How an Astrology App Makes $10m+ & Why a Boxing Announcer is Worth $400m | My First Million #182

Shaan Puri

I think you could easily build a list of **100,000+** people using this product. There is a clear premium offering on the back end, but the core of it is a quiz funnel at the top, along with a daily newsletter. Get there and reach **100,000**. I’m going to throw down the gauntlet for somebody who's bored and looking for a project that will actually stick and have some legs because I know this will have legs.

Sam Parr

Alright everyone, we're going to talk about some good stuff in this episode. But before we get to it, can you do me a favor? Go to Spotify and click the follow button. The reason why is that lately we've been getting way more listeners on Spotify, and I think it's because we're going up the charts. But I want to be sure of that. In order to go up the charts, I need you to click follow. So it's going to be like a big experiment. I'm going to reveal the results next time. So, go to Spotify, go to "My First Million," and click that blue button that says follow. Click it for me, please! I'll reveal the results soon. I think that means we're going to go up in the charts. Alright, first segment, we're going to talk about horoscopes. Specifically, there are a couple of companies that we talk about: horoscopes.com, astrology.com, and sanctuaryworld.co. They make literally tens of millions of dollars a year in the horoscope business. It's pretty wild because something like 50% of women in America are interested in that topic, which I had no idea. We also talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer. I know that sounds weird. You may not even know that name, Michael Buffer. He's the guy who says, "Let's get ready to rumble!" We talked about those two folks and how they make something like $400 million. I mean, we actually break down why they make that money and how you can replicate that. Finally, we talk about two little side stories about side products that Sean and I have. We actually launched dozens of products that we've never even built.

Shaan Puri

These are our embarrassing side projects that we haven't talked about before. We reveal them while we're discussing the horoscope thing.

Sam Parr

They range from starting a crystal business, which is just weird even saying that, and also to... a fan page that I made for Pitbull. It's kind of odd. And then finally, I talk about a story about meeting Tim Ferriss. It actually happened when I was kinda high on drugs one time. You'll hear about it, get to it, it's in the episode. Like us on Spotify. See you at the end of the episode. Alright, what's going on? We're just talking about losing weight. Sean, yeah, you look good. How long have you been doing meat only?

Shaan Puri

Meat only is only 4 days in, but I had heard about this from Joe Rogan. He talked about the carnivore diet, and it sounded ridiculous at the time. Then you started sending me, you know, nude selfies, and I was like, "Damn, Sam's pretty stacked!" You were like, "Yeah dude, I'm just only eating meat." I was like, "What?" You said, "Yeah, I'm only eating meat." I thought, "Oh, I think the second person has mentioned it." Then my trainer was getting shredded for his season or whatever, and I asked him, "So what adjustments do you make?" He goes, "I just go to a pretty much meat-only diet. Protein only: grass-fed ground beef, grass-fed beef, some fish, and that's pretty much it. A little bit of turkey." So I was like, "Well, I don't know if this is gonna kill me later, but I'll do it for 2 months and let's see if there's any noticeable change." So we'll see.

Sam Parr

Well, yeah, I was just saying you look great! You look like you've lost... how many? I mean, I don't know, like, pounds isn't the best way to measure it, but you probably have lost the equivalent of like **30 pounds** of fat, maybe **20 pounds** of fat.

Shaan Puri

I don't know that that would be a lot. My weight is the same or higher than it was when I started working out. But I do the DEXA scan, which we talked about.

Sam Parr

about which

Shaan Puri

Is that business where you go, you lay down, and it shows you kind of like where the fat, muscle, and bone are in your body? It's sort of like an MRI. I don't know, it looks like an MRI machine, but it's not an MRI. According to that thing, I've lost... you know, like I forgot. I do it every 3 months, and so the last 3 months, I went down 3 or 4% body fat. Now I'm going down another 4 or 5% body fat this time. So yeah, hopefully, I will lose like 10% of my body fat.

Sam Parr

So, the first idea I want to discuss is going to start with a fitness story. That's my segue. But before we get into that, you're going to do... For the listeners, we're going to do mini episodes. I think you're going to try the first one, right? I don't remember what it's going to be, but you wanted to do a rant on something. We don't even need to say what it was, but we're going to try a mini episode. I wonder if it's going to work. It's probably going to be 5 to 10 minutes long, maybe. Today, we're going to talk about a horoscope idea, which sounds silly, but it's actually going to be pretty awesome. Then we're going to talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer, which is actually going to be pretty awesome. Finally, we're going to talk about something that I've asked Sean to prepare, and it's about how he manages this team of interns to get a lot done. I want to get right into it, so I want to tell you the story about this guy named Ross Clark. Never heard of him? You never heard of Ross Clark? Probably not, and that's okay. He kind of looks like me—just a white-haired, blonde, corn-fed-looking dude from, I believe, South Carolina. He was a triathlete and he used to do SoulCycle. He would go to SoulCycle and he loved seeing these women walk out of SoulCycle with a glow. They were very confident when they left, and he thought to himself, "How do I make people feel like that? I want to make people feel confident. I want to make these women feel great about themselves. I want them to have a better life." So, he thinks, "What can I do? What can I do to make that happen?" Then it hits him. It's kind of a weird thing that hit him, but he goes, "The best way that I could do this is I want to create a store or a brand that sells crystals, zodiac necklaces, T-shirts, customized birth charts, geodes, and smudge sticks—these things that make women feel great." Kind of weird, right?

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

And so that's what we're going to talk about. The first idea Eddie says he's going to launch is like this brand that creates all these... I consider them kind of weird, kind of woo-woo. And he goes, "I'm going to create a brand that sells all this stuff, but first I'm going to start with horoscopes." And that's the story of Sanctuary World. I guess it's... I think they just call it Sanctuary. The URL is sanctuary.world. And the reason we're going to talk about it is they just raised a seed round of $5,000,000. Is that correct?

Shaan Puri

yeah something like

Sam Parr

They raised $5,000,000, and it's caused a little bit of controversy because horoscopes are... well, they're bullshit. They're bullshit in the sense that there's not a lot of facts behind them; they're not real. However, a lot of people buy into them thinking that they are legitimate. In fact, something like **40% of women** check their horoscope on a regular basis, and they will make decisions based off their horoscope. The reason why I want to bring it up is because it's interesting.

Shaan Puri

By the way, what is this link to the SoulCycle thing? That sounds like... who's this guy? Ross? Ross Parker, is that his name?

Sam Parr

that's the story bro

Shaan Puri

Sounds like bullshit to me. Ross Parker, it sounds like he was like, "Oh, women believe this shit. People, men believe this shit. I'm gonna sell this shit to them." Not I was standing outside a SoulCycle. I saw them glowing and happy, and somehow I connected the dots between feeling good after exercise to sewing crystals and horoscopes. That doesn't make any sense to me.

Sam Parr

it's it's a bullshit story but

Shaan Puri

hey you told him well

Sam Parr

doing is easy you told him well

Shaan Puri

I'll give you that

Sam Parr

He's connecting **SoulCycle**. He also, in the article that I read, mentions **Headspace**. He's just name-dropping, right?

