6 Retro Business Ideas That Could Be As Big As LEGO ($11.8B)

Shaan Puri

Alright, this is a fun episode. Sam started doing Legos, and that sent us down this rabbit hole where he discovered two businesses that I'd never heard of. I guarantee you've never heard of them. They're awesome businesses in the Lego niche, of all things! Then we brainstormed other things that people could do around these passionate niche audiences that most people overlook. Love it! This is an MFM classic, an MFM special. If you like this podcast, you're gonna love this one. I also had like an epiphany about 45 minutes in that kinda changed the way I think about this podcast. So that's what I got out of this episode. Sam, what did you get?

Sam Parr

So, while researching this stuff, there are a ton of twists and turns to the story—the background story of how these companies started. I want you guys to listen to them. It doesn't happen... It's the second story involving Lego. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about when we get there. It's about two-thirds of the way into the episode. I got emotional researching this, and I actually want you guys to listen to the topics and the companies that we brought up. I want you to go to their websites and see what I'm talking about. You'll know exactly what I'm referring to when you get to that part of the episode. Let us know in the YouTube comments if this actually got to you like it got to me. I dug it! There were tons of weird parts of the stories that I did not expect to happen. Anyway, check it out and let us know in the YouTube comments if you actually enjoyed this because I think you will. Also, let us know which parts of the stories you liked best.

Shaan Puri

What is up? Sean here with Sam, your boys who are stuck at 399,000 YouTube subscribers. They said we'd never get to 400. In fact, they're still saying we'd never get to 400. Sam, do you see this tweet that went viral? It goes: > "All my haters said I wouldn't make it. I didn't make it. They were right." Honestly, good call by the haters. That's like a legendary tweet.

Sam Parr

I love that stuff! Yeah, we're at 399. I read every YouTube comment. Do you?

Shaan Puri

I read and reply, bro. Not to everyone, but I reply like I'm in line at a coffee shop. I'll just go through a whole episode and try to reply to as many as I can.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so if you're listening and you're not on YouTube, do your boys a favor and just click subscribe. It means a lot to us, it costs you nothing, and we've got a good episode today. Last time we talked, we both had the same topic written down, and we did it again. It happened again this time. Before we get into the episode, I gotta tell you something. How big is your house in square footage?

Shaan Puri

56100 I'm in a

Sam Parr

I'm currently visiting family and I rented an Airbnb for two weeks. My normal home in Austin is just a little over 2,000 square feet. It's nice, but it's not big. Right now, I'm renting a 750 to 1,000 square foot house, and I am losing so much stuff. This is such a big house! I think that even 550 square feet would be too big for me. Do you like having a big house like that?

Shaan Puri

yeah it's great what's not to love

Sam Parr

I'll tell you, the utility bill here, if I had to guess, is about $2,000 a month. What's your utility bill? Well, you're in California, so you don't really use too much electricity.

Shaan Puri

I don't look, but everything's on autopay. I don't even want to look. It's probably like $1,200 to $1,500, I guess.

Sam Parr

Wow, okay, so that's expensive, but whatever. The other thing is, things break all the time. There are seven bathrooms here, and one of the guys has a jacuzzi in one of his bathrooms, but it's not working. I don't think...

Shaan Puri

people using all 7 bathrooms that's you you don't use half the shit the shit that's the trick

Sam Parr

That's how it breaks. That's how it breaks... you just don't use it. So anyway, I wanted to buy a big home eventually, and I'm happy I'm testing this out. It's such a big house. I understand the downsides to it, like just fixing things. It's a pain in the butt.

Shaan Puri

Well, here's my rule: number of humans + 2. That's how many bedrooms I want in my house. Number of humans + 2 bedrooms, and one of those bedrooms turns into a man cave. Like where I have this setup here right now, this is one of the bedrooms we just converted, and the other one's a guest room. Now, my kids are small right now, so they're all sleeping in the same bed. Stuff like that doesn't really help, but as they get older, that rule is going to come into effect.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think maybe my needs will change. But I just wanted to test out a big house. I'm shocked by how much I dislike it so far. I like...

Shaan Puri

So, just a part you want to test out things. Most people don't do this at all, and you do it a lot, which is: Where do I want to live? How do I want to live? Do I want to live in a city? Do I want to live in the suburbs? Do I want to live in a big house, a small house, or near water? You know, what matters to me? I think a lot of people have these predefined ideas that are completely based on nothing—no evidence. I really take a lot of inspiration from the way you test out lifestyles. You prototype how you want to live, and more people should do that for sure.

Sam Parr

I do it all the time, and the reason I do it is because if you think about it... Renting a really fancy Airbnb for a week could be expensive. Let's just say it's $1,000 a night or more. So let's round up and say it's $10,000 for a week. That's expensive, but you know what's more expensive? Buying a home that you only see for 24 hours, or through a 1-hour tour, and being like, "Cool, this is my place now for the next 10 or 20 years." That's way more expensive.

Shaan Puri

Andrew, honestly, you start to lose a little trust in yourself. It's like, "Oh, I thought this would make me happy." It turns out I didn't even like this, right? I'm not listening to that guy anymore. By the way, you don't have to be rich to do this lifestyle testing. I was doing this when I had, you know, no money because, well, it's all relative to where you're at, right? So, where do I want to live? I would do a road trip and we would drive to another place, live on a friend's couch, but we would live there for two weeks and just kind of see, "Okay, what's it like in this place?" I tried it in Chicago, then I tried it in Colorado, and then, you know, I just tested out different places in order to see where do I want to be. I think that's a very smart way to go about things.

Sam Parr

and you wanna talk about legos my man let's talk about legos

Shaan Puri

Can I introduce this category, which is the following: You text me and you go, "Dude, I'm playing a ton of Legos." I'm like, "What?" It's like, "Yeah, every night I'm playing Legos." "Do you do this?" And I was like, "No, I don't do this, but I know a bunch of other people that do." It caught my attention because I'm not sure if you know this, but this is kind of becoming this trendy thing. There's a bunch of NBA players that kinda came out of the closet saying, "Yeah, this is what I do at night."

Sam Parr

neil closet

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like you know the reputation for NBA players... We're all out at the strip club after games and whatever. And there's like this guy, Miles Turner. He's like, "I'm building replica Star Wars... you know, Death Stars with my Legos at night, 4 or 5 hours a night." And I got kinda interested, so I looked at it.

Sam Parr

By the way, in college, I lived with the basketball team. They were the biggest nerds of all the athletes. They didn't go out at all.

Shaan Puri

giving them wedgies 6 7 wedgies

Sam Parr

Well, like, a Friday night was playing video games. They were the least party animals of all the athletes. Alright, everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. This one's easy because I'm going to show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say "I," I mean not my team; I mean I'm the one who actually made it. I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out at joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders, and one of the ways that we've grown is by creating these surveys. We ask our members certain questions that a lot of people are afraid to ask. So, things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these interesting questions. Then, we'll put it in a survey. I went and made a landing page, so you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. The hard part with Hampton is that we are appealing to a sort of higher-end customer, sort of like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So, I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates; that's what we use. We just change the colors a little bit to match our brand. It's very easy. They have this drag-and-drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. Once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we have thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. I can then see over the next handful of weeks how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from: it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn, whatever it came from. I can actually go and look at it and say, "Oh, well, that worked; that didn't work. Do more of that, do less of that." If you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it! You could check it out; go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. Alright, now back to MFM.

