Parr

I gotta do it, unfortunately, but golly, it sucks. In the back of my head, it's that famous Michael Jordan quote.

Sam Parr

you know what I mean

Shaan Puri

that's something dude the great the great quote from jordan is republicans buy shoes too

Sam Parr

that that that is a

Shaan Puri

A "My First Million" worthy quote, you know? But you also gotta factor in how much more you're going to make. How much more are the connections you'll make in New York? One investment you make, you know, you can make more. It's easier to make more for guys like us than it is to adjust your lifestyle to try to save more. I find it... I would rather work harder to make more money than change my lifestyle in a way that feels like I'm making some compromise in order to save money.

Sam Parr

Well, I think I'm gonna do it. If I could do this again, for some reason, I think Miami is just like hell on earth. It's not for some reason; I can name about 50 reasons why I think that. I think Miami is horrible. But at the same time, if I could do it again, I almost wish I would have done so. Right now, I live in Austin, Texas, because I have a bunch of friends there. My best friends are there, and we had an office there. If I could have done it again, I would have chosen Florida, though, and New York. Texas doesn't have nice enough weather that I'm just going for the weather during wintertime. Whereas Florida, you know, I feel like I'm in the Caribbean sometimes in certain parts of it. I wish I would have done Florida and New York if I could do it again. That's what I wish I would have done.

Shaan Puri

I'm surprised the best friends being in austin thing is not a bigger pull for you I feel like that's huge

Sam Parr

It is, and that's why I'm... I don't actually mean if I could do it again. I wish the stars would have aligned so that could have happened, is kind of what I mean.

Shaan Puri

What a slap in the face! I'm just glad I'm not your friend. I'm not Neville, who lives right next door to you in Austin. It was like, "Oh, the energy in New York, that's what's gonna get you. You're gonna move away from me for the energy."

Sam Parr

Dude, New York's happening, man! It is quite fun. Whenever I walk around there, I get pumped. I do get pumped, but I also want to kill... like, I want to kill someone half the time.

Sam Parr

I do like every time

Sam Parr

I'm in line at Whole Foods or some grocery store. There, I see a fight. There's always commotion; something's always happening. It always raises my blood pressure, and I want to get into protector mode.

Shaan Puri

that's hilarious alright what else we got wanna do some more

Sam Parr

yeah I have one thing

Shaan Puri

okay sir

Sam Parr

So, I think we've talked about this. You and I have hired this guy. Go to **dreamstudiocourse.com**. His name's Kevin Chen, and I went and looked at his landing page. This guy's landing page for a course is **awesome**. He's selling a course that I never in a million years would have thought would work. But then I look at it and I think, "100% you've nailed it." I understand how you could potentially make **$1,000,000** a year. So, it's called **Dream Studio Course**, and it's a **$1,500** course. I don't know why he didn't just go with **$2,000**, but it's a **$1,500** course all on setting up your Zoom setup. Basically, I don't even think it's for a podcaster, but it's a crazy cool looking landing page. Whenever I saw his landing page, I thought, "Wow, I really want this."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

but how sick is that landing page

Shaan Puri

It's a great landing page for a bunch of different reasons. First, let's start with the **headline**. The headline is not just "a course about setting up your Zoom." It says, "Make your home video setup look like Hollywood." This immediately sells the **dream outcome**. Then, there's a picture of him that shows a really awesome video setup. This follows the principle of "show, don't tell." He basically says, "Build your studio with expert help." It's a 6-week course that'll do whatever. Okay, there's a good **call to action**: "Enroll here." Next, he has a bunch of before and afters. For example, here's Tiago Forte—he looked like crap before, and now he looks great. You know, look at this person; now they look great. He just keeps showing success stories of transformations. Fundamentally, when people buy a course, they're buying some kind of transformation. They want to walk in one way and walk out another. Most courses, and I've struggled with this myself, struggle to even understand that you're selling change. You're selling a transformation, not just content or information. Secondly, they don't know how to show that they can actually provide this for you. With something visual like this, you're going to get a before and after. A before and after is my favorite sales pitch of all time. I think a before and after is the most compelling sales pitch.

