The Billion Dollar Business Behind Drake's Gambling Live Streams (Stake.com)

Drake, Gambling, Billionaires, and Missionary Work - June 7, 2022 (almost 3 years ago) • 01:21:51

This My First Million episode features a lively discussion between Sam Parr, Shaan Puri, and Ben Wilson. They explore intriguing business ventures, starting with the surprising success of Stake.com, an online crypto casino. The conversation then shifts to other lesser-known yet highly profitable businesses, prompting a deeper dive into the challenges of understanding complex business models. Finally, they discuss the importance of persistence and mindset in entrepreneurial endeavors, drawing parallels between various business experiences and even religious missionary work.

Stake.com's Success: Shaan reveals the story behind Stake.com, a massively successful crypto casino, and the anonymous billionaires who founded it. He discusses their innovative marketing tactics, like paying Drake to gamble with house money on live streams.
MarketBeat: Sam shares the story of MarketBeat, a niche financial media company generating substantial profit with a small team and simple website. He highlights their SEO-driven strategy and direct advertising approach.
Understanding Complex Businesses: The trio grapples with understanding the nuances of business models like systems integration, procurement, and enterprise software. They discuss companies like Cisco, SAP, and Netsuite, acknowledging the knowledge gaps in their own understanding of these industries.
Workshop and Internal Comms: Shaan introduces Workshop, a platform for internal company communications, likening it to "Mailchimp for internal marketing." He explains its value in improving employee engagement and streamlining internal messaging.
CloudKids Preschool: Shaan details his sister's successful online preschool, CloudKids, emphasizing the importance of analyzing metrics and overcoming the psychological impact of rejection when growing a business.
Angel Investing in a Downturn: Shaan and Sam discuss the current investment climate, considering whether to slow down or accelerate angel investing during a market downturn. Shaan argues that downturns often produce the best startup vintages due to lower valuations and increased founder discipline.
Sam's New Venture: Sam hints at a new project he's working on, emphasizing his focus on automation, outsourcing, and a longer-term vision. He shares early success metrics and his approach to cold emailing and direct sales.
The Power of Saying No: Sam reflects on the importance of identifying and focusing on a specific target market, learning to say no to customers who don't fit the ideal profile.
Mormon Missionary Work and Sales: Ben Wilson shares his experiences as a Mormon missionary, drawing parallels between missionary work and sales. The group discusses the low conversion rates, the importance of persistence, and the unexpected benefits of community and belonging.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:06	Sam Parr	Okay, I just sent you something hilarious. I've been following this Twitter account called Mugshoties, and it's like a play on mugshots.
00:15	Shaan Puri	and it's did we talk about this you've talked
00:17	Ben Wilson	about it oh did
00:18	Sam Parr	We talk about "Mugshoties." Yeah, it's so funny! The tagline is "Hope Bae Gets Bail." It's Mugshoties, and it's all like good-looking girls who have a mugshot. It's hilarious! It's so funny.
00:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, we talked about that because there was the guy whose mugshot went viral. He's just really stunningly good-looking, and he became a model afterwards or whatever.
00:44	Sam Parr	yeah I remember that guy people still talk about him
00:46	Shaan Puri	Can I tell you some crazy stories? Yeah, so have you ever seen... I think this is probably outside of your orbit of what you pay attention to, but have you seen these gambling live streams? Where Drake will go on Twitch and he'll gamble like $20,000,000 live on stream?
01:04	Sam Parr	no really yeah like a real $20,000,000
01:08	Shaan Puri	A real $20,000,000. He lost, I think, $17,000,000 on roulette one night, like, two weeks ago or something like that.
01:14	Sam Parr	Is he really that rich? I mean, if you're $200,000,000 rich, that's 10% of your net worth.