Shaan Puri

this is gonna be associate at

Sam Parr

one? He called it the uber for zodiac signs

Shaan Puri

So yeah, basically he's saying if I say 3 or 4 legitimate company names alongside mine, I too will get the halo effect of being bucketed in with those guys. Alright, I'm like: - Meditation - Religion - Fitness

Sam Parr

Yeah, so that's what he did. I mean, Calm.com calls themselves the "Nike of spiritual fitness." So, hey, look, I ain't gonna hate the game.

Shaan Puri

right or I ain't

Sam Parr

I'm not gonna hate. I'm not gonna hate the player. So let me explain to you why this is interesting. Josh Wolf, a guy that I like... you like... he tweeted, "This is bullshit. Whoever funds this idea is a crook." Yeah, and I actually don't entirely agree with him. I understand where he's coming from though, and now I want to give you some background about this app, the industry, and where the opportunities are. So, the way this app works...

Shaan Puri

Is you download every tweet? This is Josh Wolf on Twitter. He's a well-known VC. He says, "Seriously, shame on anyone for funding or encouraging this bullshit. No doubt there is demand, but this isn't peddling entertainment; it's encouraging slippery slope snake oil flappadoodle. We ought to desire an informed, educated, rational, and not naive, gullible, superstitious society." Then he screenshotted all the investors who participated in the round. I'm here for that—shots fired! Although I disagree with what he said, go on.

Sam Parr

Yes, and so the way this app works... I downloaded it. It's actually beautifully designed, and it sucked me in hardcore. You sign up, and you see like a spinning wheel.

Shaan Puri

dude I see the glow so I should have known

Sam Parr

it got me and you sign up you say what you know you click your gem I'm a gemini I don't know what the other 12 signs are but you select your birthday and it says today is your daily reading for your horoscope it tells you like a it's like got these like text messaging vibes so it feels like it's texting me this 1 or 2 sentence description of what I should expect and then it says by the way we wanna tell you more in a few hours can you please turn notifications on so we could tell you more in a few hours about what's gonna happen to you and they use this language that speaks exactly to me and then they say also we have a little bit more that we can tell you if you sign up here and then the way the app works is you can have this premium subscription where you get more info about you or you could stay for free where you get daily updates or now this is where it gets interesting you could pay a little bit more money and you could talk to a live what do they call themselves a a mystic yeah a reader you could talk to a reader and she'll tell you all about you so so basically we've talked about miss cleo and how she made like a $1,000,000,000 you get to talk to a miss cleo on the phone or via text and they're gonna tell you all about what you can expect for the coming year the coming day yada yada yada now that in itself is not entirely interesting I mean it is pretty interesting but what's what what's really interesting is how big this is so as 2 30 something year old men we probably don't know too much about this but it's way bigger than I ever thought and the reason why I started diving deep into this is I started reading articles about the horoscope industry and a lot of like typical liberal high educated blogs that were written by women and I would have thought oh these women are gonna shit on it they're gonna say this is a scam and you know what all the articles were very positive even in techcrunch it was this woman named sarah perez wrote about it and she goes yeah horoscopes aren't really harmful it's just fun meaningless entertainment whereas this guy josh completely shit on it and the reason why these women perhaps weren't were okay with it is something like 50% of women check the horoscope on a on a monthly basis 37% said they check daily I

Shaan Puri

I always get into these awkward situations. My sister-in-law is a big believer in the zodiac. So, you know, a situation will be happening between her kids or we'll be talking, and she's like, "Oh, such a Taurus!" or "You're such a Taurus!" Or she'll say, "Well, that's because they're a Gemini, and Geminis are this way." I'm always like, "You know, I don't know how to respond to this." Because I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, but that's totally fake." But then I also think, "Yeah, yeah, that's super fake and true." So I just say, "Okay, good, go on." I don't know what to say in response to that. I can't validate it or agree because I don't agree.

Sam Parr

and I don't wanna shit

Shaan Puri

on it because who cares I don't I don't care if she she believes it puts me in a

Sam Parr

I say, "Look, if I came on one second later at 12:01, you're telling me that I'm gonna react differently about this or that just because of that one nanosecond?" Or I always say, "Well, what if I'm born in Australia where the hemisphere is different and the seasons are different and the moon's different?" But it's on the same day by the...

Shaan Puri

Way in India, they have this... and India is like this times ten. So if you think Miss Cleo is big—and Miss Cleo was big; I think she generated over $1,000,000,000 in sales. If you watched TV in the nineties, you know who Miss Cleo is. If you don't, you don't. But in India, they have this still on TV all the time. There are these gurus, these mystics, and in every village—even in the poorest villages. In fact, especially in the poorest villages, because I think that's where superstition and religion are stronger than anywhere else. When your kid is born, you take your kid to a kind of local stargazer mystic guy. He basically writes this giant thing on a scroll and gives you a scroll. The scroll basically says, "Don't let him eat yellow lentils." It's just like all this hyper-specific stuff. For example, it might say, "He shall not be married in the months of May, June, or August." So people literally, I know, who are educated—doctors, lawyers, bankers—will be engaged and when I ask, "Oh my God, when's the wedding?" they say, "This summer." And then they respond, "No, we can't do summer." I ask why, and they say, "Because my parents had this reading done when I was two months old, and it told them that I shall not be married in these months of the year." So this is not just like an American thing; it's a worldwide phenomenon under many different names. This is worldwide superstition.

Sam Parr

It's wild, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about the industry and some other people succeeding in this space. However, I couldn't find too much on these folks' revenue numbers because they're relatively new. The way that the company started was with this young guy—he's 39—Ross Clark. He went through Lorne Michaels, the guy who started or runs SNL. Apparently, he has a digital incubator that NBC or someone sponsors. It's weird. He went through this incubator and recently raised $5,000,000. He raised money from NBC, and Lorne Michaels somehow has a stake in it. He also raised money from Advanced Capital, which owns loads of magazines, and from Greycroft, which is a media investor. So, he's raised money from all these media people. This is like a traditional media company, and traditional media people like this type of stuff. The reason why they like this is that the horoscope business has been a large business for years. I mean, I've already told you the numbers; this is not niche. We're talking about a third of Americans are into this stuff. Have you heard of astrology.com? Of course, you have. They do low eight figures in revenue. The way they make money is through a lot of programmatic advertising. They do low-cost advertising, like the biomethobalin offering. They get you to come to their website, make a little bit of money off advertising, and have ads on their website. So, it's now an arbitrage play. They also sell subscriptions, so you can click a button and get a little bit of an extra reading. They make tens of millions—low tens of millions—doing that, and it's been like that for about 30 years. This is astrology.com, and horoscope.com is another competitor. They get about 20,000,000 people coming to their website a month, so it's quite large. These guys have been around since like 1995 or 1999, making over $10,000,000 in revenue in a pretty fascinating business. My opinion is...

Shaan Puri

about 15,000,000 visitors a month to their website which is

Sam Parr

a lot that that's a lot and I bet you a lot of that is director search which is really good

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

so so

Shaan Puri

Which way do you want to go with this? I think we can do a couple of things. One is there's the controversy. You know, Vinod Khosla and Josh Wolf came out saying, "Oh, how evil for funding this and for doing this." So, there's agree or disagree there.

