Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas

7 Simple Business Ideas From Nick Gray - September 6, 2024 (7 months ago) • 01:21:49

This My First Million episode features Nick Gray, an entrepreneur and author of "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party," who discusses his journey from focusing on financial success to prioritizing experiences. Nick shares his unique approach to life and several business ventures, including his Museum Hack company and a proposed high-end matchmaking service. He emphasizes the importance of networking, offering unconventional advice and actionable business ideas for listeners.

Nick's Background and Philosophy: Nick recounts his early entrepreneurial endeavors, including a web hosting company in high school and a stint in India attempting to start a software company. He describes a shift in his mindset, moving from using money as a measure of success to a tool for enabling experiences.
Networking Strategies: Nick suggests analyzing the followers of successful people to identify valuable connections. He highlights the importance of providing value in networking, using his experience of hosting events in New York City as an example.
The $10 Million Exercise: Nick encourages listeners to perform a thought experiment: "What would I do with $10 million?" He explains this exercise reveals most desired lifestyle changes are achievable with far less money.
Matchmaking Business Idea: Nick proposes a matchmaking service for ultra-high-net-worth individuals with a $1 million contingency fee upon successful marriage. He calls himself the "Babe Bounty Hunter" and invites interested parties to contact him.
Starter Business Ideas: Nick suggests several accessible business ideas, including white-labeling an enterprise sales team, creating basic websites for local businesses, and offering neighborhood computer services.
Airbnb Experiences: Both Shaan and Nick recommend Airbnb Experiences as a low-capital, high-impact starter business. Shaan describes it as a way to "get out of theory and into reality."
The NICK Method for Hosting Parties: Nick outlines his party-hosting method (NICK): Nametags, Intros, Cocktails (or mocktails), and Kick them out. He stresses the importance of nametags for creating a sense of community and structured intros to facilitate conversation.
Blogging for Serendipity: Nick recounts several instances where his blog posts led to unexpected opportunities, including connecting with a hedge fund manager and a museum conservation expert. He encourages listeners to blog to increase their "surface area of serendipity."

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	Alright nick are you ready
00:01	Nick Gray	well I'm late because I had to go to party city
00:04	Shaan Puri	you are party city dude you're the human party city
00:07	Nick Gray	No, but the funny thing is, I went out there because I wanted to get some cool stuff for you guys, for Sam. I got a hot dog hat thing because Sam likes hot dogs.
00:20	Shaan Puri	and then for
00:21	Nick Gray	Sean, you know I got the big basketball because Sean loves basketball. I got these balloons, and as I'm leaving, this lady sees me with the balloons and the basketball. She's like, "Oh, are you planning a birthday for your son?" I was like, "First, that's sexist, and second, no, I'm going on a podcast."
00:54	Sam Parr	Alright, so let me introduce Nick with a little bit of a story. I don't remember exactly how we came into contact with each other, but basically, I was in New York maybe 8 years ago. Somehow, Nick contacted me and he goes, "Hey, do you want to go to Washington Square Park and play frisbee?" I was like, "I guess, yeah, okay." So Sarah and I go, and we meet him at Washington Square Park. He goes, "Here, let's just walk. I'll give you guys a tour." So he gives us a tour. He goes, "This is the guy that's always here selling weed. Hey, weed guy, how are you?" This is my friend Sam and Sarah. Then he's like, "These are the people who are always tightrope walking. Hey, tightrope people!" Nick is just a crazy person, okay? Like, we've met him in a way that you'll go out to dinner with him and he'll be like, "Alright, for the next 5 minutes, I'm going to talk about my dating life. Then from minutes 7 to 13, we're going to talk about your work. And from 13 to 27, we want to talk about philosophy on life." Like, he had actually...
01:48	Shaan Puri	do this do you show up to like lunches like this
01:51	Sam Parr	with agendas
01:52	Nick Gray	a 100% with agendas and sometimes even my own keynote presentations
01:57	Sam Parr	And let me... well, hold on, hold on, wait. Let me give this quick summary. So, Nick's summary is basically this: He made money. Nick started a business, sold it, and made money. He put all of his money in Tesla stock and got incredibly wealthy. Now, he is single in Austin and just lives life to have fun. He does crazy stuff, like he recently went on a blind date to Tokyo. He also just wrote a book on having a cocktail party because that's what he cares about. He does everything that’s fun. Is that right, Nick?
02:31	Nick Gray	Yeah, that is directionally correct. I love to have fun, and I didn't put all my money into Tesla. But yes, I did make a lot of money a couple of times in my life. Now, I get to have fun, and I think I'm like the endgame that a lot of people are thinking about—how to get there. They want to make a business and they want to be successful, but for what? There's a lot of talk about when is enough, and I think I found enough. This is what happens when you get there.
03:03	Shaan Puri	How did you figure that out? Because that is something that not a lot of people have been able to figure out. So, how did you figure out what's enough for you? How did you actually execute that? How did you figure out what you wanted, what was enough, and then do it?
03:15	Nick Gray	You know, one year I was doing my taxes and I had busted my butt in my business. It was an absolutely incredible amount of work; it was just one of the hardest years. I think maybe we netted out like $350,000 in profit, and it was one of the hardest years of my life, honestly, for a variety of staffing reasons and other things. As I was doing my taxes, my accountant said, "Oh wow, do you realize you made so much more money from your investments than you did from your business?" I never thought about my investments. I don't even think; I just buy it, set it, and forget it. At that moment, I was like, "Wow, I'm destroying my health and my sanity for this amount of money that's not even as much as I'm making off the investments." There were a few moments like that over the last 10 years that have just made me reconsider how I spend my time.
04:07	Shaan Puri	And you wrote a blog post because I went knee-deep into the blog last night. You have this blog post you wrote a long time ago, which was "What Would I Do If I Had $10,000,000?" I don't know when you wrote this, but I found it somewhere in the archive. You basically said, "I really want to have like $10,000,000," and it made me think, "What would I actually do if I had it? What would I do today if I already had it?" You put photos on there. We should show this on YouTube. There are index cards where you wrote things like "swim more," and "write a book about hosting a cocktail party," which you actually ended up doing. You wrote all these things, and it sounded like the takeaway was, first of all, we should do this exercise because money is a tool to improve your life. But if you don't really know how much you need and what you're trying to improve, it's sort of crazy. It's like going to Home Depot for a house renovation project, but you didn't know which part of your house you wanted to renovate, what your budget actually was, or what materials you needed. But that's how we treat our careers. Then you got clarity on it, and you actually implemented it. Can you talk about that exercise you did? I did it last night too after reading that.
05:13	Nick Gray	Oh, you did it! So, I hope to give actionable takeaways for your listeners. This is an actionable takeaway for you: you can do this with your friends, your spouse, or your loved ones. Ask them, "If you had $10,000,000, how would you live your life differently?" Get specific! Don't just say, "I want to eat better." What does that exactly mean? Now, Sean may know this; this is a Tony Robbins exercise that he's done either at Business Mastery or UPW. The gist, I'll forward you to the end, is that the vast majority of things we say we would do differently with $10,000,000, actually, you only need $1,000,000 to get there. If you think, "Oh, if my life was a billionaire, this is what I would do," you actually may only need $10,000,000, $20,000,000, or $50,000,000. And I say, actually, that's still a lot of money, but it helps you to realize that, for example, for a lot of people, "Oh, if I had $1,000,000, of course, I would have a private chef." So they say, "Okay, well, let's break that down. What does that exactly mean for you to have a private chef?" Do you want to have meals that are set up in your fridge? Do you want to have a full-time person, etc.? It was a very helpful exercise for me to think that in the past, if I wanted $500,000,000, well, actually, the vast majority of the things that I wanted, I could do for much less without sacrificing all that time, money, and energy to get to that level.
06:44	Shaan Puri	Yeah, there's... but Sam, have you heard this Morgan Housel quote about money? He says there are two ways to use money. The first is as a tool to improve the quality of your life, and the second is as a measuring stick to measure the quality of your life. Basically, the people who are happy use money as a tool, and the people who are, you know, the bitter rich, the stressed rich, are the ones who are trying to use money as a measuring stick.
07:07	Sam Parr	Yeah, the problem with that is, on my list, it's like influence politicians, overthrow governments, you know, like bribe officials. And you need a lot more money than just $10,000,000 for that.
07:20	Nick Gray	For those of you that are listening, by the way, and are thinking, "That's not enough," he has given up. Money is the measuring stick in the yard and the success of life. I am totally with you, and I lived that way for so much of my adult life. Money is just a measuring stick, right? We don't spend it; we just keep it, and that shows how good we are. I still respect and sympathize with those people who, like Sam, want more money to influence politicians and buy private jets.
07:53	Sam Parr	I'm joking joking okay but go ahead
07:57	Nick Gray	you're on the record as a lobbyist okay yeah
08:01	Shaan Puri	say what would you even lobby for yeah
08:05	Sam Parr	they're for all I don't know I mean
08:07	Shaan Puri	we have a proposal here for like larger serving size of bubble gum
08:11	Sam Parr	I guess sure
08:13	Shaan Puri	it's all good
08:16	Sam Parr	That's ridiculous, but Nick, alright. So you're like, "You used to be a measuring stick guy for money." But in this blog post, by the way, you say at the very bottom, "I would do all of these things." Which, by the way, like Sean didn't say, but you have a list of things like you want to go bowling, you want to play laser tag, you want to go go-karting. That's literally on your blog post. But at the end, it says, "I would also like to work on entrepreneurial pursuits to get to $50,000,000."
