5 Conversations that broke our frames this week

Shaan Puri

Not gonna lie, I haven't heard a word since you said "leverage to the tits." I've just been waiting for us to talk about that, so...

Sam Parr

We can take a quick, quick break. It's like, you know, today I'm gonna wear a turtleneck and I might try to say "leverage" to the tits.

Shaan Puri

Sam, it's just me and you. No guests. This is nice, like a date night for us. The kids are out of the house.

Sam Parr

Well, let's debrief. I have done a few things. Do you want to go back and forth about the interesting people that we hung out with? I have got like two or three. How many do you have?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I got three or four, but I have a theme with mine. I don't know if yours would fit this, but the theme with mine is all people who are contrarians in some way. What I mean by that is not like contrarian in an annoying kind of way.

Sam Parr

Not that, like, if you call yourself a contrarian, it's like you're not a contrarian, right? Correct.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. They wouldn't say this about themselves, but I would say it about them, which is what makes it kosher. The way I'd say it is they're all independent thinkers. Meaning, when I hear the stories of what they're doing, I don't even want to ask about the thing. It's like, "How did you even think of doing that thing?" You know what I mean? It's like, "Alright, before you tell me all the details, how did you even get into that situation? Why were you even looking there? Why were you even deciding to do that?"

Sam Parr

Okay, I can fit within that framework.

Shaan Puri

Okay, yeah, I'll go first. So, I hosted this dinner in San Francisco and invited maybe, I don't know, fifteen to twenty people to this thing. You did? Yeah, exactly. I know you're boys growing up, friends, and hosting things. So...

Sam Parr

In the city, you drove to the city. You did it. I drove.

Shaan Puri

To the city. Yes, this is a true, true fact. So we go there, and there's a guy there who I'm friends with. His name is Justin Coldback. Justin is a tremendous investor. He was an investor early on in companies like Grubhub, Snapchat, and Stitch Fix—just a bunch of companies that have done really well. Let me tell you the story. I was talking to him about some of his big win investments. I'll tell you a quick one. There was the Grubhub investment. I asked him, "How'd you get into Grubhub?" He said, "Oh, Grubhub was a—here's a funny story. They were doing well, but nobody knew them, and I don't think they had raised much money yet. I tried to get a hold of them. I cold emailed them, I cold called them, I called the office, but couldn't get a hold of them." So he's like, "I just flew to Chicago. I just hung out in the lobby until I bumped into the guys. I was like, 'Hey guys, I'm just really a believer in this thing. Sorry to bother you, but I just really believe in this thing.'" He ends up doing that deal. So, okay.

Sam Parr

A classic chat. A classic meet-cute.

Shaan Puri

So, I was like, "How'd the Snapchat one happen?" He told this great story. He goes, "I met Evan, and I'll never forget meeting Evan. I walked out of that meeting thinking, this guy, he's one of them. He's one of the people that's going to build this legendary company." At the time, I think he was still a student at Stanford, a college student. I asked, "Was Snapchat taking off? Was it like a rocket ship?" He replied, "No, no, it was really small. It had maybe like 50,000 users. It wasn't growing fast, and everybody on the outside viewed it as this silly little thing. It was like a toy. People thought, 'Oh, it's just used for disappearing photos. It must be for inappropriate pictures.'" He tells the story: "First, I met Evan. I heard him out, and he shared the story that people think Snapchat is about photos. When they hear 'photos,' they think about Facebook and Instagram—permanent public photos for your memories. But actually, we use photos for communication. It's back and forth." So, Justin goes, "So, it's like messaging?" Evan replies, "Yeah, it's messaging." Justin thinks, "Okay." He goes home and does some research. He realizes, "I think everybody's been comparing this to Instagram and Facebook, and because of that, the metrics don't look as good. But if you compare this to iMessage, I wonder what this looks like, or WhatsApp." He hustles and gets in touch with somebody at Apple. He asks, "Hey, I just have a good question for you. If somebody sends an iMessage, what percentage of them send an iMessage every day for the next seven days?" They run the query for him. He thinks, "Yeah, if you use iMessage, you can use it every day. That's just how you use messaging apps." He asks somebody at WhatsApp the same question. Then he gets in touch with someone from Instagram and asks, "Hey, for Instagram, if you post a photo, what are the odds you post a photo in the next seven days?" They say, "Well, super low." He asks, "Okay, what about even just using the app?" They give him a reasonable, healthy number. He goes back to Snapchat and asks them the number. Evan says, "I don't know, let me look it up." He looks it up, finds the iMessage number, and realizes, "This is communication." He notes that nobody else was really that eager to invest, and he thought, "I gotta go all in on this thing." And sure enough, he did.

Sam Parr

And you hung out with him, and he told you that story at dinner? Yeah, that's a great story. Was this like a career-changing deal? Yeah, man, that's badass. Alright, my friend. A lot of you guys who listen to the show do so because you want to start a company, but you're not sure what idea to choose, or you may not even have an idea. You like our podcast, *My First Million*, because we've done a lot of the work for you on researching all these business ideas. Well, my friends, we've made life a lot easier for you because HubSpot has put together an entire list of resources that you can use to find a market opportunity and validate your next business idea. So, if you're looking for a market size calculator, tools to identify market trends, or a huge list of ideas to get started, there's a link below. Click it, and you can have access to the whole thing—it's completely free. Now, back to the show. Did you have any other interesting people at your dinner that you want to talk about, or no?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's a couple of guys. So there's one guy, Will O'Brien. He's this Irish guy, and he's coming on the podcast because he had this sentence that caught my attention. He said, "The ocean is the next space." I thought, "What are you talking about?" He explained, "You know how recently there's been a bunch of investment in space tech? So SpaceX, obviously first, but then after that, there have been more and more companies that have been funded, like Varda and others, that are all about rockets and satellites and getting to space—mining asteroids, mining minerals, whatever it is." He goes on to say, "The ocean is the next space. The ocean is this other vast, mostly unexplored, mostly untouched by tech space." He's building an ocean tech company and told me about four or five other ocean tech companies. It was a finger to the lips moment—he said, "You gotta come on the podcast and talk about them. Don't waste this at a dinner!"

Sam Parr

That's actually a really interesting concept because right now, space is hot. Robots are so hot right now. Having a moment is oceans—the new "it" girl?

Shaan Puri

I'm looking for it, bro. I'm looking for it. I'm like, "What's gonna be hot?" Is it like...

Sam Parr

Is she like the hot girl who just has glasses on? For some reason, she's still the nerd, and then someone's going to take her glasses off and be like, "Makeover, dude!" You know, the girl.

Shaan Puri

The rom-com where all you had to do is take her hair out of the ponytail and take off the glasses.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you're now beautiful. Is that the ocean right now? Who is that?

Shaan Puri

That's Cali. No, she shows up at prom. Who's the new girl? She's not a new girl.

Sam Parr

Imagine them giving their pitch to their LPs or to their investors. You know, like glasses... yeah, and it's just like...

Shaan Puri

Ladies and gentlemen, have you seen...?

Sam Parr

She's all that. Yeah, how about *10 Things I Hate About You*? Yeah, then my friend, let us introduce you to our new ocean startup. You get it?

Shaan Puri

So, I thought that was great because he's just thinking a lot and living in a space that is, you know, sort of right under your nose, but you never really think about it.

Sam Parr

That's pretty cool. Alright, do you want me to tell you about someone I hung out with?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, give me one.

Sam Parr

Alright, so we had this guy on the Moneywise podcast about a month ago. He's in his sixties, his name's Steve Houghton, and he's a billionaire. I had a great time talking to him on the podcast. During the episode, he was discussing making money and all that traditional career stuff.

Shaan Puri

But he's a billionaire... from what?

