Threads Becomes The Fastest Growing App Of All Time... (#473)

Shaan Puri

By the way, there's a funny tweet from Parker... I think it's Parker Thompson on Twitter. He replied to that, saying, "Okay, so for those keeping score at home, Elon bought a product for $44 billion, and then Zuck built the same product for a thousand times less, stealing all of his users like an absolute Chad. God willing, he's about to choke him out in 90 seconds in a steel cage soon." So that's what a "cuck" means now. Alright, what's up? Today's episode, we're talking about Threads versus Twitter—the big debate. We're going to discuss where we land and our predictions for what we think is going to happen and how it's going to play out. We told some funny stories, and then in the second half, we have an interview with a guy named Sam Ovid. Sam met this guy, Sam, who used to run a business called Consulting.com that, at its peak, hit $30 million in revenue. He was all over our Facebook feeds as one of these internet marketer guys, and we were curious about who he is and what he's all about. It's definitely an interesting interview. I would say he had some intriguing things to say. Also, his energy was totally different from most of the guests and different from what you would expect out of an internet marketer. So, I'm curious to see what people think of it. I would say it's a different style of energy than we've done before. Sam, what do you think?

Sam Parr

So, for those watching on YouTube, I'm sweating right now. The reason I'm sweating is around minute 35, I can't stop laughing. I'm still laughing about it. You're gonna enjoy it!

Shaan Puri

the taco bell story let's just leave it at that

Sam Parr

Oh my God, it's ridiculous! I don't know how this story came about in a business pod. I'm happy it did... I'm sweating right now. If you are on Spotify or Apple and you're listening to this, go to our YouTube page. Search "My First Million" and go to this episode. Let us know in the comments what you think. People liked when we did that last time, Sean. We got a lot of comments, a lot of good feedback. It's... it's been fun to read all the comments. But let us know what you think, and we'll talk to you soon!

Shaan Puri

Alright, what's up, Sam? We gotta talk about **Threads**—Threads versus **Twitter**. Threads came out a few days ago, and we've had some time to play with it, to sit on it, and to think about it. I think everybody's given their opinion on it, so why not ours? I want to hear what you have to say about this. I have a kind of framework for how I think we could discuss it: the **bull case**, the **bear case**, and then where we land. But first, I just want to hear—when did you get on it, and what was your initial reaction? How on your radar was this thing to begin with?

Sam Parr

I had only heard about it 3 or 4 days before it launched, and I heard about it because of a leak. I think there was a leak, right? Somehow it leaked out that it was coming out. So I downloaded the app - you can download it before it launches - and then I got the notification right at midnight, or whenever it said it launched, and I signed up. I think it's pretty cool. Are you jealous that I already have more followers than you do on that? Because I was already going hard on Instagram.

Shaan Puri

No, well, yeah, going hard on Instagram paid off. There, you got like a double bonus for growing your Instagram. So, props to you on that!

Sam Parr

I think it's great. You know why I think it's great? I really only think it's great for one reason, which is Twitter to me is pretty great. But dude, my feed is just like fight videos and people getting shot and dying. Like, it's real. It's kind of become a little bit sad.

Shaan Puri

That's unusual. I also don't know if that's anyone else's fault. You know, when you click the follow button, the like button, and the save button, the algorithm will just give you more.

Sam Parr

Look, here's the deal. If you see a fight video, you watch it. You're not going to skip that. It's like when you have a hot girl; you scroll through, and you scroll slower through that.

Shaan Puri

what is this how does this get here alright

Hubspot

keep scrolling

Sam Parr

Yeah, so it's just all these weird handles. I also think that I've become such a stan for Zuck in this whole thing. He's just proven to be like *the man*. He's come off very likable, and so I find myself picking sides based on the owner of the company.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, it's become... it's become sports. It's become tribal. Whose team are you on? I don't know how the hell I ended up on Team Zuck, but I'm like, "I'm on Team Zuck." It's very obvious to me; it's very clear. I think this guy's done an incredible rebrand of his personality. He went from being easy to hate for a bunch of reasons: 1. He became rich and powerful. People don't like that. 2. He looked like a robot, talked like a robot, and seemed to have no personality. So, you know, for the people who didn't get turned off by the power and billionaire thing, they got turned off by, like, "Okay, this guy's a lizard or he's a robot. What's going on with this guy?" Then somehow, he hired the top PR agencies in the world. He hired the fixer, the wolf, who came in and tried to fix him. All he needed to do was start working out. The guy takes 10 jiu-jitsu classes and learns how to do a pull-up, and all of a sudden, idiots like us are like, "You know what? I *fuck* with this guy." Yeah, he's relatable somehow. Yeah, it totally worked on me.

Shaan Puri

Where you start thinking about it, this happened also with LeBron James. LeBron James, at one point, was super hyped. Then he became "the guy," and people started to turn on him. Then he did this thing where he left his team and went to Miami, and everyone was like, "Oh, I hate this guy." Then somebody pointed out, "So you're telling me this kid, who had all the pressure in the world when he was 17 or 18 years old, delivered on the hype, lived up to it, never got in trouble with the law? You've never heard about this guy. He married his high school sweetheart, is a good dad to his kids, is one of the best players of all time, and just keeps himself in phenomenal fitness, in shape, and tries as hard as he can every single year. What do you have a problem with?" In the same way, I feel like the same thing has happened for Zuck. It's like, "So this guy who built this company that billions of people use, stuck with the company, works hard every single day, married his college sweetheart, has never been in trouble with anything, doesn't tweet out offensive stuff, doesn't say anything just to get a reaction, seems like a perfectly reasonable guy, works out hard, and he's a good dad. What do you hate about this guy again? What's going on? Do you know?"

Sam Parr

how old zuck is

Shaan Puri

I don't know he's like our age he's like he's a little older than us right he's like 37 38 39

Sam Parr

Yeah, he's just turned 39, you know? And LeBron is also 38. These guys are the same man. They're the same. They've been... dude.

Shaan Puri

what they were 18 yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, LeBron got drafted when he was a high schooler, right? 18 out of high school. Zuck has been the man since he was 21 or 22. There's been nothing... I mean, if you look at the grand scheme, there have been no human errors. No, no, no, no self... yeah, there have been business errors that have been cringe, but there's been nothing that they've done where you're like, "Oh, that guy's a piece of shit."

Shaan Puri

if your biggest crime is cringe you're doing alright you know what I

Sam Parr

Mean, yes. When you're the man for that long, that is impossible. That is so challenging to do that.

Shaan Puri

so you

Sam Parr

know what I mean

Shaan Puri

so we're we're clearly zuck fanboys let's talk about threads though

Sam Parr

Oh, and by the way, did you see what Elon posted? I don't know, did he see it on Twitter? He goes, "Zuck is a cuck." You know what a cuck is?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

I I

Hubspot

had to

Sam Parr

look it up actually a cuck is a a cuck is a guy who wants

Sam Parr

His wife sleeps with other men, and he enjoys it. Then he also goes, "I challenge Zuck to a dick measuring contest." Literally, a dick measuring contest.

Sam Parr

like he says stuff like that and I'm dude he says stuff like that I'm like oh my god

Shaan Puri

You're... he's an absolute try-hard to me. I don't like it. By the way, there's a funny tweet from Parker. I think it's Parker Thompson on Twitter. He replied to that, saying, "Okay, so for those keeping score at home: Elon bought a product for $44 billion, and then Zuck built the same product for a thousand times less, stealing all of his users like an absolute Chad. And, God willing, he's about to choke him out in 90 seconds on Steel Cage soon." So that's what a "cuck" means now.

Sam Parr

I think it's great man zuck is just looking great on this

Sam Parr

alright so but threads you have on here that they grew to 70,000,000

Shaan Puri

it's actually a 100

Sam Parr

it's a 100 so they grew to a 100,000,000 users in a week

Shaan Puri

So, we'll deliver the bull case first. The bull case is this: We're 5 days in, and they've reached 100 million users, making it the fastest growing product of all time. Okay, Instagram has about 1.5 billion users. They seem to be converting over pretty quickly to this. We already got 100 million on the platform. If 20% of Instagram's users come on board, it's now bigger than Twitter. So, a 20% conversion from Instagram is what they're going to need. They've done, you know, like 5% or something like that out of the public math—something like 5% so far in 5 days. The next reason that this is bullish is Instagram and...