08:43	Nick Gray	Yeah, yeah, something like that. I don't want to get into the gist of this, but I want to say that this is an activity that's helpful for listeners to do because it helped me realize that the things that truly make me happy—playing tennis, riding go-karts, eating more healthy, going to the beach—those things don't have to cost $50,000,000. I keep a very low burn in my life right now so that it feels like I have $100,000,000.
09:10	Sam Parr	Sean, something that you probably don't know about Nick is that he lived in New York City for a long time. He's been a blogger; a lot of people don't know this. Nick met Noah Kagan, Neville Medora, my good buddies, and Ramit via blogging. Nick was like one of these early bloggers. What are you, you're 40, let's say now, Nick? You started blogging when you were what, like in your twenties?
09:31	Nick Gray	gosh I had a website since 1996 yeah
09:34	Sam Parr	Yeah, and because of that, he's actually met a lot of these guys who are kind of like luminaries now. For example, he's buddies with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress. He kind of grew up in New York with the founders of Vimeo, CollegeHumor, and a bunch of these interesting people who sort of shaped the internet that we know. You were around them when you guys were all up and coming and doing your own thing. What was that like, seeing some of these guys who were your peers become people who are kind of controlling the internet or impacting the culture of the internet?
10:11	Nick Gray	Well, Sam, I'm glad you mentioned that because this brings me to the second lesson. I'll be using this little lesson, harmonica, throughout today's podcast.
10:23	Shaan Puri	I love it! Hey, real quick, I want to talk to you guys. If you are new to this podcast or new to business, I have a cool resource for you. The folks at HubSpot, who sponsor this podcast, have put together a kit—a guide for people who are getting started on their entrepreneurship journey. It has a couple of cool tools I want to call out. It's a free tool, by the way. This whole thing is free; you can just go download it. The first one is a freelance calculator. Most people are really underpricing themselves if they are selling a service to a company. Freelancing, which is a common way to get started in entrepreneurship, is often done as a solopreneur. This tool helps you figure out how much you should be charging your clients. I know that most people get started undercharging by sometimes as much as 50%. So, this is a great way to use this tool and get a better handle on how much you should be charging. If you're just getting started and you're a beginner on this journey of entrepreneurship, check out this kit. The link is in the description below. Thanks again to HubSpot for making this podcast possible.
11:14	Nick Gray	The lesson is, you know, about 15 years ago when people were using Twitter a lot, there were a lot of startup founders that I knew, like Dennis Crowley of Foursquare and Zach Klein of Vimeo, among others. I had absolutely no name on the public internet. I was a blogger, but I didn't have followers. I was just known amongst a certain crowd. Somebody figured out that all of these famous and successful people in New York all followed me. I think this was when there was a list of public follows that were more available. They were like, "Dude, why do all these people follow you?" I was actually waiting to get a message like that. I think there's actionable data that you can get from finding and looking at who else famous and successful people follow. Now, follower lists are still available on Instagram, so you can see the bulk of it. I think on X (formerly Twitter), they've throttled it back, so you don't have the full follow lists available. But if you are looking to make contact with some of these ultra-successful people, there's no way that you will. They have pretty much too much inbound. However, you can befriend their friends, and that can be your foot in the door. That is a lesson; it is an aggressive networking example. You have to lead with value. You have to have something good; you can't just do it to take. But I think there is significance, there is alpha in looking to see who all of the major people follow. There's a reason for that. Why do they follow you? I think people followed me in New York City because I hosted events. Oh my God, I hosted events! That was my way to become interesting; it was my way to be relevant. I just started hosting all these house parties.
12:56	Shaan Puri	So, I want to tie up the kind of shift from "killing yourself"—working really, really hard to make money and be successful—which is where, you know, I've been. Sam's been, and a lot of the listeners will have been. So, that's a relatable struggle. Then, the next thing you did with Life Shift was to prioritize experiences, adventure, and fun. I think a lot of us want to do that but are sort of afraid to do it fully. It's hard to get off that money train. So, can we just do a speed run of like, what did you actually do in your career? How did you actually make it? What did you try? What did you actually do that worked?
13:33	Nick Gray	Yes, a speed run of my career. In middle school and high school, I started to design websites. I was not a popular kid; I had friends, but I wasn't in the popular crowd. I was really into computers, and when I was in about 9th grade, I made a web hosting company that just so happened to get lucky. If you searched on Yahoo for the phrase "cheap web hosting," then you would find my website. You can see that at atvs3.net.
13:59	Shaan Puri	did did you do anything to be the discovered one or literally was it lucky
14:04	Nick Gray	Dude, it was just dumb luck. We didn't even know about SEO then. It wasn't like we were trying to optimize it. It just so happened that when I wrote my description, that's how it worked.
14:12	Shaan Puri	So, you're in high school, and that helped pay for college, as I understand. So, what did you kind of roughly make on that business?
14:18	Nick Gray	Not a lot of money, maybe. So, the web hosting was $15 a month per client. It cost me $5 per month per client, and at the most, I probably had 200 customers. The average was throttled out to about 120 customers per month. That helped pay for college, but then I also got a scholarship for entrepreneurship, which is a very rare merit-based scholarship that allowed me to go to a nice college. So, the web hosting business... I did some other stuff. I sold these alphanumeric pagers, but that was never a huge success. I had all these little hustles. When I got to Wake [Forest University], by the way, I started to sell speakers for laptops, and I named the business "WakeSpeakers.com." I was going around door to door, saying, "Oh, you bought your kids this laptop; they need speakers to listen to Shazam or whatever." Then the school lawyers called me up, saying, "You can't call this Wake Speakers; that's like the name of our school." Meanwhile, I was drop shipping pallets onto the quad of the campus.
15:22	Shaan Puri	so when
15:22	Nick Gray	I was in college when I tried to start a software company that was massively popular on campus but made absolutely zero money. I tried to move to India to start a software company and hire people because I thought that I could bootstrap it further there. It was a terrible success. I hired two people; one of them...
15:40	Sam Parr	was in boston he beat you
15:41	Shaan Puri	He was... the story is hilarious. I've heard him say this before. He's like, "I moved to India because I was like, I'm gonna bootstrap this, so I need cheap talent." So, he moves to India to start a software company, hires two people: one guy's in Poland and one guy's in Boston, and he's in India. So, he has no employees in India. You were Indian labor.
15:59	Sam Parr	You got that equation wrong. You did. You answered yourself. If it's like x + y, you put yourself in the wrong variable.
16:10	Nick Gray	I know I outsourced myself to the wrong thing. I did, though, develop a really nice relationship with the people in the country, and it was just a wild experience. Well, let...
16:20	Shaan Puri	Let me ask one question, which is: nobody cares about this, but I do. Even though that was kind of a failure, right? You move to India, you hire a guy in Poland or a Boston software company. Nobody knows the name of this, and it didn't work out. But there's something... if somebody told me that someone did that today, I'd be like, "This person's gonna be a winner." This is probably gonna be a failure, but that person is gonna be a winner. What made you even want to do that in the first place? Because that's a pretty radical step. Most people I went to college with did not just graduate and move to India with the idea of bootstrapping a software company.
16:49	Nick Gray	It did seem like the craziest thing to do at the time, and I think that's why I was attracted to it.
16:55	Shaan Puri	let harmonica lesson you think
16:57	Nick Gray	I think so. Thank you so much! I use this harmonica at all my events as a crowd control device. I believe if my legacy has anything, it's that the harmonica can be a helpful crowd control device. You can get people's attention in a calm, cool manner without a whistle or like a...
17:20	Shaan Puri	pow pow pow
17:21	Nick Gray	Right, so consider that there's a tip within a tip. Why did I move to India? At the time, it seemed like the future. There was all this news about BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and everything, like Wipro moving over to India.
17:37	Shaan Puri	You had said your college roommates were the guys who created CollegeHumor and Vimeo. Were you involved in that, or were you just kind of sitting by while they were doing it right next to you? What was that like?
17:46	Nick Gray	I was very happy to not be involved in that and to be their friend and a soundboard. I was the first non-employee user of Vimeo. Jake, the guy who started Vimeo, famously said that our thinking helped him think about vlogging and stuff like that. But they were absolutely an inspiration to me, and it was so cool to be in that world of really great guys.
18:12	Sam Parr	And then if you fast forward, I think you're like the first time that you kind of... you said you've made money like 2 or 3 times. The first time was after that India trip with you and your father, right?
18:23	Nick Gray	Yeah, he started a business in the basement of our house. I didn't end up seeing that money until much, much later. I still lived very frugally; in fact, I probably still live very frugally. I guess I didn't really have money per se until maybe 10 or 15 years after that. But yeah, my dad started in the basement of our house. This was my next big adventure. I came home from India, not sure what to do next. My dad had been working on this business in our house that did in-flight entertainment equipment for small jets.