Sam Parr

By the way, yeah, so he is worth... he says it on the podcast, he's worth something like **$2,000,000,000**. He made his initial money doing door-to-door sales, selling something. I forget what he sold, but he made like **$100,000**. With that **$100,000**, the savings and loan crisis hit. Do you know what that was in the eighties? I don't completely understand it, but basically, a bunch of cheap land became available. He got leveraged to the hilt and bought all this property, which made him **$3,000,000**. With that **$3,000,000**, he then bought some storage units that turned into like **$9,000,000**. Then, using that **$9,000,000**, he bought a bunch of... they say oil and gas. I don't know, like these Dallas guys say oil and gas, but basically, it means you buy lease rights, meaning you...

Shaan Puri

Not gonna lie, I haven't heard a word since you said "leverage to the tits." I've just been waiting for us to talk about that. We take...

Sam Parr

A quick, quick break... HubSpot ad.

Shaan Puri

Break real quick. Phone discuss that.

Sam Parr

I

Shaan Puri

Kinda liked it. Well done.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I've tried it much.

Shaan Puri

Wasn't okay.

Sam Parr

I've tried it on just... it was like, you know, "Today I'm gonna wear a turtleneck." I might try to "leverage to the tits." It's like getting a new haircut; you're liking affirmations. Yeah, this is my hand... pull this off. "Leverage to the tits" is my version of having bangs, you know what I mean? Alright.

Shaan Puri

So, you make a bunch of money from oil, glass, and land. Got it. Okay, so you didn't just talk to him on the podcast. Then you went and did an absolutely normal human thing for you after the podcast. You invited yourself to his family reunion or something.

Sam Parr

Well, after the pod, I was like, "Can I come over? Can I just hang out with you?" And he was like, "Yes, absolutely you can." So basically, he lives in Dallas. He has this huge mansion. I know that because of the way I look, a lot of people think that I know about skiing, but I don't. He was like, "I have a ski-in, ski-out house," which I didn't even know what that meant. I've never skied in my life, and I had to figure all this out. But we went to Utah at his huge mansion. It was a ski-in, ski-out thing, which, if you do ski, that's like a fancy thing or whatever. I learned a few things. The first thing that I learned—I had no idea—but his three daughters are famous. So, his wife and two daughters are famous. His wife is Jen Houghton. She's got an Instagram called Turtle Creek Lane. I think she has 1,500,000 followers. Basically, what she does is decorate their home in the most crazy, over-the-top way. For example, for Christmas, it looks like a Christmas dollhouse, but that's her real house. She got famous doing that via Instagram and then brought in the other two daughters to do, you know, their shtick, which I actually don't know what their shtick is. But I know that a million people follow them because when I was around them, I was like, "They're just living," and people just love watching them.

Shaan Puri

Were they just like snapping content constantly, or what?

Sam Parr

No, that's funny. They weren't... I mean, they did a bit, but it wasn't any different than anyone else who has like a thousand followers, you know? It was not obnoxious. They actually mentioned that they worked with you on a company you invested in. They were like, "His company that he invested in, they did a great job of hooking us up." So, they knew you.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of them, for sure. But I didn't know, maybe from their perspective, they do a good job in their personal content. It doesn't look like "I'm the daughter of a billionaire" type of thing, right? It's super relatable, it's fun, and it's easy to follow. It's easy to like.

Sam Parr

So, I didn't know that they were like these famous people. The second thing I didn't really know was that they were Mormon. But they weren't just Mormon; he was like **King Mormon**. He's on the board of BYU [Brigham Young University]. I think I learned this the first morning when Sarah and I got up at 7 AM to go hang out. Everyone was sitting around the kitchen, and we were just kind of patiently waiting for them to get the coffee ready.

Shaan Puri

You're just vaping rudely in the kitchen.

Sam Parr

I'm just sitting in this kitchen, and we're like, "Do you guys do coffee? What's up with that?" They had to tell me that they don't drink coffee. They said, "But we went and bought coffee beans to accommodate you, and we have this coffee machine. We even went and bought a coffee machine! We don't know how to use it, but it's over here." They had to explain everything, and I don't even know if they bought the right beans. They literally had never gone through this experience. Imagine not knowing: do you get the beans or do you get the grounds? How does it work? What device do you need to grind the beans? Is this the right machine, or is it one of the five different types of machines? They didn't know, and they went to accommodate us, which was hilarious. But what I learned with the Instagram stuff is that, dude, middle America moms with their following are so much more profitable than doing comedy bits for millennials or Gen Z, you know what I mean? They make...

Shaan Puri

%

Sam Parr

They kill it, and they would post like these gummies that they got, or this candy, or this other widget that someone had sent them. They were showing me how many of the products that they sell, and it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. It was like, "Why are the people listening to this podcast?" They're like, "I want to do things for the creator economy." No, just do it for Lisa in Oklahoma.

Shaan Puri

**Mom of the economy. That's who you want to sell to.**

Sam Parr

Oh my god, it was crazy! They were like super Mormon, and I'm not into religion. I don't like religion in particular, but I learned a lot. The one thing that I learned was they explicitly stated their values. You know when you're with your family and you make jokes with your sister? Like, "Yeah, you said you're on a diet, why are you eating that?" You just mess with her, teasing. There was not one "bring them down" joke, and I was like, "You guys haven't made fun of each other once?" They were like, "Well, you know, we're taught in this religion that you gotta treat people like Christ would, and he doesn't make fun of people, so we don't make fun of people." They had all these explicit answers. I would ask them a variety of different questions, like, "Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?" It was never like, "It just feels good," or "I don't know, we just kinda do it." It was all well mapped out, and I thought that was really cool to be super intentional about living. When I asked them, "Why don't you guys drink coffee?" they said, "Well, we're taught not to try to be addicted to things or overly rely on stuff." I was like, "Alright, that's a good reason." So, it was crazy to learn all that stuff. But here's the last thing I learned from this family: it was like a 15,000 square foot house. You've heard me talk on this podcast, and I think you feel the same way about owning stuff and having a big house. It's a lot of work, and I don't want to do that. But dude, it's such a life hack for being around your family! It's the greatest thing ever. I've noticed this among this family and also a bunch of other really wealthy families. If you can acquire a home that's big enough for your grandkids and everyone's super comfortable to stay there, they will want to stay there more. Thus, you will spend more time with your family. We didn't have a private chef; we didn't do anything. The whole almost entire weekend was us just sitting around a kitchen table, cooking our own meals, and just hanging out. It was like the way to live.

Shaan Puri

It was awkward being at their family reunion, or what was...

Sam Parr

Dude, they were so... they were like, "Come on in," and like, they might...

Shaan Puri

Even more awkward. They're so nice. Also, guys, what did you do?

Sam Parr

Nice! I just think these guys are nice all the time. I asked them, "Why are you so nice?" and "Why do you guys have so much fun?" They had activities planned, like going in the pool, doing a cold plunge, and then getting into the hot tub. I was like, "What are you guys doing?" They replied, "We just want fun to be the center of everything we do."

Shaan Puri

And it was just amazing. This is like the opposite of, you know, when you're a bad kid in school and they take you to jail. They want to create shock value and show you what your life could look like if you just keep going down this path.

Sam Parr

I just got hugged really hard. Yeah, this is...

Shaan Puri

Like the opposite. You're like, "Hey, I want to see what a really healthy family dynamic looks like."

Sam Parr

I'm going to be.

Shaan Puri

There for a weekend immersion.

Sam Parr

It was the healthiest family dynamic I have ever seen anything like this. Then they have a subreddit dedicated to making fun of them. Have you ever seen this? So, first of all, do you know why there are so many Mormon influencers? Basically, Mormons are explicitly told they should journal. You know, journaling is a good way to reflect on life and it slows you down. That led to Mormon mommy bloggers, which are inherently kind of interesting because they're really into... I think Mormons are told they need to prepare for the end of the world. That's some awesome content, right? Like talking about your packing system for all your nuts and stuff. That's really good content! Parlay that into Instagram, and that is one of the reasons why there are so many freaking Mormon influencers. I didn't know that, but they have a whole subreddit. It's called something like "Turtle Creek Lane Snark" or something like that. Every time they post something, people make fun of them for the silliest stuff. Like one time, we were in the house and one of the kids was eating a piece of cheese. For some reason, a two-year-old shouldn't have cheese. I don't know why, but that was a post that someone made fun of them for. Or there was one time where Sarah, my wife, made it into the background of one of the photos, and they were like, "Who's this person?" as if she was a new cast member. They were Googling her and listing out her name. It was crazy! I asked them, "Does this stuff bother you?" and they were like, "No, like what? What they care about us is their business. It doesn't bother us at all." So this family had the most positive outlook on life, and it did wear off on me, to be honest. I'm not about to go and become a Mormon or anything, but I want to hang out with them a whole lot more.