01:21	Shaan Puri	in a night
01:22	Sam Parr	no okay that's a substantial amount
01:24	Shaan Puri	Good question. I had the same question, which led me to some pretty interesting findings. Okay, so I saw Drake doing this, and I've seen other popular streamers like xQc and these guys... they do these gambling streams from time to time. People love to see it because they're playing kind of like high-stakes online gambling, and they're reacting to the highs and lows or whatever. Ben, have you seen this? I think it's probably also outside of your... you know, Mormon orbit. You don't watch these kinds of sins, yeah? So, exactly...
01:54	Sam Parr	this is all this is all on twitch
01:56	Shaan Puri	It's happening on Twitch. Maybe some people do it on YouTube as well, but it got me curious. I was like, "There's no way this guy's gambling $25,000,000 or $20,000,000 of his own money on these things." These streams get so popular, and I'm like, "This is actually great marketing for the website that it's on." So he's gambling on something called stake.com (S-T-A-K-E). I thought, "I bet this is house money that they're giving him in order to just promote the site." And sure enough, that's what it is. So get this...
02:26	Sam Parr	but is he is he losing it again when you play blackjack you lose against the dealer right
02:31	Shaan Puri	The house... yeah, so they're just okay. Like, if I gave you $20,000,000 to come play my rigged game, I gave you $20,000,000, you lose it right back to me. I get not... I, and you know, I'm back whole. They don't even lose the vig because they're the house. So they would take that, you know, 4% edge or whatever that they would have. They keep that as well. And if you win, maybe they have some deal where like, "Hey, if you win, you keep the winnings." I would assume they have some deal like that with them.
02:54	Sam Parr	But it's electronic, right? Like, it's like the cards are digital. It's not like a camera. So then they could just be like, "Oh shoot, Drake has 20. We have to make ourselves have 21."
03:05	Shaan Puri	Yeah, well, that's a little bit... that's illegal for sure. But they wouldn't need to do that. I guess that's kind of my point. They'll already have a house edge, and over time, they will win. Even if they don't, this is, as a marketing campaign, kind of genius. What they're doing is, Stake.com is this website, and it is the largest cryptocurrency-based online gambling site in the world. Nobody knew who was behind it until recently. Some guy in Australia bought a $36,000,000 home, and they were like, "Who is this? You're in your twenties. How did you buy a $36,000,000 home all cash?"
03:45	Sam Parr	what's the he was he was in his twenties
03:47	Shaan Puri	So these guys, they're in their mid-twenties. I think one guy's 25 or 26, the other guy's 28. And so there's this guy, Ed... You can just search "Ed Craven steak" and you'll see "The Secret Australian Origins of the World's Biggest Crypto Casino." And so, get this: basically you have...
04:06	Sam Parr	a hotline
04:07	Shaan Puri	There are these guys in Australia. They've got this office, and it's just like... the office is under this name called Easy Go Gaming. It's like, "We build online games." The office is super nice, and people would see it on social media. They would see, "Wow, these guys have a chef, and they have all these perks. They're always going on these trips." It's like, what's going on with Easy Go Gaming? You guys must be an awesome gaming company!
04:33	Sam Parr	it must just be like a couple people and they're just hanging out at someone's house
04:37	Shaan Puri	And so, well, no, no. This is a legit company. Basically, EZ Go Gaming is the licensed gaming provider; they provide the games to the casino company, Steak, which is based in some place called Curacao or something like that. Curacao is a Dutch Caribbean island where the actual casino is based. These guys own both, so they were kind of known as only the owners of EZ Go, but they actually own Steak. It all got kind of revealed when the guy bought this home for whatever. You can even see there's a Daily Mail article about it; he buys it.