18:58	Shaan Puri	Sam, I was on a plane with Nick. It was just the two of us on this plane. Instead of just sitting down, putting his bag away, and relaxing, Nick immediately started fiddling with all the gadgets on the plane. He was trying to pull off the in-screen monitor where the map of the plane is. I thought, "They made them right? Is there something behind that? What are you trying to do here?" He said, "Oh, I just want to see which one they have." Then he started giving me all these facts. Five minutes later, he finally tells me, "Oh yeah, this was the business that my dad and I worked on." They sold these little electronic parts to planes. You know how your tray table comes out and how there's this little thing here? That's what we did.
19:38	Sam Parr	And it was like... I've talked to his mom and dad, and then Nick. I've talked to them about it, and it was like a smashing success. You know, it took a while to work, but it was a home run in terms of them working on it together. It turned out to be financially fruitful, and his parents are like the cutest parents you'll ever talk to. It was literally like a mom-and-pop shop. It was like a "Nick Gray and Son" type of business. That's really what it was, and it sounded awesome. It was a very wholesome business.
20:12	Shaan Puri	Were there any great stories from that chapter where either you guys figured out something that made things work, or a moment when you thought you were screwed but then figured something out? Is there any good stories from that?
20:24	Nick Gray	one thing I can tell you is that even in those early days search engine optimization played a huge role within the business and searching for faa certified in flight monitors what a niche thing and yet all we needed was 1 and we really got a $1,000,000 deal from the seo because I bought every domain name I was creating fake blogs I had everything pointing back to our company that we dominated not just the first three results but like the first page of results because this was 2,009 ish when there was a lot less seo stuff but even now it's such a niche industry one major lesson that I think I could say was that I was lucky to come up under this salt of the earth sales guy who ran our sales team and he was the type of guy you see in movies today he's got no social media he has nothing this was an air force guy who you know would pick up the phone at this at the at the shortest instance would cold call people there's a vivid memory that I have being at the trade show of somebody's badge being flipped around and they walked up and tried to talk to him and he just looks at them looks down at them grabs like like gets in their space grabs their badge turns it around and says oh dan mcknormic you asshole and and just like that that like good old boy type of attitude that I got to come up under and so there's so many people out there that are trying to solopreneur that are trying to bootstrap that are trying to hustle that just don't have any experience that have never learned those lessons that I'm so thankful that I got to learn through him and so that was one of those experiences his name was jay healy he was a huge influence on how I think about phone calls and sales and outbound and things like that oh wait wait a second I had a business idea so someone told me jack smith said this crowd loves business ideas and so I have a business idea for your listeners I have a couple business ideas but one of them is this you need to create a white label enterprise sales team quit trying to hire programmers whatever I want you going out there recruiting the guys selling cutco knives I want you going to the mall finding the most hustler guys selling that shoe soap stuff and I want you to start building them and training them on how to sell b to b saas if you are looking for an acquihire salespeople are in high demand if you have guys that can sell and girls that can sell this company will get bought I don't care what you're selling but start collecting salespeople and build a sales team you'll either get bought out you can build a saas around it or you'll just get aqua hired in this is a good business idea
23:16	Sam Parr	Nick, what makes you special? Sean experienced it because you guys hung out, and I don't think that he fully understood that this is the type of stuff that Nick Ray does. It's the weirdest, quirkiest stuff, but when he decides to be quirky and weird, it's pretty authentic to him. He goes like a 10 out of 10.
23:34	Nick Gray	sam is exactly right and it's the same idea
23:37	Sam Parr	of
23:37	Nick Gray	Why am I getting, you know, things like the hot dog hat for Sam or the basketball thing for Sean? Or like, why do we just do little things to make it interesting? Because I think that it's just different. We can live life a little bit differently, and I like to have fun.
24:02	Shaan Puri	Yeah dude, your crayon box has like four extra colors that I don't have and I need to pick them up. I need to go find these colors. When I was doing the research last night, I made a note. I thought, "I think that Nick has chugged the biggest glass of 'be yourself' juice and now he's just belching the remainder out for the rest of the world." You had this great quote; you tweeted this out. It didn't go viral, but I loved it. You said, "Quit playing it cool. Life is too short. Be intense and passionate and mildly insane." Now, whoever's left hanging is your friend.
24:35	Nick Gray	Yeah, the lesson that I would have for listeners is that I can live that way now. I think it's because I grinded it out. I think that I can live that way now because I achieved some success and I did some truly great things. This is not your carte blanche permission to go be an insane person. That's not what I'm telling you. There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I'm not saying that I'm a genius; I'm probably more insane. But I am 42 years old. I have had some successful businesses, and I have been playing the game of business for way more than half my life. I feel that I have the confidence today to be who I want to be because I have achieved some of that success.
25:23	Sam Parr	do you get lonely
25:24	Nick Gray	Probably, I don't exactly know what it would be like not to be lonely, but I have a lot of friends.
25:30	Sam Parr	You have a lot of friends, and I consider us to be very close. We're like family to me. But sometimes I think to myself, "I want a 9 to 5," just because people throughout the day can't hang out with me. I want a routine so I could have a family, do you know what I mean? But then other times, I see you just jetting off to Japan on a blind date, and I'm like, "Oh, that adventure seems fun." It's hard to have both the stability of a family sometimes and the eccentric excitement that you get to have. So, do you ever get lonely leaning into one of those sides versus the other side?
26:08	Nick Gray	The largest and most valid critique of me and my lifestyle would be that I am 42, single, and have no kids. People will say that this is one of the greatest fallacies; that I've waited so long to begin my life and my family, and that no happiness can come from the happiness of a parent loving their child. I think that is 100% valid. I also do not agree with the critiques that say, "Just get married as soon as you can. Business will follow. Get married first above all else; make that your priority." I lived my life thus far, at least through my late thirties, making business success and financial freedom my number one priority. In fact, I hired a matchmaker for a little while when I was in New York. She set me up with like 20 or 30 dates, and at the end of it, she said, "Nick, you know what? I don't think you even want a girlfriend. I think you just want to go on dates." She said, "With your business right now, you have no room in your life. You would never make a woman your number one priority." I said, "That's exactly right. We should have talked about this beforehand. There's no chance; my business is my..."
27:29	Shaan Puri	number one refundable yeah yeah
27:33	Nick Gray	And I said, "Look, this is my number one priority: my business. It's all that I think about; it's all that I do." I would wake up. I had this girlfriend in New York who was a poet. We would wake up in the morning, and she would want to color, drink coffee, and hang out. I'm like, "Babe, I gotta grind."
27:56	Sam Parr	I don't have time to call her. There's no time to call her. We can't call her today.
28:01	Shaan Puri	color me unimpressed with this plan yeah
28:04	Nick Gray	Yeah, no time. It's like, "Babe, you gotta go," and I'm not here to hang out. That was a different time in my life when I was so focused on that. So, this leads me to my next business idea. I am going to potentially, if enough people ask me for this, be the first seven-figure millionaire matchmaker that is only based on a contingency fee. So, I'm going to have no cost. I'm only going to take the top of the top clients. We're talking people like... I'm not going to name names, but folks that have a minimum of probably $50,000,000 net worth and 5,000,000 social followers. I'm going to be matchmaking for these people, and if they get married, only a success gentlemen's agreement handshake: a $1,000,000 minimum success fee. I think that that's interesting for a few reasons. Number 1: Think about all the cool people that I'm going to get to meet if I have this little roster of close friends and incredible people that I get to go up and approach and I'm like, "Oh, I'm matchmaking for such and such." Number 2: Most matchmakers will never work on a contingency basis; they only work on a retainer. But I don't need the money. I have plenty of time, and I'm happy to let this play out over five years.
29:23	Shaan Puri	Can you explain how a traditional matchmaker works? I don't think most people know. How much does a good matchmaker in New York cost, and what do they give you?
29:31	Nick Gray	I think there's a variety of different matchmakers, and it's not just in New York City. You can find these in Dallas, Texas; you can find them in San Francisco and Chicago. Matchmakers, by the way... gosh, let's talk about this.
29:42	Sam Parr	there's a huge range
29:43	Nick Gray	There's a huge range, and actually, private equity companies do like to buy these businesses. I've heard of two of them. Brent Beshore's company has bought one, and someone else we both know looked at acquiring one of them. But matchmaking services can go from $5,000 all the way up to $100,000. The ones that I have heard of are roughly $5,000 a date. They set you up and extensively prescreen these women.
30:13	Sam Parr	Yeah, and in advance, you get a PDF. I've helped some of my buddies review some of them. You get a PDF.
30:19	Shaan Puri	yeah
30:19	Sam Parr	Of like 5 different people. It's crazy. It says they live in Jackson Hole but are willing to relocate. Then it does a profile on them, and you kind of pick and choose.
30:30	Shaan Puri	And how much better is this PDF than if I'd just gone to somebody's Tinder profile and right-clicked "Save as PDF"? What would I be getting that's different in this?
30:39	Nick Gray	Oh my god! Well, the next piece of advice for listeners is: you need to delete your dating apps. You guys need to get off of the dating apps because you are not going to be able to make a difference. Nobody cares about you unless you're above 6 feet tall and devilishly attractive. The vast majority of men need to delete their dating apps, please. I'll give you one tip: you need to join a sports club. Specifically, consider joining a kickball league. Now, why kickball? Kickball has the largest number of teams, so the team size is larger than any other sport. Generally, both teams go out for drinks afterward. Now, you've heard other things like "join a run club" or "go to yoga classes." Things like that. If you do those things, you can basically talk to two people at each one. You can talk to somebody before and you can talk to somebody afterward. But if you're trying to ping pong around this run club to get numbers, it's going to be very, very low signal, and you're not going to look good. Think about that. Start a matchmaker.