Sam Parr

Well, we can actually address that right away, which is... I totally disagree. They're bullshit. They're wrong. Exactly. Like, let's say, "Why would you ever invest in the nicotine business or an alcohol business?" Like, dude... there's a place for all types of... [expletive].

Shaan Puri

Or a burger chain, or Netflix, or whatever, right? You can believe that there are sort of negative consequences for society and humanity for Facebook as well, right? I think in this case, their view is very tainted. Here's an easy example: if somebody was doing a religion app, they would never say anything about this. But because the religion is the stars instead of the gods, now it's "snake oil," now it's "bullshit," now it's peddling fake science. What is religion? What is the difference in religion? It is a belief in something that is supernatural, that is invisible, that cannot be proved by science. It is blind faith in something, and that faith gives people comfort, entertainment, community... you know, many positive benefits. So if you're going to say this about horoscopes, you better also say it about religion. Otherwise, I view you as a hypocrite.

Sam Parr

Yeah, we're on the same page there. And also, dude, I don't like... many people have a shitty life. They go to work, they get home at 5 PM, and they just wanna fucking veg out. If a little horoscope gives them a bit of hope, who cares? You know, we... I need all the help I can get, and I'm sure a lot of people do too. So I don't care.

Shaan Puri

so the

Sam Parr

I will say it's **bullshit**, just like I think a lot of religion is. Sorry if you're religious, but I respect that if you like it. However, I think it's **bullshit** too, but it's okay.

Shaan Puri

Me too. Okay, so then the second piece is that I'll just say on that is... it's **fucking annoying**. The virtue signaling by VCs—nobody likes this. The grandstanding that people do is so annoying to me. I recently... we'll talk about this more in a month. Weird teaser, I know, but I'm going to go in-depth about a topic in a month regarding a fight I had on Twitter—a good old Twitter ruckus. One of the things that came out of it was the absolute hypocritical nature of people and their virtue signaling. This is almost more annoying to me than cancel culture: the **virtue signaling culture**. People take any chance they get to say how they're greater than others. They try to take the moral high ground at any cost, and I find it to be so annoying. It's such a weak move for people to do that. So if you're an investor and you go and say, "I'm a good guy; I would never fund something like this," that is such an annoying move to me personally.

Sam Parr

what do

Shaan Puri

you think of that

Sam Parr

So, I completely agree with you. I mean, I think that we have to remember that there are some moms, like my mother in Missouri, who are having a hard day. She just needs to get off somehow... that sounded weird, but you know what I mean. She needs to find a little bit of happiness somewhere.

Shaan Puri

I don't care

Sam Parr

If she wants a soap opera or reads about horoscopes, who cares? Not everything needs to save the world. It just needs to be a little bit of fun and entertainment.

Shaan Puri

And not everyone needs to agree with you. Okay, you don't want to fund it? No problem. You don't have to fund it. But to call out and demonize the people that do fund it? Let them do what they want. I find it weird that the people who are trying to be so righteous lose one of the more fundamental things, which is open-mindedness. Maybe other people have different beliefs than you and will act in different ways in accordance with their beliefs. They should not be judged or demonized for it. So anyways, I think that's kind of annoying, but okay.

Sam Parr

so for all the people yeah

Shaan Puri

go ahead

Sam Parr

who who like this let's talk about the opportunities and why this works you wanna talk about that

Shaan Puri

yes I have I have a couple

Sam Parr

Okay, I'll go first. The first is Myers-Briggs and other personality tests. You can do this exact same thing with that.

Shaan Puri

By the way, the reason for bringing this up as the most interesting subject to anybody is themselves. Exactly. So that's the umbrella. We're not talking about selling pseudoscience. That's actually a technique. Why does this work? It's because the most interesting topic to me is me, and the most interesting topic to you is you. Because of that, if you accept that this is true—which, by the way, it is—once you understand that, it opens up a set of business possibilities that you can go through, work through, and try to figure out. So, okay, go on.

Sam Parr

So the goal is to find... The reason why I went to this app, why it was so interesting, I bet... So for most apps, the free-to-paid conversion ratio is probably 1%. Maybe you think that's about right?

Shaan Puri

it can get higher it can get to like 3% 4%

Sam Parr

Okay, with this app, I bet you it's as high as 10%. Yeah, if they told me 10%, I wouldn't be surprised.

Shaan Puri

I'd be impressed but not surprised I would

Sam Parr

Be impressed and not surprised. Exactly! A 10% free-to-paid conversion rate is incredible. The reason why it's good is that you could spend a lot of money on advertising. Now, the churn might be high, but that's a situation we can address after we're already big and popular. So, let's just assume that the conversion rate is true. Let's say it's 6%. The reason why it's 6% is that it's so personal. The way this business works is that it is personal. What you need to do is go out and find personal stuff. That's the reason why Myers-Briggs and any type of personality test are effective. I could say, "Oh, you've just told me these 10 things about you. That means that you're probably disorganized, right? Let me tell you all about being disorganized and what that means." Personality tests are great. It's actually, in a way, the same thing as a horoscope. What you can do is you could really just do a daily email if you wanted to. So, it's not really simple.

Shaan Puri

By the way, all those people who are like, "Horoscopes? Yeah, that's for dumb Trump voters to believe in," will also be putting in their Twitter bio, "I'm an ENTJ," right? They'll go put their personality quiz results into their bio. I know there's slightly more science that says that's a real thing, but I don't know... This is all, yeah, exactly, this is all hand-wavy shit as far as I'm concerned.

Sam Parr

yeah and and guess what I'm in favor of it

Shaan Puri

all right I take these tests enjoy them

Sam Parr

So, I think that you can do a daily email for this. I also believe that paid content and paid subscriptions for these types of things work really well. What this app is doing, that I particularly love and think could work for so many different things, is that you get a top-of-funnel approach where you give these tests. Then, you have a conversation with a person, and you would charge $50 per person or per hour, or whatever it is. As a middle person, you take a cut. I think that is brilliant. I love this, by the way.

Shaan Puri

I was talking to... there was a company we talked about on here. It's called, I feel like it's called Intro. Was it called Intro? It was basically like you can book a call with, like, Justin Bieber's stylist or... oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam Parr

think it

Shaan Puri

was called intro a camera call

Sam Parr

no it it was called something else but you oh maybe you're right

Shaan Puri

So anyways, Intro.co. The founder is legit; he sold his last company and started this thing. He's like, "Oh, it's great because I'm remodeling my kitchen. Wouldn't it be great to be able to do a 30-minute call with the person who remodels kitchens on HGTV?" So they got all these stars on, and it's all good. Guess what? The number one vertical for them is astrology readings. They found all these Instagrammers. You can go on Instagram and find all these people who have cult followings. They have like 50,000 to 150,000 followers, and they just post a daily sort of reading. People will pay to book time to get a personal reading from them. It's taking off! Now, he doesn't publicize that. If you go to the website, it still looks like it's about style, home renovations, and other things. Yeah, and that is affordable fitness.

