My Step-By-Step Process To Building a $1M+ Business

Sam Parr

Like I should create this, and then I looked in the mirror and I was like, "Yeah, this ain't gonna work."

Shaan Puri

There's a reason your nickname is **"the Vanilla Gorilla."**

Sam Parr

It wasn't going to work.

Shaan Puri

So, Sam, I have a question for you. You launched this business this year called **Hampton**, and I love the name! I love the brand. I go to the website, and I love the website more than anything. I love the idea. I'm jealous of this idea. Andrew Wilkinson said, "I'm so jealous that I didn't start this idea." I feel like you got so much right. I know that in doing any idea, there's something called the **idea maze**. You go through it, wander around, and try to figure out the right path. If you're lucky, you pop out the other side with what you did with Hampton, where everything turned out right. What I want to know is: what were the other paths you considered but ended up saying no to along the way? Because nobody sees that stuff that's on the cutting room floor. I want to know. I love the name **Hampton**. Were there other names that you thought about? How did you pick that one, and what was that decision process like? I want to know about the target market. I feel like you nailed the target market and the value proposition. Were there three other runner-ups that you'd consider but didn't have? I kind of want to see what goes on underneath the surface before this beautiful execution comes out.

Sam Parr

Well, first, thanks. Hopefully, you only see the good stuff. Obviously, there's all types of bad shit that happens on the back end where we're like "This sucks," but in general it's been quite pleasant. So dude, with this company, it's so funny... I purposely had on... we had guests that ran these types of companies, and I wanted to prove to everyone, "I'm gonna do my research in front of people."

Shaan Puri

You left a paper trail, right? Like you left public breadcrumbs as to exactly how you did this step by step. And by the way, I love that you're honest about this because you definitely had guests come on and basically explain to you what the blueprint is, and then you were like, "Cool, thanks. Gonna go execute on that blueprint."

Sam Parr

And I didn't hide it from them. I told them, "I want to launch something like this, and let's talk about it." So there was nothing unethical or evil about this. But yeah, I wanted to do it publicly so people could see. So let me tell you first. I sold The Hustle, I think in 2020 or something like that. I had about 6 months, or 8 months, or 10 months—I forget—where I was just kind of fooling around and looking at different ideas. The two ideas that lost... I'm so thankful they lost. I remember how I got super into Airbnbs. I was like, "This is the thing! I could do this!" So I bought one, and I did it. It did okay, but I was like, "This sucks! I do not enjoy this. This isn't in my zone of genius; it's a pain in the ass."

Shaan Puri

And it seems on paper like a good idea. You created this Facebook group of... I forgot what you called it, like "Sam's Short Term Rental Bros" or whatever the hell you called it.

Sam Parr

What was it? The STR crew.

Shaan Puri

The STR crew (short-term rental crew) piled in and they started explaining their blueprint. They're like, "Yo, I own 40 Airbnbs. They make this much cash flow. Here are the pain points, here are the plus sides." This other guy is like, "Oh, I do the same thing with this angle." I was like, "Dude, this is fascinating." Sam's doing his research again in public, and then you were wandering around the idea maze. You're like, "Maybe it's over here, maybe the exit path is over here in this short-term rentals thing." It kind of seemed like a good idea on paper, but you ended up saying no to that.

Sam Parr

And it was a good idea. It wasn't a good idea for me. It is a profitable thing, whatever. It was cool. The second thing that I thought about doing was creating a trucking business. I've always wanted to create one. I'm passionate about truckers and blue-collar workers. My family, I grew up in a trucking family; they work in that industry. So I was like, "I'm gonna become a YouTuber, create an audience of truckers, and then build a product for them." Then I started doing it, and I was like, "No, I hate this. Not gonna do it."

Shaan Puri

You're like, "I love the idea of blue-collar workers."

Sam Parr

Yeah, I like the idea of it being amongst them. It's like getting a neck tattoo - the idea of it's kind of neat, but I don't know if I actually want it. So then I was like, look, we had this thing called "Trends" at The Hustle, and I got a lot wrong. I love the business model still, I think I can do this. My partner - my now business partner - and I, we had like basically a therapy group where we would... bitch and complain about everything going on. And we're like, "I settled on that product."