31:39	Sam Parr	you gotta you gotta answer sean's questions
31:40	Shaan Puri	you have to run which sucks okay
31:43	Nick Gray	Sean's question was, "How much more detail do you get from a matchmaker?" The one that I worked with was a different way. I would not get these detailed advanced prep sheets for the $5,000 date. They are checking to make sure that the things that are important to you are important to them as well.
31:59	Sam Parr	and sometimes they do they do background checks on on everyone
32:03	Nick Gray	yes they do
32:03	Shaan Puri	$5 a date? I don't know if this is like with the Indian DNA in me, but that sounds insane. $5,000 a date sounds insane. Obviously, even if you're wealthy, I get the rationality of why it would make sense, but that sounds crazy, especially when you have a low hit rate or low success rate with it.
32:20	Nick Gray	But if you ask me today, how much would you pay if I could introduce you to your perfect person?
32:26	Shaan Puri	that I'm a believer in if you said and and I've actually told
32:30	Nick Gray	7 figures
32:30	Shaan Puri	You should set up a bounty. If you introduce me to somebody that you, you know, fall in love with, or get engaged to, or get married to, why would you not put up a $1,000,000 or $2,000,000 for that? For them, it would make such a huge difference in their life. It's the best thing money could buy for those people.
32:47	Nick Gray	And that is why I'm retitling myself to be Nick Gray, Babe Bounty Hunter. If you are listening to this and you are interested in putting up a 7-figure bounty to find your person, give me a call.
32:59	Shaan Puri	Dude, "Babe, the Bounty Hunter"—that's a good moniker! You can have your own TV show with us. Sam Nick is so funny because when we hung out, he was the only person I've ever met in my life who calls people "babe," but not like...
33:12	Sam Parr	not like they're terrible babes
33:14	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he's just like, "I was hanging out with these two babes," and I started laughing. I was like, "I've just never heard someone say that." He's like, "Yeah, they were. It was cool." Okay, so you're Babe the Bounty Hunter, $1,000,000 contingency fee. Sell it to private equity? I kind of love this idea. You know, I don't know if you're raising for this, but I'm interested. We could get you some distribution on the pod. We could do some special episodes once a month where we talk about our suitor here.
33:39	Nick Gray	I'm super stoked! I'm excited. I'll cut you guys in easy. It's a good deal. Look, here's the thing: it's very, very hard for extremely successful people, whether it's men or women, to sell and market themselves appropriately. I don't necessarily believe that having money is a bad thing. I think it is something to be proud of, but there's no good way to say that about yourself. Anyhow, do...
34:04	Sam Parr	You know a lot of single wealthy men, Sean? Yeah, I know so many of them. I call them "Peter Pans." Like, I've got...
34:11	Nick Gray	got second
34:12	Sam Parr	Yeah, sorry Nick, it's you're Peter Pan. What's crazy to me is Mick's not one of these guys. Typically, I would have thought you'd be good at some type of public speaking. Even if you just have a team of 10 people, you could talk to them in front of them. There are a lot of attributes that you would think would translate to women, but that's not the case. Not the case with a lot of friends, and that has always boggled my mind. You know what I mean? Do you have friends like that, Sean? Doesn't that seem kind of crazy?
34:41	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I mean, the crazier part, honestly, is that you’ll talk to them and it’s basically like, “Yeah, this is the one thing I really want. That’s the area of my life that I want to invest in. I want to grow, to bloom. That’s the part of my garden I want to bloom.” Then you talk to them, they say that to you, but then the next four weeks, they’re like, “I’m on the road, I’m doing sales calls, I’m going to this pitch.” It’s like, dude, you took 49 pitches in the last two months but you know one date? The priorities don’t match the calendar. But I get it. It’s because there’s a human tendency, which is that whatever is not going well for you, wherever you’re struggling, it’s easy to just avoid that and gravitate towards the things that are giving you that immediate dopamine hit of success, of progress, of being great at something. I wish that they wouldn’t do that. You know, the ones I respect the most are the ones who fight against that grain and they’re like, “Dude, the incremental dollar does nothing for me at this.”
35:35	Shaan Puri	But meeting, you know, my life partner would be an amazing thing for my life. It would really help to match their calendar with their priorities.
35:42	Sam Parr	Did I listen to this thing? I hung out with my friend last week. He's worth probably $200,000,000 and sold his company. He's fabulously wealthy, 64 years old, polite, nice, and just an awesome guy. My wife and I met with him, and he was like, "Hey, I met this girl on Hinge, and we matched. I don't know what to say to her. Can you guys help me out?" I'm like, "Are you kidding me? You're nervous to have this text-based conversation?" I'm like, "Dude, you're the catch here! You're perfect! What are you talking about?" And he was nervous. We had to go through each line. He's like, "Does that sound weird? Does it sound weird if I say this?" I think there's a shockingly large amount of men that are like that, which is insane to me.
36:27	Nick Gray	The dating thing is interesting. I, Sean, put my hands up when you were doing this because I was like, "Yes, the calendar doesn't lie. If this is important to you..." But you know what? I'll say something that folks are saying online. If you're listening to this podcast because you want to be financially successful, I think you need to have priorities in life. It is very hard to run and be laser-focused on your business when you're trying to build a relationship. Dare I say, it's almost impossible.
36:56	Sam Parr	Just a bunch of dudes playing with harmonicas and balloons, talking about how to get chicks.
37:06	Nick Gray	Yeah, oh, what are you doing over there, Johnny? Oh, I'm listening to this guy on the harmonica talking about how to find your life partner. Oh, he must be very successful. Is he married? Kids?
37:14	Sam Parr	No, he's single. What was your other idea?
37:20	Shaan Puri	do you have another idea
37:22	Nick Gray	Okay, I got another business idea. I think we should bring back web hosting companies, specifically service agencies to help local small businesses build very basic WordPress websites. We often dismiss these simple ideas, but notice what the focus is: the focus is sales. Can you sell it to them? You go to somebody and say, "Look, for $50 a month, I'm going to host your site. I'll make sure it doesn't get hacked, and I'll keep it lightly updated." You know, you can buy an additional service if you want to make updates, but this is a SaaS business. You are now creating websites where you are selling them this service—hacker web hosting, whatever. You're just doing the basic stuff. I think we often feel that we have to come up with this new AI stuff, but we should go back to the basics. Start making web pages for restaurants in town and begin at the fundamentals. I really think we need to bring back web hosting companies.
38:14	Shaan Puri	I got a cool twist on this which is the why now or what what you could do differently now I have a friend who's doing this right now they took I won't give away the category because I don't want them to feel like I invited competition for them but they they found a specific category so a specific type of business it's not pest control but let's just pretend it was pest control for a second so they picked a category and then they were like cool if I hired like a fancy new york design agency to make an awesome website for this company doesn't have to look super super slick but like much slicker than what they have by default and checks all the boxes of what a company like that needs oh they need to immediately be able to request a quote they need to be able to do x y z cool got the requirements got 5 design templates made and then what they did was they were like cool you know ai is actually amazing at this so they told the ai they were like ai go find every let's just use pest control as an example every pest control business in new york right now that you can find on on the online easy to do it crawls it gives you a spreadsheet of all the the names of the companies and their urls it says great then it created another ai agent that said take their existing website pull out the info and then apply it to one of these 5 templates and it did that and then it said and then he said another ai agent was draft a cold email to this list of prospects and include in a mock up an attachment that was made by agent 2 that that redid their website and so they're getting this crazy response rate because they're going to these businesses and they're saying hey I was checking out your site just so you know I'm a web developer I help companies like you I actually made a mock up of your I made a mock up of your your website like of what I think I could do with it if you think this looks cool I'll be happy to do it for you for this monthly fee and they're doing lead gen they're they're getting amazing lead gen because they're coming with a hyper personalized offer which is not just hey do you need a website or hey I make websites for companies like you but hey I looked at your site I thought I could you know improve it here's what it looks like improved do you want it and that is is just that makeover can now be automated with ai which again I don't think you need to make your idea successful but it does add a turbo juice that like didn't exist before that now can work
40:22	Sam Parr	What do you use for that? I mean, that outbound seems amazing for everything.
40:28	Shaan Puri	It is amazing. It's the AI sort of go-to-market idea. I think right now, the people who are going to make the most money in AI are the AI tool providers. But then, the second group will be people who can string together AI tools to turbocharge sales.
40:43	Sam Parr	I wanna use them do you know what they are
40:45	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I mean, it's three different things, right? So, let's say for the automated emails, there's a certain tool called Clay that's really good at that. Clay sends personalized emails. It basically takes a prospect list and enriches it. So, it'll say, "Cool, give me all the companies who fit this criteria." It'll give it to you, and then it will add in how many employees they have, roughly their revenue range, who their CEO is, and what's their phone number. It will fill that whole table out for you automatically. Then, you could say, "Cool, draft some email scripts for me to email these people," and it will create templates that can be sent as hyper-personalized templates. But before that, let's say you need the other piece. You might use Claude or something like that, where you're going to say, "Build a little tool for me where I can basically input this and get out a website in this format." So, you may use Claude with artifacts to do that or some custom workaround. And then the first piece, which was just the prospecting, that's pretty easy. There are a lot of tools that can do just the prospecting side for you.