Shaan Puri

so do you know what this category is called

Sam Parr

is it called the is it the acronym that starts with an a

Shaan Puri

No, no, no. They call them... they call people like you "kadults." The toy industry refers to you guys as "kadults," and "kadults" or "eldertainment" is the name of this group of people who are adults buying kids' toys. That sounds like a pretty fringe thing, but it actually makes up **25%** of all toy sales. So, **$1,000,000,000** and **$1,000,000,000** of dollars. One out of every four people that go buy, you know, let's say a set of Legos, is going to be an older teenager or adult. But do you...

Sam Parr

You know what they call it for Legos? Specifically for Legos, it's called... I don't know, it's one of those words that I've seen, but I don't know how you're supposed to say it. It's A-F-O-L, which stands for "Adult Fan of Legos." That's how you're self-identified as an AFOL.

Shaan Puri

Actual, *fucking* old Lego maker. Yeah, so this category is based on all the growth in the toy industry. If you look at how fast it's growing, 60% of all the growth is just coming from this one segment. It's like this segment that's growing really fast. At first, I didn't understand it, but then they did some surveys. All the toy companies were like, "What's going on here? This is not what we planned for." So, several years ago, they commissioned a bunch of studies and they went and asked, "Why are you doing this?" I'm curious if you're going to say the same thing because 90% of the adults all said the same three reasons that they do it. What are your reasons, Sam?

Sam Parr

Bonding with my family... Well, in my family, it's my wife. Okay, no screens. We could just sit at the table and do it together while we're just talking. Maybe there'll be TV in the background, but it's basically bonding without screens, sitting at the table. It reminds me of my childhood.

Shaan Puri

That's exactly right. The three-word phrase is "nostalgia," which you just mentioned: "anti-loneliness." So, bonding with whoever you're doing it with and detoxing from your phone, as well as having an anti-anxiety angle to it, makes it a really relaxing activity.

Sam Parr

Because I'm following directions. I'm just following the directions. I'm not making any decisions; I'm doing what I'm told.

Shaan Puri

That's interesting. Oh, okay. I thought it was kind of the hands part of it, but you're saying as an adult, I'm constantly having to make decisions and think. It's so nice to not make decisions and just be told, "Put this blue thing over here."

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like a PG-rated dominatrix. You know, instead of spitting in my mouth, it's telling me to connect these two pieces.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, some people are into that stuff. Alright, to each his own. This is fascinating! I want you to tell me, I have some more ideas around like more examples. I have a bunch of examples around this trend and some ideas of what I think people could do. But before we do that, I just want to know, what are you actually doing? So you're buying LEGO kits? Which ones? And what do you do with them?

Sam Parr

So, LEGO is this huge company. I think they do about **$10,000,000,000** a year in sales. It was started in the twenties by just an engineer, and now they have movies, characters—it's like a whole franchise, almost like Marvel. I particularly like the line called **Technic**. Technic is cool because you build cars, tractors, or bridges, and there are gears within the machine. I'm learning how, you know, in the snow when old cars spin their tires, only one tire would spin sometimes. That's because of a rear differential; that's a mechanical piece. So, I'm building that and understanding how a transmission works. I built a Land Rover that has a **6-speed transmission**, and I see how gears work. It's really fascinating to me to see these moving parts. I've probably spent **$1,500** on them so far. Each one is between **$150** and **$350**, and I only buy the Technic ones—that's my thing.

Shaan Puri

and you're you finish them in one sitting or these are like multi week

Sam Parr

No, no. One a week. So, but it'll take... I'll sit for 2 hours. If my wife's not with me, I'll listen to a podcast or something. I'll just sit there for 2 hours, assembling it from 9 to 11.

Shaan Puri

just you and the voice of Scott galloway

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm just like... I'm listening to some war story. So it's like just me and Benito Mussolini as I build this Land Rover.

Shaan Puri

Like this, like a 6-inch tractor. Yeah, I love, by the way, how you're like, "Yeah, I built a 6-speed transmission." It's like, no.

Sam Parr

no no

Shaan Puri

You didn't. You really didn't. I feel like you got a lot of confidence from this. That like, if it came down to it, I now could.

Sam Parr

and I

Shaan Puri

Don't think you could, man. So, alright, you're doing this. Is this a fad, or do you think this is like a lifelong hobby for you? What are you thinking?

Sam Parr

lifelong I could see it being lifelong

Shaan Puri

Oh wow, yeah, I could see it. When you're done, you finish the 6-speed tractor or whatever. What are you going to do with this?

Sam Parr

So, one of the companies that I'm going to bring up... Basically, you can tell this company that I'll break down and explain what sets you have. You destroy them and you rebuild them using different plans. You can make alternative items out of them, and that's what I intend to do.

Shaan Puri

okay alright well so they're

Sam Parr

I'm not gonna sit on a shelf. I'm not gonna be like the 40-year-old virgin and have, yeah, like dolls and packages still unused. No, it really is an "enjoy the journey" type of thing. So once I'm done with it, I'm like, I don't care about it.

Shaan Puri

Okay, good. I wanted to bring up a couple of other examples because I saw this and I was like, "That's weird, that's interesting," about Legos. I was like, "No, there's something to this," like adult behavior, right? Where adults are buying and doing kid things that are, you know, anti-phone, anti-loneliness, and nostalgic. I'm going to give you some examples of trends that are like this. So the first is Calm. We're both friends with the founders of Calm, Alex and Michael. I don't know if you remember this, but back in the day, Calm was really struggling. Today, Calm is kind of very popular; it's a multibillion-dollar company. But back when we were living in San Francisco and hanging out with Alex, Calm was small. It was a slow grower. It was not sexy; nobody wanted to do well.

Sam Parr

it was kind of a joke like a meditation app are you kidding me

Shaan Puri

Alex is very jokey, and the other things he built, like the $1,000,000 homepage, were all jokes. So it's kind of like, "Oh, cool."

Sam Parr

and the other guy built like a stuffed animal business before that

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so they were definitely like non-serious serious entrepreneurs. I remember one time talking to Michael. He came to visit from London, and I asked him, "So, what do you do with the company? You're not even here full-time." Alex is sitting in his apartment, grinding away at this thing that's not really growing too fast. So, I asked Michael, "What are you doing?" He said, "Oh, I work on new products." I was like, "Dude, this is not like... you know, he looks at Richard Branson. This is not Virgin Atlantic. What new products?" He said, "No, no, I got a great one. I want to do bedtime stories for adults." I was like, "What?" He insisted, "No, no, no. I think this is going to be a thing. A lot of adults listen to things before they sleep to help them relax and actually fall asleep, but they're not done very well." I asked him, "Do you?" He replied, "Yeah, I do sometimes. I have a version of white noise that I sometimes listen to, or I'll just listen to podcasts and fall asleep." I noted that it's not the same thing, but there's a demand for relaxation content. In fact, I think one of the top podcasts in the world is just like 18 hours of sleep sounds. It's like...

Sam Parr

Dude, I listen to *Family Guy* when I go to bed. I just hear Peter, like, "Oh, I'm going to sleep." Yeah.

Shaan Puri

You're just a "check guy," right? Exactly. So, he's like, "I'm gonna do the same." They ended up creating sleep stories, and sleep stories were one of the things that really let Calm take off. It exploded after sleep stories. In fact, I would say that Calm is less about meditation; it is more about the state of being calm. The number one product is the sleep stories. They got Matthew McConaughey to narrate this bedtime story. He was hosting, I don't know if you remember this, in San Francisco. Before they prototyped this, he was hosting parties in San Francisco where you would go to this woman's house, lay down on her carpet, and have a pillow. They would set the mood, and then she would just talk and put you to sleep. Everybody would go to sleep, and it was the most San Francisco thing ever. That was like a party; it was like a networking event. It was amazing.