Shaan Puri

You built a product, launched it, and did not use your audience initially. Publicly, you didn't use the podcast to promote it at first. Maybe your brand name helped in private, but you didn't do it publicly. You drove it to $1,000,000 in revenue very early on. That's a very successful outcome that everybody listening to this podcast kind of wants. So, you know, you're a walking case study. Go ahead.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so Hampton is a peer group. Some people call it a community; I call it a peer group. Basically, there are three parts to the peer group. First, you have an 8-person group that consists of individuals with similar sizes or types of companies. It's basically like a therapy group where you can just complain. It takes about six months for it to really catch on and become awesome. I have a 6-person or 8-person group, and it's freaking awesome. In each meeting, someone will make a presentation. They'll say, "Here's my portfolio, here's my net worth. Can you guys tell me if I'm doing something wrong or right? Here's how my company works. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right?" So, we do a presentation; that's part one. Part two is we have a digital community where you can post and see what other people are saying. You can ask questions like, "Hey, I'm trying to hire a nanny. What are your guys' best advice for agencies to use in the Northeast?" You can discuss personal stuff and non-personal stuff. The third part is events. I think we host 200 events a year at this group.

Sam Parr

Including retreats and all these types of things, it's highly inspired by YPO, Vistage, and other large companies that are in this space. So that's the business. Originally, I was trying to go after marketing executives and then just executives in general. Dude, I called... I did 50 to 70 meetings with people trying to convince them to join, and none of them wanted to.

Shaan Puri

Hello, dear marketing executive. Anyway, how goes your marketing today?

Sam Parr

No one wanted it. I couldn't get any traction. Eventually, I realized I needed to charge around $10 a year to make this a viable business. But still, no one wanted it. They were willing to pay $500, so I created a group that was actually $500. I thought, "Dude, this sucks. I can't do this." Then we considered targeting doctors. Doctors would be cool, but I thought, "What the heck? I don't know anything about doctors." I tried to get in touch with Don, but no one wanted it. Then I thought about Fortune 500 CEOs, but I faced the same problem. How do I get in touch with a Fortune 500 CEO? I don't know any! It is really hard.

Shaan Puri

I did that. It sounded right on paper, but as soon as they came into contact with reality, they got punched in the face and they ran. Hook up and...

Sam Parr

Goes to the police... Well, this one really punched me in the face. The next one we thought about minorities. We're like, you know, my wife is a minority and I hear a little bit of the things that she goes through. I'm like, "I should create this." And then I looked in the mirror and I was like, "Yeah, this ain't gonna work." I'm the opposite of a minority. Businesses don't look great on paper.

Shaan Puri

But the... yeah.

Sam Parr

The old reflection... but that looks good in the mirror.

Shaan Puri

I remember when you told me that idea and I was like, "Dude, honestly, it's a great idea. I think it's an underserved community. I think they want that career development. I think that makes sense." But I was like, "Dude, what are you gonna do when you're like... hey?" I was like, "You know, are you gonna have Sarah be the CEO? Like, what are you gonna do? You're gonna be like, 'I am this... yeah, this white man who's running this'?" I don't know. You [might be] possible, but... I don't know.

Sam Parr

If you Google the word "white bread," you're going to see a picture of Sam Parr. It feels like it would not have worked.

Shaan Puri

There's a reason your nickname is **"the Vanilla Gorilla."**

Sam Parr

Like, great, it wasn't going to work. Then my partner was like, "Dude, let's just go after CEOs." He'd been saying this the whole time, and I was like, "They will never pay for this." But all along, some people had heard rumors I was launching this, so they asked me, "Can you do this for us?" I kept saying no. Then finally, we were like, "Fuck it, let's do it." That obviously was the right decision. By the way, I did a ton of research. I interviewed a ton of members from all these different groups, and they're like, "I'm a tech guy," but it's all like guys who own 18 apartment buildings in South Florida in my group. It kind of sucks. I love them, but we don't align on business.

Shaan Puri

Well, it just sounds like it's a better founder fit, right? Like, you know, it's... it's...

Sam Parr

Who we were.

Shaan Puri

It's about who our audience is on this podcast. It's where you had a reputation. It's where you knew the relatable pain points. You knew how to reach them because you knew where they hang out. It's like way better founders.