41:36	Sam Parr	that's crazy that is crazy goddamn
41:40	Nick Gray	Help me think about this, guys. Is there something here that I want to riff on? Sean just had this great idea. Notice that my idea was to go to local restaurants and try to sell them a new website. Sean took it to the nth degree: "No, write a script so now you can do 5,000 a day," and blah, blah, blah. I want to pull listeners back to my side of the aisle.
42:14	Shaan Puri	yes I think I think I midwit memed it for you
42:18	Nick Gray	Which is to say, there is beauty in the simplicity of getting started. Calling, hand coding, and building your business has shown up for me when I did my museum tour business. I was a tour guide, you guys. I built a multimillion-dollar business out of being a tour guide. Every Friday and Saturday night, I was literally leading people at the museum. I did that for two years before I even hired my first person.
42:46	Sam Parr	how much money you making just you doing that
42:49	Nick Gray	During the tour, each ticket was like $80. I would tour for 10 to 20 people a night, doing it every Friday and Saturday night. So, you can do that math.
43:02	Sam Parr	Dude, Sean, my friend Nick had this company called Museum Hack. Was it the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) or the Metropolitan Museum?
43:09	Nick Gray	of art the best museum in the whole world that's where we started
43:12	Sam Parr	he just hijacked it so like he didn't ask them permission if he could give tours there
43:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you called it "Renegade Museum Tours," right? So he's just part of their offering.
43:23	Sam Parr	And so, he built that business and sold it. Whatever. Sarah, my wife, and Nick are close friends. She was like, "Hey Nick, can you give my mom and me a private tour of MoMA or the Met?" Something like that. And he's like, "Yeah, I got you." So apparently, my mother-in-law was like, "You know, I like Nick, but I kind of felt dangerous being around him." Because the security guard would be like, "Hey, you can't go through that elevator." And Nick would be like, "Oh no, no, trust me, it's okay." He would just walk on the elevator. It's like he would tell them, "No, you're wrong. It's okay, trust me." And he would just go and do whatever he wanted to do. Is that how you ran your business?
44:02	Nick Gray	Yeah, I like to think that some of those guarded-off areas are more suggestions rather than rules. And that as long as this...
44:09	Shaan Puri	is a rope not
44:10	Sam Parr	a fence
44:11	Nick Gray	Yeah, exactly, exactly. Whoa, can't go under it? Watch me! No, no, no. I have a lot of respect for these museums and for the art, but we would do different, nontraditional things. We would lay down on the floor to look at the ceiling. We would sit down to talk about the art. We would discuss how much the paintings cost, which is a very taboo thing in the art world. We would do all these nontraditional things in a museum space to really conduct museum tours for people who didn't like museums. I want to just say that again: I did tours myself as a side hustle while I was still in the family business. This was my thing to build up enough money so I could quit the family job and start my own. Every Friday and Saturday night... that is why I had no dating life, because I was running this business. This brings me to my next business idea: Airbnb Experiences. If you are interested in starting a new side hustle, you can sign up on Airbnb Experiences to lead a tour in your town and charge people for it. This is a way for you to immediately start to get money from people searching for cool things to do. Now, this only works in major towns where they've launched Airbnb Experiences, but it's generally in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Find your favorite stuff, do tours for locals, show them around to some of your great spots, provide a great experience, beg for 5-star reviews, and you can literally create a side hustle on Airbnb Experiences.
45:41	Sam Parr	Dude, I love Airbnb experiences! I've done probably 15 of them. I freaking love them. Have you ever done those, Sean?
45:47	Shaan Puri	I've never done one, but I've looked at it a bunch. I like Nick's framing of this, which is like, I've been thinking about this a lot—like starter businesses. I wrote this blog post, this essay last week that was about my kind of first two years out of college. I called it "Being Strategically Broke." I just avoided getting a job. I said, "I'm not gonna get a job; I want to have maximum freedom." So, I calculated instead of how to make the most money, I thought about what is the minimum money I need to have maximum freedom. That shift was different from everybody else I graduated with, who were just like, "How do I get the best job and make the most money?" But you don't even make that much money as an entry-level job; they all suck. So, I think skipping that level of the game altogether was a great choice. At the time, it looked really bad. My apartment looked like shit. I lived super scrappy; we slept on air mattresses. We couldn't afford a dog, so we got a mouse. We did a bunch of random things like that. But then we did little things that were starter businesses. I had a little tutoring company, and then I started doing a basketball camp once during the summer. We also sold wristbands to sororities and fraternities who needed a themed item; they wanted their name written on something. That taught me how to make a website and go to Alibaba. None of these were businesses that were super lucrative; most made no money, and some made a little bit of money—nothing you'd be impressed by. But they were amazing starter businesses that got you your first dollar, which is a very addictive feeling. It gets you out of theory and into reality. It gets you moving and teaches you a bunch of the core tools and skills that you need, like sales and marketing, that you're going to have to figure out when you're ready for a bigger business. I love the idea of Airbnb experiences because it doesn't even sound like a business. It's that much of a starter business. Anybody could do this. This is literally now just a question of: are you willing to actually do something, or are you just going to talk about it for the rest of your life? Anyone could sign up to do one of these. Can you walk in your area where you already live?
47:46	Shaan Puri	Your finger at things. If you can do that, you can host an Airbnb experience. I think it removes all excuses and gets the ball rolling for people. I love these starter businesses.
47:54	Nick Gray	I love what Sean said: it takes you out of theory and into practice. My first million listeners, some of y'all have never run a lemonade stand, and it shows. Okay, so we're going to give you some ideas.
48:07	Shaan Puri	star got them
48:10	Nick Gray	Here's the next one. It's a similar idea because you may not like doing tours. I'm not a tour guide or a Geek Squad type of neighborhood computer service. I'll give you one that is genius. I was hanging out with a friend yesterday, and her laptop was disgusting. The screen was all smudged up, there were cookie crumbs in the keyboard, and there was all this stuff. I've had this fantasy of dressing up and just going door to door to help fix people's tech issues. I'm talking about boosting their Wi-Fi, cleaning their computers, helping them with some basic tech support, and measuring the power. Another pet peeve of mine is that a lot of people have really bad cell phone chargers and cables. They're not charging with USB-C at full max power. Here's a new business idea: it's "Geek Squad as a Service," where you go door to door, maybe even just to clean up their laptops and phones. I found this gunk online that's like gel sludge that you put into keyboards to suck up all the dust and dirt. You can walk around with a little toolkit and, for $100, make some massive improvements for people. All you need for that is about $100 worth of supplies, a little bit of knowledge on the tech side, and you need to dress up nice and look respectable. But thinking about these things that don't necessarily scale, do those things start there? You need to get your hands dirty in these types of environments. That's my suggestion.
49:35	Sam Parr	did you see sean when nick travels did you like did he show you all the gadgets he keeps in his bags
49:40	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he had... well, and see too, he had a pillow. He had like an Apple Vision Pro. I don't know what else he had. Like, you know, some juggling balls. He had, you know, the essentials, dude.
49:53	Sam Parr	He's so funny when he travels. He researches stuff like crazy. He'll have the best charger, but he also knows how he wants to live. For example, apparently, I don't even know what buckwheat is, but there's a buckwheat pillow that he loves. Whenever he goes to a hotel, he buys that $50 or $100 pillow and has it shipped to the hotel room because he's like, "I have to have this buckwheat pillow."
50:19	Shaan Puri	nick what's up with the pillow
50:21	Nick Gray	Think how wild this is: we will spend $300, $400, sometimes even $500 a night for a hotel, or even $200 a night. Yet, your sleep can be ruined by some of the smallest things. The pillow was the one variable that, as I traveled the world, I realized I could control. Someone once said to me, "Strange pillows equal strange dreams." I realized that I might not be able to control the mattress, but I can at least control the pillow. So, I learned about these Japanese buckwheat pillows when I was over in Tokyo. You either love them or you absolutely hate them. The largest complaint...
50:55	Shaan Puri	hard as a brick have you ever had one of these I think I might have done it wrong it's mine is so hard
51:00	Nick Gray	Yeah, you need to remove half of the hulls. Okay, so if that's a complaint that you have, that it's too hard, then just dump out half of the hulls. And the good news is, it's buckwheat, so you can have it for dinner.
51:10	Sam Parr	I guess what I appreciate about you is that, like, I think Sean's the same way as me. When I see something or something disappoints me, I'm like, "Fuck it, I'll live with it." You know what I mean? Like, "Oh, you brought me pesto pizza, but I ordered a steak." Yeah, fuck it, whatever. I don't even like pesto, but I'm just going to deal with it. Whatever. Or my haircut's bad, and I don't want to complain. It'll grow back. Fuck it. You are not that person.
51:37	Shaan Puri	Yeah, when the barber asks you, "Do you want it rounded or squared?" you have an opinion. Whereas I'm just like, "Whatever, it's fine." You don't have to do it. Just... I have all I can do now. You want the money?
51:48	Sam Parr	That's nice. Fuck me, right? You have an opinion about stuff, and I appreciate that.