Shaan Puri

Right, this is wild. By the way, didn't he get in like a helicopter accident the next week or something?

Sam Parr

The week after, yeah, he... on the podcast "Moneywise," he talked about how much he loves flying helicopters. I don't know all the details, but like three days afterwards, they were flying a helicopter. I think he was flying it himself; in this particular case, he was the passenger. They got in a wreck, and it was not good. He survived, and he's going to be fine, but it was a bad wreck. If you go to their Instagram, you'll see all 10 of their family members surrounding him at the hospital. So, yeah, he's going to have a lot of issues to deal with. But like, this was the kindest, sweetest family I've ever been around. Do you know Raleigh Williams?

Shaan Puri

Mhmm.

Sam Parr

He came to, and it was like me, Raleigh Williams, and then the Houghton family. Raleigh Williams' kid was amazing; she's 10 years old. I was like, "How did you learn how to talk this good?" She replied, "You know, for the church, they teach us how to do a homily. That's what we call it in the Catholic Church. I don't know what the Mormons call it." We talk in front of like 500 people at church, and she said that in doing that, she learned that she needed to... and she told me all the principles of speaking confidently. I was like, "You're the greatest person! I'm naming my next daughter Navy because of you." But this freaking family was awesome! I honestly felt like I was in a reality TV show, but there was no drama—zero drama. It was like the happiest thing I've ever seen. The husbands, by the way, are the managers of the two daughters. One guy was like, "Yeah, I used to work at Amazon. I helped create, I think, Alexa or something like that. But then when I saw the potential for this influencer stuff, I quit right away." They told me how much money they make, and it was just an astronomical amount. Yeah, it was crazy! So that was my weekend with a billionaire Mormon family, and it was awesome.

Shaan Puri

Alright, where can we go from here? This might feel like a letdown after that. Let's see... I'm just going to give you three numbers to pick from. I have three people on this list. Give me a number: do you want number one, number two, or number three? Maybe I could rapid-fire these, and then you could tell me which one you want to talk about. Okay, I hung out with my friend James Courier. We did a podcast together that's going to come out soon. He has this one bit that I just really liked. So, he's all about his fund, which is called NFX, as in network effects. Nobody on earth knows more about network effects than this guy. He has this great blog post and this thing that we talked about, which is called "Your Life on Network Effects." I hadn't really thought of it this way, but the contrarian thing he said was about leaving San Francisco. We had a bunch of friends who we used to hang out with that have moved out of San Francisco during COVID because they were like, "Oh, everything's online now, so we'll just leave, and it'll be good for taxes." He goes, "Look, I've already... you know, personal choices, do whatever. But if you wanted to be here and you left because of taxes and because you thought it's the same on Zoom, he's like, that's idiotic. You're just going to save 13% on your taxes, and you're going to make 13 times less money on that same money-saving decision."

Sam Parr

Moving for taxes... When someone tells me they do that, I think they're stupid. I think that's a really foolish thing to do. Do you agree or disagree?

Shaan Puri

There's a lot of people that do that.

Sam Parr

I think it's foolish. Sorry, they're not stupid. I think that decision is foolish, or rather, I don't agree with it.

Shaan Puri

That decision, and actually several other decisions they make, are probably also stupid.

Sam Parr

But don't you agree? The essence of succeeding is to do what you want. You don't have to move to Puerto Rico. If you want to live in Puerto Rico, then great, do it! But if taxes are the number one reason, I think that is your... what's that phrase? You can't see the forest for the trees or something like that.

Shaan Puri

I mean, I kind of agree. That's why I'm still here. But yeah, I thought that was interesting. When he talks about your life in terms of network effects, his idea is basically this: if you could take all the decisions you make and instead of thinking of them as things you did or decisions you made, or just events in your life, you looked at them as either joining a network or leaving a network. You either added to a network or you subtracted from a network. For example, where you choose to go to college is not just about the college or the education; you're picking a network to join. I joined the Duke alumni network, and that alumni network is going to have certain benefits down the road. It's also going to lead me to maybe certain careers that that network tends to go towards, like Wall Street finance and things like that. Where you live is obviously a huge factor. The city you choose to live in can determine whether you join the Hollywood network, which comes with a certain lifestyle and career opportunities, etc. When you leave, you are opting out of that network or distancing yourself from the white-hot center of the network. Even just the skills you pick, like if you want to learn marketing, well, you're actually joining a network of other people who know marketing. Those are the people you're going to hang out with, and those are the opportunities you're going to get. That's why the next decisions are going to be heavily influenced by the network decisions that you make initially.

Sam Parr

And what... did that make you reflect on the decision that you've made? Are you thinking that you did the right thing or the wrong thing? How will you implement this? Because that makes me... I don't regret it. I don't regret moving, mostly because of family, or only because of family. But I do wish I was a child.

Shaan Puri

You opted into your own network, right? You know, your own family network or whatever. You opted to be more dense there.

Sam Parr

and

Shaan Puri

Have more connectivity there, which is going to be great for your family raising and all that. But you opted out of the tech network of San Francisco, let's say.

Sam Parr

If I could live anywhere, like if family weren't a thing, it would either be in San Francisco or a suburb that's about twenty minutes away.

Shaan Puri

But right.

Sam Parr

I would live there in a heartbeat. And just, what did it make you feel like?

Shaan Puri

Well, he kind of points out, he's like, "You know, there are some things that you don't choose, like where you're born," right? Things like that. But then, after that, it's a lot about what you start to choose to do. Even little things, like you know, language is a network. So, if you're in China right now, choosing to join the English network is actually a really powerful decision you can make. That's going to completely change the trajectory of your life. If you start to look at things, English is not just a language; it's a network. It's a network of people who can all communicate with each other using certain syllables, words, vowels, and phrases. Right? Money is a network too. Joining the Bitcoin network early on turned out to be a really profitable decision because you picked, "Hey, we're a bunch of people who all believe that this thing is going to be valuable." So, it just made me more aware of that. It made me think, you know, why did I host that dinner in San Francisco? Partly because James was like, "Yeah, one of the big mistakes I made earlier in my career was I got successful and I kind of siloed myself. I just wanted to do my own thing on the edge of the network." He's like, "It was great for creativity because I was just in my bunker, doing my thing, but it was terrible because I turned down that lunch meeting with Travis when he was starting Uber. I was too egotistical to take that job at Facebook early on when Mark was trying to recruit me because I just thought, 'I'm going to be off in my own land, creating my own little castle over here.'" And he's like, "Again, fun for creativity and for learning, but a little bit foolish to the extent I was with that." So, for me, for example, I moved forty-five minutes out of San Francisco, and that reduced a lot of the serendipitous meetings that I could have in the network of people that I like to be around—interesting, ambitious people.

Sam Parr

Would you move closer, then?

Shaan Puri

Well, I don't think I'll move closer because the family network is out here, and it's just better. The school that we're in and all that stuff is better out here. But I'm like, yeah, I could definitely drive to San Francisco twice a month and host a dinner, do a couple of live podcasts with people there. That'll be great, and like that's not that much of an effort. But just to stay... just to keep one, almost like in the diagram, right? One line connected to the white hot center of the network.

Sam Parr

And I mean, you live near Bart, right?

Shaan Puri

I do, but Bart... Bart's a network I don't want to be a part of.