Sam Parr

So much easier! It was way easier. Alright everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. This one's really easy for me to talk about because I'm going to show you a real-life example. I've got this company called Hampton, [joinhampton.com](http://joinhampton.com). It's a community for founders doing between $2,000,000 all the way up to $250,000,000 a year in revenue. One of the ways that we've grown is by creating these cool surveys. We have a lot of founders who have high net worth, and we'll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask but provide a lot of value. So, things like how much the founders pay themselves each month, how much money they're spending each month, what their payroll looks like, and if they're optimistic about the next year in their business. All these questions that people are afraid to ask, but we ask them anyway, and they tell us in this anonymous survey. What we do is create a landing page using HubSpot's landing page tool. It basically has a landing page that says, "Here are all the questions we asked. Give us your email if you want to access it." I shared this page on Twitter, and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they wanted this survey. I could see if they came from social media. I can see if they came from Twitter, from LinkedIn, basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from. I'm able to track all of that. Then, I'm able to see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up and became a member of Hampton. In other words, I can see how much revenue came from this survey and how much revenue came from each traffic source, things like that. But the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it. A lot of times, it takes a ton of work to make that happen, but HubSpot made that super, super easy. If you're interested in doing this, you could check it out at hubspot.com. The link's in the description, and I'll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually see the landing page and how it works and everything like that. I'm just going to do that call to action then, and it's free!

Shaan Puri

Check it.

Sam Parr

Alright, now back to MFM. Let's talk about the names. Here's a good story about the names. The company is called **Hampton**. A lot of people think that means the Hamptons. Up until I was 27, I didn't know what the Hamptons were. I thought I'd read about it in *The Great Gatsby*. I thought it was like that. I didn't even know what it was until I married a woman from that area and learned about it. What I do is name all of my LLCs after streets in my neighborhood of Saint Louis. There are a lot of really good names for some reason. So, I usually look at the map of where I'm from and just check out the names. Let me tell you some names that I thought about naming it. None of these really fit, but they could fit for other things. 1. **Maclin** - I love that name. At one point, I thought about having the Maclin Running Club. 2. **Sablette** - I've always liked Sablette. 3. **Simpson** - That was a street I grew up near. 4. **Kings Highway** - Check this out, Kings Highway is awesome! I love Kings Highway. Eventually, we settled on **Hampton** because I grew up near Hampton Avenue. Everyone thinks that it means the Hamptons, but it doesn't. It means Hampton. Sometimes people will say, "Oh, I love the Hamptons," referring to my company, and I'm like, "No, it's Hampton." So, we settled on Hampton because it had a good sound to it.

Shaan Puri

By the way, could you tell me about deciding a name? Is that like a one-day process, a one-hour process, or a one-month process for you? Are you bouncing it off people, or are you just going into a dark room and saying, "What feels right in my soul?" What's your... what is the actual way a name gets picked for you?

Sam Parr

I only ask like three people. Usually, it's my wife, my business partner, and that's about it.

Shaan Puri

There are three people, but actually, there's only two. Even better.

Sam Parr

Did I just name two?

Shaan Puri

and myself.

Sam Parr

The royal "we"? Yeah, no, I don't really ask too many people because I just don't care that much. I just want to hear someone's gut opinion. But also, Hampton.com... I don't think I'm ever gonna get that. You know who owns that? It's Marriott.

Shaan Puri

The Hampton Inn.

Sam Parr

So, I don't know if I'm ever gonna get that, but check this out with branding. If you asked me about this 5 or 10 years ago, I would have never in a million years thought this was important. But I actually do. I hired a branding agency, so I paid $15,000 right out the gate. What I did was, and I sent this to you, I created this document. It all says just one line: **"Elite but cheeky."** The reason I was inspired by that was, have you read Felix Dennis's book? Yes, **"How to Get Rich."** So, Felix Dennis is this famous entrepreneur. He's dead now, but he was a wild guy. He was basically a combination of Richard Branson and Mick Jagger. He had swagger, but he was also a legit business guy. He was elite in that he was great at what he did, but he was also a silly person. He wrote in a very conversational way, and I love that. When I wrote out this branding document, I listed what the business is, who uses it, whatever. Then, I listed a ton of ads that I liked. There are a bunch of advertisements from the seventies; that's one of my favorite eras for ads. I found a bunch of GQ ads, Porsche ads, and Rolex ads. Rolex had this famous series of ads called **"The Men Who Built the World Wear a Rolex."** They would do a really cool exposé on an astronaut, and you could see the astronaut wearing a Rolex. Or Dwight Eisenhower, the President of the United States, he’s got a Rolex. It's like, **"The men who built America are wearing a Rolex."** Then, there's one with the Wall Street Journal where it says, **"Money talks, we translate."** It's just this beautiful imagery. So, I took that imagery, and then I took the color British Racing Green. You know what British Racing Green is? I mean, it's the Hampton colors, but it's like a famous color from Land Rover and Jaguar. It's like these British racing colors that I love. When I think of a Land Rover or a Range Rover or a Jaguar, what do you got there? There you go! I freaking love that color; it's my favorite color. I've got motorcycles in that color, I've had a car in that color—it's my favorite color. I took that color and thought, **"We have to make the brand feel like these ads but be that color."** I wrote a bunch of sentences that I would want on the website, and that's how we selected the branding. Dude, hiring a branding agency is like a total hack.