Sam Parr

but nutrition makeup

Shaan Puri

Fitness, nutrition, makeup... all these things that, you know, smart people will nod their heads and say, "That sounds good. That sounds healthy." Then it's like, what do people really want? Where's the highest demand? It was in the "tell me about me" through a reading—either a psychic reading, astrology reading, whatever it is. Okay, I want to go back to something you said very quickly, but I think it's super legit. We need a sound effect for whenever you and I have such total conviction. It's like in, if you watch, I don't know, "America's Got Talent" or something like that, or "The X Factor."

Sam Parr

the buzzer

Shaan Puri

The golden button, the golden buzzer, where they're just like, "We don't need to vote. I'm gonna push this button right now," and you automatically advance. So, I'm pushing the golden button right now for anybody who wants to take this idea of creating this funnel. To do this, you need to know nothing about code, but you do need to be kind of internet savvy and clever. Here's what you do:

Sam Parr

you and you should probably go and read like ryan hoover's book hooked

Shaan Puri

near I asked or yeah ryan hoover's like the editor

Sam Parr

Whatever. Sorry, near or go and read *Influence* by Robert Cialdini.

Shaan Puri

Right, exactly. Somebody who gets into this stuff and is nonjudgmental... they're not going to do this forever. But here's the experiment: you create a quiz that's the top of the funnel. It basically says, "Find out your personality," "Find out your X," "Find out your Myers-Briggs," or "Find out your horoscope," whatever it is. You create a quiz at the top, and then to get your results, you put in your email. We email you the results, and then we send you a daily newsletter that's personalized to you. Right? Because you were born on this day of this year, I'm going to give you your daily horoscope and your daily reading. So that's the whole product. Now, I think if we do this, I will put money in. I bet Sam would put some money in too. You put a little money behind the paid acquisition here, and there's inherent virality because people will share their quiz results. They will share their readings, especially when it says, "See if you're compatible with your brother, your girlfriend, your mother, whoever." Right? You'll get somebody to share the quiz with somebody else. So I think you could easily build a list of over 100,000 people doing this product. Then there is a clear premium offering on the back end. But the core of it is a quiz funnel up top, a daily newsletter, and getting to 100,000. I would... I'm going to throw down the gauntlet for somebody who's bored and looking for a project that will actually stick, that will actually have some legs because I know this will have legs.

Sam Parr

And I don't know how big a leg is, but I would say with a high degree of certainty, if you work on this full time for 3 years, you could have $5,000,000 a year in revenue.

Shaan Puri

Or, or, or even simpler, right? A lot of people, when I surveyed my audience, one of the biggest things was, "Dude, I'd love to just have a side hustle that I could do a few hours a day that would bring in a few thousand dollars a month." This will do that. So if you want to do this, DM me, email me, find a way to contact us because I want somebody legit to actually try this. Let me tell you about some experiments I've done in this area. I don't even know if you know about these things. Not too long ago, within the last couple of years, I was quite bored. I had sold my company and I basically said, you know, in the last episode you asked, "Do you want to build something that lasts for like 30, 40 years, like a long-lasting company?" I'm like, "Yeah, sometimes I dream about that." And then sometimes I dream about, "What's something I could do this weekend that would be fun and like I could throw away next weekend if I wanted to?" Like a low-commitment fling of a business.

Sam Parr

just a a fun scheme

Shaan Puri

right a hookup and so I wanted a I wanted a business hookup

Sam Parr

and yeah one night stand

Shaan Puri

And I created three ideas that I thought would work. The first was an IQ test. I have always wanted to know my IQ. I don't know my IQ, but I'd like to think I'm smart. I think I'm above average smart. Guess what? Everybody thinks they're above average smart. So, I thought, why isn't there an easier way to do an IQ test? What if there was an ad on Facebook that was like a puzzle? It could say, "Solve this puzzle, and this is the start of an IQ test." I would go through that. I would take the IQ test for 20 minutes, and then I would want to get my results. I'd give you my email, and I might even pay for the full results of this thing. I thought that was kind of interesting—doing IQ tests and kind of recreating Mensa as a sort of online funnel. Again, no physical product needed, no shipping, no logistics, no supply chain, but a pure play sort of digital info product. The second one: Have you read the book "The 5 Love Languages" or "The 5 Languages of Love"?

Sam Parr

obviously

Shaan Puri

Okay, yeah, you're married. So at some point, you were given this book and someone said, "Hey, read this." Yes, and that's one that’s a pretty successful franchise. So if you go look at my Facebook page right now, my Facebook profile, you'll see, "Oh, why is Sean the admin of a page called The Love Doctor?" Well, let me tell you why. Because I wanted to take the 5 Love Languages test, put it online, and send people through that flow where they answer a bunch of questions. Then I would say, "Would you like to know what your love language is? Put your email in, and then I'll send you your results." Then I say, "Well, wait! We need to see who you're compatible with. Do your love languages match? And do they know yours? Send this to your partner." And boom! By the way, like, "Here, buy the ebook. Buy the PDF that will tell you what to do given your love language." Because there are only like 5, so I can just make 5 PDFs and sell them. So these are these little business experiment flings. I have one last one that I did because, as you can tell, these types of businesses appeal to me. I like simple, lightweight stuff that has a lot of demand, which Silicon Valley likes to pooh-pooh and say that they're better than. I find this as an opportunity. So the last one is crystals. You said something...

Sam Parr

About crystals? Yes, I did. So this guy, what he wants to do is he wants to sell crystals. I don't... I don't say "Oh my gosh," and I think it's wrong to say "sell" because I think it's like anything that... You know, Tony Robbins, is he bullshit? Yeah, but I read it sometimes. It's not a big deal.

Shaan Puri

yeah helpful bullshit

Sam Parr

so so who cares but I think crystals are nonsense

Shaan Puri

Yes, exactly. So, is a placebo a bad thing? If this thing has no measurable effects but I believe it to have a positive effect and it helps me feel better, then has it not achieved its purpose of helping me feel better? I looked at these three ideas and I had to pick one because I didn't have too much time. I had a weekend hookup to go to. So, I said, "Should I do the IQ one? Should I do this love doctor one, the 5 languages of love test? Or should I do this crystal thing?" As I looked at the crystal thing, I saw a bunch of interesting things. There are a lot of female influencers. For example, Adele carries a rose quartz crystal with her and uses it before she goes on stage for every performance. Gwyneth Paltrow, you know, with Goop, she's all about crystals. Just go through the list of who's who. The Kardashians—after Kim Kardashian got mugged or robbed and she was feeling very unsafe—she credits crystals as one of the things that helped her center herself, calm herself, and feel better about herself so she could go back into the world and feel safe again. I found that, wow, a lot of these female celebrities and idols have pictures and quotes with these. I thought, "Oh, that'd be pretty useful to help sell this thing." Then I found that I could source crystals very easily. The crystals are not that expensive. So, I created an e-commerce store for crystals. I tried it for a couple of weekends and I spent, you know, $5 to $10 booting this thing up. I broke even; I even made a little bit of profit. In the end, I sort of got bored of the hookup and was ready to move on.

Sam Parr

on with my life yeah

Shaan Puri

But I kind of validated that this idea could work. It wasn't like gangbusters. Look, if this started printing money, I wouldn't have given it up.