Sam Parr

that calm is gonna have toy or you're saying the the toy is

Shaan Puri

The best part of the same thing is like adults using kid products. Basically, it's bedtime stories for adults. That's another version of it.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

you know adults using legos

Sam Parr

My family member... I have family members. I won't even say who they are; they might be embarrassed. We go to sleep to calm bedtime stories.

Shaan Puri

then what's embarrassing about that that's awesome

Sam Parr

I don't know I don't know

Shaan Puri

you you

Sam Parr

never know I'm not gonna out someone

Shaan Puri

so there's also like moon pals and squishmallows have you seen these

Sam Parr

yeah I know moon pals

Shaan Puri

Like, basically, they are giant stuffed animals, but they're geared more towards adults than they are for kids. You see, like, 24-year-old girls in the Bronx who have a moon pal that they carry around with a little safety blanket.

Sam Parr

funko pop is that was that what it's called what's the funko

Shaan Puri

Funko's a publicly traded company, you know that? No? They're like a $400 million market cap company. During COVID, when everybody was stuck at home and people started spending money collecting or buying crypto or doing whatever, Funko was over $1 billion because they were selling so many of these figurine doll things.

Sam Parr

figurine like dolls that's all it is

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's just like a little toy... a toy figure, action figure? No, action, I guess just a toy figurine that has an oversized head.

Sam Parr

That's funny! We had talked about Mini Brands as well, like the company Mini Brands that makes miniature... I don't even like Coke cans. Yep, those are insane too.

Shaan Puri

another one have you ever been to build a bear

Sam Parr

dude they they kill it yeah I've taken a nephew there

Shaan Puri

So, Build-A-Bear is like this thing in the mall where you go to build a teddy bear. It's usually for kids, but you know that 40% of their revenue now comes from adults.

Sam Parr

that's insane

Shaan Puri

That's insane! Absolutely. They call it "Build-A-Bear After Dark." They basically open up at late hours and let adults come in to do it as a date night activity and stuff like that. It's crazy!

Sam Parr

There's one with an American Doll. You know, I don't know if you had a sister, so you would know about American Dolls, but I bet Ari knows about American Dolls or had an American Doll. American Dolls still crush it. You know what an American Doll is?

Shaan Puri

no is that not barbie that's something else

Sam Parr

It's different. It's a doll that's maybe 3 feet tall. Back then, they would cost $150, so it was a big deal. It was sort of like GI Joe but for girls. There was an American Girl student, and so it looked like a little girl who was going to Harvard, or an American Girl astronaut, or something like that. It was themed, but they were supposed to be more high-end than a Barbie and more collectible, I think.

Shaan Puri

american doll onlyfans creator oh they have like new new genres that's great so they of course so there's there's just like like even barbie by the way do you know bar you know how the barbie movie came about because like the barbie movie is not not geared towards kids right like if you've seen it it's it's not a it's not a kid's movie really it's an adult it's like geared towards adults and that this is the reason why they act bar barbie the company actually created an internal movie production company to create this movie geared towards adults to help sell more dolls into this kidalt like segment and so there's I was a marketing stunt for that which is kinda crazy when you think about it I didn't realize that about the barbie movie but like there's also tabletop gaming so you know those guys from churnin' they've made it like big bets on tabletop gaming which is basically board games that adults play they have like exploding kittens and they have some other ones but that's another genre even mcdonald's came out with an adult happy meal I don't know if you saw this last year just a hilarious like they made a bigger box with full size fries and an adult toy and they did this last year and it was like this viral marketing stunt that went crazy because everyone's like oh dude I wanna go get one and it like went viral on tiktok and stuff like that brands are really capitalizing on this so I have a few ideas I wanna pitch pitch you I want you to tell me you can just give me a genius or idiot on these this is sort of like a mini drunk ideas episode for you alright alright first one you know how you've seen the stats how millennials are just like not getting married and not having babies like it's like a lower rate than ever before yeah tamagotchis for babies so basically you give you give that 28 year old who's single and whatever you give them a tamagotchi that's a baby that they gotta keep they gotta raise and they gotta take care of like tamagotchi's I think were pets screw it we're just doing an actual human baby you gotta take care of this thing and it literally is the same level of like same same like hourly needs as a baby and let's see what you got so tom igat you for babies that's my first one

Sam Parr

So, the problem with these ideas is, if you would have told me about the things that are successful now, that they said, "This is going to work," I would have said those are all horrible ideas. So, this is like a really challenging category.

Shaan Puri

That's why I prepped you by telling you all the ones that worked before I shared my bad ideas. I wanted to kind of frame you, like prime you for, "Hey, I don't know, man. Anything's possible."

Sam Parr

So, do I think... yes, I think there'd be legs for Tamagotchi. What happened to the company?

Shaan Puri

dude I have no idea what's tamagotchi

Sam Parr

It's a Japanese business. Yeah, it's based in Japan. I'd believe that it's a Tamagotchi for babies.

Shaan Puri

Could it work as a standalone device that's going to replicate having a baby? Alright, that's number one. Number two, do you ever use Konex?

Sam Parr

yeah love konex you ever build a big ferris wheel

Shaan Puri

No, because K'Nex were hard. I have a cousin who's the same age as me, looks like me, and has the last name Puri. This guy is way smarter than me, and I'm pretty sure the reason he's way smarter is that his dad bought him K'Nex when he was a little kid. He was just making K'Nex all day, every day after school. I was playing Dreamcast, and he was building K'Nex. Guess what he does now? I have a podcast, and he builds self-driving cars. This guy is a genius. So, I'm pretty sure K'Nex is the number one contributing factor to this guy being a genius.

Sam Parr

dude listen to this k'nex was sold in 2018 for only 28 $21,000,000

Shaan Puri

I know, I know, crazy! What happened to the... how is Lego like a $50,000,000,000 company and K'Nex sold for $21,000,000? Like, what happened here? When you were describing the Lego Technics, it's very similar. So, K'Nex, the difference was that it was more kind of like a STEM kid thing, where it's like sciency and mathy. You know, you have these little rotating wheels, and it's almost like a motor that you're creating. It's like a high-functioning version of Legos.

Sam Parr

That's how I describe youth. By the way, you're a high-functioning version of a Lego. That's basically you.

Shaan Puri

I take that as a compliment. I think Connects should be rebooted, targeted at adults who want to do Legos. Basically, it's for guys like you. It's literally Connects for Sam Parr. That's my next idea. Go ahead.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm in. That's a no-brainer. I'm in. So, Connex was acquired in 2019, and they're basically not that existent anymore because of a bunch of tariffs. Something like where they couldn't deport them, but...

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I'm in I think that's awesome

Shaan Puri

They sold a bunch through Toys "R" Us, and then Toys "R" Us went bankrupt. I think they lost a bunch of revenue there. So, I think just a little bad luck, you know? An unfortunate bounce of the ball there. I feel like Connect still has a good opportunity. Alright, here's my next one. What else? An easier Rubik's Cube. Can you do a Rubik's Cube?

Sam Parr

no I can't I cannot

Shaan Puri

can you kinda wish you could

Sam Parr

Yeah, I mean, what we used to do is just take the stickers off. You take the stickers off, and then you put them all back in the right place. You could brag that you did it.

Shaan Puri

Oh, okay, gotcha. You can also buy it new, and it's done. So, what's the easiest party trick you could do? Like, I can juggle. Can you do anything like that?