Sam Parr

Zuck shared that on Threads. He said, "We just hit 100 million," and he mentioned, "We've not even really promoted it yet."

Shaan Puri

yeah we haven't even done our promotions yet which is

Sam Parr

yes

Hubspot

nice

Sam Parr

it's also really cool that he's revealing some of the stuff

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's really active on it right now. He's part victory lap, part community engagement, which is cool. He tweeted for the first time in like 15 years, right on the day of launch, which was also nice.

Sam Parr

and it was like the meme of the 3 spider mans pointing at it on there too it was pretty it was great

Shaan Puri

He's, you know, in on the joke. Whoever he hired, like his nephew or whoever, is like, "Yo, give me your app. Give me your phone. I'm gonna make you likable." Like, hey, instead of fighting it, just post a meme. It's cool, don't worry.

Sam Parr

But he needs a verb, so there's no verb. What do you say? You threaded it? You posted it? Yeah, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we're threading. I don't know what's going on. The interesting part is, I go on Threads and I expect to see the same sorts of people as I do on Twitter. There are some, but there's a whole new market of people who were basically never on Twitter. They just didn't like Twitter; it didn't work for them. So, you know, you get a whole new set of people that are going to use Threads. They don't have to switch off of Twitter; they're just new people to a Twitter-like behavior. So it can basically beat Twitter without getting people to switch because it's expanding the market. Twitter is... I don't know if you know this, but Twitter is basically the most abandoned product I think ever. More than 1 billion people have signed up for Twitter or tried Twitter and then been like, "Nah."

Sam Parr

I don't get it

Shaan Puri

I'm good

Hubspot

just yeah

Shaan Puri

That's not for me. Now, the big question—the sort of like the $100 billion or $200 billion question—is: Is it because the idea of Twitter doesn't appeal to that many people, or that Twitter's execution was not good enough to hook those people? If it's the idea, then those same people who try Threads will eventually bounce because they're just people who like to look at pictures and videos. They don't want to write text and read random text messages from different people. So, if it's the idea, then Twitter's safe. All these people will try it and they'll bounce. But if it was the execution—if it was that Twitter didn't hook them properly—then they're screwed. Because if there's one thing that the Instagram and Facebook teams are going to do well, it's execute. You can already see it in the small things that they're doing, where they're like, "Yeah, we're just going to make the feed work better." They're focusing on blocking and muting, and all of the stuff. They're just going to do the stuff well—the stuff that they've been doing for 20 years. For example, when somebody signs up, let's just make it really easy for them to find their friends or interesting people. Let's just make this feed killer—this algorithm killer—where you just want to keep scrolling. That's something Twitter never really did. If you go look at Twitter's ad product, have you ever run Twitter ads?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so this is what I was going to say. This is another bull case. If you've never run ads before and you talk to anyone who has run any ads, Facebook is always in the top 2 or 3 parts of the conversation. Normally, it's number 1; it's usually the best platform. I've spent maybe $10 million of my own money actually running ads, and Facebook is always number 1. Twitter is never part of the conversation.

Shaan Puri

how do you manage it

Sam Parr

I don't know if I don't even know if it's any I don't know if it's like that anymore because I haven't run ads of it I

Shaan Puri

I'm running ads on it right now, and it works. However, the ad platform is so trash compared to Facebook and Google's ad platform, which is surprising because that's how they make money. You would think they're highly incentivized to improve it. So, my bigger concern is not really about whose ad platform is going to be better; it's about execution on all the details. It's about getting people linked up with the right individuals, making the feed super interesting, and handling spam and abuse better—issues that Twitter has struggled with over the years. The bull case is that basically, with 100 million users, if they convert some of Instagram's users, they could be bigger than Twitter. They don't even need people from Twitter to switch; they can just bring in net new users to the market. They can continue to promote this across Instagram and WhatsApp. Now, I'm going to switch to the bear case. Also, part of the bull case is that Twitter often shoots itself in the foot. Elon does a lot of questionable things that piss people off. For instance, he's pushing to implement a paywall where you have to pay $8 a month to have your content seen in the feed. This introduces friction. He also added a tweet limit not long ago, which adds more friction because...

Sam Parr

which is insane no more

Shaan Puri

Tweets for you cut off the ability to post tweets and have them embedded in other places. This was because he was like, "Oh, we're getting scraped too much." So, he basically put a login wall in front of the content. He's adding friction everywhere. These are foot faults. Nobody is killing you; this is you killing you. And so, that's part of the bull case. Now, here's the bear case: why this won't work. If I were to argue why this won't work, here's what I would say. I'd say, "Hey, name the last Facebook standalone product that just worked." Not one that they bought, but one that they made. That's where there's really a kind of graveyard of Poke and a bunch of these other apps that they tried to create. They tried to create a TikTok competitor; it didn't work. They tried to create a Snapchat competitor; that didn't work either. So, there is a graveyard of these things. The only things that have worked have been things that they put into the Instagram app, like Stories and Reels, because people are hooked on Instagram. So, the standalone app thing hasn't really worked, and this is a standalone app. The next problem is that just because 100 million people try it doesn't mean they're actually going to stick. There's going to be massive churn, just like there is when...

Sam Parr

you have you gone back

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I open it up right now, but I'm not completely hooked on it myself yet. Are you?

Sam Parr

I'm not hooked yet no I'm definitely not hooked yet

Shaan Puri

On Twitter, I've also built up a big following and a bunch of people that I follow. So my feed is more interesting. On Twitter, it's curated. I've been curating it for 10 years.

Sam Parr

I was gonna say we might be the 1%... the 1 percent. Because we make a living in part because of Twitter. So, there could be a part of it like, "Oh shit, I don't want to use this other thing because I already have this one thing that's working." This new thing might just cannibalize it. I can't tell if there's that bias there or what it is, but no, I'm not hooked yet. I am opening it maybe once a day, maybe once every two days. I am a little bit like, "Shit, I don't want another thing to have to use." But I am happy that it's text-based because that's where I excel. You know, I'm a Missouri 6, but I'm on my 4.9.

Sam Parr

yeah I don't want I'm not like I'm not I don't I got the I

Sam Parr

got a good face for twitter so like I prefer that but I yeah

Shaan Puri

We were the outliers because both of us have, together, almost a million followers on Twitter. Now, I go to Threads and I have 3,000 followers or something. I'm starting from scratch again. You know, I'm like that guy who moved to San Francisco, bought a house, and just redid my lawn. Then everybody started moving, and they started raising the prices. I'm like, "I'm dug in!" I'm like, yeah.

Sam Parr

I'm dug in

Shaan Puri

I already paid for the renovation, you know? I guess I'm just here when everyone else is choosing places that might be a better fit. So, you see, we might be the wrong person there. Here are the other reasons that Twitter might win: After the churn, you know, Threads might have 20 million or 30 million active users compared to Twitter's 300 million, right? I think there's going to be so much churn that this 100 million number is a bit of fool's gold. The next thing is that Twitter has key content. It has news, it has sports, so it's got the journalists, the athletes, and the people that cover the NBA and the NFL. It's got famous people. It's basically got this key, rapid breaking news and influential content. Threads is going to have new content, but the type of person who's big on Instagram may not be the right type of person for what works in this text medium. We don't know... there's a TBD on that. The next thing is that Threads is just a straight-up clone. There are no product improvements, and in fact, there are some big drawbacks. For example, they don't have DMs... they don't have, like, you know...

Sam Parr

dude I get dms I've been getting dms I think I don't know what they're called

Shaan Puri

there's no inbox

Sam Parr

people have been messaging me let me pull it up but

Shaan Puri

I think they're at mentioning you there's there's definitely no oh

Sam Parr

Maybe that's what it is. I don't even know how to use it yet. Then, yeah, it's a mention, but it looks like a DM. Like, right? The thing looks like a DM. Alright, yeah, you're right.