51:59	Nick Gray	thank you thanks and you
52:00	Sam Parr	and you like put in the effort to like have life way I I don't really do that as much
52:04	Shaan Puri	is there some story about like a billionaire who does the same thing nick but not with a pillow
52:09	Sam Parr	but with like heels does that with a mattress right
52:12	Shaan Puri	yeah what's the story
52:14	Nick Gray	I don't want to comment on it. I have heard that somebody has positioned a couple dozen mattresses around the world in major metropolitan areas. So, when he goes to the hotel, his advanced team moves the mattress into the hotel room. This way, he has the same exact sleep anywhere, just to remove any number of variables possible.
52:37	Shaan Puri	sam what does your advanced team do yeah
52:43	Sam Parr	I don't know how to reply to that my advanced team I'm your
52:48	Nick Gray	advanced team I love being sam's advanced team at events I love to get himself through
52:52	Shaan Puri	name for that you you
52:54	Sam Parr	Nick is my body guy. Sometimes, for example, I'll get invited to speak someplace, and I'll be like, "I'm only gonna go if Neville and Nick will go with me," because I don't want to go alone. So I asked Nick, "Do you want to come with me?" He said, "Yeah, can I be your body guy?" I replied, "I just want you to come as my friend." He said, "Well, can I be your body guy?" I said, "I don't know what a body guy is, but yeah, I guess, as long as it's nothing that will make my wife angry."
53:20	Shaan Puri	usually into that right yes
53:23	Sam Parr	And so, he's my body guy. He goes, "Alright, Tim, so what that means is, on Wednesday, your schedule is this, this, and this. We're gonna go here, here, here, and here." I go to this talk, and there are like 10 people in the crowd. No one came. He's like, "Alright, we're gonna do autographs and photographs over here. So, Nick, Sam, come with me." I'm like, "Dude, Nick, like, no one wants to do any of this stuff." He's like, "No, no, no, we're gonna do this." Then, he'll see someone walking by, grab them, and say, "Hey, is it true that you want to take a picture with Sam?" I'm like, "Is that what a body guy means?"
54:00	Shaan Puri	A body guy is like the opposite of a bodyguard. A bodyguard keeps people away, while a body guy brings people to you. That's great! I love it.
54:06	Sam Parr	he like created this hype he's like a hype man and it was so funny
54:10	Shaan Puri	I had the funniest, most embarrassing interaction the other day. When I went on that trip to San Diego, I was wearing this hat—this hat right here. So, I was standing there, waiting for my tacos at the taco shack, and this guy goes, "Hey, I don't wanna bother you, but do you mind if I take a picture?" I was like, "Yeah, sure man, that's cool. You've been listening for a while?" He said, "No, no, I just like your hat. My friend has a company called West, and I just wanted him to see this." I was like, "Oh yeah!" I just assumed that he wanted me. I asked, "What are you getting tacos? Do you want my tacos?" I had no way out of that moment. Did you want my... By the way, Nick, cue the harmonica! I got a riff on your idea, your Geek Squad thing. I think it's a simpler version of it. Every parent I know that's kind of like my parents' age has this box in their house of just old home videos. So, I think an even easier one, versus "Can I help you with your stuff?" is just to say, "Hey, do you guys have any home videos from your kids? Because I can convert them into stuff that you can have on your computer or on the internet, so you'll never lose them. They'll live forever! You can't even find a VHS player anymore." So, I could take that box. If you just have that box, I'll take it and do it for you. Then you basically drive it to, like, you know, CVS or Costco, and they do this stuff for you. But there's a gap there where most people aren't really aware of the problem, or it's on their to-do list and they'll never do it. But if a kid showed up at their door, dressed nice, with a million-dollar smile, and said, "I'd love to take care of that for you. I'm doing that for people in the neighborhood. I could take it from you right now. Just show me the closet where it is, and I'll go grab it." I think you can make, you know, an easy few thousand dollars in a couple of months of effort. That sounds like not that much, but at different phases of your life, a few thousand dollars is all the money you need, right? And it gets you going.
56:05	Nick Gray	Knock, knock. Ma'am, can I ask you a question? How much are your memories worth? Boom, boom! Keep your memories safe. Yeah, it's an easy sell.
56:17	Shaan Puri	Use "The Wolf of Wall Street." Fair enough, close. Yeah, it's like you watch all the YouTube videos about sales and you're completely overkill going door to door. It's like, Sam, have you seen that company that's doing these nap bands? Me and Nick were talking about this on the plane. There's like... you haven't seen this on Twitter, Sam? It's this nap band. They have this device that's like... you gotta find it. It's called Element or something like that. It's to help you sleep.
56:45	Nick Gray	mind to send me my free minute shipping address I've been
56:48	Shaan Puri	I'm begging these guys to try it because I'm a prolific napper, and napping is like part of my brand. I really... how do you spell it?
56:55	Nick Gray	Eli, Mind, and Sean, and I can act out the skit that we're going to do as a promo video for you.
57:00	Shaan Puri	if you want to put it
57:01	Nick Gray	sean please
57:01	Shaan Puri	I'm Deepak Chopra, or a billionaire. This is what they're doing right now. It's a pre-release product, but they're building insane hype on Twitter because they'll go to a famous person. So, Nick, I'm the billionaire and you're the founder of Elamind.
57:13	Nick Gray	Okay, Deepak, I'm going to give you the new Elamind. Why don't you put this on and see if it'll help you sleep?
57:21	Shaan Puri	like this okay that's it mhmm mhmm
57:25	Nick Gray	What's up, everybody? I'm Susie, CEO of Alomine. This is Deepak Chopra. Look at that! The little guy fell asleep in 5 minutes. He's out like a light! You can't even...
57:35	Shaan Puri	hear me what's up deepak
57:37	Nick Gray	little bitch free orders open now
57:42	Shaan Puri	This is a special strategy right now. They take a famous person and they just knock them out so fast, but almost to the point where they're just drooling. It's like, "Yo, they're all..."
57:53	Nick Gray	she literally puts a picture of them sleeping it's like my worst nightmare
57:58	Shaan Puri	It's like "Punk'd." It's a mix of 8 Sleep and Ashton Kutcher coming out of the van. It's amazing! It's the best part of the campaign I've seen in...
58:05	Sam Parr	a while
58:05	Nick Gray	she does have that attitude she's like deepak chopra got him
58:10	Shaan Puri	this is the leader of the fruit world right now but watch this boom out like a light bitch
58:15	Nick Gray	yeah oh sleeping like a little baby little ceo needs nap
58:19	Shaan Puri	time is
58:23	Sam Parr	this is this legit at all
58:25	Nick Gray	I think it is legit I think that it's says I would pay for this thing I want it I want it
58:30	Sam Parr	Yeah, this is insane. There's no way this works, right?
58:36	Shaan Puri	no I think it works yeah I'm a blazer
58:38	Nick Gray	Speaking of unique marketing strategies, can I talk about what I did on Google Reviews with my Google Maps photos?
58:45	Sam Parr	Well, and by the way, the Equinox lady came up on this element, Elamine. I want to hear the Equinox story.
58:51	Shaan Puri	Tell the Equinox story first because I hadn't heard that before until you texted me last night. However, I have only heard what you texted me, so I don't know the story.
58:58	Nick Gray	Great! So, first of all, the moral of this story—I'm just going to cut to it—is that, listeners, the next experiment that you need to be doing is to bring back blogging. You need to fill the AIs, and the AIs need to have data from the public web to scrape.
59:15	Sam Parr	I've been saying this for a long time blogging needs to make a comeback
59:19	Nick Gray	Take some of your best tweets and put them into your blogs if you need to. You don't have to create new content; just share the stuff you're already sharing elsewhere in your blogs. A great example of that is my own monthly recaps. If you go to nickgraynews.com, visit the blog, and click on the monthly recaps, you'll see that I take some of my best posts and put them there on the blog, on the public internet, in order to scrape. You need to do this for a few reasons, but one of the reasons is for nefarious purposes. I wanted to find a list of all the Equinox gyms in New York City that had swimming pools. It was a very hard list to find, so I made my own list of all the Equinox gyms with swimming pools. It started to rank pretty quickly as the number one search result for others searching for the same thing. Unfortunately, my gym started to get very crowded, and I would have to wait for the lanes to swim. I was getting 50 to 100 visitors a day to this page, so I closed my gym swimming pool according to my blog for maintenance for a year. This way, I wouldn't have to wait for fewer people. People would say, "Hey, they’d go there and say, 'Hey guys, sorry, this pool is closed for a year. You know, we're resurfacing the bottom pavement, but these are some other nearby pools.'" And yeah, so that's what I got.
01:00:38	Sam Parr	Going to do, Johnny? Go listen. John Google, like Nick Ray Equinox, he has a PDF on his website. Yeah, download my full list of Equinox gym pools. If you sign up, we'll send you the pool lengths for each of the New York City Equinox pools.
01:00:56	Nick Gray	you know I got that lead magnet for the friends newsletter we're on the
01:00:59	Shaan Puri	zoom call lead magnet
01:01:01	Sam Parr	Yeah, you're going to have just dozens of pool fans in New York to worship you.
01:01:08	Nick Gray	wait literally that's my life a dozen here a dozen there
01:01:12	Shaan Puri	Alright, so you get that ad though. SEO hacked your way into having your own pool time for free because you told everybody the pool is closed. That's on them for not having better SEO. Cool.