Sam Parr

no but it could have been

Shaan Puri

you only get it for

Sam Parr

a few weeks

Shaan Puri

right like which is most things you have to stay at it for a bit to actually get it to work

Sam Parr

That's brilliant. I like hearing these stories and... as I was thinking, I made fun of crystals, but I actually had something similar. There's this guy named Ryan Holiday. You know Ryan Holiday?

Shaan Puri

the author of trust me I'm lying is that it

Sam Parr

yeah I I might have his he

Shaan Puri

he's got his books I think is one of his right

Sam Parr

I have some of them up here, and he's got many books. His famous thing is stoicism, so he talks a lot about stoicism, which basically just means how to deal with adversity, how to be a tough guy. Obviously, horoscopes are mostly for women; this is probably mostly for men. I read one of his books. I thought it was nice; it made me feel better about myself. I went to dailystoic.com and I bought a $30 coin that says some...

Shaan Puri

message

Sam Parr

There's a Greek thing on there that... I don't even know what it says, but it translates into something like "You live and then you're gonna die," so like "live well" or something like that. It just... and I would carry... I always... I don't know.

Shaan Puri

what it is who gets the the tattoo of an asian asian character on his arm and doesn't know what it means

Sam Parr

yeah I I don't but I doesn't matter what it means

Shaan Puri

like it means something to you

Sam Parr

When I was... yeah, like it's gotta be stoic on there. They're supposed to be tough. I would carry it around with me, and I paid $30 for it. I think it costs a dollar for him to make. I think he makes a few million dollars, so that shit works. I dig it. By the way, my one-night stand recently, about a couple of years ago, our friend Ramon was killing it on dog stuff. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that looks so fun!" He would create all these Facebook pages dedicated to a specific dog breed. I go, "Whoa, that looks fun! I just wanna tinker. I'm gonna try it." I created this one page called "Bully Boo"—so the word "bully" and then space, the word "boo" (B-O-O). I just made that word up. Bully is like bully breeds; they're like pit bulls, whatever, yada yada. I just went and got viral videos from Reddit and posted them on Bully Boo. Dude, I got like 10,000 followers on Facebook in a matter of like 5 days. Yeah, so that shit works. So anyway...

Shaan Puri

By the way, I also have a pet project. I heard this guy was making a bunch of money by printing your pet's photo on socks as a gift. I thought, "Great, we can hook up!" I tried it and spun up the whole thing. I had a friend, Eric, who has this cool sock company called Tribe. He was like, "I'll print the socks for you. Here's a link, here's an easy way to set it up." I tried it, but my results weren't great. Still, I really enjoy these mini experiments. Here's the thing: when I share these, I think part of it is interesting just hearing about these little random things. Most people listening to this, I don't think, do that. I think we're somewhat unique in that we have done many of these. Right? Like, I didn't even know you did this Bully Boo thing, and you didn't know I've done these three things. There's actually like ten more that I've done that you haven't really talked about.

Sam Parr

so a lot of which are so embarrassing I don't think I'll ever say

Shaan Puri

these are the ones we're talking about imagine the ones we don't talk about so so the

Sam Parr

I think the one of

Shaan Puri

The meta takeaways are to experiment more and be willing to spin something up quickly, then throw it away when you're done with it. Don't try to marry everything; it's okay to date. It's okay to have a hookup, a fling, or a one-night stand with a business. I think a lot of our skills are built through this process. I used to tell one of my interns who was working with me on the crystal project, "Dude, I don't know if this crystal thing's gonna work, but I'm just amazed that in 48 hours we went from you just bullshitting about the idea to our first sale." That's just kind of amazing. He called it a "flash brand." He said, "I love that we just created this whole brand. It looks real, it's got a name—we named it after my sister's kid. We created a logo, we got this Shopify store spun up." In doing so, we learned all these mechanics: how to get better at writing copy, how to get better at naming things, how to get better at making a logo, and how to use tools like Shopify and Klaviyo. Even if you think the ideas we're talking about are dumb, it's not dumb to use these as an excuse to learn about Facebook ads or to learn how to build a Facebook page quickly. That knowledge might come in handy again three days later or three years later when you're trying to do the next thing.

Sam Parr

And of course, that's not really the most important thing you're learning. What you're learning is the confidence to just go through the motions and get shit done. In the same way that it's a lot easier to get skinny when you know how to bench press properly or you feel comfortable squatting. When you're like, "Oh yeah, I just do this, this, this, and I eat less," and boom! I'm confident I can... I just follow the... Can I tell you...?

Shaan Puri

A mini story on this real quick, and then we'll move on. So, I invested in that company, Maven, which was started by our mutual friend, Gagan Biyani. He started Udemy, and now he's got a $3,000,000,000 ed-tech company. Now, he has a new ed-tech company for teaching online. I invested in the company, and in order to get in, it was such a competitive deal. He said, "Look, you guys have a good audience; you have a big Twitter following. You gotta do a course. If you agree to do a course and be one of the teachers or be a user, then I'll let you in the round." I was like, "Done," because I wanted to invest. So then, he's been hitting me up like, "Dude, where's your course? Come on, man, make your course!" I was like, "Alright, shit." I was overthinking it, and the lesson here is not... it really has nothing to do with my course or...

Sam Parr

I guess I'll tell the end

Shaan Puri

Of the story, and then I'll tell you how I almost messed up. So, the end of the story is: yesterday, I took about 20 minutes and wrote a three-tweet tweet storm about...

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

How writing has helped me... I said, you know, in school I was a **shitty writer**. In school, they want you to write long essays; they have a minimum word count you have to hit, literally. You study Shakespeare and think that's what good writing is, or you read *The Odyssey*. But then, you know, in the real world, it's the exact opposite. You're paid to be concise, not to have a lot of words, right? You're not trying to write really epic, complex things. You need to be simple and crisp and communicate well. I said I've gotten good at that. So, I sucked at school writing, but I've gotten pretty good at real-world writing through trial and error and studying some of the best people, yourself included. Our friend Neville—I bought his course and took the whole thing. I got better at copywriting. In general, there's this whole idea of how much value can be unlocked if you're good at writing emails, tweets, blog posts, company memos, investor letters... all those things can generate a lot of value. It's made me **$1,000,000**. I think it can do that for other people too if you get better at writing. So, anyways, I tweeted that out and said I want to package this. You know, I’ve probably studied this stuff for like **1,000 hours** in my life. I want to distill it down into something you can learn in **10 days**. If you're interested in that, it'll cost **$400**. Here's a link. I put it into a simple Google form where you put in your name and email and tell me why you want to take this course. So, I tweeted it out. Guess how many responses I got? **300**. I got **1,000** responses already from people who gave me all their info and said, "I'd like to sign up to be in the first batch." I thought, so the way that Maven works is they encourage you to do this to test demand. If you get **100** people, they say, "Alright, there's enough demand. You should go figure out why they want to do this and then launch your actual course." **1,000** blew me away off of, you know, one tweet, basically, let alone an email list or anything else. So, I thought, oh, that's interesting. Wow! Let's say that this is **1,000** people. The course costs **$400**.