Sam Parr

Do you have like a file or something that has all your... you're saying this as if you have categories of headlines?

Shaan Puri

of headlines or of

Sam Parr

you're like you're like oh he's doing the before and after style headline I love that style

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I have the... So in my course, I teach these. I'm like, "Here's a bunch of frames you can use to sell your product if you can do you."

Sam Parr

resend that

Sam Parr

to me

Shaan Puri

Like this, yeah? I will. If it's a visual, like this, you use "before and after." If it's not visual, there's another one I call "Stop the Struggle." So, "Stop the Struggle." You sent me this landing page. Actually, Abstract Ops used to have this landing page. I think you invested in those guys. It was like a stick figure running away from a tornado, and it just said, "Stop putting off your back office tasks" or "Stop running away from your to-do list" or whatever. That's what I call a "Stop the Struggle" pitch, which is basically saying, instead of saying what we do for you, we'll say, "We can put you out of your pain." Is that pain hurting you? I can stop the pain for you. I could stop the struggle that you're having, right? He could do the same thing. So he does "Dream Outcome" before and after, right? Like, "Make your home video setup look like Hollywood." He could also have a "Stop the Struggle," which is like, you know, basically, "Stop showing up to work looking like this," and it's like the up-the-nose camera shot, blah blah blah. And it's like, "Instead, you could look like this after." So, you know, basically, I have these different frames that I'm like, "This is a way that you can present your product, your information." One of my sessions in my course is a landing page one, and that's where I'm like, "This is where you need to use this on your landing page." Because your landing page is your 24/7 salesman that will always deliver the pitch exactly as they were trained to do, 24/7, anywhere in the world. It's never going to have a sick day and takes no commission on sales. So, like, a landing page is the greatest salesman ever, and I think you should train your salesman to be able to sell your product effectively, essentially.

Sam Parr

I'm writing a new landing page now for my project, and it is daunting. No matter how many landing pages I've written, it is always hard.

Shaan Puri

Well, because your bar keeps going up. You're like, "Oh, I know what great looks like. I know I want it to be great." So, what would have otherwise been sufficient five years ago, now you look at that and you're like, "No, I'm sure it could be better. I know it could be better," right? Because you're already really good. If I was going to get somebody on my landing page, I would hire you. So, you're already very good at it. The fact that you're feeling daunted is like, I don't know, like a musician going back into the studio to record their new album. They know that they're good, but it's like, "I gotta do it again. I gotta make magic again. I gotta make a hit again."

Sam Parr

That's exactly how I feel. I'm staring at the landing page and I'm like, "No, this is lame. This isn't up to my standard. This sucks." I'm just looking for... you know what I usually do? What I like to do is find competitors that exist now or that used to offer a similar service. I go to Newspapers.com and I find old articles written about them. I see how reporters used to explain this, and if I see a catchy sentence, I go, "Boom! Got it!" I'm still in that angle. So that's how I've been getting inspiration. I just use Newspapers.com to find old articles in the New York Times written about a certain company that's in the same space.

Shaan Puri

There was this guy we hired once, and I actually don't think he was a smart hire. I've made a bunch of mistakes. Now that I think about it, looking back at my business career, I'm like, "Man, we hired a firm to do that." You know, we hired this person to do this, we paid this... I remember during the Indy 500, they were doing their race or whatever, and it was like, "Hey, there's free billboard space we can give you for your app." I was like, "Oh wow, that's cool! The Indy 500, I've heard of that. They're giving us free space." So, we spent the next 48 hours filming this video that was going to go on this billboard, this video billboard. Looking back, I'm like, "Oh my god, how cheap was my attention that I let this random cold email divert me and my marketing team's focus for 48 hours to do what?" Did we really think this billboard was going to...

Sam Parr

at indy 500 at indy

Shaan Puri

500 was going to drive downloads. It was a beer app, so yeah, it was on. But like, they were just not trying to download apps in that moment, and there was no way to track it. It was awful. And so, like, that's happened to me a thousand times. I've made a thousand dumb decisions like that. I'm like, "Wow, we really spent time and energy doing that." That's kind of embarrassing now that I know what I know. So similarly, we had hired a naming agency. Like, I hired an agency.