05:09	Sam Parr	I'm I'm reading it right now a 38.org yeah
05:12	Shaan Puri	$38.5 million mansion he buys, and they're like, "Who is this kid?" He's 26 years old or whatever. That's kind of how people figured out, like, "Oh, he owns Stake.com." Now, I believe these are kind of my predictions and my guesses. So, Stake.com, I think, is pretty clearly clearing $1 billion in revenue. I think both of these guys are now self-made billionaires, possibly even $10 billion+ is what they've made off of Stake.com because this thing is an absolute cash cow. You can kind of back into this by looking at, like, they do these Sunday raffle or lottery-type things. It's like you pay, and it's like, "Oh wow, you know, 250,000 people bought this $10 ticket." It's like, "Oh wow, they just made, you know, that was just like a $2.5 million Sunday for them." Then they pay out this much, and they keep $26 million or $50 million. That's just a week for them. So, you can kind of see, you could kind of back into it. I did some calculations on it, but I'm pretty sure that these guys are both self-made billionaires, if not $10 billion at this point.
06:20	Shaan Puri	In equity value of stake.com, it's just kind of crazy to me that this exists. These guys are so young and able to do this, and people are just willing to live on the edge. It's like, "Yeah, I'm going to go set up a company in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao," which gives out online gambling licenses, like my neighborhood gives out candy on Halloween. These guys have amassed this absolute fortune, kind of anonymously building this. Isn't this just kind of crazy to you?
06:53	Sam Parr	Yeah, this is... I'm researching, and I know how I recognize this. They're a sponsor of the UFC. Yes, and so they're big UFC sponsors.
07:01	Shaan Puri	And they also sponsor Watford, the English soccer team. They pay $10,000,000 a year as their lead sponsor for that too.
07:10	Sam Parr	So, I'm doing research just as you're talking. I have on LinkedIn... there's one guy who says he's the CEO, but that seems... I don't know if that's legit. This is crazy! This is one of those amazing companies, just like VPN and a few other things, that's completely under the radar and is totally crushing it. I've said this to you before: I actually think that people's personal homes, the price of it... you know, like a rich person can live in a low-priced home. But if you purchase a high-priced home, the likelihood that you're rich is indicative of what you have. It's hard to... it's not impossible, but it's hard to get a bank to give you a loan if you don't have a significant amount of income, not just assets, but income. So, if he bought a $37,000,000 home in cash, is that really what it said then?
08:02	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I don't know if it was all cash, but it was like three times more than the house sold in 2018 for three times less. Then the guy renovated it, and this guy bought it for almost $40,000,000.
08:12	Sam Parr	To buy a $40,000,000 home, I would think you'd want to be worth at least $250,000,000 in at least some type of liquid situation as well, not just a privately held company.
08:22	Shaan Puri	So, here are my notes on this thing. I'm just going to read you my raw notes from last night. It says there’s a small company in Australia, in Melbourne, called EZ GO. It looks like your typical successful startup. You’ve got ping pong tables, a chef, and perks. You’re going on boat trips with the team. But they’re hiding a massive secret. They’re also the founders of Stake, which I believe might be the world's largest casino ever. It's crypto-only, which is a massive growth lever.
08:47	Sam Parr	does that mean that it that it's legal
08:51	Shaan Puri	you mean illegal I I don't know the legality of it that's like probably a pretty complicated thing like
08:55	Sam Parr	like full tilt went away in america I used to play tilt on full
08:58	Shaan Puri	Tilt. You can't go on stake.com if you're in the U.S. You can't access it; it's like, "No, this is not available to U.S. citizens." But internationally, it is available. They are based out of Curacao, which gives out their online gambling licenses, so I think they are fully licensed. They use crypto, which I think allows them to do things like KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering). Basically, I think you could just transfer in Bitcoin or whatever, and you could start gambling on the site. You just put in an email and start gambling. They have all these games, and I think they're paying Drake like $20 million a month to be the sponsor of this thing, which is...
09:33	Sam Parr	no way you're trying to really think that much
09:35	Shaan Puri	Because he's gambling at those stakes, and I'm pretty sure that's all house money. I don't think Drake is promoting this company by putting in $20,000,000 of his own money and losing it every month.
09:44	Sam Parr	Well, they're not giving him $20,000,000. They're saying, "You can win up to $20 million," or you could... no.