Shaan Puri

So, they closed the app, but they left some things out that might make it better. For the most part, I would say the product strategy is like this: if you've printed out the roadmap, it shows some features. Then you turn the page, and it just says, "Not Elon Musk, like not Twitter." It's basically just, "Here's not Twitter." There are a bunch of people who don't like Elon and don't like Twitter, and they'll just try this out. So, I don't know if that's a great long-term product strategy.

Sam Parr

by the way speaking of mediums and leaving things out do you use twitter on your phone or desktop

Shaan Puri

both yeah

Sam Parr

I mostly use it on desktop, and I use the Thread app. I was like, "Hey, when's the desktop version coming?" That's why I prefer typing on it. People were calling me a boomer and stuff, and apparently, yeah.

Shaan Puri

that is that's some boomer shit

Sam Parr

Dude, that's some boomer shit, I guess. But I hate using it on my phone. I want to use it on my computer so I can scroll through and click on things.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's like if a guy knocks on the bathroom stalls and says, "Hey, I gotta take a piss sitting down." And you're like, "What?" It's not illegal to do what you're saying, but it's certainly not acceptable. And that's... yeah.

Sam Parr

you're more of a you're what are you more of a

Sam Parr

pee with your shorts down at your ankle type of guy while standing up

Shaan Puri

so so your your desktop thing it's okay to use desktop but let's not let's not get out of control

Sam Parr

I think a ton of people do that. Man, I'm telling you, the older guys... I guess I'm old now, but I need... I need.

Shaan Puri

a desktop version appeal to as a social media platform the older guys

Sam Parr

yeah we'll call it khaki

Shaan Puri

Alright, so here are a couple of other things. The best creators on Twitter are the people who have, over a 10 to 15 year period, proven that they're really good at creating text-based content. They now have a big following and don't really want to start over from scratch on Instagram—aka me. So, I think those are some of the downsides of this. But I do think, you know, once you take into account the bull and the bear case, it's prediction time. How do you think that this plays out?

Sam Parr

Well, you have to... Let's do the interesting nuggets really quick. If it doesn't work out, Nikita, our friend Nikita, who worked at Meta and did all the social stuff, what did he say?

Shaan Puri

He was basically like, "You know, this thing's gonna be at 100 million users soon. If it fails after that, that will sort of officially make it the biggest fail in social app history." To be honest, I don't think that really means anything.

Sam Parr

I think the truth is, I believe it's going to end up closer to the bull than it is to the bear. I think it will work more than it fails. I don't think Elon would ever sell Twitter out of pride reasons. However, if it weren't run by a billionaire, I think it would effectively put it out of business for advertising purposes. I believe it's going to work. I don't know if it will overtake Twitter, but I think it's going to work so well that it will cannibalize Twitter, and they will be at least equal.

Shaan Puri

The CEO of Cloudflare tweeted out a chart. I don't know if you saw this, but it was about Twitter traffic because Cloudflare has, like, I don't know, they run like...

Sam Parr

that's fucked up right

Shaan Puri

In some way, it's... yeah, I don't know. Maybe they haven't paid their bill, or maybe there's a lot of money.

Sam Parr

That's like a doctor revealing your illnesses, isn't it? It's like these two guys are making fun of each other. It's like, actually, this guy...

Sam Parr

his cholesterol is way worse than yours

Shaan Puri

right yeah so like

Sam Parr

if you wanna beat him

Sam Parr

up kick him in the left knee

Shaan Puri

He did that. Basically, he tweeted out showing that Twitter's down about 5% in overall traffic so far this week from Threads. He said something like, "It's plummeting" or "dropping off a cliff," which is pretty dramatic. I don't know, 5%? I wouldn't call that plummeting, but...

Sam Parr

that's weird that he shared that that's super weird

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, I... it's gonna be closer to the bowl. Whatever I've learned, Nikita actually would always joke about this. He would say, "Never, ever, ever bet against Zuck." I've heard so many people say that when I bet against Elon, for sure, not often. Not often. I think that he follows through a lot. He's just been closer to death so many times, and I don't think Zuck entirely has. I just think that Zuckerberg, when it comes to this field, like consumer social, I just think that he's... I would not bet against that person.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I think that's the rub here. I think that it's not Zuck versus Elon. In the same way that in the cage, Zuck will probably win because he trains. He's been training jujitsu for a couple of years, so that gives him a little head start. In the same way, Zuck probably could not build a rocket company or a car company. You're planning to.

Sam Parr

even build oculus like you couldn't even like do that type

Shaan Puri

of hardware it's doing pretty well to be honest

Sam Parr

It's doing okay, but I think that they're going to miss... they're not going to be like the one. Perhaps we'll see.

Shaan Puri

But I guess, like, it's his domain. The social app thing is their domain; they have Instagram. I think I'm with you. I land where I do think Threads will be bigger than Twitter. I don't think it kills Twitter; I just think it sort of stunts whatever slow growth that Twitter has. It just stunts it even further. Twitter remains this kind of niche platform, basically this thing that has really strong appeal to a niche audience. I think Threads becomes the more mainstream version of it. I think it becomes the more palatable, just cool, interesting thing. This happens a lot with music, TV shows, or stuff like that, where something has its time, and then the new thing comes out. It just has a little more mainstream appeal and becomes the default. The other thing doesn't die; it doesn't go away necessarily. But I do think that if you fast forward 2 years or 18 to 24 months, I think it's pretty clear. My bet would be that Threads is bigger than Twitter. Twitter basically has now like a ceiling on its head that it's bumping into. It can never really grow from there. It might get better at monetizing those people or preventing them from switching, but the dominant place for that will be Threads, which is insane to me. It seemed impossible to dethrone a social network like this 12 months ago.

Sam Parr

There’s this cultural shift with young people where they’re so much more kind and nicer than our generation was at that age. You see that on TikTok. If you go to TikTok and look at the comments, people are so much more positive. There’s still something...

Shaan Puri

that they're not more positive that's tiktok is amazing at sorting comments and hiding comments

Sam Parr

whatever whatever that is okay maybe maybe there's culture

Shaan Puri

Because all you see is kindness and jokes. Then you're like, "Oh, that's how I'm supposed to behave here." Twitter never figured that out.

Sam Parr

It builds a culture. Whereas on Twitter, I post something and I get made fun of so much sometimes. I always click on the accounts, and it's clearly like a bot or I don't know what it is. But there's this huge underground culture. I have no idea how this is happening. There are people who all they do is make fun of others. It always shows it to me. Do you get that when people are making fun of you all the time?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah because it just shows you everything

Sam Parr

twitter says it shows you everything

Shaan Puri

If you said something, here's what they said back. And guess what? There's always going to be people that either disagree, argue, or just say mean things to you. That's, you know, just the way the world works. The best companies have figured out how to algorithmically suppress that behavior.

Sam Parr

Yes, and one day I opened up Threads. It was like Gary Vee saying, "I hope you all have such a wonderful day." They seeded it with these positive people, and it created this weird culture where it seems significantly more positive.

Hubspot

so far

Shaan Puri

threads like good morning y'all yeah 10 times

Sam Parr

I have like pomp saying, "I hope you have a wonderful day and get after it." It's just so much positivity. I have Sahil already popping up on my feed. It's all positivity, whereas Twitter is way more negative. Honestly, it does wear me out.

Shaan Puri

And by the way, Zuck has sort of said this in his threads where he's like, "Yeah, that's part of our key strategy." He's like, "I always thought there should be a sort of town square, a public conversation type product that gets to a billion users." Twitter, for some reason, never figured it out. We're going to do our best. Then people were like, "Oh, I noticed in this place it's like, you know, more kind or sort of like, you know, much more positive energy right now." And he goes, "Yeah, I think that's really important. That's something we're going to really focus on and try to get right. I don't think Twitter ever got that right." Some of these features, like setting the culture in that way, are invisible. They're not like, "Now you could do live video," or "Now you could do Twitter Spaces." It's not a feature that you see; it's almost what you don't see that's the feature. I think that Facebook and Instagram have a lot of experience fighting abuse, spam, and hateful content. It's not going to be nowhere; it's not just going to be gone. Whatever, that's fine. I get that. But I think they're going to do a better job of it. In the same way that, like, you remember it used to be a common thing people said, which is, "If you ever want to see sort of hell on earth, go to the YouTube comments." YouTube comments were considered like an actual cesspool. Now, if you go to a popular YouTube video, the comments are often like, they add to the joke. They're funny and they're positive. I don't know what they did over time, but they fixed that problem, which was that the YouTube comments were like, you know, where hope goes to die. Now it's good; it's part of the experience. Sure, there's some spam or there's still obviously like the one-off thing, but it's nowhere near where it was in the early days.