Sam Parr

I don't think that's a horrible idea I don't think that's the worst idea

Shaan Puri

I think it was **$15,000** or **$25,000**. It was a lot of money, and it took like **6 weeks**, which is also more expensive. It was like if we just had the name, we would've just moved faster.

Sam Parr

what was the name that they came up with

Shaan Puri

I don't even remember

Sam Parr

it was like

Shaan Puri

the first dating app that we were building

Sam Parr

Is that like they just came back with Jersey Shore characters? Your app is called "The Situation." So we were thinking, what's sophisticated but also fun?

Shaan Puri

party at the front

Sam Parr

Yeah, so basically, like in Poly D, say it with me: Poly D, the latest and greatest stadium.

Shaan Puri

It was like... and so, anyway, it wasn't even that they did a bad job. They actually did a good job with their thing, but it was just unnecessary. It was an unnecessary thing to do. But I do respect the craft because I remember I went to this meeting room. This guy, Eli, was sitting there. I think Eli Altman is his name. He was like, "Okay, so tell me about it." I was like, "So here's the screenshot." And he's like, "No, no, just like tell me about it." I'm like, "So it's an app that lets you do this and has these features." He's like, "No, no, no, like why did you make that?" And it's like, "Oh, because at the time I was single." I was like, "So I'm single, I've used dating apps." And he's like... I was like, "They just... they all sucked. And so that's why we wanted to make this great one." I kept rushing into the "here's my answer, here's my solution." He's like, "But like you said it sucked. What sucked? Like what sucked about them?" I was like, "Well, they're just too hard to use... again, generic." And he's like, "So like what did you... do you remember just getting really frustrated about it one time?" So he's asking me these good questions to actually unfold, to unpack the customer stories, the words, the phrases that actually mean something. He got beyond the jargon. Then I was like, "Okay, so what happens now?" Now you guys have this crazy brainstorming exercise where you come up with a name. He's like, "No, just like give me some time." He just took a whiteboard marker and he sat down cross-legged, like you know, like Indian style, in front of a whiteboard on the floor. And I was like... it was...

Sam Parr

a child at play yeah he was literally

Shaan Puri

Like a child at play, he just put his phone on silent and left it outside. I was like, "Whoa, this guy's mean." You know, there's no bigger sign of seriousness than someone who turns their phone off and leaves it outside of the room. Then he just started writing. He began writing long form, not just names. I went there to look for names, but no, he was like, "You know, dating is hard." Actually, it's not hard; it's just kind of frustrating. The thing that's frustrating about it is that I know I'm a good catch, but I'm sitting here trying to perform. And he's just writing out the feelings that go through the mind of the person that...

Sam Parr

Did it, dude? Like, the way the story needs to edit is... it's the most weird, horrible thing. Like, he's this thoughtful thing and he comes up with, like, "dick butt," like basically.

Shaan Puri

That's basically it. So, he did this long process, and I actually think that there's a military phrase which is, "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." I've always tried to go fast when it comes to business stuff. I ask myself, "How do I go faster? How do we speed this up?" I've paid the price many times where, if I had just slowed down at the appropriate step, the whole thing would have gone faster, even though that step would have gone slower. For example, figuring out what the actual problem is that I'm solving. What is the pain that the person is feeling here?

Sam Parr

what are the words that

Shaan Puri

They would use words to describe it that would resonate with them and get them to nod their heads, like, "Yeah, I've had that." Then, how would I explain it in a way that's simple to them? That's what he was ultimately trying to do. He was trying to figure out what the problem was and what words somebody would actually use that would resonate with them, where they'd nod and say, "You know, amen, preach! I feel that. You just put it into words better than I even could about how I was feeling about this situation." Then, he would describe the solution, but instead of explaining it in terms of features, widgets, and gadgets, he would tell me how my life would be different because I'm using this. It works in a different way, and it kind of makes sense that it would work that way, right? For example, imagine you ran a lemonade stand... and so on. That's what he did. I remember walking out of that meeting thinking, "Wow, that was an impressive thing this guy did." It looked so unimpressive. He asked me some questions, kept slowing me down, didn't want to jump to an answer. Then, he just sat with a marker alone in a room and wrote for a long time on the whiteboard, creating paragraphs of stuff. Through that process, he came out with a deeper understanding of my product than I had to begin with. I think there's something cool about that process. You have a good thing going when you create this landing page. It's like that's the thing you actually want to do because "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast."