Sam Parr

Yeah, if I smoke a cigarette, I could blow smoke out of my ear. Really, I swear to God. I've had all these surgeries on my ear, and so like some pipes got rerouted. I used to be able to blow smoke out of my ear.

Shaan Puri

**Ear dude, how do we not start every podcast with that? Come on, you know, sandbagging us. We would be at 400,000 subscribers, but dude.**

Sam Parr

solving a rubik's cube is a close second though

Shaan Puri

Alright, easier Rubik's Cube. I think a Rubik's Cube is a fun little idea; it's kind of like a fidget spinner. However, the way that the Rubik's Cube feels is way too hard. We get it, if you can do a Rubik's Cube, that's fantastic. That's chess. Where's the checkers of Rubik's Cubes? So here's what I'm thinking: letters on the outside. It's kind of like Wordle. Wordle is a very fun, simple game you play every day. You could build a daily habit. I think somebody needs to take the concept of Wordle and put it in the form factor of a Rubik's Cube. Every day, you get a notification on your phone or there's a website that posts the starting letter combination, and then you have to rotate it to make the word. It should take like 5 minutes. You know, do you play the New York Times mini crossword? No? Do you? Every day? This thing's amazing! It's such a fun... it's literally like a 60-second break. It's a game. Crosswords are kind of fun, but a real crossword puzzle is pretty hard and time-consuming. When the New York Times made this mini crossword, that thing drives like a million dollars! I don't know, 10% of New York Times' revenue comes from this little game app, and it's mostly the New York Times mini crossword. This thing is an absolute hit product. Alright, I have 2 more candle pouring kits. Another thing that is highly tactile, highly satisfying, and leaves you with a result: a candle. Candle pouring is something I see a lot on TikTok. I don't know exactly how it goes or how it works, but I'm pretty sure this could be another adult arts and crafts relaxation thing that is accessible to many and results in you actually having something that's not just clutter and junk in your house. You could just light the candle, use it, melt it down, and then you're done. So I think a candle pouring kit company could do pretty well. Dude, I'm in!

Sam Parr

on that one because you'd wanna buy 1 you you'd wanna continually buy them if you got into it right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and candles make a ton of money. If you want to know what products work, go look at the candle MLMs (multi-level marketing schemes) and work backwards from there. There are several multilevel marketing schemes that are based around candles, which tells me there's a giant market for candles.

Sam Parr

tell me one more and then I wanna blow your mind with a lego story

Shaan Puri

Okay, I'm now seeing what I wrote here, and I have no idea what this means. So, I'm going to just take this as a blank canvas for myself: "relaxation puddle." I don't know what I meant when I wrote this. This was late last night. I think what this is about is my kids. One of the things you do with kids is you give them something called sensory play. You buy this box and you put in things like Orbeez or these gel circle things. You put your hand in, and it has this cool sensation. It's very cold. They're like these balls that you can touch and feel, but they're not like slime. You know, slime's really popular for kids. There are all these things that are very tactile, like Play-Doh. So, I think what I was thinking here is that it's very relaxing if you put your hands in this thing. What if you could put your whole body in this thing? I think that's where my head was going. It's more like those sensory deprivation tanks that people like to do in San Francisco and maybe other places as well. I'm not sure, but it's something you could just go lay in, and it's like a super nap. That's really where my head was going.

Sam Parr

I'm trying to "yes and" you, but it's really hard when the premise is a relaxation puddle.

Shaan Puri

So, the word "puddle" is actually underrated. It sounds great and has all kinds of jokes. It's a very memeable word. I think that's what you want with any of these ideas; you want the concept to be so silly that it gets memed into popularity. You understand what I'm saying here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to do it. It's going to sound ridiculous, and 95% of America wants to make fun of you. But then those articles go out, those memes go out, and then 5% of people are like, "I don't know, I'd try it." Right? Like, you remember when that thing happened where guys were laying on their backs and suntanning their buttholes? They were like, "Yeah, that's the new thing." I don't even think that was a real trend, but I think there was someone behind that who was like, "You know what? We'll get rid of everything overnight if we say that this is a thing."

Sam Parr

I've got this friend, Chris, who would send me so many photos of him. You just see his legs, like as if he's that way, close with his legs in the air, and he's like... just like that.

Shaan Puri

say his last name he deserves it for doing that

Sam Parr

just being healthy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but they... Crocs are like this, right? They're intentionally ugly. They're intentionally so ugly that you have to talk about them. The design stands out in a not-so-good way, but the result of it is that, you know, it gets talked about.

Sam Parr

yeah like you just gotta figure out what the fuck a relaxation puddle is first you're just starting with the words let me tell you 2 crazy stories the second one is in particularly crazy and I think you're actually gonna dig it because it's gonna revolve around your world so I'm a lego fan I I like doing legos now it's my new thing there's this website called rebrickable so rebrickable is this amazing website it was clearly started by an engineer I think his name is actually I don't know what the guy's name is who started it nathan I think his name is nathan so nathan was just an engineer at some company normal job in australia he started this website that he it's actually quite complicated and what you do there there's tens of thousands of lego kits you know and it's been around for a 100 years so there's probably hundreds of thousands of different types of lego kicks kits you tell it what type of lego sets you have and then other designers so people who are lego fans have created directions on how to build their own creations it's called an moc my own creation and it's a whole community of people who build mocs and he has roughly 30,000 people who have uploaded a variety of mocs that you can buy from $10 probably all the way up to a $100 and what's interesting about this guy there's so many crazy business implications here but what's interesting about this guy is a he's an engineer and the the the people who listen to this podcast there's a bunch of engineers out there there's a huge overlap a venn diagram of lego enthusiasts and this guy adds a third circle to that venn diagram of business people and so basically it had he reveals all of his stats online and you can go to his blog and you could see it he started this company I think in 2010 and it was just a project I looked at his linkedin he worked as a full time per had a full time job since 2000 until 2020 and he reveals every year how much page views that the website has had how many registered users it's had how many people are selling products on there so it's basically a marketplace and so in 2023 he had 11,000,000 users create an account on his website which is wow which is huge and so if you account for let's say 3% of people buy something that's 330,000 people or sales who bought an moc so someone's directions on building something say the average sale is about $15 that's about $5,000,000 in revenue that he's collected and of course he gives a lot to most of it to the designer but there's people who have whole like stores on the website and it's really fascinating and his page views last year 2023 were around a 160,000,000 page views and if you look at his website he blogs every year and he says what his stats are how many pages he's had he has and it's a very interesting blog to read because a he's being transparent about the business and b you could see how to build like a rabid community so on his blog and it's clearly a self built blog he's not even using wordpress he built everything from scratch you'll see the comments saying I love this community I'm so into rebrickable like nathan you're the man like people are are rabid about this niche it's incredibly fascinating and this type of guy I'm just gonna stereotype him he's not a business savvy person or at least he doesn't want to be like he's not out there trying to milk the straw and make as much money as possible but this type of business that he has once you get users to a passionate following like this to your website you can sell them anything and so what andrew wilkinson calls us is an airport business so once you're there well while you're here we could sell you this we could sell you that it's people are here to learn and they're ready to buy and the reason why this is fascinating is because with legos you know they cost 100 of dollars sometimes and you wanna buy a new one every month every couple months and so the market is actually quite big to build a big business this is like a a type of company that if you wanted to be a pe guy which I don't think you should because this is like a work of art to me but if you wanted to be a pe guy and buy a business that you could milk for tons of profit and you don't actually have to do that much innovation this is one of those websites

Shaan Puri

Dude, what a great find! This is such a cool, cool business. Yeah, 10,000,000 users. And by the way, look at this! I went to top designers. We gotta put this on the screen so that our 399,000 YouTube subscribers can see this. The Chinese restaurant... this thing is insane! Who made this up? This is so crazy! This is insane!