Shaan Puri

What are some things along the way of making Hampton that you could have done but you said no to? In retrospect, maybe it was a good idea, bad idea... you don't know how it would have turned out. But what were the "no's"? Because we can only see what you said yes to. We could see the name you chose. Where you told us what names you said no to, we could see the color you chose. What were the things you said no to along the way? Was there anything else that was like a path you considered?

Sam Parr

Here's two really big ones: So Hampton gets, let's just say these aren't the exact numbers but we'll use them roughly, 100 people a day who apply. We accept a fraction of that. My partner Joe and I, we watch 100% of the interviews. In order to get into Hampton, you have to interview. We are the only people who click "approve" or "deny." That is it. It was just us two. That is our job - to watch 100% of the interviews.

Shaan Puri

So, you said no to delegating that out.

Sam Parr

We said no to delegating that out. And here's what sucks: we turned down so many people, and it's like we're turning down so much revenue. It fucking kills me. I'm adding up the numbers. Now, when you ask me about Chief.com, it's like this business, I guess we're like them, but they're for women executives. You know why they grew so fast? They grew to $100 million in revenue in 4 or 5 years. They let in 100% of the people who apply and interview. We don't, and it fucking kills me. I see all this missed revenue, and I'm like, "Oh my god." So, I'm thinking in my head about Kingsford Charcoal. It was invented because Ford had all this extra wood that they used for their furnaces, and they eventually turned it into charcoal. That's how Kingsford Charcoal came about. Always in my head, I'm like, "What's the charcoal I could make from these people who we've rejected or who don't fit our criteria at the moment?" But we've said no to doing any of those ideas. So, we're basically saying we're only focusing on CEOs of this demographic and this type of business. We're only going to do that until we say otherwise, and there's no time in the near future that we intend to say otherwise.

Shaan Puri

Well, let me tell you two things I think you could be doing. First, I can give you two ideas that I think you maybe should have said yes to. Number one, if I go to your website right now, I don't see that you say no to that many people or that there's a clear indication of how heavy the curation is. All the things you just said to me would make me want to join because, like, "Oh, they're really actually curating the community. These are actually high-quality people." The founders watch every single interview. They accept less than 1% of people. They have a counter on their website of how many people they've said no to or how much revenue they've turned down in order to make the community solid because that comes first. We put our money where our mouth is; we turn down this much revenue. I don't know, maybe it's too vulgar, but I think you could use that. The second thing...

Sam Parr

You got the elite part right. Now, we have to make it cheeky.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I just went *elite douchey*, so I don't know. We gotta work.

Sam Parr

On the other part.

Shaan Puri

The other thing I don't think you did a great job of is your story. So, like, would you... do you value a founding story? Or like the founder's story and the founding story of the company? Do you think that's important or useful?

Sam Parr

I think that's incredibly important, and I think I made a mistake because I wanted to make this not the Sanpar business. I think I've screwed up. I think I should have leaned into that. I think the way it works... I did this with The Hustle. You can... the founder can be the company or be the face for a [period] of time, and you could phase it out. And with this time, I was like, "I'm not gonna be it," and I screwed that up.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think you should lean into that. You know, those situations where you don't want the founder to be the face are when the founder has to deliver the service. It's like the law firm or the specialty marketing executive. It's like, "Oh, this guy's great, but now I'm handing off to some junior person. They're doing my marketing. I want that guy on my account." Whereas with this, you don't have to be the account. You're not delivering the actual service. So I think you could use it because the true founding story is how we met. We made a peer group in San Francisco when we didn't know anything while running our companies. There were companies that failed or succeeded, and in that group came a billion-dollar company, a hundred-million-dollar company, a thirty-million-dollar company, and a few failures. But one was the best man at your wedding and a friend who you ended up investing in, and that came out of that. Then this podcast came out of that, which has become one of the top business podcasts. Blah, blah, blah. That's actually almost like your founding story as an entrepreneur and helped you when you successfully sold The Hustle. I remember in our peer groups, it was like, "I'm going to do The Hustle." It was an events business. Then, no, no, no, next month, "No, it's not an events business. It's a blog business."