Sam Parr

I went out to dinner last night. I'm in Williamsburg, and you know, everything's tight in New York. I sat next to this guy who worked at Meta on the Threads team. I'm not going to reveal a lot because I don't want to rat this guy out, but me and Sarah were out to dinner. I texted her, "Let's just not talk," and we just listened to this guy.

Sam Parr

we just listened to this guy talk

Sam Parr

For two hours, we talked about launch week and what it was like. He said it was the most exciting time in his career. This guy was so bought into the Threads movement. He even talked about how much money he was making.

Sam Parr

it was crazy man I would just sit there

Shaan Puri

dish what'd you hear you don't have to say the person but tell us everything

Sam Parr

it was it was 7 figures a year it was 7 figures this guy and

Sam Parr

I like I feel like I know all about this guy

Sam Parr

I don't know where he's from, or at least I know where he moved from. I heard the very, very typical... this is so funny. You hear people say this all the time when they first move to New York, or when they're like tech guys. They'd say, "San Francisco is all about what have you built lately?" In New York, it's all about "How much money do you make?" You’re reminded every time about how important money is. San Francisco is all about what you built. That's like such a concept.

Shaan Puri

saying it in a positive way

Sam Parr

it's not you the the guy who was with was asking about the he's like it's refreshing new york

Shaan Puri

it's refreshing that my pay stub delivers

Sam Parr

But he was just talking about the launch. He was saying how the morale of the company is really high and how everyone was pumped, which is something Facebook needed because it was pretty rough for a long time with all the negative PR. Then he was talking all about the launch and what they were doing. It was so fascinating. I just sat there, shocked that he didn't catch the hint that I was just listening in on the conversation. I heard everything.

Shaan Puri

Hey, look. If there's one thing that Facebook engineers don't have a lot of awareness about, it's that, dude, I don't think you noticed that you weren't talking to your wife.

Sam Parr

Do you ever go out to dinner, and if you're with a business associate or a successful friend, you talk about money? You're talking about things like, "I want to buy this house; it costs this much money," or "This is what I'm earning. What do you think I should do with it?" Whenever we talk about these sensitive topics, whenever the waitress or waiter comes over, I always stop talking about that because I'm like, "That's embarrassing. It's tacky." They didn't get that hint, and so I remember them talking about...

Sam Parr

I remember them they they

Sam Parr

Said the 7-figure thing, it's like, "Yeah, it's not that big of a deal." You can just go get a director or a startup and get a $1,000,000 package, and that's okay. But like, are you really doing anything meaningful? Right? As the woman was waiting to see if they wanted dessert.

Sam Parr

yeah and I remember seeing that I was like oh

Sam Parr

I hate that. That is so **embarrassing** and **obnoxious**. You gotta shut up at that. That's when you know you're like, "You gotta lower your voice." You gotta whisper a million.

Sam Parr

you know what I mean like that that's what you're supposed

Sam Parr

to do in that scenario but these guys did not catch that hit I hate that

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah it's a little pc that dies inside every time

Sam Parr

You know who sucks at that? Whenever I'm with our friends, Sully. Sully is horrible at that. He'll talk about shit... Yes, he'll talk about what he's investing in so loudly. I'm like, "Dude, shut the fuck up! This is embarrassing. Everyone's looking over." Don't use that word "million," please.

Shaan Puri

I haven't

Sam Parr

seen more of this conversation

Shaan Puri

I haven't seen that, but I have another friend that does it like crazy. Then I'll be like, "Hey!" I'm kicking him under the table, and he'll just be like, "What? Why are you kicking me?" And I'm like, "Dude!"

Hubspot

we have a friend

Shaan Puri

That we took to this place in San Francisco that I guess has like the best hot chocolate. He likes hot chocolate, so we're like, "Dude, you're a little baby for liking hot chocolate." First of all, if you are a baby that likes hot chocolate, you gotta go to this place; it has the best hot chocolate. So we go, and he sits at the bar. The bartender comes up, or whatever, like the table, and it's like, "Hey, this guy loves hot chocolate." We told him this is the best spot, so he had to try it.

Sam Parr

said the waiter was like

Sam Parr

what are you 4

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's like, "Oh cool, yeah, yeah, let me bring you one." So he brings one out. The guy takes a sip and immediately gives an audible "ugh." Then he says he doesn't like it. We're like, "Oh, you know, whatever, okay, I guess it's not your type." So he just puts it down, right? It's sitting in front of him. The waiter walks by, and he just pushes it forward towards the bartender, almost like he's pushing his chips all in at a poker table. The guy's like, "Oh, are you done?" And he replies, "You didn't like it?" He goes, "No, it's not very good."

Sam Parr

oh my god that's so embarrassing

Shaan Puri

Trying to accomplish here, why are you doing this? So, I literally just fell off my stool, crawled away, and died. I had to deal with this interaction, but it was terrible.

Sam Parr

I had a friend, and we went out for dinner. Afterwards, they gave us coffee, and we wanted decaf. The next day, we texted back and forth, like, "Hey, did you stay up all night last night?" He was like, "Yeah." I said, "I think they gave us regular coffee." He was insistent, saying, "I gotta call them. I gotta call them and let them know." He was really determined to call them. I was like, "Dude, what are you doing? We're on vacation! We're visiting! What?" It was such a weird move, like something Larry David would do, to call someone to tell them, "You made a mistake last night. You gave us normal coffee instead of decaf." Those types of people are very challenging.

Shaan Puri

For me to be around David, it's like he's likable and adorable. When anybody else in real life does it, it's just hateable. My mother-in-law has a version of that where anytime we're complaining about something, her go-to is not even to tell them or call them. She's like, "Call the news! It's like, call 10:05. They will investigate this." And I'm like, "No, it's really not."

Sam Parr

dude I can't stand that

Shaan Puri

it's really not what's gonna happen here

Sam Parr

I've ordered a steak before and they've brought me pesto chicken pizza and I won't say a word I'm like yeah whatever

Sam Parr

it's food I can eat that

Shaan Puri

I gotta tell you this story. So, I can't decide. I wanted to do a segment called "L of the Week" because I think we sometimes brag a lot on here. We say, you know, how we're so great in all these different ways. I think it'd be nice to share a big "L" that we took. But I gotta be honest, this might actually be a "dub." This might not even be an "L" because the experience was so incredible.

Sam Parr

was it

Shaan Puri

Alright, so I go... I'm feeling like I'm doing something, I'm working, whatever, and I'm feeling hungry. I was driving back from an errand and I'm like, "Alright, I'm hungry. I'm just gonna pick up some food real quick." So I go to Subway to get a sandwich. I walk in, and there are about five people in line. There's only one guy working, and it's a Black guy. There's a white guy checking out, and I'm thinking about what sandwich I'm going to get. I kind of decide, and I notice that the guy is still checking out. I look over and I'm like, "What's taking this guy forever?" These guys are talking about, like, "So where'd you go?" The guy responds, "South Africa." They're talking about Africa and some race relations. They're just talking, and I'm happy that there's no racism on earth, but I'd really like a sandwich right now, and so would the four people behind me.

Sam Parr

how about that meatball marinara

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. Red, that's the color of my meatball that I'd like right now. So they're just talking, and then they hug. I'm like, "What's going on right now?" When they hug, I lose it. I leave. I'm hungrier than ever because I've just killed 9.

Sam Parr

minutes here thinking

Shaan Puri

Exclusively about a sandwich, and I got teased. There's no sandwich coming. Right next to the Subway is a Taco Bell, and I made a business decision. I said, "It is what it is. I'm going to Taco Bell today." I haven't been to Taco Bell in like 13 years, so I walk in. I'm in line, and you could always... I have this theory about places. You can see your future when you go into a place. If you go to a place regularly enough, you're going to start looking like the people that are in that place. So sometimes I'll go to a fitness class, and I'll look around and be like, "Alright, if these people, who are the clear regulars here, don't look the way I want to look, I'm just going to leave now." Because this is not a good path, right? It's like a very good life.