Sam Parr

You're opting out of that one? Yeah, I'm out of that one. Alright, I have another person. So basically, I don't speak at conferences unless my wife wants to come with me, if Neville wants to join and do it with me, and if Nick Gray will attend. Those three things have to happen, you know? I'd buy entourage.

Shaan Puri

All three.

Sam Parr

All three have to happen. All three have to happen.

Shaan Puri

That's your, like, "I only want green Skittles." That's your rider.

Sam Parr

That's my rider: Sarah's gotta begin. The reason I don't like traveling, but I like to travel if it's for a conference, is because I love going somewhere. The first two days are conferences, and the next few days are fun because you meet someone at the event who's going to tell you cool things to do. Also, I just like doing stuff with my friends. So, I went and spoke at this thing called the Newsletter Conference, which was pretty wild because like 15 of my ex-employees were speakers. Many of them are millionaires or making a whole lot of money doing newsletter stuff, and that made me feel proud. I met James Altucher. You know who James Altucher is?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's been on the podcast. What is his title in life? He's an author, like what is his title?

Sam Parr

I think James might be the craziest person that I've met in the last six months. If you Google James Altucher, you're going to see that the thing that sticks out is his hair. He's got this crazy haircut, and in real life, he sort of looks like a rock star. He kind of looks like he's not trying, but he looks so different that he appears super cool and awesome. James is the type of guy who has an interesting story. I don't know his full background, but he's created a startup, made a bunch of money, blew it all on stocks or bad investments, did another startup, made a bunch of money, lost it all, and now I think he's on like mountain three. He has a thing called "Choose Yourself Financial." It started out just as a newsletter where he would write about his interesting opinions and things like that. He sold a portion or all of it to Agora, which is a large newsletter business that makes something like $1 to $2 billion a year in revenue. I don't like their company. I think they have like 15 or 20 newsletters. It basically started in the eighties as one newsletter, and now they have like 20. They acquire other people's newsletters, and I think they do a lot of nefarious stuff. So, I'm not trying to promote those guys, but now they're not all bad. He sold to them, and now he's their highest or one of their highest-earning newsletters. His newsletter, "Choose Yourself Financial," did $130 million in revenue last year. The numbers are crazy—very profitable. He said all this on stage; everything I'm saying is public. I hung out with him and his wife, and we had a great time. He said one thing to me in passing that made me stop in my tracks. He said, "Yeah, you know, I love DoorDash because I don't leave my house for like three to six weeks at a time. If I need a pen, they just bring me a pen." I was like, "What did you just say? You don't leave your house for like three to six weeks at a time?" He told me, "Yeah, sometimes I just get so into something that I literally will not step foot outside for like four weeks at a time." He said like five other things like that, where he was just so fascinating. It was proof of something I think I read in Peter Thiel's book, "Zero to One." He mentioned a graph where extreme success often correlates with extreme personality traits. Those traits can come off as weird or undesirable in many settings. You could be like Elon Musk, which means you might be kind of mean sometimes, or like Albert Einstein, who was forgetful and wore two different socks. James is that guy. He very much has the brilliant but forgetful and quirky scientist vibe. It was wild seeing him have normal conversations because his opinions and the way he looked at things were 100% fresh and different from how I viewed the most normal things. For example, when he said he didn't leave his house, I thought that was horrible. He was shocked that I was criticizing him, which is pretty funny because he should live his life and be happy, and that made him happy. In the green room, he was playing chess the whole time with Steph Smith, who was also there. I asked, "You guys know each other?" They replied, "Well, we've never actually met, but we play chess constantly together online." He meets a lot of his friends playing chess online. There were just so many little tidbits about this guy that made him so fascinating to me. By the way, if you know Agora, you know they're famous for these long-form sales pages and incredibly aggressive advertising. Do you remember in like February 2020 or February 2019, James' face was everywhere? He said, "I hate that. I hated it. I hate our landing pages. I hate how long they are. I hate how they look—too aggressive." He tried to write differently and make his own landing pages, but none of them could ever convert nearly as well as the crazy stuff that they would write.

Shaan Puri

So, did he make a ton of money off that Agora thing?

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, alright. Or maybe the answer is "yes." And also, I think the answer is still...

Shaan Puri

And it's still okay. Gotcha! Alright, I like that one, James. I have another one that's less weird but more side questy. So, Sheel Manat, who came on the podcast recently, you can see his episode.

Sam Parr

The number's crushed.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he did really well. He was at the dinner too, and Scheele tells these stories. If you just listen to the stories, you'd be like, "Wow, this guy is fascinating." You would never know his day job because Scheele is an epic side quester. His day job is that he's a VC; he invests in fintech companies. The weird thing is that if you listen to him, he's like, "Oh yeah, I'm taking courses or whatever. I'm getting certified to be a travel agent now so I can access all these travel discounts." He's been doing that. He's like, "Yeah, I actually looked at buying the ambassadorship position for being an ambassador of a country because it has these perks." He's basically like your friend who's really good with credit card points, but for everything, including credit card points. By the way, I think on the podcast he gave us a pretty good credit card tip. He just has all these epic side quests he's gone down over and over again. He's like, "Yeah, I got married in the metaverse and Taco Bell sponsored it." Oh, and hey, guess what else I did? I started this auction company to buy and sell domain endings like .app and photography. That was his business. It's like these aren't even normal; even his businesses aren't normal businesses. They're just weird side quests that made money.

Sam Parr

I think his side is **thistle**. Is that it?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Thistle was another one. He's like, "Oh yeah." The story he told on the podcast was that he was interested in this food delivery space. It got really hot—Sprig, etc. I was ordering from all of them, but I just thought, "There's no way this thing's making money." So then, as a side quest, I signed up and became a driver for a month. I drove around, and it was amazing. I met all these people, learned the model, and I realized that this thing's never gonna make money. And he was right. Sprig went out of business, so did all the others that were doing it. And he's like, "But we could do this other thing, Thistle." I got my friend to do it, and now Thistle is like... I forgot what he said on the podcast; it's like an absurd number.

Sam Parr

I think it was like **$1,000,000**+.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, over a hundred million dollars in revenue, and I was like, "Wow, this guy is just always on side quests." For example, he was talking about how Mr. Beast posted this video about being on an abandoned island or whatever. He said, "I'm the only one here, and there's nothing here," blah, blah, blah. Then she was like, "Hold on, I've been to that island, but without the video." And he's like, "No, wait, that's not abandoned. There's a bar like three minutes away from where he is, and there's this motel." So he tweeted about this, and then Jimmy calls him and is like, "Hey man, what are you talking about? That is an abandoned island." He's like, "No, it's not. It's three minutes away from a bar." And then he's like, "No, technically it's abandoned if you look at X, Y, Z." I was like, this guy just constantly gets himself into situations.

Sam Parr

Wait, Jimmy called him because Jimmy felt his integrity was under attack.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and he was like, "Did you give Jimmy my number?" I was like, "No, I didn't even know this happened."

Sam Parr

And he shielded back down. He was like, "No, it's not an abandoned island." Or were they both right?

Shaan Puri

He's like, "Where were you?" He's like, "Look at it, three minutes away. There's a place, there's a pub. It's not abandoned." I think technically maybe there was something about the border, or like, I don't know. I didn't get into the details. I obviously don't give a shit. But I just thought it was amazing that there are people who do things for their own amusement. I'll bring this home with a little TikTok I saw. It was a TikTok that had gone viral, and I'm glad it went viral because it means that other people are similarly attracted to those who just do things for their own amusement and really for no other reason. So, the TikTok that went viral was like, "Shout out to my boy Willie for spending all of our bachelor party weekend trying to learn this dance." I guess there's like some dance, and there's this awkward-looking white guy with two black friends trying to show him how to do it. Everywhere they went during the bachelor party, he was just practicing this dance to see if he could learn it in a weekend. He starts off really bad, but by the end, he's actually pretty good. Then they cut to the wedding, and he's doing the same dance just for fun on the side of the dance floor—not part of a performance, just doing his thing over there. I respect that. I think I respect that more than I respect someone's achievements in life. I kind of respect people who value their own amusement as the highest order. I think Scheele is an example of that. The things he does, he's not doing it because there's some outcome he's seeking; he's just amused by it. Therefore, he follows it and ends up in these situations that, in the end, become really good stories. But I don't think that's why he's doing it.