Sam Parr

You said something that stuck with me, and it was it.

Shaan Puri

Pissed. It pissed you off.

Sam Parr

No, no, because you weren't wrong. You were right in that I couldn't build a huge company that way, but you were wrong in that I don't have to build a huge company in order to achieve my goals. Which was... You go, "Dude, you're showing up to this fight... Did you show up to this knife fight with just a knife? I don't even want you to have a gun. You need to have a magic fucking wand!" And I was like, "Well, you're not wrong. That would be nice to have, but I don't have it. So until then, we're using our fists."

Shaan Puri

In Silicon Valley, if you go pitch for investors, you're basically making a promise: "It's gonna be a billion-dollar company." So I was like, "I don't think this is gonna be a billion-dollar company." What I didn't know is you were like, "I'm not trying to build a billion-dollar company. I'm trying to build a company that makes me X million dollars." And I could do it. It can actually do that, and that would change my life. It'd be fucking awesome, which is a different pitch.

Sam Parr

So, you are right. But where I was wrong was that I shouldn't have aimed for that from the get-go.

Shaan Puri

Right, right.

Sam Parr

But you are correct.

Shaan Puri

But so I think, you know, maybe using a founding story would be helpful for you because it's genuine. That's actually, you know, the origin of... I think a lot of this is like firsthand experience: - How the peer group helped you - And how... [various other benefits] And then how it also leads to all these other things. That group became, you know, one guy's like... a groomsman at your wedding. Another guy becomes an investment you make down the road... That's kinda how these tend to work. So anyway, that's my two cents.

Sam Parr

Well, thank you. Have you ever used a branding agency?

Shaan Puri

I used a guy for the Milk Road. Not an agency, but just one guy. This guy, Jerry.

Sam Parr

I think you actually nailed it. To be honest, yeah, I did. I loved it.

Shaan Puri

It was a cool experience. It definitely felt so indulgent. It's like, "Oh, now I'm going to take a break from my $0 revenue business to go through this mood boarding process with this designer and talk about how the brand needs to feel." It needs to feel like there's a user and a customer. There's definitely a part of my voice that was like, "Shut up, shut up, you idiot! Go build your business!" But what we did, the trade-off we made, was with Milk Road. We wanted to do a brand right away, and we said, "Let's reward ourselves with a brand when we get to, I think we said, 100,000 subscribers on the list." I said, "Today we're going to make the brand," but when we get to 100,000, then we'll know. We can always rebrand or polish it up. That's what we did to reward ourselves. I think in the future, I would probably use an agency if I'm confident about the idea. It's also just like, I don't know, it's a luxury item. It's not a necessity, but it's a luxury. I think for some things, it is a necessity. Like if you're an e-commerce brand or something, you gotta get your brand right.

Sam Parr

And you know, another thing that I thought was the dumbest thing ever, but I think could be cool: a naming agency.

Shaan Puri

I used a naming agency once.

Sam Parr

I find a lot of value in that now. I think that it's like most agencies where a lot will suck, but I actually think that it could be quite valuable. What about naming? How much of the names hired?

Shaan Puri

This is one of my many rookie mistakes. I hired a naming agency once and I paid them $25,000—a lot of money. They came in, and now let me tell you a couple of things about them that are interesting. First, the people who work in a naming agency are actually awesome. Someone who is drawn to that is a super interesting person. The move is to go vet branding agencies or naming agencies and then just pluck the most interesting person you have and be like, "You're gonna run our whole brand. Come over, you're gonna run our whole brand." That's what I should have done.

Sam Parr

And just the audacity that they think they could just name something that is...

Shaan Puri

They think that could be the job. Yeah, yeah. That's just, "Who do you think you are?" It's like...

Sam Parr

That's crazy.