Sam Parr

what did

Shaan Puri

you what did you see him talk about

Sam Parr

like a bunch of like tweety bird shirts

Shaan Puri

So, I love going to Taco Bell. First, everybody there was under 17, so I was like, "Oh, I get it. Their bodies can still tolerate this." I'm the only guy in his thirties at this place. There's one guy sitting there, probably about 28, and he sits down with a feast in front of him. This guy was like, "Hey, omakase chef's choice, bring it all out!" So, he's omakase-ing Taco Bell, and he's eating up a storm. It's just me, these three teen girls in front of me ordering, and this guy. It's kind of quiet in Taco Bell as I'm standing in line. Then, this guy pulls a move that I was still stunned by just thinking about it. He's sitting there, eating his feast, and he just rips the loudest fart. We all look over, and I'm like, "Wow, so embarrassing! This guy just farted aloud in public." It was almost like he was sitting on one of those benches; it echoed. It was like this crazy auditory experience. I look at the guy, and he just stares back at all of us, raising his eyebrows like, "What?" We're all here like, "You're also here at 3 PM on a Tuesday, and that is what it is." This guy did not back down.

Sam Parr

not cower in shame

Shaan Puri

He alpha-ed us and was just... he literally was like, "What?" And I was like, "Nothing, I guess. Just carry on." You're right, we're all equals here.

Sam Parr

The bottom of society, you just got Dutch dubbing by a Taco Bell guy. It was incredible.

Shaan Puri

So, I took a big dough for this guy, and this is an experience I had.

Sam Parr

to share with you

Sam Parr

when did that happen

Shaan Puri

This was like 5 days ago. I've been sitting on the story. There's no one else I can really tell. I started to tell the story to my wife, and she was like, "You went to Taco Bell?" I was like, "You're missing the whole point of the story!" I didn't even get to the good part, and I just thought, "Okay..."

Sam Parr

should have farted back at him

Sam Parr

I wish

Shaan Puri

I had one in the chamber. I didn't... I mean, he really just laid it down right there in front of us.

Sam Parr

what did the girl say

Shaan Puri

I mean, the eye contact... nobody said anything. We all looked to laugh at him, and then we just got stunned by his bravado.

Hubspot

and I was like holy shit this is

Shaan Puri

the biggest power move I've ever experienced

Hubspot

in experienced

Sam Parr

in person that's the best how was the food at least

Shaan Puri

Horrible, honestly. The food at Taco Bell is phenomenal. The taste of Taco Bell is great; it has a great flavor. They have a diverse menu. I mean, first of all, the innovation! You've been to a Taco Bell, right? You know Taco Bell used to be just tacos. It's not like that anymore.

Sam Parr

this dude it's just the

Shaan Puri

Same shit, ratcheting. That's become a taco. Now it's a taco inside of a burrito. It's like, how's the taco inside the burrito? I guess we call it a **Cheesy Gordita Crunch**. Then they had this thing called the **Volcano** right now, and I was like, "I guess just give me the Volcano," because I didn't know what to do there. I was like, "I don't really understand what's happening." I'm still reeling from what just happened a few minutes ago. I got the Volcano thing. It was great. It was fantastic.

Sam Parr

You should have brought that African guy over to let him sniff up America. Let him see what it says: "Baby, this is what we're about, bro."

Shaan Puri

come on

Sam Parr

peace love and happiness

Shaan Puri

That hug... shit, that's not real. That's not the usual experience. This, this is the real. This is why we're in World War.

Sam Parr

backs back to back champions

Sam Parr

because guys like that salt of the earth they don't make them like that like that anymore

Shaan Puri

can you imagine a european doing that impossible no impossible

Sam Parr

no like a kind person

Shaan Puri

From this, from Singapore. Never get arrested for that in Singapore. That's crazy.

Sam Parr

yeah that's like that's like 5 to

Sam Parr

20 in singapore there's not a chance

Sam Ovens

I can't find this client info

Hubspot

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Sam Parr

So, Sean, I've got a funny story. We have Sam Ovens today. I'll do a little bit of an intro, but about 3 or 4 years ago, I used to see Sam's ads everywhere. It was basically him in a bright blue blazer in his fancy apartment overlooking Manhattan. There was a little bit of hate in me, and there was a little bit of...

Shaan Puri

you had slicked back hair too I remember

Sam Parr

He had slicked back hair, and for some reason, he pissed me off. I wrote on one of the ads, "You're full of shit" or something like that.

Shaan Puri

you did a hater comment

Sam Parr

I did a hater comment, and it sat with me for years. I talked to my friends who eventually bought some of his products, and they're like, "Oh no, it's awesome! We loved it." I started learning more, and I was like, "I think I was wrong." So, I sent Sam this message, I think 18 or 24 months ago, and I was like, "I'm sorry. For some reason, that one comment bothered me." Eventually, I saw Sam four weeks ago at a party, at Sophia's party, and I talked to him. My wife and I talked to him for like an hour, and I was like, "You're one of the more fascinating people that I've ever spoken to." I asked him, "Did you get that email, right? I apologize." I said, "I got it." So, that's kind of how we got here. But Sam, how do you describe yourself? You had Consulting.com, which was like a big information business, but you have a new thing. Do you want to tell us how you describe yourself?

Sam Ovens

Sure, well, I'm an entrepreneur and I have a software company called **Skool**. I'm the CEO of that, and it's a community platform for creators.

Sam Parr

you're you're kind of underselling yourself there

Sam Ovens

well what do you want me to say

Sam Parr

the reason why I like

Sam Parr

To get out with you is Sean. He reminds me of Jack Smith so much. It's the same type of...

Shaan Puri

Yep, but the funny thing is, like, Jack, you're right. There's definitely an echo of Jack there. But I almost feel like Jack picked business models that suited his personality and his way of thinking. Whereas Sam, the funny thing is that when I discovered you, Sam, I saw this sort of outgoing persona. It's like a guy who's recording a selfie video of himself in his fancy apartment, telling me something. It's sort of like, "Oh, this guy thinks he's some hotshot business guy," whatever. And now you talk, and I'm like, "This guy owns a surf shop or something." Why is this guy in the most zen mode, almost introverted to an extent? Isn't that strange? Was that strange for you to have a very public persona, even though you clearly are actually more of a laid-back, maybe more introverted guy?

Sam Ovens

Yeah, I think that's why it rubbed people the wrong way, like Sam. Because, you know, that's kind of the thing that I didn't like about that business. If you're selling training or coaching or whatever, you have to be very out there. You have to make content of yourself. You have to continuously promote yourself, right? I was always very uncomfortable doing that. I guess I used the New York apartment and the blue suit as like a character... yeah, like a character or like a crutch to help me, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and it worked. You built Consulting.com, which I would describe as sort of like training masterminds and courses. You would teach people how to start their own consulting business. People would pay you a few thousand dollars, and you put a bunch of free content out there to get people into the funnel. Eventually, they would pay you a couple thousand dollars to learn how to start their own consulting business. From what I understand, you scaled it up to about $30 million a year at one point, at the peak on the revenue side. Then you realized, "This is too much and too crazy. We have too many people and too little profits." You were pushing the boundary too much, so you scaled it back down to a more manageable level. The revenue went down, but the profits either stayed the same or went up, and you had less headache. So it definitely worked. Where did you get the idea for that? Were you just in a basement watching Tai Lopez videos, thinking, "Okay, I understand. I could do this now"? Or why did you decide to even do that?

Sam Ovens

you mean like sell courses

Shaan Puri

Sell courses in the way that you sold them, which was just like a really heavy paid ad strategy with you as this character or this persona—the face.