Sam Parr

I think, you know, we've done close to 700 of these episodes. Sheel would be in my top 10 of people who I admire most. I think that, Sheel, did you like... people? I don't even know if we mentioned this one. Do you know that Sheel's in a Justin Bieber music video? Of course he is.

Shaan Puri

Why wouldn't he be in a Justin Bieber music video?

Sam Parr

I know. How did...?

Shaan Puri

That happened.

Sam Parr

I was watching from the outside. I think the way it happened was during COVID. Scheele created an online version of "The Bachelor." Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I watched this. It was great.

Sam Parr

And what was it exactly? Was this during COVID?

Shaan Puri

Or on Zoom, I think it was called "The Zoom Bachelor" or something like that. It was essentially "The Bachelor," and there were a bunch of women that would pop up. Then he would give out roses and eliminate them. In the end, he would pick someone, and they would go on a date or something.

Sam Parr

And somehow, I could be confusing all the stories, but somehow this... it was a hit. It was awesome. Then there's a video of him where he's turned around like this, and it looks like he's making out with someone in the video. Yeah, so I think he was... I'm watching this all from outside. I think he posted that video, and then he turns around and smiles. He looks so happy, and that clip made it into a Justin Bieber music video. If you go and watch the music video, his clip—Shields' clip—is the best clip.

Shaan Puri

Oh, I have it. I have it. It's there.

Sam Parr

What was it called? Like, "Love Yourself"? Was it "Love Yourself"? And he's like, it looks like he's making out with someone. But is it? Play that clip and watch that.

Shaan Puri

Oh my God, this is so funny! It turns around, and he's got a huge mustache for some reason, and he's just cheesing.

Sam Parr

Do you know another crazy thing about him? By the way, I think he created the podcast "StartUp" on Gimlet Media.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think he did.

Sam Parr

Or what? He had his hands in it. Maybe we'll say that.

Shaan Puri

Good, yeah.

Sam Parr

He just has had so many weird things happen to him.

Shaan Puri

Let me tell you about another person who I think is doing their own thing. My buddy Furcon, who you know, has also been on the back of the ass. Furcon and I tried to start a bunch of companies together for like, you know, six or seven years. I know Furcon super well. One of the things about Furcon is that he is just a grinder. It doesn't matter how successful or wealthy he's gotten. I mean, his last company, AppLovin, is like a hundred billion dollar company. Yeah, and it's absurd.

Sam Parr

Was why is it taking off so much? By the way, like Applovin, for years it was sort of a joke. When you would drive in San Francisco, they had billboards where they were trying to recruit engineers, and the name Applovin came out, right? Or we still associated it with McLovin. It was like, "Is this a real company?" You know what I mean? And now it's one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, he—Furkan—has been early into a bunch of tech things, right? He's basically like a hacker's hacker. He was really into crypto before it was cool. I remember literally being at the office and he was not paying attention because he was buying into the Ethereum ICO at like $0.17 or something like that. I was like, "Ethereum? That's literally the dorkiest name ever. It's never going to work." So, I didn't buy because your boy's a genius, and that's why I'm a podcaster now and he's a billionaire.

Sam Parr

Is Percon a billionaire now?

Shaan Puri

I don't know. I don't know if he is or isn't, but he started a...

Sam Parr

**$100 billion company**

Shaan Puri

I don't know. He's not like... he's not like three zip codes away. Maybe he's two. I don't know. Well, he's getting close. So, he got into crypto early on. Remember when Web3 happened? Everybody was like piling into Web3. Furcon was building a company in that space. Literally, this company is called Thirdweb. He was just really into the actual technology behind it. He's like, "Oh, I think I can make these tools easier to use for developers," and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Sam Parr

Dude, one time he did a talk on... remember the raspberry?

Shaan Puri

Raspberry Pi.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and like, he spent **forty-five minutes** explaining it all to me. He knew everything about it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he knows everything about everything. The second thing he got really into was VR. He bought me an Oculus just because he was like, "I don't want to tell you about this and hope that you go try it out. Here, here's the new Oculus headset. Go home and put this on." So, okay, that’s the type of friend you need. I go home, I put it on, and I'm blown away. I'm like, "Wow, this thing's getting really good." Then I think he bought me another one when it got better, and I started buying them. I'm paying attention to VR, but you know, I'm like every other lemming out there. I pay attention when things get hot. Furcon, the reason why Furcon is so great, is because he doesn't pay attention when things get hot. He's in the hardcore nerd bucket where he pays attention because it's interesting to him. He doesn't care if it's popular or not, if it's hot or not, or if it's here or not. He wants to be on this train the whole time. He was telling me about his lab called Effing. He first told me about Thirdweb, how it was growing and how it had real revenues. I was like, "Oh wow, that's great." Then he started telling me about VR. I asked him, "Sam, how many people do you know that are interested in VR right now?" It seems like everybody who is interested in tech is interested in AI.

Sam Parr

Where's your Oculus sitting right now?

Shaan Puri

Dude, where's the biggest pile of dust in my room? I think it's back there. It's... yes, gone. Same.

Sam Parr

My, I mean, like, I did what everyone did. They got it. This is awesome! This is gonna change the world.

Shaan Puri

Gonna change everything.

Sam Parr

I don't know where the charger is. It's in my drawer somewhere. Yeah, let's...

Shaan Puri

Go back to scrolling on my phone. Yeah, and he didn't do that. He's like, he would tell me, "We would hang out and he's like, I'm working in VR today." Once a week, I go co-work in VR. Like, what? And so guess what? His interest in VR, there's not... it's not popular right now. In fact, they went to a VR conference and this VR conference was like, you know, crickets basically. And he sends...

Sam Parr

Is VR the new ocean?

Shaan Puri

It's the old ocean that's the problem. So he doesn't even have the new tag. Our buddy Hubert, who works with him, goes there wearing a black t-shirt that just says, "I invest in VR" huge on the front. He's like, "Dude, it was like being the only girl at a prom or something like that. Everybody was interested in him because he's the only guy left investing in VR." And he's like, "Dude, it's actually kinda working. If you look at the top 15 apps in the Oculus store, these three guys over here own three of the top 15. They're printing money right now! This thing is amazing. Yeah, it's not the hot thing right now, but I don't know if you can make $10,000,000 as a small team building these apps. You're on the front line of this, and you're the only people specializing in this technology. Good things are gonna happen." So it just kinda reminded me that all the money is made either by being sort of right on time, but timing is super hard. The same way that Warren Buffett was like, "Don't try to time the market; focus on your time in the market." Furcon is doing the tech, the engineering version of "time in market." Once he's interested in something and believes in it, he doesn't let his interest go in and out based on popular sentiment, VCs, or exits. It's just based on whether the tech is getting better or not. I think that's such a strong thing that's gonna help them be super, super successful.

Sam Parr

To all the young people listening who are looking for something to do, I feel like that story is maybe life-altering. This is a very good premise, and I'm on board with it. I do think VR is actually... and this isn't a secret. Mark Zuckerberg, who has a really good ratio of getting things right, has said, "This is the thing." And do you know who else loves VR? Sheryl. Sheryl posts videos of... or not, it's not VR, but the meta technicals... yeah, or what's it called? The Ray-Bans.

Shaan Puri

Ray-Bans, yeah.

Sam Parr

He loves those Ray-Bans, and it's very clear how that's all in the same ballpark of VR and how this can all work.

Shaan Puri

That was what I was going to bring up next. I love those two! I have them; I bought some for my sister just for her birthday recently. I think that is a great product. Do you have them, by the way?