Sam Parr

And the technology to build this stuff is amazing. You could just buy a MOC (My Own Creation) from someone, and they'll tell you what parts or kits you need. They’ll sell them to you, or there's this crazy algorithm that they have. You upload hundreds of different kits that you have, then you click "submit." You see a wheel turning, and it takes about 60 seconds, as if it's doing heavy calculations. Then, it gives you a huge list of 100 or 1,000 different MOCs that others have uploaded that you can create with the parts you have. It'll say you have 100% of the parts needed for this, or you have 50% of the parts. It will show you the other 50% that you need, and you can buy them here. It's really fascinating, and I would imagine it's quite complicated to build that.

Shaan Puri

you found like dork mecca this is great

Sam Parr

it's it's the best

Shaan Puri

All the adults doing Legos... adults doing Legos who need custom-made Lego designs. This is insane! Yeah, this is cool. By the way, this Chinese restaurant has 3,000 pieces for $10 for the MOC. What a steal!

Sam Parr

It's amazing! There are people in the forums saying that they're close to making a full-time living selling their MOCs (My Own Creations). When you have a rabid base like this, it's fascinating to see what types of businesses you can build. Now, this particular model is very unique to LEGO, but you could look at what the sneakerheads have done with shoes. You know, that was considered silly a few years ago. There was a small group of people, and they created marketplaces for it. This is a perfect example of how this is executed well with these niche followings, going all in on them, and building them for the community. What's interesting is, check this out: in year one, he had **1,000,000** people come to the website. So, in year one, that's **80,000** people a month. That's pretty good, but it's not crazy. His page views were **11,000,000**. He started that, I think, in **2015**. Most recently, in **2023**, he had **11,000,000** users and **160,000,000** page views. You can see how slowly these types of businesses build, and it would be very hard to break this company down. They have a true moat.

Shaan Puri

yeah 100% should we help them with like a marketing slogan maybe

Sam Parr

Dude, this guy... this guy's killing it, man! Whatever he's doing, I want to be part of it. But let me tell you about an even crazier story. This actually should be a movie. There's a website called BrickLink. BrickLink was started in the year 2000, so one of the early, early, early first website businesses—the first internet companies. So, BrickLink originally started as BrickBay. The guy who started it, his name is Dan Jezek. You spell that last name J-E-Z-E-K. Do me a favor and type in "Dan Jezek" on your Chrome and go to his personal website. You see his personal website? It looks like a GeoCities website.

Shaan Puri

is he dead why is it like

Sam Parr

he's dead he's dead okay so let me tell you the story so dan started he dan was a what he they didn't explicitly say this but it sort of sounded like he was a hacker type of guy and so he was kind of like a little bit gray hat where he was a type of guy who probably like would break into like different websites and things like that that's that's the vibe that I got from him but he was fascinated fascinated with legos and so he built this website called brick bay it was called brick bay at the time because he lived in hawaii on a bay eventually he got sued by ebay they're like you can't use bay so he changed it to brick link and he was kind of like reading about him I kinda got vibes of ross ulbrich the guy who started silk road it was one guy he was anonymous and he would blog about all the changes he was making to the website but it was under the name admin he never used his real name and it was just him and he had a handful of volunteer admins who helped him run the site he ran it like a community and what brick bricklink does is you can buy and sell different types of legos and so the thing about legos is if you build the thing you don't have any more joy for it sometimes so you can pack it up in the boxes and you could sell it and just get a little bit of your money back and then keep going or buy rare or interesting pieces and so he ran this for 10 years and it became a good business however he died tragically no one online actually says how he died we don't know a lot of people suspected a drug overdose but we don't know but he was working on this website full time 24 hours a day 7 days a week it was like a full time gig when he died his mother imagine like a cute old lady who like bakes cookies that's what his mom looks like and when he died his mom loved you know she loved her son and she was so passionate about the community that that he made that she was like well I can't let this community go away and so her and her husband dan's stepdad took over the website but because it was just one guy running it they didn't even have the passwords they didn't even know how it was run and so they called the web hosting site or the web hosting service and they're like hey here's what happened can you help us they gave them the passwords and they just spent 3 years figuring this out and try to make the community thrive again and it did and the community stepped up and they're like we gotta do this for dan this community is too good we can't let brick bricklink go away because we love buying and selling legos here and so they run this business for 3 years and it becomes a good business now dan dies they're running it 3 years later a billionaire named jae kim bought it have you ever heard of jae kim no so jae kim if you click his wikipedia obviously jae kim is not his real name it's jim kim jong joon jae kim was basically kinda like the marcus pink mark pincus of korea so we in the nineties he was early in the internet and he created games and he became the biggest gaming company in korea then he was a billionaire so he starts his family holding company where he buys a bunch of interesting companies and bricklink was one of the companies that he loved another one now this is where it kinda comes into your your world

Shaan Puri

he says at the time of his death he was the 3rd wealthiest person in all of korea

Sam Parr

Yeah, he's a big deal. He's a big deal. But Jake Kim, he was like a steward for this website. They basically didn't change much, but one of the reasons why he bought it, and one of the things that makes this interesting, is I'll read this excerpt from Dan, the original Bricklink owner's mom. She wrote this beautiful tribute. So if you go to danjesic.com, you'll find this amazing tribute where they show pictures of Dan and him growing up and working on Bricklink. She wrote this amazing thing, and I'll read part of it. She said, "Not long before he died, he developed an international monetary exchange engine called Bricklink that allowed sellers almost anywhere in the world to sell in their own currency, and their customers could buy in their own currency as well. Every two hours, the system that Dan built would update, so you could buy cross-country or across the world, and your currency would automatically be updated. Everyone was getting a fair shake. He built that in 2010, which is pretty fascinating. And Jay Kim also owns Bitstamp. Have you heard of Bitstamp?

Shaan Puri

crypto crypto exchange right

Sam Parr

One of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. The reason why this guy, Dan, and this whole story is fascinating is that there are actually some weird crypto implications here. You see this overlap of, like, wow, what this guy Dan was doing is actually in the same world as this whole crypto thing, and he was pretty early to it. These Lego fans, if you go to BrickLink and see the comments, they're all similar. It's all a similar type of people. This business, BrickLink, is fascinating. Oddly, Jay Kim also died under mysterious circumstances in his fifties in Hawaii, where Dan died. So, there's a bunch of weird things going on with the story. But BrickLink is a very fascinating company. Most recently, after Jay Kim died, Lego, the company, bought the website. They openly said, "We bought this website because we want to carry on this tradition. We don't want anyone messing with it. We don't intend to do too much with it; we just want to keep it going because this is for the people." Wow.

Shaan Puri

that's pretty cool

Sam Parr

very fascinating

Shaan Puri

On this guy's website, it says, "Here's a quote from him about what he wants to do after..." There's a subject, there's a post on the forum that said it was called "Afterlife."

Sam Parr

Who j kim or or dan

Shaan Puri

Dan, he goes, "After I die and go to heaven, this is how I imagine it to be: a place where there's an infinite amount of bricks and an infinite amount of time to build with them. There would be all kinds of bricks for all themes, so that when I got bored of building a castle, I could move on to a town or a pirate ship. There would be lots and lots of other Lego maniacs to share ideas and build with. Isn't that just wholesaling? Right? So great!"