01:01:21	Nick Gray	yes yes I have a couple other stories like that what
01:01:23	Shaan Puri	okay yeah give us give us a couple other I like these cool
01:01:26	Nick Gray	so
01:01:26	Shaan Puri	You know, the gray area... Oh dude, the gray area! Perfect theme with your last name. Alright, keep going.
01:01:33	Nick Gray	Here's another reason that you should be blogging and writing about interesting things. I noticed that the movie about Herbalife, the Bill Ackman movie, was produced by this hedge fund guy named John Fichthorn. I couldn't really find a lot about him, and he wasn't ranking for a lot because some of these guys...
01:01:53	Sam Parr	Is basically that John must have been pro-Herbalife and Ackman was anti-Herbalife. So they were having like a PR fight.
01:02:02	Nick Gray	john was anti as well and was funding this movie to show bill's sorta anti story some some reason or another john got involved I don't remember the gist of it but he was a hedge fund guy who was a producer of this movie and there wasn't a lot about him so I wrote an article about all the stuff I could find about him various news articles whatever I scraped it I put it all into a thing and literally like 6 months ago he called me up he's like hey is this nick graves like yeah he's like this is john fitchstone you wrote an article about me I was like oh my god I'm so sorry like do you want me to remove it he's like no I just want to fix some things can you change some of these things that you got wrong and we ended up having like a 30 minute phone call he told me about his new strategies and ideas and all the things he's doing super cool connection that he doesn't know me from anybody but because I rank for him he reached out and he wanted to help out that's one reason I've done this in other times if there's this art thing called the normandy panels okay the ss normandy was a french cruise ship that traveled the world in the 19 thirties basically to proclaim to the world that france is awesome and it had some of the most amazing art deco interiors I became captivated with the story of the ship world war 2 broke out the ship was changed into a military craft and all the guts were ripped out and now show up in private collections around the world I love this stuff nobody was really tracking these panels and so now I am the de facto resource for these panels on the internet just as a hobby project that I've maintained on my blog last week I literally got a call from a conservation expert at the metropolitan museum of art asking me for advice about who they can talk to as they're thinking about these panels and how they're gonna show and display them all of this is through publishing and living your life online these are little moments of when I've done that that have paid off for me in the long game it's important to know this didn't happen overnight this is a long term investment
01:04:05	Shaan Puri	Nick, there was a guy who I did a podcast with a couple of days ago. Sam couldn't make it, and it's a guy named Guy Spier. He's a kind of well-known value investor; he's a disciple of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. He ended up meeting Warren Buffett and all this stuff. One of the things that came out of it that I didn't realize is he read the book Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, or whatever the... I forgot what the exact title is, I think.
01:04:30	Sam Parr	it's influence
01:04:31	Shaan Puri	Influence... Sorry, and I guess the context is, he had a fund and he was investing kind of friends and family money. He's like, "Dude, I'll never get beyond friends and family money if I don't learn how to do sales and marketing. I have no idea how to do that." But like, "Oh yeah, let me go try to read a couple of books." So he reads this book about the guy who was the number one car salesman in the world. He says this guy broke the Guinness Book of World Records for selling the most cars, more than anybody else. They went and studied him and they said, "What are you doing differently? What is your influence? What is your persuasion technique?" He used to send out thousands of handwritten notes to anybody he would meet. He would send a letter, and the letter was very simple. He would write their name and he would write, "I like you." And he's like, "You know, people like to be liked."
01:05:13	Sam Parr	that's it it just said dear sean I like you from cars nest
01:05:17	Shaan Puri	The exact... that's what the book says. I don't know if there was more to it. Now, he reads this and he's like, "I don't know much. I'm not great at many things. But when I do hear something that might help me, I'm desperate enough where I just throw my all into it." The one good thing about me is I don't have to go in. So, he's like, "I decided, alright, I'm not leaving work any day until I've written at least three notes." The first one he wrote was like, "You know, Sam, I like you." He's like, "Oh my god, I can't sound this. This feels so weird." So, he's like, "Okay, I'll change that to thank you." He's like, "I can always say thank you. Thank you for blah blah blah." He's like, "I can always find something to thank them for." So, he started writing three thank you notes a day. He started writing that and he started upping the volume. Then, he tells a story about how that led to him actually meeting Warren Buffett. He's like, "You know, it's not that every note turned into some transactional thing." He said, "But I didn't even want that. It's not even that I actually genuinely felt it in the moment. I forced myself to do it, but then I started to kind of feel it as I went because I'd have to think, 'What am I thankful for?' If you keep asking yourself what am I thankful for in this person, you'll start to actually appreciate them more." It started to work. What happened was he went to the annual meeting of this guy, Monish Pabrai. Monish was a famous investor. He's been on the pod. He wrote him a letter afterwards that just said, "Thank you for having me at the event." By the way, he didn't invite him; he just said, "Thank you for having me at the event. I had a great time." That was it. Monish called him the next day and he goes, "Hey, I don't know... I'm Monish." He's like, "Oh wow, how'd you get my number?" Monish replies, "Well, I looked you up because, you know, I've been having these meetings for years and you're the only guy who's ever written me a thank you note afterwards. I just had to get to know you. Would you like to get lunch tomorrow?" So, they get lunch and at the lunch, he says, "You know, this lunch is great. Warren Buffett has a charity lunch and I think we should bid on it. Would you come in with me? Whatever amount you're comfortable with, I'll cover the rest. I'll cover, you know, four-fifths of it, three-fourths of it. You cover whatever your share is, but I want to go to it with you."
01:07:09	Sam Parr	oh so guy spier was up more up and coming with than manish
01:07:14	Shaan Puri	Yes, exactly. Manish had, at the time, like an $80,000,000 net worth. The guy was much smaller, in single-digit millions. So, the guy was like, "I think I could put in like $150k, $200k, $250k max, please." And so, they bid on it, they won, and then they ended up beating Warren Buffett. Now, the full story comes full circle. While we're doing the podcast, he reaches back and he goes, "Is this on video?" He pulls out a letter that Warren Buffett sent him, just saying, "Guy, thanks for coming to the event, you know, blah blah blah." And he's like, "Warren, with his assistant, sends out these holiday cards every year to thousands and thousands of people." He's like, "Warren gets this principle of basically everything you publish out there, whether it's a directed thank you note or, Nick, in your case, these blog posts. Publishing to the world is an invitation for serendipity. You don't really know what's gonna come out of it, but if you do enough of it in the long term, you will far outkick your coverage. You will get a huge return on this investment. Plus, it just feels good to everybody involved doing it. You'll feel good doing it, and they feel good receiving it."
01:08:14	Sam Parr	good story that's a great story
01:08:16	Nick Gray	The surface area of serendipity... and they talk about that in a lot of different things, right? That's why we don't get lucky; we put ourselves in the opportunity to become lucky.
01:08:30	Shaan Puri	right
01:08:31	Sam Parr	You want to hear another fun fact about Nick? He's the only person who hosts parties where literally five of his ex-girlfriends will be there at the same time. They all love each other and get along perfectly.
01:08:45	Nick Gray	I want to host a girlfriend conference. I want to host a conference for all my ex-girlfriends because I really do think that they would get along. They're such incredible, amazing people. It might be the worst idea ever, but I do.
01:08:58	Sam Parr	think should a 100% do that just I think there's no doubt that I
01:09:01	Nick Gray	love it
01:09:02	Sam Parr	this idea
01:09:03	Shaan Puri	no I see no potential issues
01:09:05	Sam Parr	Yeah, I think this is going to go wonderfully. I think that's perfect. I think you've nailed it, Omron.
01:09:14	Shaan Puri	Nick, can you talk? Can you give us the 5-minute crash course on how to throw a party? You know, I haven't read your book yet. I'm sorry, I bought it, but I haven't read it yet. Of course, what do you have? How?
01:09:25	Sam Parr	many copies have you sold by the way
01:09:27	Nick Gray	20,000, maybe 21,000. It's pretty good, right? Here's the thing about a party book, by the way: nobody wakes up and says, "You know what I need today? A book about how to host a party." They want books about how to get rich, how to lose money, how to blah blah blah. Nobody says they want a party book. So that's been an uphill battle. I'm very, very proud of that self-published sales figure.
01:09:51	Shaan Puri	And, but I understand you have something called the Nick Method. I don't know what the Nick Method is. What is the Nick Method for hosting a party?
01:09:57	Nick Gray	So, the Nick method to host a party will absolutely level up your events. I'm going to do a harmonic on this because if you do this one thing, you will elevate your events to be so much better. The reason is that the bar is so low for a successful event. Think about when somebody invites you to a company happy hour. It's just people standing around at an open bar. It's like... bad. That's the old way, and the future can change if we bend our will to make it do that. You can do that with the Nick method when you host events. N.I.C.K. — like my name. The "N" stands for name tags. Fill out the name tags with first names only, in big block letters. The name tags I like are the Quali-Pac 3100. I also like the Avery 5424. The Quali-Pac 3100 comes in six different colors. You guys may know those. They discontinued the 5426, which was really sad, actually.
01:10:50	Sam Parr	it's the vintage you
01:10:52	Shaan Puri	you should
01:10:52	Sam Parr	a good year
01:10:53	Shaan Puri	You should completely make up the model numbers, by the way, and just see if anyone ever finds out. And be like, "I've been waiting! I have an envelope for the... it's a golden ticket!" It's like for the first person that realizes that I was completely making up the model numbers of these name tags. You are my fellow nerd.