Sam Parr

No, I'll go buy them right now. What do they do? Like, what's the... well, the first, the very...

Shaan Puri

First, the easy thing is they're basically AirPods. So, people don't really realize this. At worst-case scenario, you just bought a pair of AirPods that you're probably not going to lose. The audio from the glasses, the part that goes behind your ear, is not in your ear, but you can hear music, podcasts, whatever, super easily. So, the audio and the AirPod-type feature is great. Then there's the camera. It's a hands-free camera. If you have a kid, like for kids, this thing is incredible. I wear them to my daughter's soccer games or whatever. The moment passes so quickly with kids. If you're fumbling to get your phone out of your pocket, unlock it with Face ID, or type in your password to get the camera app open, it's over by then. Now, you're looking through your phone at life versus your glasses, which are already on your head. It's on a swivel. All you do, literally, if something's going on or something's interesting, is just tap the thing, and it starts recording. The video looks great, by the way. It's really, really good. So, if you're traveling, if you're out and about, if you've got kids, if you're at a sports event, or if you're at a concert, this thing is amazing.

Sam Parr

So awesome.

Shaan Puri

To me, these are the future. I think Meta knows this; they're investing in it very heavily. I think it's interesting because it's kind of uncontested right now. Maybe Apple will get in the game, if they still have the juice to do it. Snapchat seems to have fallen out. The famous... I forgot what the thing was called... Magic Leap, those guys died or are dying, and the Humane Pin died, right? All that stuff is just kind of dead. I think Facebook has this sort of uncontested space right now. The thing I was going to say, though, is I remember when I was in San Francisco, this company called Leap Motion got bought. Do you remember Leap Motion?

Sam Parr

Yes, did that become a video game or like part of a video game?

Shaan Puri

They got bought by Facebook. What they were doing was like this thing you wore on your wrist. You could just move your hands and do hand gestures to control a computer, essentially. They never really found product-market fit because, guess what? Not a lot of people want to sit in front of their desktop and do hand gestures like in "Minority Report." Replacing the mouse and keyboard wasn't like super appealing, I guess.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but it's pretty sweet if you have some physical disability. I mean, there are a lot of amazing applications, I would imagine.

Shaan Puri

Maybe, but you still gotta use your hand and your arm, right? So it's like, you know, the same thing as, I guess, a mouse really. But the team that was working on it was cutting edge at this kind of gesture control. And guess what? Being the best team in the world at gesture control... another example of this was a company that got bought for, I think, over a hundred million dollars. There was another company that got bought for a hundred million dollars that never hit product-market fit. This was the company that was working on face masks. Remember when Snapchat came out with those face filters? It was super hot, like the dog face filter.

Sam Parr

It emoji.

Shaan Puri

No, it was called **Masquerade**; that was the name of the company. I think it was a European company, just a small company, and again, it got bought for like **$100 million**+. Then Facebook bought another company that was doing a very similar thing. Or maybe I'm mixing up who bought Masquerade, but I guess my point is being at the leading edge of tech. You get two shots to win. If you make the breakthrough app that actually does get product-market fit, then you get to win in the billions. If you're just the most hardcore tech team at building good functionality and working on these new platforms, your team of 10 really strong engineers can create a company with a floor value of **$50 to $100 million**. I don't think most people realize this. I think most people think starting a company is really risky. Yes, it is, but there are less risky versions of this. Right now, if you were working on the **Meta Ray-Bans** platform, which, like today, has no app store for it, there's nothing. But guess what? There’s going to be! That form factor is for sure going to exist, and there are going to be apps built on it. So, if I were part of a hardcore tech team or if I worked at one of these big companies, like let's say I was at Facebook or I was at Snap with Snap Spectacles, the smartest thing you could do is spin out with your five smartest friends and say, "Hey guys, the floor of this company is a **$50 to $100 million** company, and the ceiling is like a **$1 billion** or **$2 billion**, or whatever it is." All we're going to do is live at the cutting edge of this. We just have to survive five years; we need time in the market. We just have to survive five years in order to be there. We're going to work out all the kinks about spatial recognition, getting gesture control correct, and all these little tech problems that you need to solve to make things great. Because either you're going to do it and crack the app, or they're going to buy you because you've solved a bunch of gnarly problems.

Sam Parr

There was... I'm reading this book called *Digital Gold*. It's about the history of Bitcoin and the early community and things like that. I don't...

Shaan Puri

I've read that one.

Sam Parr

It's great! There's not actually that many books written about the early characters, which is why I wanted to read it. We had Nick Bilton on, and we did "American Kingpin" about Silk Road. I was like, these stories are really fun. Now, I know a lot of the early characters of Bitcoin and their experiences, like going to their first conference. At that first conference, there were about 50 people there, and it was at a shabby restaurant. Just all these stories of a crowd of nerds who were regarded as freaks, and no one took them seriously. Then one legitimate financier said, "Okay, there's something here," and then another one, and then another one. There was controversy, but they overcame it. It fits all the stereotypes of these types of stories. What you're describing is like that same thing—it's a group of weirdos. You know, what did we say about that time I had some guy pitch me a company that I thought was really stupid? Now it's huge! I thought, "This product is dumb," and then I realized, "Oh my God, people are using this. They're dumb!" And then, "Oh my God, everyone's using this. I'm dumb!" You know what I mean? That's the process of some of these things. When you're talking about these meta glasses, VR, and oceans, I'm like, "Oh my God, there's a story here, a story there." It's the same pattern over and over again. It's a really fun pattern.

Shaan Puri

Speaking of crypto, I have three crypto things for you real quick. Number one: James, on the podcast, tells a story about... because he wrote this blog post a long time ago. He tells a story about how his friend thought he was Satoshi. The reason why is because...

Sam Parr

How flattering!

Shaan Puri

I know, by the way, like, so what's up with my friends?

Sam Parr

It's like, "Who made?"

Shaan Puri

A long shot.

Sam Parr

You think I'm Satoshi? No, I could never write you.

Shaan Puri

What an honor, though! The thing that he was saying was he wrote this blog post that I’ve read; it’s still on his blog. It’s called "One Currency to Rule Them All," and it was about creating a digital world currency. He tells a story on the podcast about why he was interested in that and what happened. So, it was him and Philip Rosedale, who started Second Life. By the way, Second Life is probably still the best virtual world to this day. They had millions and millions of players who lived their lives in there. They formed relationships and marriages, and they even had their own currency in that world.

Sam Parr

It is its own thing still.

Shaan Puri

I don't know if Second Life has officially died. I'm not sure if it's still going, but at the time, they had Linden Bucks or whatever, Linden Dollars, and it was like a whole thing. So, him and Philip Rosedale were interested in this. There’s a famous VC [venture capitalist]—I'm forgetting the name now—but he tells a story about a famous VC. They used to meet once a week and talk about, "Okay, how are we going to build this world currency?" They were like, "Well, here's what it needs to do," and all the things that Bitcoin eventually did. They said, "It needs to have this, it needs to have this." What they did was go to the Lobby Conference, which, if you know, is like this hundred to hundred person conference, and they would break out a little bit.

Sam Parr

Last year at the lobby conference, it was awesome. It was all internet OGs. It was so cool.

Shaan Puri

So, they were at one, I guess, and their little breakout conversation was about this. They were like, "Hey, I think there's a need for this." He bought the domain **blue.com** (B-L-U-E dot com). He was going to launch it; it was going to be called **Blue**. You know, the dollar is green, and this currency was going to be blue. They had the whole thing sort of planned out, I guess. But they were like, they couldn't figure out how to do this. If this ever becomes a thing, the target on our back is going to be too crazy. They thought, "We can't do this." The problem was they were like, "We've already talked about it at the lobby." Once they realized this thing would need an immaculate conception, that it would need to be totally anonymous or pseudonymous to start, nobody could know who did it. They were like, "We blew it. We said it at the lobby conference. There were 14 other people now who have heard us be interested in this." When the white paper came out years later, Philip called him and was like, "Dude, I can't believe you cut me out."