Sam Parr

not all of them

Shaan Puri

will will convert but like

Sam Parr

200 maybe

Shaan Puri

but this was let's say

Sam Parr

a 100

Shaan Puri

He said about **30 to 40%** of people will end up converting, but that's if you qualify the list a little bit. This was just one tweet, so let's assume I also email it out or tweet again about it. I think I could probably triple the size of the interest list because this was just whoever was on Twitter in that moment that saw it. So, I could probably triple the size of this list, and then let's say **30%** of them convert, or **25%** of them convert. Okay, so let's say the net is...

Sam Parr

a $120,000

Shaan Puri

I could easily make six figures. I think $100,000 on the low end, and $400,000 to $500,000 on the high end of this course. Okay, so that's sweet, but what's the lesson here? The lesson is actually that I wasn't going to send this tweet. I was telling Guggen, "Alright, you know you need to test the demand for this course." I was like, "Great! Here's my plan: first, I'm going to work on the content of the course and make sure it's good. Then, I want to show people I'm good at this. So, I'm going to do ten examples. I'm going to do ten emails showing me taking something that was kind of bad writing and turning it into something better. That'll get people interested. Then, I'll mention it on the podcast and do this other thing." And he's like, "Dude, you don't need to do all that. Trust me, just say, 'Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Here's why I think it would be good for you. If you're interested, sign up.'" I was like, "Yeah, fuck, you're right! I'm doing that." And that thing is what most people do, which is: you are afraid to fail, so you overthink what you need to do to make it successful. Abreu, you're listening to this and you're about to go do your own startup. Don't make this mistake that I was about to make, and that I've made many times in the past. Most people make this mistake every time they start a new venture: they are afraid to fail, therefore they overestimate what they need to do to get started. "I need to incorporate. I need to come up with a good name. I need to buy the domain. I need to build it to make sure I have a high-quality product. I don't want to go out with a bad product and disappoint people." Or, "I need to create a whole website before I do this thing." Nope! Shitty tweet, shitty Google form, 1,000 responses, right? You can get results with a much shittier sort of go-to-market. So, the classic quote here is: "If you're not embarrassed by your first product, by your first version of your product, you waited too long to launch." Anyways, the middle of something I relearned was: don't overthink it. I almost overthought it. Do you?

Sam Parr

know what you're gonna teach or are you gonna figure that out

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I have a good idea actually. I think this would be cool, so tell me what you think of this. I haven't told anybody this yet. I think the way to get good at writing is to write, obviously. Sorry, the way to get good at anything is to do it. So I'm like, alright, but I can't just tell you to go do it. If it was that easy, you would have already done it. So I thought, okay, what about this? What if every day I gave you a prompt? Let's say we want to get better at writing for the real world. Right? So let's say it's a cold email, like the way you cold emailed people to come be speakers at Hassel Khan. Great! So I say we're going to write a cold email to somebody who you want to come speak at your event. I'm not going to tell you how to do it. First, try it. Put 15 minutes on the clock and just try it. Write a *shitty* version. So they try it, then I'm going to give them a kind of a learning. It's like do, learn, and then do. So you do it, oh that's great! Then I tell you how I would do it, with four examples: "Here's one way of doing it, here's another way of doing it, here's another way of..."

Sam Parr

doing it

Shaan Puri

Here's another way of doing it. Here are the common principles I'm using in all these. Alright, you learned that. Good! Now do it again and submit that one. I'll give feedback on all the submissions that people give. I'll be like, "Hey, this is actually awesome," or "Hey, this is much better than your first attempt." Look, in 30 minutes, you just went from really bad to pretty good. Here's how you can go from pretty good to amazing if you make this one tweak additionally. I want people to get daily reps at writing one of those things. So it might be a headline. "Here's the story, write the headline." Okay, cool. That was a bad headline. Here's what goes into a great headline.

Sam Parr

I'll do

Shaan Puri

it again

Sam Parr

You better launch fast. Someone, a listener, is going to go and do this. Of course, they don't have 150,000 followers, but yeah.

Shaan Puri

If you want to do this, help me do it. I think this should exist. I believe it would be a cool way for people to get better by actually doing something in a controlled sandbox. It's not just saying, "Open-ended, I don't know, go write a bunch of stuff." It's very specific: "Write this." Here are examples of what good looks like. Now that you know the principle, go apply it. So anyway, that's what I'm going to try to teach.

Sam Parr

Do you want to talk about Michael Buffer? "Yes, what do you... So on our doc, Sean's got 'Michael Buffer and Judge Judy personal monopoly' written down there. I'm very curious what that even means."

Shaan Puri

So, this started with just curiosity. I was watching the Canelo Alvarez boxing match that happened last weekend. Fun match! The guy, he *really* broke this guy's face; he punched him hard.

Sam Parr

a guy literally

Shaan Puri

Poked his face in three places, and then the guy quit between rounds. So, anyway, boxing is this funny thing where the match itself only lasts for, you know, some number of minutes. But they need to charge you all this money for a pay-per-view, so there's all this pomp and circumstance, all this parade around it, right? They walk out with music and their kind of entourage and their outfits. Then the next person walks out, and there's the introduction. In the introductions, there's always this guy— you've probably seen him. He's this white guy who basically has a great voice, and in boxing, he says, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's get ready to rumble!" That's like the signature thing. He would kind of get wired over the years of following the sport that, yes, this is the main event; this is the big one.

Sam Parr

and and by the way do you know who that guy's brother is

Shaan Puri

bruce buffer right so bruce is in the ufc and he says I'll let you do it

Sam Parr

he goes it's time

Shaan Puri

right it's time

Sam Parr

And by the way, they didn't know that they were brothers until they were both in their fifties. Exactly. There's a crazy story about that.

Shaan Puri

So, I was just watching this and I was like, "How much does Michael Buffer get paid?" Right? So I do the search: "Michael Buffer salary." Do you know how much Michael... you might know. It sounds like you know some things.

Sam Parr

no I I I don't know but bezos is 10,000,000 a year

Shaan Puri

So, Michael Buffer has made **$400,000,000** in his career doing what he's doing. He's made most of that off the fact that he has created a personal monopoly. He is synonymous with a big boxing match, and his phrase, "Let's get ready to rumble," is a trademarked phrase. Now, how is it a trademark? He has trademarked it and licenses it out to video games, movies, shows, and stuff like that. Actually, if you go watch the back catalog of UFC fights, they cut out Bruce Buffer's "It's time" part because they don't want to pay him the royalty on "It's time."

Sam Parr

How well... First of all, I knew he was wealthy because he looks like he's had a lot of work done on his face. He's got that Wayne Newton look or like Sigmund Freud, where I'm like, "Oh, that's that Las Vegas rich look." Second, how on earth does the boxing federation, or whatever it's called, allow him to own it along with Bruce Buffer?