Sam Parr

And if you read this guy, Dan... if both Dan and Nathan from the other website, they use these... just like, what was the name? Dread Pirate Roberts? What’s the Silk Road guy? Yeah, whatever. They... it’s a marketplace, but it’s a weird movement. It’s a weird diary, and it’s like a cult. There’s a very particular leader, and he is leading the charge. It’s really...

Shaan Puri

knew his name he he was just called admin unbuttoned

Sam Parr

He was just "admin." No one really knew it was Dan, but he never revealed his name. It was just, "Oh, admin's doing this." It's this weird thing that all stems from, you know, remember the phone freaks? Those were people who would hack into payphones. Then there was the internet, and they were doing things like that. Now there's crypto. It's this weird chain where it's actually all quite similar. It's this underground community. As a business person, I see these things and I'm like, "What other products cost a lot of money, have a passionate, nerdy following, and where you can build a large audience and then eventually sell them everything?" Lego fits that perfectly. I think there are a few others; you've named a few. But it was actually challenging for me to find other things that were like this. Sneakerheads are kind of one of them. It's just really fascinating how big I think these businesses can be, even though they appear quite niche.

Shaan Puri

Oh dude, I forgot about the **thrill of the shill**. So first of all, the thrill of the shill is one of the *chef's kiss* best inventions we've had. Unlike the gentleman's agreement, which we kind of stole from somebody else, the thrill of the shill is actually an original. But I have a different thing I want to try today. Are you down for it?

Sam Parr

Yes, "The Thrill of the Shill" by the way came up literally 30 seconds before we hit record. A few weeks ago, I said, "How do we promote interesting stuff?" and you were like, "Well, we gotta tell them valuable content, and then hopefully they'll buy whatever we're selling." Just call it "The Thrill of the Shill." So congratulations! Let's hear it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so that was good, but now I want to try something different. Have you ever read this thing that is like the famous Hemingway story? I'm sure you have because you're a copywriter guy, which is the 6-word story. Do you know this?

Sam Parr

about the guy outside holding the the poster board with the baker

Shaan Puri

I don't know if it's that exactly, but basically there was a challenge, which was a 6-word story contest. The challenge was: how do you tell a story in only 6 words? The lore is that they told this to Ernest Hemingway, and he came up with the 6-word story that won: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Six words tell a deep story. It hits you in the emotions.

Sam Parr

There's another story like that where there's a homeless guy sitting outside. He says, "I'm blind, please help." A famous copywriter writes, "Let me help you." The homeless man responds, "It's spring outside" or "It's springtime," and then adds, "I'm blind, please help."

Shaan Puri

And so, I have a **6-word challenge**: "6-word thrill of the shill" that I'm going to hit you with. Alright, so I'm going to do my Hemingway. I'm going to do this whole ad in 6 words. Here we go: **"Business for sale: owner never hired."** It's about this business; it's a story about a business that failed and is now up for sale. Why? Because the owner never hired. He tried to do it all himself and just never made the key hires that he needed to scale the business. He didn't go to **supportshepherd.com** and find amazing talent overseas to hire at a low cost—5 times less than in the United States. Boom! How was my story?

Sam Parr

That was beautiful. That was beautiful, dude. The Hemingway one was quite good too. I'm still thinking about that one. What is it? What business is for sale?

Shaan Puri

Shouldn't have put Hemingway before the one that I made up one minute ago. Maybe I should have done the all-time best against mine.

Sam Parr

what was it what was the line business for sale owner never hired

Shaan Puri

for sale just like the shoes for sale business for sale owner never hired

Sam Parr

I thought it was good support. Shepherd.com, that's the shill. The thrill was a beautiful line.

Shaan Puri

There we go, back to the episode. You know, the other one that's most like this is fan fiction. So, Wattpad reminds me a lot of this. There's also another one that's like a wiki; it's like a Wikipedia but...

Sam Parr

fandom

Shaan Puri

Fan, yeah, I think fandom like bought them or something like that. But there's another one that's just straight the Wikipedia part of it. But fan fiction... People get super, super, super passionate about Harry Potter and about, you know, different books. Then they kind of spin out their own world, right? Like a "Rubber Muggle Net," which was started by that guy Emerson Spartz. I don't know how to say his last name. They built such a huge, huge website just around fans of Harry Potter. It was very much like, you know, BrickLink or whatever. I remember I used to go on there and read people's stories because we'd be waiting for the last book to come out. People would write their own versions of that last book, and you would just read like a full-length book that somebody wrote in their spare time for fun. That led to some big things, like, you know, "Fifty Shades of Grey" came out of a fan fiction post just like that. It was originally written as a fan fiction post around "Twilight." So, fan fiction... A few people were surprised that Wattpad was getting like 100 million visitors every month. It's one of the most popular websites in the world.

Sam Parr

I think they sold for $600,000,000 to a korean company recently 2 years ago maybe

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they weren't making any money, but the passion and the usage were off the charts. You don't have to do much marketing because the people who are passionate about it are just going to search the internet for every nook and cranny to find other people who are as fanatical about it as they are.

Sam Parr

So, there are a few attributes here that I'm just thinking about off the top of my head. **Attribute number 1** is that they seem like jokes at first. It’s kind of silly, almost embarrassing. For example, when you say, "What do you do for a living?" and the response is, "Oh, I run a Lego blog," it seems silly when you talk about it at first. But if there are enough people involved, it could be pretty great. **The second thing** is that I actually think these types of companies shouldn't be built quickly. These are slow-burn businesses where you don't want to get too big too fast. Otherwise, the passionate ones, the "nerds," will be like, "Oh, this is lame. This is too big, too mainstream, too commercial." **Number 3** is that if you do it right, they have huge moats and are very, very hard to kill. People become very loyal to them. For example, New York Times Cooking had this issue a few years ago. New York Times Cooking is a similar community with passionate fans. They had a revolt because in their Facebook group, an admin made a change. I don't know if you remember this, but about 2 or 3 years ago, they had 60,000 people in New York Times Cooking. They changed something where you had to get your post approved instead of being able to post on your own. A change like that caused people to revolt. So, in these communities, you're basically a steward of the people. You're not always a dictator. You have to be very aware that your fans are temperamental. There are pros and cons to these types of companies, but I do think they're very, very valuable because of how hard they can be to ruin.

Shaan Puri

Do you think, not to be self-serving but just a real discussion, that we can kind of do this? I kind of think that we have the makings of doing something like this, but we also might mess it up by trying to.

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

Grow it too fast. So, for example, one of the best tests I remember talking to Ben about is this experience: Do you ever go to a restaurant and then you can't help it but your brain is trying to calculate how much this restaurant is making? You basically start counting the tables. Then you can't... you just count the tables, you figure, "Oh, this many meals per hour. What's our bill? Our bill is this much. Okay, average ticket is this," and you end up with like, "What's the EBITDA of this restaurant?" If you're like that, you're probably going to like this podcast. So, it's a very high overlap, but being like that is weird, right? That's not a normal way that people are. Most people just go to the restaurant, they look at the menu, and they order the food.

Sam Parr

And if you're sitting now with four other people, no one else at that table is going to nerd out with you. Like, "Look how packed this place is! Wow, how much do you think one of these servers makes per hour?"

Shaan Puri

and look

Sam Parr

How much is the meal? Like, you know what I mean? No one’s going to dork out with that, but no one’s going to be like, “Dude, shut the fuck up and just eat your chicken parm.”