01:11:06	Nick Gray	I may have got those model numbers wrong
01:11:08	Shaan Puri	Why... why do the nametags matter? Because I went to a party of yours, and at first I was like, "Okay, this is 2nd grade. This is cheesy." But then it was kind of useful, obviously, because I don't remember a lot of people's names. But it seems like there's more to it than that. What is the... like what's the why behind the why?
01:11:22	Nick Gray	The "why" behind the "why" is that it's like a sports jersey to show everybody that we're on the same team. Have you ever walked into an event for the first time and felt like you were the outsider? You think, "Everybody else must know each other; they must all be friends already." When you have name tags, you show that you are all on the same team. This is not a party of cliques; we're all here together. By the way, if you host meetups, you absolutely have to use name tags when you host at a bar or another public spot. This way, you know who is there for the meetup. Have you ever gone to a meetup at a beer garden and thought, "Well, who's here for the meetup?" It's like, "Oh, these people." It's great!
01:12:01	Sam Parr	I guess I'll just figure it out
01:12:02	Nick Gray	on my own amateur hour
01:12:05	Shaan Puri	alright and name tags I'm in I buy
01:12:07	Nick Gray	Yeah, and as for name tags, I stands for intros or icebreakers. When I wrote the book, I called them icebreakers, but there's such a cringe reaction to the idea of icebreakers and that word. So now I call them intros. This can be in small groups or it can be your whole group together. But what's the first thing that everybody asks when they meet you? "What's your name? What do you do for work?" We're going to get that out of the way by having everybody say it real quick. I think it is important, by the way, to say what people do, especially for listeners of this podcast, because you never know who's looking for a job, who wants to network, or who's working on growing their business. Those rounds of intros give you an excuse; it's a conversational crutch for your guests to go up and start new conversations. Your role as...
01:12:47	Shaan Puri	Is there a better and worse way to do those intros or icebreakers?
01:12:53	Nick Gray	My man, of course! Dude, I've done more icebreakers. I live and breathe icebreakers. You have come to the right spot. Welcome to Nick Gray's Party Icebreaker Therapy! Because I've spent a lot of my life doing icebreakers, here's the deal: there are two different... do you?
01:13:11	Sam Parr	Do you know Stephane from SNL's Weekend Update? You're like that. You are Stefan right now. That is the ice. That is the ice.
01:13:22	Nick Gray	I'm so passionate about icebreakers because I've seen so many bad ones. You know, an example of a bad one is: "Alright, everybody, team meeting! Let's go around and say one fun fact about yourself." That's a terrible icebreaker. So much of my work involves making people who have social anxiety or consider themselves introverts feel more welcome. I know that some of them are going to hate this idea of intros, but ideally, what they like is to be able to know what to expect and have minimal surprises. A green-level icebreaker or intro at the beginning of an event, when there's no social rapport and people are new and a little uncomfortable, is just an easy one that doesn't take much time. The exact question that I have most people do is: "Everybody, real quick, let's just do a round of intros." You have to say the "why." The reason is that there are a lot of interesting people here, and I really want you to go meet somebody new. So, we're going to have you say your name, say what you do for work or how you spend your day, and then tell me one of your favorite things—one of your go-to things that you like to eat for breakfast. Now, that's a bit of a red herring because I actually don't want to know their breakfast; I want to know what they do for work. But we take away the attention and make them think about the breakfast. The breakfast question works because it's easy, it's subjective, people don't judge you for it, and it's not hard. You don't get locked up in your head. A bad example would be: "Hey, everybody, let's go around and name what you do for work and tell me your favorite business book." "Favorite" is definitive; it is your absolute favorite. People are going to judge me: "Oh my god, what's my favorite? What's my favorite?" So, we start with a very easy one. You could do the breakfast question. If you want to make it a little edgier, you could ask people to say their favorite vice, or ask: "What was one of your first online screen names and why did you choose it?" or "What was one of your first jobs that you ever got paid cash money for?" Now, those are beginner-level ones. I want to tell you an advanced one, but I want to check with you guys: Can I keep going?
01:15:12	Shaan Puri	yes yes keep going
01:15:14	Nick Gray	As you continue the event, about an hour later, you want to do one more advanced round of intros. This is what I call a value additive intro. Value additive means that everybody's answer adds to the benefit of the room. For Sam, for example, who lives in Connecticut, if he was hosting this in Westchester, you would say: "Hey, everybody! We're going to do our last round of icebreakers. Your question is going to be: What is one of your Westchester pro tips, life hacks, or little secrets? What's a small business you support? A dog park you like? A hiking trail you enjoy? What's the best coffee shop in town? Tell us one great thing in town that you like and want to shine a light on." So that's one example. One more example, if you don't want to focus on your town, would be: "Hey, everybody! We're going to do a last round of intros, and I want you to share a great piece of media that you have consumed recently. What's a movie you watched? A documentary? A podcast like My First Million? Like and subscribe, gentlemen's agreement! What are some of those things that you liked and want to share?" Then you go around the room and you do that. Why does this work? It works because every answer gives somebody value. "Oh, I've been meaning to go to that restaurant." "Oh, My First Million, I love those guys!" "Oh, I heard about that book; I want to check it out." You do it towards the end of your event, so at the end, people get all these new ideas, they've met all these new people, and they leave with a feeling of value. They leave feeling that they're better than when they showed up. That's what a good party is.
01:16:52	Shaan Puri	You did something at a party I went to of yours where, I don't know, you were lurking around or hopping from convo to convo. But then when you brought everybody back together, you said, "James, will you tell people that amazing email trick that you did that really improved your open rates?" The guy said something that was so useful to me that I thought, "That one thing alone made this party worth going to." It's like you had eyes and ears around the room, so you could pluck the best kind of pro tip that you heard. You had two or three people go, and you just had them share with the whole group. In that moment, I thought that was pretty awesome.
01:17:29	Nick Gray	That's an advanced tip. The main thing I want your listeners to know is that I found interesting people want to meet others who are doing interesting things. The fastest way to become interesting for me was to host my own events. We talked before about those business ideas that you don't need a lot of capital for. Hosting events is kind of the same way; you can do it with very little money. Each party should cost you less than $100. These strategies start from beginner to advanced, and I've helped hundreds of people host their very first party using this method. You should be going through life collecting the interesting people that you meet. Why is this helpful? Well, it helped me launch a multimillion-dollar business called Museum Hack, which was launched on the back of the network I built up from hosting all of these events. I hear from a lot of people, "Oh my god, I'm going to do a startup party. I'm going to do a launch party for my new app." I say, "Awesome, perfect! How many events have you hosted? When was the last event you hosted?" They respond, "Oh, I've never hosted anything." I'm like, "Bro, you have a cold list. Nobody knows you. No offense, but in real life, nobody knows you. Nobody cares. This is not going to be a successful launch party. You need to start building up and hosting these little events." By the way, the perfect size for a happy hour, in my opinion, is about 15 to 22 people. I could talk forever about this, but a small plug: I wrote a book called The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, which is really more like a workbook or a step-by-step guide that helps you actually do it. And by the way, if you want to go through a cohort or something, you give me $100 at the end of hosting the party, and I'll give you the $100 back. That's how it works. But hosting the party might change your life.
01:19:12	Sam Parr	The book made you like the king of the introverts because I had so many introverted friends who read the book. They started hosting Nick Gray parties. I would be walking around Austin at like 7 o'clock at night. In Austin, all the bars are outdoor bars. I would see, I swear to God, there was this one-mile walk through East Austin where all the bars are, and I would see multiple Nick Gray parties happening.
01:19:39	Shaan Puri	harmonicas all throughout downtown austin joe is in the night
01:19:43	Sam Parr	They would be in a circle, and we would call them "name tag Nick." So, they always had Nick's name tags. I could see the person in the middle pointing, exactly like he tells you to do in the book. I swear to God, on one mile walk, I saw three. I saw one at Lazarus, one at Whistlers, and one at this other bar. It was three Nick Gray parties. It was insane! It's like you were the introvert's king for a handful of months while I was in Austin. So many people were doing it.
01:20:13	Nick Gray	The reason we're doing this is that people are hungry for in-person events. We're all digitally saturated; we want that human connection. I found that you can add value to people by introducing them to other interesting individuals. If you're looking for a business idea or trying to raise your status in the world, you have to start by adding value. Hosting a party and introducing the interesting people you know is a way that you can add value.
01:20:40	Sam Parr	Dude, you have so many stories. We probably should wrap up in a minute, but you have like so many freaking stories. I just want you to rattle off stories. I just like hearing all the most interesting things that have happened.
01:20:50	Shaan Puri	even without explaining it for the completionist can you just say what the c and the k stand for in the nick method
01:20:55	Nick Gray	The Knick Method: - N is for Name Tags. - I stands for Intros. - C stands for Cocktails or Mocktails only. Do not do a dinner party. I talk about why dinner parties are a recipe for failure for new, first-time hosts. - K stands for Kick them out at the end. This is only a 2-hour gathering. You want to keep it tight. You want people to leave when they're wanting more. End it when it's going great. Just like this podcast. Thanks for watching! Bye-bye.

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Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas

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