Sam Parr

of it very internet market y

Sam Ovens

Yeah, well, I wanted to start my own business. I used to have a job, and this is going back like 12 years. I used to watch this interview site called Mixergy. Do you guys remember that?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

yeah we love andrew

Sam Ovens

Yeah, I watched an interview one day, and this guy was saying that he was going to show he had a software company. His name was Dane Maxwell. He said he was going to teach some other people how to start a software company. That was my first experience of being in a course. He launched a course called, back then, "The Software Roundtable." I learned how to start a software company in that and started a software company called Snap Inspect. So, I first experienced being in a course from the student side. Through that experience, I had a successful software company, and then I was like the star student of that Software Roundtable foundation. Then, he made me do an interview on Mixergy. This was back when I was very young. A bunch of people started emailing me, saying they wanted to pay me to help them with their software company. I would just sell like six one-hour Skype calls for $1,000. Very quickly, I ran out of time to sell. I sold so many of these packages, and I just noticed that I was repeating myself on these calls a lot. I thought, "Oh, this could be a course." Everyone was struggling with the same problems, and I had run out of time. So, the next guy I took through these six one-hour calls, I recorded the calls and then put them in a Dropbox folder for the people who wanted to buy my coaching from that.

Sam Ovens

On I said I don't have any time left but I've got like a course that you can buy for the same price and I would just sell it for $1,000 and give them a login to the dropbox and they would watch the recordings in there and they liked it and they they didn't ask for their money back and it's like and that's where it started and then when I sold more and more of those I was like woah this is I should put some more effort into this so I did and then I and then I wondered well how can I sell more of this instead of just waiting for people to come to me from my mixergy interview and ask me over email so that's when I started learning about like internet marketing and then I remember the people back then were like frank kern and who else there was like ramit sethi there was this guy called clay collins do you remember this era of like yeah and so I just kinda got I learned how to market from that world like that kinda underground internet marketing world and that's and then my course business started to do so good it quickly overtook the the profit of my software company and I just wasn't very passionate about property management which was the niche that my software product was for was that called snap inspect yeah it still exists it's snapinspect.com and I just wasn't passionate about the niche so I sold my shares of snap inspect to my cofounder and then just went all in on the course business and that's what eventually became consulting.com and in the end I was making courses showing people how to make courses I just fell in love with the craft of like finding a group of people that you care about and solving their problems and then sharing the solutions with them and turning that into a business

Shaan Puri

how did you get the domain consulting.com because that's a great domain

Sam Ovens

It was... I went to the domain, I went to the URL, and there was nothing on it. Then I used MX Toolbox to find out who owned it. I just sent him an email and I said, "Do you want to sell it?" He said yes.

Shaan Puri

how much did you pay for that one

Sam Ovens

that one was 300,000

Sam Parr

Just in the 10 minutes that you've given that spiel and shared your background, and in the hour that I've hung out with you, you have this trait that I love. Certain people have it where, in your brain, I can see you're the type of person who sees a challenge. You don't think of it as an emotional thing; it's very logical. You're like, "This is a puzzle. I'm going to figure out this math equation." That gives you joy. At least, it seems like it does, especially with the marketing aspect. It seems like the same thing where you're like, "Well, if I wear this jacket, that will pop off in a thumbnail," and that's important for a higher click-through rate. You just read tons of books and put together an algorithm on what to do. That's why it didn't seem entirely authentic that this was who you were. It seemed like you were just playing a game that you wanted to win. Is that how you went about it? And who did you learn the algorithm from? What interesting people did you learn from that aren't entirely popular or are some strange resources?

Sam Ovens

I guess you know, there was... I just looked at the people who were doing quite well, like Brendon Burchard and Marie Forleo. This was back then, and I noticed that they had, like, a brand. If you thought of their names, you could quickly assign a couple of attributes to them. They had a brand, essentially. I was like, "This kid from New Zealand teaching people how to start a business." So I was like, whatever it is that needs to happen, when people see my video, they instantly need to think of money, basically. My main market is America, and New York is like the iconic money place. That was why I went to New York and why I found an apartment with a view like that.

Sam Parr

I heard a rumor that that apartment is almost exactly the same as something from "The Wolf of Wall Street" or one of those iconic money movies where they hang a guy over the balcony. I heard that you wanted that apartment for that reason. Is that true?

Sam Ovens

That isn't true. I wanted the apartment because it had a really cool view. But then we were watching that movie and we had to pause it. We were like, "Wait a second, is that this building?" We realized it's not the same building, but it must be one of the five in that area that are all very close to each other.

Sam Parr

got it

Shaan Puri

And so, you started in this. Now I'm curious. A lot of the names you mentioned, I never hear about those people anymore. You know, I remember Frank Kearns. I remember even Pagan and some of these guys that you could kind of go study their content, their funnels, but they're not around anymore. Or if they are, I don't know where they are. They don't seem to be crushing it anymore like they used to. Am I wrong? Are they just out there crushing it and I just don't see them for some reason? Or why do you think that very few have sustained? Did they just get so rich they quit? Or are they locked into one mode and didn't evolve with the times? What do you think happened?

Sam Ovens

I think things have changed a lot, and a lot of people didn't adapt. But also, I think some people just got... they're just not going as hard, or they might have gotten burned out. They're just relaxing a little bit. It's probably a combination of all of those things.

Sam Parr

How big were some of those old school marketers? Well, they're old school to me. How big were some of their businesses?

Sam Ovens

you never know like that's that's why it's

Sam Parr

always so interesting I I I I have no idea because they never talked

Sam Ovens

About that, they seemed to... they weren't real businesses in a way. They would make a ton of money on a launch, right? But then that product would kind of go away, and then they might do another launch in six months. It was all based on this launch model. These launches would pull big numbers, like $1,000,000, but I'm sure there was a lot of profit in there too. However, they weren't like these products that were evergreen, that could be sold continuously. They didn't have a team, and they weren't contributing to this body of work. They weren't building on top of what they built yesterday, essentially.

Sam Parr

You had this interesting video where, yeah, we were talking about Jack. Jack's one of my best buddies, and he was on the last episode. You guys are very similar. But in this video, you opened it up and you just looked at the camera and said, "I'm back." Apparently, the story of the video was about Consulting.com. Consulting got to like $30,000,000 in revenue, and you'd hired dozens of people at fancy offices. You hated it. You basically scaled it down to, I think you called it a "band." I think it was like 5 or 6 people. You said, "We're gonna do $10,000,000 in revenue, $5,000,000 in profit, and everyone gets a share of the profit." What was like the peak of the consulting business, and then where was it when you sold it?

Sam Ovens

sure so the peak was it must have been around like 2,017 or 2,018 and it was doing 36,000,000 a year in revenue but profit wise it was probably only like 5,000,000 on that most of it was was expenses and we had about 50 people and we were spending like 2,000,000 a month on ads and it was just everything was breaking I hired everyone way too fast and it was heavily dependent on ads which I didn't like I was reading this book on my honeymoon in tulum in mexico and it's it's called lean thinking and apparently it's like jeff bezos's favorite book which is why I was reading it and in there they talk about like how you should optimize a business based on customer based on value the way a customer experiences it right and you should analyze like the headcount how many people are like working on how many people are actually contributing to value the customer would experience in your headcount and then your your money flows so like how are you allocating the capital where is all the money being spent and does the customer experience value from that and then your time and attention and energy right so you're just analyzing all of these flows and I realized that all of our time money attention and headcount was on ads and that customers did not think ads were valuable in fact they thought what you did it actually pissed them off right so I was like oh man I've really screwed this one up and I was like everything should be focused on the customer and so I went back after that vacation and realized that I basically had to start again and I so I just started restructuring that company I realized that organic content was really good because that's cost customers find that valuable right like a good youtube channel good email newsletter so I was like we should do that and then if we do that well we don't need to do ads and then I was like everyone on the team should be contributing value to like the customer they should be doing support or they should be account management for mastermind clients they should be customer facing in some way and all of my time and attention and energy should be thinking about the customers' problems instead of advertising problems right and so I just with that kind of mental model I just started restructuring the whole company

Sam Parr

And then, so like, you've talked about consulting a bunch on other podcasts. But the story is that you eventually, and we can go back to it, you eventually sold it. Your new company, Skool, it's funny because whenever I was texting you, it always autocorrects to "stool." You were telling me—you didn't exactly say it this way, but I read it this way—that you're not taking any funding, or at least you're not anytime soon, because you self-funded it with **$10,000,000**. You mentioned that you're hiring the best people. So, you went from this internet marketing type of culture to a startup. First of all, is that true? And second, was that number right—**$10,000,000** that you're going in on this?