Shaan Puri

So, the guy... they come in and there are three of them. I'm like, "It takes three to do this? Oh my God!" So, the three of them come in and they sit down. They say, "So, tell me about the company." When I tell you I've never felt as much pressure in a pitch, because I'm like, this isn't pitching for an investor or a customer. I need to give these creatives something because creative people like that are very skeptical. You know, they see a bunch of corporate BS. It's like I need to be cool and clear, and I need to capture the essence inside this business. I can't just say the surface line because that's what they want. They're like, "Yeah, but what is it?" And you're like, "I just told you what it is! What do you mean, what is it?" So, anyway, I have this conversation with them, and then I'm like, "I want to know this guy's process." So, I leave the room, and then I come back in.

Sam Parr

He smokes a bunch of weed and eats cereal.

Shaan Puri

Style in the middle of the room. He's moved our table to the side. He's sitting in his aisle on the floor with a wipe. He took our whiteboard, put it on the ground, and he's writing long sentences. I'm like, "This is not names; this is like paragraphs. What are you doing?" He's just writing out, almost in first person. This was awesome, actually. He was writing out in first person. I think we were doing a dating app at the time, so he was helping us with the dating app. He was just writing out, like, from first person, almost venting as the customer. He's like, "I don't download a dating app; I download dating apps. All of them. Every single one of them. It's embarrassing." And he's like, "I've tried them all. I use them all, and I hate them all. But I use them. I hate using them." And he's like, "I hate them because it's mostly me sitting there sending out messages that are not getting replies. And then the next message I send, I know this is probably not gonna get a reply. That's a pretty hopeless feeling. At least if I go up to a girl at a bar, she rejects me to my face. Online, cowards! These women are cowards." And he's like, "They don't even reply." So then he's just venting, and he's scratching stuff out because he's like, "No, that's not really true." But it was almost like slam poetry. It's like he was trying to get into the feeling of the problem and then the solution. He was doing it not in a business planning way, but I really actually liked that process. I kind of hijacked that, so I paid a very expensive $25,000 to learn that one process, which is actually very useful as a copywriter to get to the essence of what you're trying to do. The name ended up sucking, and they did all these exercises where they would put out these flashcards that were like Branson, Elon Musk, Einstein. They'd be like, "Pick two that you think fit." Then they'd be like, "Corvette, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, blah, blah, blah. Pick two." And then I'm like, "Dude, what is this, a personality quiz?" I just hated the whole process. And then whatever the name was, I don't even remember that.

Sam Parr

What was the name? You don't even remember the name?

Shaan Puri

I'm sorry, it's a very unsatisfying ending to it, but...

Sam Parr

How do you not remember the name that they picked?

Shaan Puri

That's c'est la vie.

Sam Parr

That's what you should've called the **fucking** app.

Shaan Puri

The app failed. By the time they gave us the name, we were like, "Oh, this is a stupid idea. We don't know how to do this app. Let's move on."

Sam Parr

I still think it's worth it, by the way. I still think it's worth it. I think that's a lot of money, though. $25 is a lot. I think I paid my branding agency $15,000.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's hard though. When you start to fall into that hole, you're like, "Well, do I want the best brand or just a mediocre brand?" Like, if I... How much is my brand going to be worth? Is it not worth an extra $5K? It's very hard to say no.

Sam Parr

Dude, at least for me, ridiculous is that the pod.

Shaan Puri

Well, let's just recap real quick. It took you... you did your research in public. It took you five false starts on figuring out who the customer is. The way you did it was you had an idea that sounded good in theory. Then you went and tried to contact them, asking, "Do you want this?" You got punched in the face five times. One of them looked great, but then there was no founder fit. Ultimately, you settled on what was probably the obvious idea. So that's the first takeaway. The second takeaway: your name is awesome! The name is awesome, but you used streets around you. I don't know if anyone else wants to copy that. Mine would be Grand Floral Boulevard, which I don't think is going to make for a great startup name.

Sam Parr

No, San Francisco has a bunch of good names too.

Shaan Puri

Well, that's where I used to live when I was a kid. I think we should show the deck that you made for the branding agency. This is not what they gave you; this is what you gave them to get a good output. You know, because "garbage in, garbage out." If you give bad instructions or a bad prompt, you're going to get a bad result on the brand. So, I think that's cool to show. And I think, you know, maybe one other thing that people would take away is using a founder story. I think a founder story is very powerful.

Sam Parr

And I think I need to fix that. So, I just got **$25,000** worth of advice for free. So, that's good. I appreciate that.

Shaan Puri

You've got my Venmo.

Sam Parr

Alright, is that it? Is that the pod?

Shaan Puri

That's it. That's the pod.