Sam Parr

No way! He's like...

Shaan Puri

Have you seen Bitcoin? He's like, "Yeah." I said, "That's you, right?" He replied, "No, it's not me." I thought it was you. If it was either of the two of us, it'd be you. You're way more technical. He said, "No, it's not me. Who the hell is this? How cool is that?"

Sam Parr

That is awesome! That is one of the greatest stories I've heard. It's weird that multiple groups of people start working on the same thing independently at the same time, isn't it? And they had the same conclusion: that it had to be an anonymous creator.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. And you know what? The other crazy thing is, you saw this Jack Dorsey... like, is Jack Dorsey, dude?

Sam Parr

That was the stupidest thing, man. There was some compelling evidence, but then what they did was completely spoil the broth by putting in there, "Jack loves wearing Japanese clothing," as examples of why he is Satoshi. Do you know what I mean? It was ridiculous. Spoiled it. I didn't think that.

Shaan Puri

Was that bad? What's wrong with that?

Sam Parr

There were multiple pieces of compelling evidence that suggested Jack wore a "Who is Satoshi?" t-shirt to the Olympics. It was just ridiculous stuff. No, I thought it was ridiculous. You didn't think it was ridiculous?

Shaan Puri

First, I did because I was like, "Jack Dorsey? No way!" And then there's this deck, right? Did you read the deck? There's this actual full slide deck about it.

Sam Parr

There were a bunch of good points. There were a bunch of good points.

Shaan Puri

Good points about it. One thing I didn't know is that Jack was in those early cyberpunk communities when he was about 15 years old or something like that. You know what I mean? He was actually in that. Whoever started this thing was likely in that really small community of about, I don't know, 1,500 people that were on those early mailing lists.

Sam Parr

Well, he was.

Shaan Puri

And he... I didn't know that, so that was kind of new information. Okay, interesting. Other things that I didn't know: there was a lot of timing involved with when he was starting Twitter, when he was basically active as Satoshi, and then when Twitter took off. Then, when he left Twitter, he was like, "I'm excited about new things," and then all of a sudden that was... yeah.

Sam Parr

Like, he tweeted, "Someone needs to create this thing or that thing," and it was right when Satoshi was creating that thing. There were all these weird coincidences in the timeline, exactly. But then there was other stuff where he was like, "Look at the code here. That sounds like Jack's favorite restaurant in San Francisco," or Jack said he wants to be by the U.S. Mint for his office, which Twitter was. Therefore, I just thought it was huge reaches.

Shaan Puri

There are huge reaches, and I don't think it's true. But I thought, wow, this is a lot of stuff about Jack Dorsey that I didn't really realize. For example, one of the biggest reaches was when they looked at strings of the transaction IDs or whatever, and it would be like, "See, this says D2MP, dude, Entombment Plaza." That was his address. You're like, alright, I don't think D, just because D2MP showed up in the middle of a string, means that he's saying, you know, "One dude, SF, one DSF." That's it. You know, it's like those are the ones where it's like, okay, I don't think that stuff is true.

Sam Parr

It's like trying to figure out if Tupac's still alive. Did you hear what he said? "Shook, shot me." He said it in the song, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

But like, definitely go read this deck. The deck was very entertaining and it was presented in a very serious way. I just appreciate the seriousness with which somebody took this research. By the way, that was at Two Man Plaza; that's where we were for the dinner. It was the same day that the thing dropped. I was like, "Hey, maybe I'm the creep."

Sam Parr

Maybe... maybe you're Satoshi. That should be the takeaway. That was my takeaway. I don't know. I've got one more thing for you: go to **chisos.com**.

Shaan Puri

Is it Chisos? Is it Spanish?

Sam Parr

**Chisos boots. Do you see the boots?**

Shaan Puri

**Incredible craftsmanship. I see cowboy boots.**

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I own a pair of these boots. I have no stake in this company; nothing. I just think it's cool. The founder is part of my friend group in Austin. He was friends with Nick, and I met him once or twice through Nick. His name is Will Roman, and this company...

Shaan Puri

You bought a $1,000 pair of cowboy boots.

Sam Parr

I think it was a $500 or $600 pair a year, like a while ago. This company, he owns the whole thing, and he was explaining it to me while we were hanging out. I was like, "Dude, this is a good story. Can I talk about it?" So he gave me permission. The company does low seven figures in revenue. The way it started was he worked in tech, at a normal tech company. He quit his job, moved to Mexico to learn, because Mexico is where a lot of great boots are made. He spent years there learning the craftsmanship.

Shaan Puri

Like apprenticing.

Sam Parr

Yeah, apprenticing to make bespoke boots was his dream. He’s a Texas guy; he kind of looks like a cowboy. He quits his tech job, moves, learns how to make boots, and creates this company called Chisos. He was telling me the other day—he didn’t say this directly, but I got the sense that he’s a little burnt out. He mentioned that the company is growing 10 to 15% a year, and he owns the whole thing. He was explaining his vision: there are Tacovas, which are kind of cheap but sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of boots. It’s a startup. Then there are bespoke bootmakers who are just mom-and-pop stores. He said, “I want to be a little bit closer to bespoke than to Tacova. I don’t want to be cheap; I need the highest quality and I refuse to sacrifice that quality. But I want to build this into a huge company.” I asked him, “Do you spend on marketing? Do you do this?” and he said, “No, we don’t do anything. I just make the greatest boots.” I Googled the boot name, Chisos boots, and read that all these other companies and forums are talking about how this is the best boot on earth. I see all this, and it starts formulating in my brain. I’m like, “This is it, my friend. You have it! The hard part is done. Surely there are some nerds out there that could help make this company big.” I thought I’d bring this to you because I often criticize the D2C world. I have that criticism about this world and how there’s not enough emphasis on product creation and story. It’s mostly just arbitrage. I came across this and thought it was an example of something that I think—though I don’t know anything about this world—could be blown up and made pretty huge.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this is really cool, by the way. Great branding by this guy! So, like, dude, he has everything. Go to their website; it's very clean. And like this "sawed in half" video... what I like about this is, I love that story of moving to Mexico to apprentice and actually learn the craft. I just kind of want that to be like a TV show. But the second thing is, sometimes the people who are really good at making the product can't show it. There's a little story: Ben's brother bought into a restaurant or helped co-found a restaurant where they live in Phoenix. So we go there for lunch, and it's his brother. I was like, "So why'd you do this?" He's like, "Well, the chef is amazing. He's recognized as one of the best chefs. So he's a great chef. I just really believe in this guy's product, and I thought we could turn it into a business." He's like, "The problem is when you partner with these artists, sometimes they don't a) know anything about how to convey that or show that, and b) they just won't compromise on price or quality or whatever. This is uncompromising." He's like, "Bro, we need to make this... we're so expensive compared to everybody else. Like, that's a... but nobody really is. We're so expensive, and that's hurting our business." I was talking to him about it, and he's like, "For example," he holds up these tortillas. He's like, "You know these tortillas? These tortillas cost this much." I forgot what it was, but let's pretend it was $22. He's like, "It's $2 a tortilla. Most people get their tortillas for like 20 cents." And I was like, "Well, why?" And he's like, "Because he demands that every morning we get fresh tortillas that are trucked in from Mexico." And I was like, "Wow."

Sam Parr

That's awesome.

Shaan Puri

Why don't you tell anybody that? And he's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, you should tell people that we truck our tortillas in fresh from Mexico every morning. I'd gladly pay $2 if I knew that your problem isn't that the chef is not willing to compromise and cut costs. Your problem is that you're not marketing this in a way that actually tells the story of why this food tastes better than anyone else, why this is fresher, why this is more authentic, why this is better, and why this is higher priced." So that became like a little core principle for us. My little team—me, Ben, and Diego—we talk about this all the time. We call it the "Tortilla Principle." It's like when we look at businesses that we're either going to buy or own, we ask ourselves, "Where are we trucking in tortillas fresh from Mexico, and are we doing a good job of telling that story?" Almost always, the answer is no. The things you do in your business that are like the blood, sweat, and tears to do something great, you take for granted because they just seem like table stakes for you. You're not even telling the world about why you do that or what you do there, or why you're different than anybody else, or why you've gone the extra mile.