Sam Parr

well did you did I show you that I hired a branding agency

Shaan Puri

I saw that yeah you sent me the like markups

Sam Parr

I think I spent **$15** on it, and they're based in **Hong Kong**. Normally, this would cost **$30** in America, and I was actually happy with the work. This is normally something I would never do, and it took them **30 days**. You just get this deck that outlines everything, and I never would have done that. I think it was totally worth it. This is not something I ever would have done, and I think it was totally because whenever you build something and make a website, you slowly iterate. Then you hire new people, and they come up with ideas, and you're like, "No, we already tried that," or "No, that doesn't work because this page looks like this." I'm like, "Let's just get it all done the right way the first time." That's something I never in a million years would have done, and it was worth it.

Shaan Puri

It yeah, we did that for the Milk Road too. We hired this guy, Jeremy, who did our initial branding. I'd never hired a branding agency like that for a startup I was doing, but I was like, "Alright." I told Ben, "We're not gonna do it off the bat. You're saying you're doing it upfront. I think that's okay. I don't think that's necessarily bad, but I also don't think it's necessary." So usually for a startup, you just kind of want to do what's necessary when I...

Sam Parr

say off the bat I already had a quarter of a 1000000 in revenue

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, I had told Ben, I said, "He made a logo in 5 minutes on Canva." I was like, "Alright, I like this. I like the name 'Milk Road.' It sounds fun, goofy, and easy to say." I see I can get the domain for $2,000. Let's do it! He made this logo in like Fiverr or Canva or something like that, and I was like, "Alright, let's run with it." He's like, "You know, don't you think we should... blah blah blah?" And I was like, "Alright, here's the deal. It seems like you want to spend more cycles on it because you think the brand is important." I agree, the brand will be important, but I just don't think it's crucial for us to get our first 10,000 subscribers or even 100,000 subscribers. So, let's make a deal: if we can get to 100,000 subscribers through our "jenky" thing, then we'll reward ourselves by investing in the brand. Because I think ultimately, the brand—this whole exercise of having a cool brand—is really for our own pride more so than it's going to improve the conversion right now. It's unproven how that's going to do. So, let's reward ourselves. We got to 100,000, and then we hired this guy. He took us through these cycles and, you know, review after review of these decks.

Sam Parr

I thought

Sam Parr

both were good I have

Shaan Puri

This guy in India, who's like my designer for all my projects, created that **Milkman** character, who I think is actually the best part of the brand. He made it in like one day, and I was like, "Wow, perfect! Thank you, that's exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much!" So we just ran with that.

Sam Parr

dude

Sam Parr

I think the outcome was actually quite good. I loved your brand. No, I thought it was good. I thought it was a win.

Shaan Puri

I told you the story, right? When I went on vacation to Hawaii, there was this guy, Jeremy. He lives there, and he was like, "Oh, you're here! Let's hang out." I was like, "Oh yeah, great!" So he comes to the hotel, walks up barefoot, and I was like, "Something happened? Is your kid here okay?" He said, "What do you mean?" I replied, "You're not wearing shoes, dude!" He said, "Oh, I don't wear shoes." I was like, "You don't wear shoes?" That was the most *fucking* branding agency thing I've ever heard. The most creative!

Sam Parr

is he a white guy

Shaan Puri

Respect for taking the... I'm a creative to the peak. Like, you thought the beanbags in the office was it? You thought that, you know, having these... like...

Sam Parr

he like a a white guy who moved to hawaii or is he born in brazil

Shaan Puri

Moved to Hawaii. An Australian guy moved to Hawaii, and when they got there, they were like, "Oh, we don't need shoes on the island. We just live; we're part of the island." So, they put their shoes in storage. He's like, "Yeah, we had to travel to Australia to visit our family," and he's like, "I need to go get my shoes out of storage."