Shaan Puri

so the so the way the happening so so the way it happened was michael buffer is the is the the announcer guy right and at first he's not making much and boxing is kinda nascent he's he grew with the sport right so as tyson got popular and holyfield and all all these big names you know you just keep seeing this one guy for like 30 years so he ended up building his own brand you know along the way so nowadays he gets paid about or or sorry I don't know exactly what michael buffer gets paid per event but he he got to the? Where it's let's say 1984 and he's saying let's get ready to rumble and bruce buffer who doesn't know that they are siblings he is half they're half siblings so he's watching what is it he's watching the event or something like that and he sees that this guy's last name is buffer and he goes oh that's cool I've never met another buffer he doesn't think they're brothers he just thinks this guy's last name's also buffer that's cool I've never met another buffer he goes in the yellow pages and he looks and there's no other buffers so he's like dude this is crazy that this guy's last name is buffer and he's driving with his dad or something like that and he asked his dad he's like yeah this guy's oh no he finds out he so he he looks into michael buffer he finds out he was he grew up in a town like I don't know half a mile away from bruce he's like dude dad how crazy is this this guy you know the guy on the boxing thing michael buffer last name buffer and he grew up you know half a mile half a mile away from us and the dad while driving just goes yeah I think that's your brother he's like what he's like yeah you know you didn't know this but before you and your mom you know they've been married 50 years before you and your mom got together you know I had another I had a son I don't know if it's him but maybe that's your brother and so they go and they find out that they are actually half brothers they share a dad so bruce then goes to michael and he says michael you're doing great but you have no like business manager I'll be your manager and he's like okay what does that mean he goes dude you need to trademark this phrase this is your catchphrase so he applies to the trademark he gets it and then he basically says takes that trademark and he starts to licensing it out merchandise you know hats shirts video games everything so he starts building this guy's brand and then later michael gets bruce into the comment the announcing game and bruce becomes the announcer for the ufc so a different sport and bruce is making like on any given event if you go watch a ufc event he's making 50 to a $100 for that night's work which is basically before every fight he just announces you know in this corner we have this guy from new york

Sam Parr

that's right now that's right now he makes a $100 for

Shaan Puri

Big fights and $50-ish. And this is like... we got a caveat. This is like, you know, when you Google someone's net worth. I don't know if this is actually his number; this is like the...

Sam Parr

got it

Shaan Puri

this is the it's in a bunch of articles but maybe they're all referencing the same shitty source I don't know

Sam Parr

right and he does probably 3 a month

Shaan Puri

yeah and so

Sam Parr

so you're looking at about 3 and a half $4,000,000 a year

Shaan Puri

And he says that, you know, his net worth is sort of in the tens of millions, whereas Michael Buffer is in the hundreds of millions. So this sort of came to this concept of creating a personal monopoly. How do you build yourself to the point where you are irreplaceable? This is like Ryan Seacrest with *American Idol*. Right when *American Idol* first started, there were two dudes.

Sam Parr

and at this. Ryan seacrest actually go ahead

Shaan Puri

Well, I was just going to say Ryan Seacrest is now, you know, sort of synonymous with *American Idol*. It's like Chris Harrison with *The Bachelor* and Jeff Probst with *Survivor*. These are hosts that, on the surface, it's like, "Oh, he just comes out here and says a few lines. Anybody could do that."

Sam Parr

no doesn't take any time no no no

Shaan Puri

The fans grow attached to this person, and that becomes part of the brand of the event. The consistency of seeing those same faces, those same recurring cast members, saying those same catchphrases is part of what makes it popular. So, judge and...

Sam Parr

At this... Ryan Seacrest has Ryan Seacrest Productions, which is a production company. Frankly, I've always been wondering, what does a "production company" actually mean? That's one of those Hollywood terms that I'm sure does... it's confusing, but I don't want to get into it. But it [the company] does something like north of $100 million in revenue.

Shaan Puri

Well, he produced the Kardashian show, *Keeping Up with the Kardashians*. He was the creator and producer of that show. I think it was his idea.

Sam Parr

So, he partly put that into something. I don't exactly, like I said, I don't entirely understand how a confident company puts money.

Shaan Puri

Because at the beginning of *American Idol*, there were two hosts. One guy, after season one, was like, "Oh, this is a hit! I want more money." At that time, he didn't have a personal monopoly yet; he was replaceable because the show was so new. They said, "No thanks, we'll keep Ryan." Ryan Seacrest could just be the lead guy now. Ryan Seacrest did it for like 15 years, and by the end of it, he was making, I don't know, $10 to $15 million a season doing it. He waited until he became entrenched in the franchise as the face, and he became a valuable character, like Simon Cowell and the other judges. *Judge Judy* is probably the greatest example of this. The highest-paid person on TV was Judge Judy for a number of years. She was making $47 million a year for, I think, about 50 days of filming. So she was making about $900,000 a day filming the show. Before that, she was a judge making $113,000 a year. From the commodity skill of being a judge to building her personal monopoly as the show *Judge Judy*, she was able to turn a $113,000 a year salary into $47 million a year. Then, CBS bought the back catalog of *Judge Judy* for $100 million, so she's still making royalties without working anymore. I just find this to be tremendously interesting. It's something that was counterintuitive to me. It seems like all these people are replaceable, but clearly, the economics of Hollywood show that they're not. I also like the story of the long-lost brothers: one brother finds the other, becomes his manager, and convinces him to trademark it. That trademark, building that personal monopoly of intellectual property, is what helped him build a multi-hundred-million-dollar franchise. I thought that was amazing.

Sam Parr

So, I want to... let's go down the rabbit hole. I don't think we're going to get to the intern thing, but maybe we will. Let's put a pin in the rabbit hole because I know a few people that have these personal brands. Maybe some people think that I have that, but I actually don't have it because I'm not nearly careful enough. You seem quite careful about your brand, so you might have this. Who comes to mind? I know Tim Ferriss. I know Tim Ferriss, and I know Jack Butcher. Yep, Jack Butcher is a great friend of mine. He created this huge following off of "Visualize Value." Great name! All he does is make one picture that describes a thousand words. So basically, you have this complicated topic, and he makes one graphic a day that explains exactly how it works. You would think that's silly, but he's crushed it. He probably makes $2 to $3 million a year selling a course on that topic. The second one is Tim Ferriss, and the reason why I can't do this is because these guys are so protective and particular about their brand. Tim Ferriss... I'm going to tell a Tim Ferriss story that I... I don't want to turn this into clips. I don't want this to get popular, but I'm going to tell a story. So, Tim Ferriss years ago came to my office when he had just... I know Tim Ferriss because he would walk his dog. We were neighbors; we lived down the block from each other. We would walk our dogs together. He would be at the park, and I would be at the park. I wouldn't bring up business. I wouldn't even act like I was a fan, other than saying, "Hey, I just listened to this podcast the other day. It was wonderful. Good job!" Anyway, how can you manage your dog doing...

Shaan Puri

Can you tell me about the first time you all met? How did you meet? Because I think when people meet someone they know and admire, they often blow it by totally fangirling over them. What was the story? Do you even remember what the first interaction was like when it became normal?