Shaan Puri

Exactly. In the same way that most LEGO enthusiasts, if they went to school, could not find someone as passionate as they are, when you go to work as an adult, you're not going to find people who are trying to build this 2,000-piece Chinese restaurant that they bought the blueprint for for $10. You're not going to find your people there. So, you find your people elsewhere. You find them on BrickLink, you find them on Rebrickable, or whatever. I think for us, it's the same thing. That person who's at that dinner with you, the six people at the dinner, if you have your family and friends, they might not want to geek out about it. But you find us, the community of people who like this, and you're like, "These are all people who want to know the EBITDA of the restaurant." So, it becomes just like glue, and you find your people. I think I have been tempted in the past to try to grow this faster, and the things you do to grow it faster are sort of dilutive. You actually...

Sam Parr

sell out a little

Shaan Puri

You sell out a little, right? Like it's the cringey YouTube thumbnail face. It's the, you know, talking about a topic that might not be the thing you would actually want to dork out about. I like that this episode is basically 90% us dorking out about these niche Lego websites versus things that might be more mainstream. You know, talk about the Super Bowl next week or whatever, but it will attract the right people.

Sam Parr

I thought the Super Bowl was in November. I didn't even know that. Yeah, that's news to me.

Shaan Puri

So, okay, that's one thing. The second is like a business principle I saw. Somebody said this, and I thought it was really good. They said, "If you want to build a truly strong business, build like a reverse funnel." I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." I always think of every business as a funnel, but I always think about it from top to bottom.

Sam Parr

what do you mean audience first

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the top of the funnel is people who don't know you. They come to your website for the first time, they hear your podcast for the first time, or they hear about your product for the first time. That's when they become aware of you. Then, they might get interested. After that, they might actually sign up as a user, and eventually, they might sign up for the paid account. The paid account is always at the bottom. I always thought of a funnel as top to bottom. What this person was saying was, "Yeah, you actually want the reverse." You want to build a reverse funnel. This means you want to find the 10 people who are most interested and passionate about what you're doing. These are your extreme hardcore users who absolutely love that you're doing this. They will use it every day and give you feedback. They'll annoy you with their feedback, and they'll tell all their friends. Their friends won't even listen; it doesn't matter. They are your power users. Then, you sort of go one rung up. You go to the next 100 people who care a lot, for sure, but less than those 10 who are really nuts. Then you go to 1,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people, and you stack the funnel from the bottom up. This is a way to think about building an enduring product because you're really going to find the people who need it the most and who love it the most. They're going to give you the best feedback to help improve the product. You'll find the people who love it versus everybody else who's kind of like, "Oh, that's cool." I thought, "Oh, that's actually a good principle too when it comes to how to build something." I don't know, when you built Hampton, did you do that?

Sam Parr

yeah for sure yes

Shaan Puri

how did you think about who the first let's say 10 to 20 people should be how did

Sam Parr

You decide that. So at first, I was like, "Let me figure out who wants this most." I had ideas as to who that would be, and then what I found was, "Wow, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in Tennessee, Iowa, Idaho, Delaware—some of these forgotten areas that aren't on the coast." I'm shocked at how lonely they are and how much they need this. Let's go get more of those people. So that's what we did. I thought it was going to be like cool New York or San Francisco people, and it turns out it was cool Kentucky guys too. But they weren't even part of my vernacular; I wouldn't have even thought about them. So that's what we did. I think with this podcast, it's good that you and I have other businesses that a) pay us money and b) can grow faster. There's been very... it's been very tempting to try to do things that are inauthentic, but we know they will get more views. Actually, we've done a good job of sticking to being authentic. But this is a very... that was a really good.

Sam Parr

Of yours, this podcast, as well as a handful of others, are like these nerdy things that a small group of people are really passionate about. For example, did you see the meetups that people were doing for MFM?

Shaan Puri

I was just about to bring that up

Sam Parr

that's that's an example the test dude do you know they're still meeting like they're they're still meeting

Shaan Puri

That's exactly right. So, we thought, I guess the first mind-blowing thing was, "Oh, if Sam and I say we're going to some place to do a live show, wow, we could fill like, you know, 1,000 to 2,000 people in a theater to come watch us."

Sam Parr

and it's a ton of work

Shaan Puri

what's that it's a ton of work and we're both just like alright let's not really do this yeah

Sam Parr

I don't wanna fly to toronto for sure

Shaan Puri

And, you know, we were cool. We had the moment where it felt good, but I don't know if that's what we want to do on an ongoing basis. Then somebody came to us... I'm forgetting your name off the top of my head. Rachel? Rachel River?

Sam Parr

from river

Shaan Puri

And she's like, "Hey, our product does this." She's like, "Yeah, our product is for creators who have a community. Let your community meet up without you." I was like, **keyword: without you**. Love it! I actually thought that kind of makes sense because, again, while it feels good to maybe be the center of attention, it doesn't really feel good. Also, that's not actually what makes something really valuable. What we'd rather do is use our content as a magnet, as a honeypot, to bring in the cool guy from Kentucky and the cool girl from Illinois. They all do the restaurant thing where they start calculating restaurant revenues when they walk into a restaurant. We want to get them together because they're going to hit it off, but it'd be hard for them to find each other. So, if all we serve as is basically the finding function for those people to meet, what's cool is that they did the first meetup, but now they've just been meeting on a monthly basis. That tells me that we did something right. I don't know; we didn't intend to do that, to be very clear. None of this was intentional, but that means something went right.

Sam Parr

I FaceTimed a few of them. They were like, "Hey, we're doing this thing." I was like, "Alright, cool! I'll FaceTime and just say hi." There were people, and by the way, we have like... there's no monetary thing. I think it's completely free. If you Google "MFM" and then "River Meetup," you'll see the landing page. I talked to people, and they were like, "Yeah, I drove 6 hours to come to this one because I'm looking for a husband or a wife. I want to meet someone who has these similar values that for some reason MFM is a proxy for." I thought that was super fascinating. They told me, "Oh, we're still actually doing monthly meetings because we just want to hang out with other dorks like us." I thought that was awesome.

Shaan Puri

By the way, my tagline for people that will like this is "just business nerds with a sense of humor." That's the whole thing. If you're a business nerd, meaning you do business but also nerd out about more business stuff, you can't really get enough. It doesn't feel like work to you to think about business, read about businesses, or learn more business stuff. And then, with a sense of humor, because there are probably people that are more experienced than us who share more tactical stuff. They are smarter, better, and have more to offer. But I think the one thing we do is we try to have a lot of fun while we do this, and that rubs off. So that's the capture of who our audience is.

Sam Parr

So, we just dorked out on niche, passionate things. I think that this Lego stuff is crazy fascinating. You'll have to go to the Dan Jezik site, danjezik.com, just to look at this. Maybe you guys will dork out over this like I did. By the way, if you made it this far into the pod, you're definitely one of these nerds. Just go ahead, this is my one sellout: click subscribe on the YouTube page because you made it this far. You could actually make fun of us in the comments or let us know what you think about this niche stuff.

Shaan Puri

I have one more quick one that's kind of in the theme of kids' stuff, games, and toys. Have you seen the thing called *Pal World*? I know you're not a gamer, but do you know about this?

Sam Parr

no what is pal world

Shaan Puri

**Pal World** is currently the most popular PC game in the world, and it came out of nowhere.

Sam Parr

Tell me, what's... I still don't understand. I don't understand exactly what Steam is. Steam is like an app store, but for computers.

Shaan Puri

The company that makes Counter-Strike, in order to let people download the new version of Counter-Strike and buy it, created Steam. It's like a store to sell Counter-Strike, but it also sells all the other games. Now, anybody can list their thing there.