Sam Parr

I was like what a weirdo

Shaan Puri

You don't need shoes that much that you didn't even just chuck them in the garage, like just in case. You put them far away. That was the equivalent of the guy, the branding agency guy, putting his phone on, turning it off, and leaving it outside the door.

Sam Parr

That's insane! Just for the record, I'm on board with that. I think shoes are stupid. I walk around barefooted all the time. When it gets above 80, if it's 85 or higher, no shirt, no shoes. That's just the rule. I'm always outside shirtless.

Shaan Puri

I currently hate socks. They were packaged poorly.

Sam Parr

no man you got to

Sam Parr

Get the calluses on there, then it's like you're wearing shoes. Anyway, I dig it, but I'm happy you're back. We went... I had Ryan Holiday on, and we'll do a recap about that. And then, yeah.

Shaan Puri

I leave for one day you guys do a podcast about how great hitler is I was like wow all right

Sam Parr

yeah yeah that that we we had to

Sam Parr

Switch some things up. Basically, we did this part on Hitler, and I was talking about how sad it was. Then our freaking YouTube guy put up this stupid thumbnail. It said something like "Things You Could Learn from Hitler" or "Things You Could Learn from Hitler on Business Building." I was like, "Whoa!"

Sam Parr

no not a chance and I texted ben I go ben you gotta get rid of this

Sam Parr

This is... that's not at all what we talked about. This is, you know, I... and it had my face on it. It had my face next to it.

Sam Parr

Dude, that's not even remotely what we talked about. We talked about how horrible he was.

Sam Parr

and so yeah we talked about hitler and had rhein holliday on just when right when you left

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I decided to come back. I cut my emergency short to return.

Sam Parr

I got fucked man

Sam Parr

I can't let you totally

Sam Parr

Throw our YouTube guy under the bus because he did contact me. He was like, "Hey, I think I'm gonna do the Hitler angle. I think it'll get tons of clicks, but obviously it'll be controversial. Do you think that's cool?" And I was like, "Yeah man, go for it. Anything for clicks."

Sam Parr

More YouTube videos like... and you're like, "Yeah, put Sam's face on it while you're at it, not my face."

Sam Parr

only sam's face

Shaan Puri

brighten the image can you

Sam Parr

brighten his face up a little bit

Shaan Puri

turn down the color balance yeah

Sam Parr

did you get sam doing like a

Sam Parr

heart shape with his hands

Sam Parr

It was the worst, man. I saw that picture and I was like, "Baron, I can't have this. You gotta delete it immediately. Please delete that." This is... I gotta show you.

Sam Parr

The reason I thought it was okay is because in the first 30 seconds of the video, you say, "Hitler's obviously a bad person," but I don't think it's wrong to study his life and learn lessons from it. So I was like, well, he says he's a bad person in the first 8 seconds of the video. I think it's okay.

Shaan Puri

you ever heard that phrase if you're explaining you're losing

Sam Parr

Yeah, if you're explaining, you're losing. That is totally right. I was like, it didn't work. That was a... I understand, but people...

Shaan Puri

I liked that episode, but multiple people were like, "My favorite episode!" You know, I've just shared it. I don't know if you saw those tweets, but there were a bunch of people who really liked that episode.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and they also liked the Ryan Holiday one. So basically, you're welcome... you're welcome for carrying the load for a while. I'm thinking about doing a motorcycle trip this November, and I'll be gone for 5 days. So you're going to have to see if you can...

Shaan Puri

I got you

Sam Parr

carry yeah you're gonna have to see if you can carry the weight during that time

Shaan Puri

Yeah, why? You know why Stalin is so misunderstood? Yeah, coming to you.

Sam Parr

we could talk about this another time but do you know that youtube channel ghost town living

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's those guys who bought that abandoned town. They kind of vlog about it as they've been building it out or whatever.