Sam Ovens

that's true

Sam Parr

And why the shift from like the startup, where you have hired all the people, and you're running things very Silicon Valley-esque, versus what I imagine in my head, a lot of internet marketers are not like.

Sam Ovens

Well, I started in software. Remember, the first company I ever did was Snap Inspect. I've always had a love for software. The problem back then, though, was that I didn't love my market, like property managers. We were constantly limited by our money. You know, software engineers are expensive, and subscription revenue has a cash flow trough in it. So, we were limited by money, and I didn't love my market. But I did love software, and I also hated having to market. I swore I was never going to touch software again unless it had network effects because I wanted it to grow itself, basically like a platform instead of a software tool. Then, I fell in love with courses. The beauty of that was that I was able to save a lot of money. Then I came back to software because I was now building software for the market that I loved, which was online creators. I had money this time, so I wouldn't be limited by that. I could get the best engineers and not cut corners on anything and take a more long-term view. This was a platform opportunity instead of just a software tool, so we didn't have to have a marketing or sales team, and we had no customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Shaan Puri

And how is this growing? Because I see the traffic is like, I don't know, 8,000,000 visits a month or something insane like that. It looks like you had an affiliate program here. If you're not running marketing, where's the growth coming from? Because I get that there's network effects, but...

Sam Parr

That's way more than, like, Circle Dot. Is it called Circle? That's way more than a lot of high VC competitors, the traffic, I believe.

Shaan Puri

yeah so I don't know if the number's right but let's let's say it's part

Sam Ovens

of double circle yeah

Shaan Puri

how are you getting so much traffic

Sam Ovens

It's a community platform. So, you know, once you start a community and you add some content to it, the first thing you do is invite members. What happens next is that roughly 1% of members create their own community. They're like, "Oh, this platform's cool! I want to make one of these." Then they create their own community and invite their members. There's a loop there or a network effect.

Shaan Puri

When you were doing your content stuff, your ads, I had read that you did some interesting things. We talked about the apartment and the suit, and I don't know, you had a motorcycle in the middle of the room and stuff like that. What were some interesting experiments that you ran that either worked or didn't work? What sort of taught you something about human psychology or the way that people's attention works? What gets people interested? What gets them hooked? What are some learnings from all of those different kinds of content experiments you did when your content, your face, was the driver?

Sam Ovens

Well, a lot of people just want to make money. That one was annoying. You just put a jet in something, or a fancy car, or a New York apartment. It works so well that it's annoying because you're like, "Oh, do I have to do that?" Aren't people just going to listen to the value of the idea? But that's what I learned back then when I was doing those experiments. I think now people are looking for longer-form, real stuff. Podcasts are really taking off, right? So I think the people that are doing a good job now are like what you guys are doing. I think having a podcast and an email newsletter is what I would do if I was starting again right now. Those two work really well together.

Sam Parr

We have this friend, Rebecca Zamolo, who has tens of millions of YouTube subscribers—maybe 15 million or something like that. She only launched her channel in 2017, which isn't that long ago. I asked Rebecca, "Why did you get so big?" She replied, "I took it like a job." She got laid off or quit her other job; I forget what happened. She said, "This is now my thing." It was like a 40-hour-a-week commitment. She was all in, and I thought, "Well, doesn't everyone do that?" She said, "No, shockingly no." Most popular YouTubers start with a side hobby, and even when they're fairly big, it's still not full-time. But she treated her channel like a company; she ran it like a business, and it worked out. I really like that focus.

Shaan Puri

no no no chance you said sum bitch

Sam Parr

no no chance you said sum bitch I I added a that's

Sam Parr

A Sam Parr special. Maybe, maybe I summed that up. Maybe it was like...

Sam Parr

you know I took this wonderful thing very seriously

Sam Parr

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

You've been pretty good at focus. I mean, why even sell Consulting.com if it's doing well and you're not working on it? You seem like you're very, very focused on things. I mean, just to go $10,000,000 on that school, was that a significant chunk for you to do that?

Shaan Puri

And was that like a verbal commitment, like "I'm willing to do up to X," or did you literally wire it into a bank account and say, "That's now in the company; that's being used for this company"? We're burning that.

Sam Ovens

That, yeah, I bought a house because, you know, I've got a wife and family. So I bought a house and I left some money in the personal account for the family. Then I was like, "Everything else, I'm just betting on this company."

Sam Parr

so not no other portfolio

Sam Ovens

nothing

Shaan Puri

how big do you think school's gonna be

Sam Ovens

well that's hard to answer there's what I would like it to be

Sam Parr

which is what

Sam Ovens

I've always wanted to build something that a 1000000000 people use

Sam Parr

What do you... how are you sleeping at night knowing that you're holding... or a lot of your nut is in there? That's a very stressful thing.

Sam Ovens

Quite well at the moment. Things are going really well; the growth is compounding pretty fast. Top-tier VCs email us every week. I'd like to mention that I've had to stop talking to them. A lot of people want to give us money, but we're not taking it. I think the fact that many people want to give me money has allowed me to calm down quite a lot. I'm not worried that we're going to run out of money. Also, is it profitable? No, it's not, but deliberately so.

Shaan Puri

Okay, fair enough. Where'd you base the company? Is it remote, or do you have people in America, New Zealand? Where are your people?

Sam Ovens

everyone's in la and san fran

Hubspot

okay and

Shaan Puri

Do you like when Sam says you remind him of Jack Smith? One of the cool things about Jack Smith is that while he's clever and interesting on the business side, he's also clever and weird. He does crazy experiments in his personal life, whether it's sort of biohacking, lifestyle choices, or not naming his child until she was one year old. Whatever it is, he takes a novel approach to each thing. I'm curious, are you weird in other areas of your life? Do you do anything that's sort of nonstandard that makes sense to you, but maybe to other people sounds a little strange?

Sam Ovens

I'm sure

Shaan Puri

would you like to say any examples since this is a podcast

Sam Ovens

I mean, I slept on a futon for like three years, and I loved it. Then, when my wife got pregnant, she made me give it up. But I really miss that futon, you know? A Japanese futon. Yeah, I love that thing. I just like to keep things very simple and minimal. I only have one pair of shoes, and I only have the same type of socks, the same kind of underwear, and the same t-shirts. Then, I have three wool jumpers, and that's all I have. I also have the same soap—this tea tree soap—and I just have like 20 blocks of it. I even take one with me when I travel because I only like that soap. I don't wear sunglasses because I think they're unnecessary. I just like to reduce things. I like to find something that I think is good, then only use that and just get a few different pairs of it. I want to keep things as simple and as minimal as humanly possible.

Sam Parr

is your wife normal

Sam Ovens

yes she is

Sam Parr

we were the reason why one of the

Sam Parr

Things you said... We were sitting around, Sean. It was me, Sam, and my wife, Sarah. We were at this restaurant, and Sam, you have some strange energy in a very cool way. You've got very strange and cool energy that I like. I love people like you. We were just sitting around, and the conversation kind of died. We sat in silence for like three seconds, I think. Then you just said, "I delivered my baby."

Sam Parr

and we were like we were like

Sam Parr

what

Sam Parr

with what

Sam Parr

and you could say my hands

Sam Parr

And we're like, "Hold on, say this again." And you're talking about how your wife... she... you're gonna be like...

Sam Parr

A home delivery or something, and the midwife didn't make it in time. You just did the day update, and I remember thinking, "The reason I love this guy is I don't think he understands how unique and strange his mannerisms and voice are." They're so interesting in such an intriguing way, which I frankly love. I love people like you because you're so unique and you're not vanilla. Do you realize that you're like that?

Sam Ovens

Honestly, not really. Because I don't try to fit in, and I don't try to... like, I don't even look at what other people are doing. I don't have social media at all, and I never look at really what's going on or what's in the news or anything. I just do what I want.