Sam Parr

but I can't do it on apple

Shaan Puri

well no because you're playing on a you know a a razer pc or something like that

Sam Parr

got it okay

Shaan Puri

what do you need

Sam Parr

to do

Shaan Puri

The Apple App Store, right? That's not going to work. So, it's the Apple App Store but for computer games. And huge, by the way, like a multibillion-dollar product. The number one game on Steam right now is **Powell World**. Powell World, in like 7 days, has done $200,000,000 in revenue. What? When games hit, they hit like none other. And by the way, this thing was made on a $10,000 budget, so it was a very, very low-cost game. What's interesting about this, right? So, the game is basically... the reason I wanted to bring this up is not because I... I don't know, I'm not even playing the game. It's not like you play games, so we don't have a lot to talk about here. But I do think it's an example of the **midwit meme** strikes again. This is basically that the best ideas, the absolute best ideas, are simple. And they're not just simple; they're simple to the point of sounding dumb. Okay, so simple to the point of sounding dumb. What does that mean? To me, this is... let's see... simple to the point of sounding dumb is **Snapchat**. The next big social app wasn't started as this grand intellectual theory on the future of communication. It was like, "What if you could send someone a picture that would disappear in 10 seconds?"

Sam Parr

seconds nudes it's like college nudes

Shaan Puri

Right, and people are like, "What would you do with that?" I don't know, stupid stuff. Why stupid stuff? Because it's going to disappear in 10 seconds. So I have no filter. Then, after the fact, it becomes this thing that people intellectualize. They're like, "Well, see, the thing is that impermanence is actually the greatest form of permanence." Like, what are you talking about? People start to get intellectual about it, but that's not where the best ideas come from. The best ideas come from really, really simple things that can be described in just a couple of words. For example, if you go look at this game, it's like, "Oh, what's the game?" The game is Pokémon with guns. It's like, "What?" It's like, "Yes." And then literally, that CEO, he says this: "I'm not a visionary. I don't know how to do that. I just try to make whatever people want." He knew that Pokémon... or he didn't say Pokémon because he doesn't want to get sued, but he's like, "Yeah, I had this idea of, you know, you could run around and capture these little monsters, but then we added guns because, you know, Americans love to shoot things."

Sam Parr

that's insane

Shaan Puri

That was like the core idea. And he was like, "So why do you... what was the decision to do this art style?" He's like, "Oh, I didn't even want to do that actually. I wanted to do like a cool 3D thing, but I didn't even know that to do that you have to have like an animation rig and all the stuff." He's like, "So I made one, and I was like, 'God, that was hard! There's no way we could do this with like 10,000 characters. It's impossible.'" He's like, "So we had this artist that we had rejected, and then we hired her later." And they're like, "Oh, what did you tell her to do?" He's like, "I don't know, like whatever our programmer could make. That was her mandate." They're like, "What was her budget?" He's like, "I don't know. We had like $10,000, but we didn't really set a budget. You know, I guess if we needed more, I would have probably just gone and borrowed some more." And they're like, "Tell us about the developers on your team." He's like, "One of my developers is a guy I met at a convenience store. This kid, he's like a teenager, but he told me he could code. So I told him to come by, and you know, he works on the game. He's pretty critical for the game."

Sam Parr

So, the founder has written this really amazing blog post where he explains everything that you're talking about. He's kind of a "shithead" in the best possible way. He basically says, "This game shouldn't even exist. It's the antithesis of proper game development." He mentions that they had no budget. No sane company would ever start developing a game without a budget, but Pocket Pair, which is the developer, is not a sane company. He talks about how he started asking himself, "What's the budget?" When the balance of their bank account reached $0, they could always just borrow money or release money just before the company went bankrupt. They had about two years of runway, and he decided to keep working without stressing about the budget because all he was worried about was getting the game done as fast as possible. He's not like a corporate CEO; this is pretty awesome. He's in Japan, and he's a Japanese guy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's a Japanese game. He basically made some money in crypto and then took the crypto money and was like, "Alright, I'm gonna start a game studio with this," even though he kind of wasn't equipped to do that. Right now, on Steam, it's the number one game. As we're recording this, there are over 1,000,000 people concurrently playing the game.

Sam Parr

the second

Shaan Puri

The second highest was 2,000,000,000 at a time we were playing the game concurrently. It's number one, more than Dota, more than Counter-Strike, more than PUBG, more than all of them.

Sam Parr

He was like, "This one lady applied, but I didn't think her designs were that good, so I rejected her." But then, three months later, she sent me a DM. I was so amazed that she was bold enough, after I rejected her, to keep messaging me. So we hired her. It just has story after story of like that doesn't make sense. So let's do it.

Shaan Puri

But that meme, the mimic meme, where it's like, you know, the Jedi kind of think the same thing, right? Like, just make the game as fast as possible. Or, you know, if you run out of money, just try to get some more. What should you make it? What if Pokémon had guns? That'd be cool. It's like versus people who are, you know, trying to overly intellectualize and overanalyze everything. I just see this trend over and over again. I truly believe... and then I'll tell you about the midwit thing I'm trying to do. No, what I truly believe is this midwit meme explains so much of my own life. I want to see it every day as a reminder to not overthink it. Just keep it simple. What's the obvious answer? The obvious answer is always there, but it gets fogged up by my own stupidity trying to overly architect things.

Sam Parr

or like wanna be an intellectual

Shaan Puri

and so george mack our friend do you do you know george he's awesome

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

He's a great dude, a very interesting thinker. He had this idea to create a super glossy, high-end coffee table book featuring just 100 midwit memes. When I heard this idea, I thought, "That's genius! I can't wait." So, I messaged him, and then, months later, I asked, "Dude, what happened to the book?" He replied, "Oh, well, I didn't want to do it because, you know, I was going to have to do 365." His original plan was 365 memes, one for each day of the year. He said, "I didn't know if I could get to 365, and I thought the cost might be a little high. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to make my money back." Then he mentioned that a best-selling book has certain attributes. I went and studied all the best-selling books and learned about the commonalities between them, like *Atomic Habits* and others. After reading his lengthy WhatsApp message, I sent him a midwit meme back and said, "Make the book! It'll be fun, right? That's obvious. Just do it! Who cares? You might lose a little bit of money, but it's okay. The people who buy something cool will come from this. This is no big deal." So, I'm trying to convince him to do this book with me. I'm like, "Let's just make this book! It'll take us like two weeks, and it'll be fun. Anyone who actually buys this thing is going to be the exact type of person I want in my life."

Sam Parr

just do it do it on your own

Shaan Puri

I'm looking for an excuse to do a project with George because I really like him. Also, this was his idea, so I don't want to steal his idea. I want to convince him to do this with me. If he really refuses, I'm going to say, "Alright, can I just do this myself?" And yeah, I'll do it myself.

Sam Parr

It's Monday. I think this episode goes live on Wednesday. I forget when, but whenever it goes live, give him... he has 7 days. If this doesn't get him to do it, he has 7 days.

Shaan Puri

Tweet at George Mack. His Twitter handle is @george_mack. Just tweet at him and say, "Do it." He’s going to have to figure out why everybody's tweeting "Do it." I'm sure he will eventually put two and two together and know this is why he needs to do it.

Sam Parr

I enjoyed this episode. What do you think? Yeah, this was fun! I enjoyed dorking out over this stuff. I had a great time. Do we wrap here? Is that the pod?

Shaan Puri

that's the pod I feel like I learned something today

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I had a great time. That's the midwit meme of preparing for these things. I'm like, "What gets views? What will make more money? And what will be more fun?" Alright, that's the pod.