Sam Parr

So, I invested in it. It's me, Ryan, Nathan Barry, and like 3 or 4 other guys. I wrote a check; I think I gave him $25, so I think I own like less than 1% of it. But I'm going to ride a motorcycle there and check it out. It's like 4 hours outside of LA. I think it would be fun.

Shaan Puri

That's interesting. Why do you invest in that? Well, you can ride your motorcycle there anyway, right? So, what do you think? Is this going to become a valuable investment?

Sam Parr

Or, no, it was an emotional thing. No, it's there; it was an emotional thing. My justification was that it was like me, Ryan, Brent, the guy on there, my friend Brendan, and like three other entrepreneurs—so it was seven of us. I figured, well, if I can somehow get invited to a thing there or get to talk to them, and I invested $25, I bet I can make that money back just off these relationships or just like a cool story. So that's kind of how I thought about it. I asked Nathan, "Well, and so I did it for that reason." I also did the whole deal without seeing any documents, just talking to Nathan. Nathan Barry wrote me a text. He goes, "Just so you know, there's a little bit of room if you want to join this. Here are the pros and here are the cons. Here's why I did it." I said, "Okay, cool, I'm in then," because he just said, "You're in, I'm in," because I trust him. So, it was that simple.

Shaan Puri

That's great! Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Okay, cool. By the way, I have a couple of banger topics. I'm doing a lot of research right now, and I'm excited. There are some topics that are almost so good they might need to be their own episode. I want to do one that's basically breaking down what's actually going on with VR. Is VR kind of like dead in the water?

Sam Parr

is it

Shaan Puri

low key killing it like you know that sort of thing and so we've been doing a bunch of research on that

Sam Parr

share it with me yeah

Shaan Puri

and we'll

Sam Parr

do a whole episode on it on monday and I'll be the straight man and I'll ask you questions like I don't know anything

Shaan Puri

Okay, sounds good. I think it needs... basically, it's good as is, but I think it could be a lot better. I actually want to go talk to a bunch of the VR app developers to be like, "Yo, give me the real deal. Here's what the data tells me, but do you agree or disagree?" So, I want to talk to a few other experts, which normally I don't do. Normally, it's like either that happened already accidentally or spontaneously.

Sam Parr

you're not doing it it's a capital j journalism

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so this time I'm kind of like... I don't know, going further for some reason. But I think it's because I actually want the answer. I want to know if I should be investing more in this space or not. A couple of my investments have taken off. Some of the early deals with the fund are now two years old, and we now have two or three companies that are like 40x to 80x returns. They're not liquid yet, so you know, anything can happen. But that's a crazy multiple! In my brain, I knew intellectually this is how it's supposed to go. You're supposed to do this angel investing thing, get a basket of companies, and then look for these breakouts that are going to return huge multiples—20x, 30x, 50x, 100x, or even 1000x returns. When you start to see it actually happen, you take out the calculator app and you're like, "Wow, this is incredible!" A $100,000 investment can turn into $10,000,000 just like that. A $100,000 could turn into $50,000,000 if it makes one more leap. That's pretty exciting! For some reason, that's been like a second wind for me. I guess in general, when things become real, they always ratchet up. I've always felt this way. The first time I took a dividend out of my business, I was like, "Oh, okay." I thought I was already all in, but this made it even more real and exciting, right? I'm ratcheting it up when I thought I was already at the maximum. The same thing is happening with the startup investing stuff. Now, as these startups actually break out, it's like I've ratcheted it up even more, even though I thought I already was. That tangible hit of success is similar to what happened with content creation. I thought I was already trying hard, and then, oh, now we're getting 100,000+ views per episode. Okay, I'm starting to do research. I thought I was already doing research, but no, now I want to push the envelope further.

Sam Parr

Alright, well let's do a whole thing on VR on Monday and we'll talk about your investments. Cool? We should actually do a thing where we...

Shaan Puri

a full stack of

Sam Parr

it yeah

Shaan Puri

And we can balance it. We could be like, "Okay, I lost this much money in the stock market," and we could do a more wholesome, like a more holistic thing. So it's not just, "Hey, here's some wins." It's like that means...

Sam Parr

I have to log in and look though

Sam Parr

I don't even look

Shaan Puri

fuck that never mind