Sam Parr

Yeah, Joe Sugarman, one of my favorite copywriters, said, "I used to sell so many of these particular watches. I forget which company it was, maybe Casio." He explained that they were like, "We make this out of aluminum." Casio was explaining to Joe Sugarman, the copywriter, how they make their watch because he was like, "Tell me everything so I can learn." He was told, "We use space-grade aluminum to make this watch." Joe was like, "Wait, so this aluminum is strong enough for spaceships?" They replied, "Yeah, but like every watch company ever uses the exact same stuff." Then they mentioned, "This quartz movement is special for this reason," but again, every company uses that. He thought, "Space-age aluminum, precise quartz movement," and that became what sold a lot of Casio watches. It's called the **knowledge complex**—when you know too much about something that you think it's not interesting. Joe Sugarman, an outsider and a copywriter, was like, "No, this is so interesting." That's what someone needs to do if Google will... [Roman, that's the founder].

Shaan Puri

But dude, look at his website. You started your story with this guy who worked in tech, had an everyday job, and it wasn't perfect. He quit his job and moved to Mexico for three years to learn the art of boot making. Guess what? That's not on his website. I know, but those were years of life—three years of marketing collateral that he's not using, right? Like, that's a thousand days of his life that he's not putting on the website. Even if you click down the "More" tab, right? It's like "More: Our Story." You go to "Our Story," and it's like, "True small business. Hi, I'm Will. I'm a hardworking guy passionate about craftsmanship." Guess what? Everybody says that. But not everybody has done what he did—moved to Mexico for three years and apprenticed in this boot factory.

Sam Parr

I was like, "Right, I was like, Will, do you use Reddit?" He goes, "I don't really know how to work it." I said, "Let me show you something. If you Google 'what's the most comfortable cowboy boot,' Reddit, the top post is someone asking that." And Chizos, the top line, says, "This is the most comfortable boot I've ever worn," and there are 17 comments agreeing with that top post. He's like, "Oh, that's awesome!" He saw that and I was like, "Are you insane, man? This is it! You have it!"

Shaan Puri

This guy doesn't have a TikTok, is that right?

Sam Parr

I don't think so.

Shaan Puri

Does he not know that every niche nostalgic profession is now like the coolest kid on TikTok? Like, if you plant beets or something like that, if you have a beet farm...

Sam Parr

Dude, there's like Victorian porn where it's like people wearing, you know, old doll dresses. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's like...

Shaan Puri

The weirder, the better. The more physical and real-world, the better. Go look at Epic Gardening, right? If he wants to do this, go teach people about it. Show them the process. Show them how the factory looks like. Show them cutting a boot in half—stuff like that. I think would be just fire on TikTok.

Sam Parr

And I only brought it up because the story was amazing. I also want to go on record as saying this might be like another one of our feathers.

Shaan Puri

In the

Sam Parr

Caps, where we called it "moment" because I do love their boots. It's so good, and I love meeting people who... 80% of the work is done. This other part, a lot of people could help you and get it done, and whether...

Shaan Puri

They're not that... 80% of the work is done because, like, actually 80% of the work is the marketing and operations. But they did the one hard thing that others aren't really willing to do.

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's what I mean. It's a great product; the product is good.

Shaan Puri

We did this in my sushi restaurant. The restaurant that we started was initially a virtual restaurant. This was before DoorDash and Uber Eats. We created a website, drove people to it, and you could order sushi. We would make it in a commissary kitchen and deliver it to you in under twenty minutes. So, we had our menu, and we would meet with Dan Ariely. Do you know who that is?

Sam Parr

The author.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he wrote this book called *Predictably Irrational*. He's a behavioral economist and he just happened to be a teacher at Duke. We were Duke students, so we got in with him. Normally, companies pay him whatever, six-figure or seven-figure contracts to consult with them. He was willing to meet with us because we were just three, you know, dumbasses that were in school. We go, "Dan, we want to drive more sales. You're the guy. What should we do?" He says, "Show me your menu." We show him the menu, and he goes, "Oh, okay. You want to make more money? You want more people to buy from you? Raise your prices." I go, "What?" He responds, "But, you know, we thought we could make it more accessible, more affordable. That was the whole pitch. We won the business plan competition by telling people we're going to make sushi more accessible, more affordable." He goes, "Yeah, but when somebody looks at this, they just see cheap sushi. So guess what people don't want? The worst sushi."

Sam Parr

Cheap sushi is the worst type of sushi.

Shaan Puri

Sushi. Exactly. So he's like, "That's not what you want." The reason I bring this up is that we were an online restaurant, so we could literally A/B test. Now, we didn't have the tooling; we weren't smart enough to even know what an A/B test was. I didn't even know the phrase. But we would literally switch it by day. So, on day one, we would show menu A. On day two, we would show menu B. Then we would look at the numbers at the end of the day and be like, "How did we do?" We raised prices, and not only did revenue go up, but the conversion rate went up as well. We actually converted more customers and made more money per customer. It's like, "Oh shit, okay, damn! What else could we do?" He goes, "Sushi and the wine industry." I forgot the name he had for it, but he said they create their own language around their products. We go, "But that's why it's so inaccessible! I don't understand what any of that stuff means." He goes, "Exactly! But if you do know what it means, you feel smart and you feel like an insider." We were like, "What?" He goes, "So we tested three models of language." We had what we had before, which was what we thought was the accessible version: "The Philadelphia roll, salmon and cream cheese wrapped up, tastes great." That was literally how we used to write. Then we had the next one, which was language. He said, "Do you freeze your salmon?" We were like, "No." He said, "Awesome! Fresh, never frozen, Atlantic hand-caught salmon," or something like that. Same roll, same salmon, more words. Boom! Conversion rate up. We were like, "Oh God, it works! This is true." Then we just kept doing the same thing with the whole menu. It showed me two things: 1. Restaurants should really A/B test their menus, and I don't think they do a good enough job of this. 2. The same thing can be sold just with better words and better marketing, which can dramatically change your business. It's not like just something you slap on at the end and that's good enough. It's like, no, you will get this multiplier on success based on how well you do this one thing. It's not just like a 10% improvement; it was like a 2x, 3x type of improvement you could get by stacking these on top of each other.

Sam Parr

What was your cute way of explaining cream cheese?

Shaan Puri

I don't know. I think we might have just said, not even mentioned it, just put it at the end. You know, like... and a smooth.

Sam Parr

You know, the other stuff... yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I remember. The funny thing was with salmon; we were so excited about **fresh, never frozen** salmon. It was like our calling card. Not like those other guys, they're just frozen, frozen salmon. We used to go even further: "We don't even have a freezer in our restaurant! That's how fresh this is." Then we met the chef, and he was like, "You need to freeze the salmon; it kills the bacteria." We were like, "Oh shit, sorry." They were like, "Whoops."

Sam Parr

Well, and also...

Shaan Puri

From flash-frozen salmon to kill all of the bugs.

Sam Parr

And like, have you ever seen the documentaries when the Japanese catch the salmon that they're going to use? They drop it into the boat that has, like, a freezer. They freeze them, you know what I mean? Flash frozen, like, on the spot. Yeah, so I remember learning about them and thinking, "Oh shit, everything I've been told is a lie." Yeah, alright, that's it. That was a good pod. What do you think?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I mean, this was a good catch-up. It's fun to hang out, fun to talk, and I feel like... I don't know if other people feel this way, but just debriefing interesting people we met and the way their mind works or the little schemes they got into is kind of my favorite thing.

Sam Parr

Well, I stole it from you. I actually started writing notes right after I meet someone. Even if you don't refer back to it, it's pretty good. It's good. Alright, that's it. That's the pod.