Shaan Puri

So, what do you do with that free time? Let's say no social media, no news. For most people, that's like 4 to 5 hours a day or something like that. How do you reinvest that 4 to 5 hours a day? Where do you put it? What gives you energy? What do you do for entertainment? Or what do you do to unwind?

Sam Ovens

I mean, all I really do is focus on school, and that's mostly the product. So, I'm just obsessive about the product and all the details of it. Then, I go home, hang out with my wife and daughter, and I need two hours of watching something to unwind. Otherwise, I can't sleep. So, I'll watch series, like TV series, and I like old stuff—things before technology—because it's nice and slow, and it helps me go to sleep.

Sam Parr

But when you say you're obsessive, what does that mean? Do people like working with you? Are you the type of guy who, if something very small at the footer is screwed up, freaks out over that?

Sam Ovens

Yeah, I can see a pixel. So if something's off, I'm like, "Something's off over there," and then I'll inspect it with Chrome Inspector, and it will be 1 pixel. I joke with the team that I can see a pixel. I'll go into those details. I designed the school's interface in Figma, like the whole thing, and defined a lot of how that entire system works, which is quite complex.

Sam Parr

Well, I knew you were like that because when Consulting.com first came out, most courses didn't look the way yours looked. Yours had this really cool concept of a caveman becoming a person, right? Is that what it was? Then there was a picture of the globe, and it looked like a software page. It was very unique. I remember seeing the design of it and thinking, "That is incredibly unique." It stood out and made you feel more sophisticated than most other people in the space. Do you remember that page? Am I describing it correctly?

Sam Ovens

I do yeah

Sam Parr

accurately yeah what what were you thinking when you made that

Sam Ovens

Well, that's what I like to do. I like to spend a long time on the tiny details. You know, I've spent days trying to figure out the right pixel radius of a rounded corner for a button.

Shaan Puri

Is that a feature or a bug? Like, if somebody I worked with was spending days on how much the border radius should be on a button, I would slap them. I'd be like, "What are you doing? This doesn't matter, and it's not going to be high impact. So why are you doing this?" So, you know, is that a good thing or is that a byproduct? Maybe you do that in certain areas where it really works. Then I have to live with the fact that I do it in these other areas where it doesn't matter at all.

Sam Ovens

Yeah, so, you know, if it's not, I won't block anyone by doing that, right? So, like, when we're building the thing, I'll be very fast and not the bottleneck of the team. But then, in my spare time, I'm playing with things, thinking about the next time we update the design system. I'm just tweaking little things in my... that's what I do for fun. So it's not like what I'm doing is my work, kind of thing.

Shaan Puri

How do you organize your day? Do you focus on one thing? Do you have a morning routine, like, "Okay, this is my to-do list"? What do you do? How do you create your day?

Sam Ovens

Most of what I do, I would say, is product strategy and design. That's where I spend all of my time, just in those zones. We have got three product teams at school—three full-stack product teams with back end, front end, QA, product manager, and designer. They've got three roadmaps that are all going in parallel. I need to think ahead of them; I've got to dream up the whole product strategy and roadmap and everything. Then, I have to reverse engineer it into chunks, break it down, and figure out which team should work on what thing and sequence it. After that, I've got to design the whole thing, spec it, brief that team, and stay a few development cycles ahead. So, I'll either be designing something, trying to figure out a priority, talking to that engineering team, or doing the final QA check before we push something into production.

Sam Parr

I actually think that that's totally the right way, in my opinion, that a lot of companies should run. The reason they don't is because, A, that's really, really hard. So, like, you're the brainchild. You have to know probably every single thing that's happening. That's incredibly challenging for just about everyone. Number two, it doesn't feel good to feel like a dictator. It's like, basically, you guys are a band and you're like the main guy. You're Celine Dion and everyone else is the backup band. That's a weird reference, but it is what it is. You're Billy Joel.

Shaan Puri

I don't that's where I went

Sam Parr

yeah that's that's where we went you're celine dion I don't know long hair

Sam Parr

You're like the guy, whereas I don't know if I can recover from that. Most startups are a lot more decentralized and things like that. But with this type of product, it seems like you're the main person and there's a circle around you with things going on. Is that right? It sounds exhausting.

Shaan Puri

Funny example of this was, I remember Sam, when you were running The Hustle and I was running my company. We would meet up every couple of weeks as part of our kind of founder mastermind thing, where we would get together. You know, I was sort of drinking the Silicon Valley Kool-Aid, which was about autonomy and empowering your people. I was preaching to my team, like, "Hey, whoever's got the best idea, we're going with you." You know, "Oh, janitor, you got an idea? Let's do it! Let's make it happen." Then, I met up with Sam, and Sam showed me a 12-page document that he wrote out for some new woman that he hired. The document just said, "Welcome! Here are the things that you're going to do. Your job is to do this. Here's how you will do this: Step 1..."

Hubspot

Do this step 2. Do this. He wrote this like a 20-page document.

Shaan Puri

Was just like handed it to her and was like, "This is... do not deviate from this. I don't want to hear your ideas on this." I asked you, "Why do this?" You're like, "Because people mess up, and I just... I need her. I think this is the right way to do it, and I just need her to do it this way."

Sam Parr

No, because whatever Sam has said, I totally agree with that. The problem is that it's **exhausting**. You know what I mean? Like, it's really hard to do that for a long period of time.

Shaan Puri

it's not scalable yeah

Sam Parr

well it's kind of scalable

Sam Ovens

Oh yeah, like the engineers, I'm not telling them what to do in terms of code. I'm not even coming up with all the ideas from my own mind. I spend a lot of my time looking at what our community wants. I go through our school community where people ask for stuff and share bugs and feedback. Then, I'll talk to power users. I always find out who's spending the most time on the platform, get a top 100, just DM a few of them, and get on Zoom to talk. I talk to them for hours about it. Then, I use the product myself and talk to the team too. Ideas come from all of these places, but I'm like the filter, the sorter, and the prioritizer basically. When I go to engineering, I know what the feature should be, but they might push back on a lot of what I say based on how easy it is to implement with code. They might be like, "Oh, do you really need to do it this way? Because that's going to make the code messy," or "Why don't you do it this way? That would be way more simple for the system." I'll listen to that feedback and adjust the actual feature because I'm trying to give the users what they want, but I'm also trying to keep the code clean. I'm trying to build things fast too, so I'm like, "How could we shrink the scope of this to make it so we could deliver something faster?" It's not like I'm just dictating to everyone; there's a lot of collaboration.

Sam Parr

you know sean something I've I've do you know that company jasper

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

have you talked to those guys is the founder's name is dave or david yeah

Shaan Puri

I see him on first of all on the website of consulting.com

Sam Parr

Dude, well, that's what I was gonna say. For one, if you go to like Unsplash, I think it was called, or one of those stock image websites, for some reason, Dave is in the picture of so many stock photos. I used to use a picture of him, and then I met him. I'm like, "Dude, I used your face for a stock image! You're on this royalty-free website." And number two, he used to be part of Consulting.com, didn't he? So, Jasper's, for the listeners, is like a, I guess, a $1,000,000,000 company now that does AI stuff. Was he part of your crew?

Sam Ovens

He was a student who bought my course many years ago, and he was one of our most successful students. He used to sell coaching and training, but then he wanted to get into software. So, he did this thing called Proof. Do you remember that little pop-up? Yeah, and then that turned into Jasper.

Sam Parr

and did I why did someone someone told me to ask you what you think about ai why did they say that

Sam Ovens

Well, I think it's like massively overhyped and somewhat just unnecessary. I don't know about you guys, but ChatGPT hasn't replaced my Google usage. I still use Google every day, and I've found no real task for it, honestly. It seems the hype is extreme.

Sam Parr

Well, the hype cycle is there around the growth. They're like, "Well, it's not there yet, but I could see the future of this." So you're not bullish at all on the future of it? No.

Shaan Puri

Alright, I'll take the other side of that, Sam. Is there anything else you want to ask before we wrap up?

Sam Parr

No, I appreciate you coming. I want to talk to you again another time. I find you fascinating. I think that you're an original thinker, and I appreciate people like you.

Sam Ovens

thanks

Sam Parr

alright

Sam Parr

well that's that's the pod

Shaan Puri

that's it