Sam Parr

Okay, the funny story is, I was on the way home from the hospital after getting a kidney stone. I was super high on morphine and oxygen. I got the kidney stone at around 5 o'clock in the morning, and my wife, Sarah, who was my girlfriend at the time, was driving me home at 8 AM. As we were coming home, I saw Tim walking in front of my house. I was in the passenger seat, riding dirty with my seat back because I was all high and stuff. I said, "Hold on, Sarah! Becca! Hey, Tim! What are you doing around here, man?" He replied, "I live on the street." I said, "That's cool! I'm a big fan. Just got a kidney stone. You got any tips for that?" I realized I was being obnoxious. The next day, I saw him again walking his dog. I said, "Tim, I just wanted to apologize. I was under the influence. But anyway, I know your book. Big fan! What's your dog's name?" And that was it. We were just talking about dogs. Eventually, he cold emailed me months later. He said, "Hey, I heard about the hustle. It seems cool. Do you want to have dinner so we can talk about it?" I went to dinner, and he said, "Wait a minute, you're the guy with the dog!" I replied, "Yeah, man! What's going on? It's me, your neighbor. I didn't ever want to bring up email or business to you because, you know, I didn't want to be tacky."

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

So, it was a weird thing that we knew each other. One day, after he invested in my company, he came to the office. He saw me drinking a Coke cereal and he goes, "Hey man, can I have one of those?" I go, "Yeah dude, you can have as many as you want. Let me go."

Shaan Puri

get you one

Sam Parr

I give him one, and he chugs it super fast. He goes, "Can I get one more?" I go, "Yeah, yeah, I got two." I've brought two. He chugs them. We get done with this meeting. There are six of us in the office. We're in a little baby conference room, which is basically a one-bedroom in one of the apartments. There are about six of my employees, or four of them, and then Cieva was there. He goes, "Alright, well that was a good meeting," and he pushes the Coke cans my way. I go, "What?" He says, "You mind throwing those away for me?" I go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll put them away." I take them, and he just didn't want to be seen walking out with a diet soda can. That's how particular this guy was, you know?

Shaan Puri

what I think it's great I dig it

Sam Parr

Whenever we work with Tim, if I write something and there's a mistake or something, he's on top of it.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And at first, I was like, "You know, you're really being a pain in the butt." Then I realized, "You know what? You're not being a pain in the butt; you are..."

Shaan Puri

being 10 years

Sam Parr

Want it? You are being exactly how you should be. You are protecting your brand. You want things in a very particular way. You're being demanding, and I respect that, and I like that. That's when I realized I don't think I could ever be a personal brand because you have to guard that shit like crazy. You have to be on top of it every single time. It has to be... it's gotta be exactly a very particular way every single time. And that's how you build a really good brand. You have to be **on** when you're on. I mean, I'm certain...

Shaan Puri

That's a phrase I use. I don't know if I made this up or if somebody told me this; I have no idea. It was a long time ago, about 10 years ago. It's called **EPOC** (E-P-O-C), which stands for **Every Point of Contact**. It said if you want to make a great brand, you need to be congruent. You need to have something you stand for. Alright, most people don't know what they stand for. They're not clear about it; it's not unique, it's not compelling, and it's not something notable. But once you do that, the second step is at **Every Point of Contact** you have to embody that. You can't be the *4-Hour Body* and be out of shape. You can't be like the *4-Hour Workweek* guy and then be super inefficient, working 80 hours a week. So, you have to be congruent at all times. That should be the goal as a brand: at every point of contact a customer has with you, in any place, they're getting that same thing that you stand for. That's your aspirational goal. Of course, you don't do that; it's not achievable, but it is a mindset to have in order to reinforce the brand many times. People will have experiences with you. This is like **Disney World**. Disney World has all these things where they're like, you know, there's no trash cans, and you can't see the mascots ever taking a smoke break with their head off. You can't see Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette. It's like, no, we have to be at every point of contact.

Shaan Puri

Of contact, this place stands for joy. Then everything's gotta be joy, right? The bathroom's gotta be joy, the food's gotta be joy, right? Like all these different things. That's what great brand owners strive to do.

Sam Parr

And what you and I do, or at least I know I do, is I test stuff with people. In a way, we have a podcast. I mean, I would say we're actually "what you see is what you get." I mean, you and I talk like this regardless if the camera's on or not. But I do know which jokes hit, and I will test them on people. I kind of see like, "Oh, this story I just told caught that guy's attention." I should tell it a little bit differently though. With Tim and other people, I've seen them repeat phrases like, "I don't pretend to be a doctor, and I don't play one on TV." Right? Like, that's just a phrase that he uses, and I guess it kind of...

Shaan Puri

yeah you're so likable yeah

Sam Parr

And these phrases that I've seen... these quote "famous" people. So a guy like Tim, who else do I know that fits this category? Jack is definitely one of them. Jack Butcher... I've told the story before.

Shaan Puri

On the pod, Chris Sacca did this and it blew me away. I met him in person, and for those who don't know, Chris Sacca is like one of the best investors ever. He's already retired; he only invests in climate change stuff because he's already won the game of money and success.

Sam Parr

he's it's called post economic yeah

Shaan Puri

He's post-economic, as Balaji taught us. I met him in person, and he told this story. As he was telling the story, he had all these little offhand moments where he would say things like, "I didn't realize that at the time," or he would correct himself, saying, "Well, I guess no, that would mean this, but..."

Sam Parr

oh but he used that line

Shaan Puri

On everything, I saw him on CNBC one day, and he said the same thing, the exact same way, like a comedian does in their sets.

Sam Parr

or a

Shaan Puri

A comedian, if you go up there and it feels like they have said this joke a million times, they're bored of it. Then it's not funny. But a comedian has to sort of like... it's almost like they're realizing or telling this story for the first time. That's when it really hits. I saw him do that and I thought, "Oh, there are levels to this." Not only do you have to be good at it, but this is like comedy; this is like storytelling. This is like a play, you know? A Broadway show that goes on stage every night. There's a new person in the crowd, and they have to do it like it's a Tuesday night, but no, this is our best performance ever. This is the first time we've ever done it. This show matters the most. We repeat our lines, and I thought, "Oh wow, I've never even thought about that." But yeah, I guess it makes sense. You could kind of craft these stories that hit, and you could tell them over and over. Once you have them in your bank, you could say, "I tell this story, and people feel this way about me." And that's cool.

Sam Parr

So, I'm going to try and bring this back to the brand thing. But before I do, another way that you can see this is when you're pitching stuff. When you're pitching your company to people, you have to... and I mean, I did this well when I was selling the company. If I was ever trying to raise money or convince someone, I do the same thing when I am on other podcasts or when I am hiring someone. I've got the same pitch. I look at the inflection of my voice, or I look at the person's eyebrows and their body language to see where I can get them to lean in. I notice where they pull back, and you’ve got to find these hooks. You constantly have to throw them out and see what bait works. Then you just rinse and repeat. He was like, "Oh, that line hit."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Or when I said, "I wanna be like Ted Turner," they didn't know who Ted Turner was. Okay, what else do I got? You know what I mean? Exactly. So to bring it back to Judge Judy, I don't know how I'm gonna do that.

Shaan Puri

Bring it back to Judge Judy. Let's just move on. Anyways, cool story about Michael Buffer and Judge Judy. If you didn't know, they made a bunch of money. It pays to have a personal monopoly.

Sam Parr

alright that's the podcast