09:49	Shaan Puri	They're giving him house money. They're giving him a chip or a credit line that basically says, "Here's $20,000,000 to go play on the site." You probably can't just cash that out; you have to gamble it here. But I'm pretty sure that's how it's working.
10:01	Sam Parr	That would be crazy! I mean, I like... okay, so the private equity guys, like Steve Schwarzman and a few other folks who founded Carlyle, BlackRock, and Blackstone, they'll... there are some years where they'll get paid like $800 million or $500 million because of performance. But $20 million a month is $240 million a year. I can't imagine there are more than 100 people in the whole world that earn that much income. I mean, of course, there are a lot of people who earn like paper gains, but who earns that much income in a given year? That would be absolutely astounding.
10:37	Shaan Puri	So get this: the guy buys this house for $40,000,000. They also own multiple penthouses, like the top floor of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, which was the largest skyscraper. But here's what's even more interesting. When one of them was 18 and the other was 20, they started something called Primedice.com. It's still up! If you go to Primedice.com, it's basically a crypto gambling site where you just bet on whether it's going to be like... what's going to happen. It's like heads or tails; it's like a roll of the dice. You can just wager on it, and you can see people betting constantly on what the dice is going to roll out to and what they're going to win for it. They created this back in, I don't know, 2013. It says on the site that it's the largest crypto gambling site since 2013, so they were pretty early on that.
11:29	Sam Parr	this site is wild do you see all the live users betting money
11:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, just look at this one guy, Shane. He recovers just by betting over and over again.
11:40	Sam Parr	This company... this is such an amazing find! This Prime Dice thing is awesome.
11:46	Shaan Puri	So then let me tell you some of the other things that come into it. Basically, I think one of the YouTubers that they pay, or maybe Twitch streamer, this guy Adin Ross, I think is getting paid a few million dollars per month to do it. That, I think, there's pretty good authority on.
12:03	Sam Parr	$3,000,000 a month
12:04	Shaan Puri	Yeah, no, I think $2,000,000 a month. Okay, now let me go into more detail. All of that was like, you know, this is all not confirmed, but these are now some rumors. So, or I guess this part's not a rumor. If you go to their website, you can see that there's a company called Medium Rare NV, which is incorporated in Curaçao. That's the company that holds the gaming license. If you Google map the address, it's just like a shabby warehouse building that you'll find where this company is based. So, I don't know what's going on there. It's like, you know, when you incorporate in Delaware and they give you like a P.O. box as your address. Okay, and then a couple of other random rumors are like they added Dogecoin to their site as a way to deposit back in the day. When all the Elon stuff was happening, I think they dumped like $100,000,000 worth of Doge. They sold it all when the Elon pump was happening to Dogecoin. Yeah, it's crazy. So, anyways, this is just a crazy thing. But what, like, okay, let's say you even had the idea for this...
13:09	Sam Parr	I googled... I'm googling these guys as you're talking. There's very, very, very little information on these folks. There's just... there's almost nothing. Do you think I could change my browser to Australia and maybe get better results? Because I'm googling their names now and there is like... there's one picture of them on the whole... on everything.
13:28	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I found their Instagrams. Both of their accounts are private, but I know somebody who falls over or whatever, so I stalked their Instagram too just to see what's going on. It's... are.
13:38	Sam Parr	they jacked are they jacked bros now or are they still nerds
13:41	Shaan Puri	They're not jacked, but they're fit. They're definitely bros, for sure. Like, damn!
13:47	Sam Parr	they're breaking the stereotype
13:48	Shaan Puri	you know like here's the like I'm just gonna describe to you I'll send this photo we can put this in the are
13:53	Sam Parr	there ferrari pictures
13:54	Shaan Puri	Okay, so one... Picture number one: you would have guessed Ferrari, but here's a close second. It's a picture of a Range Rover with a giant bow and somebody hugging them because they just gave them a Range Rover. That's a classic! You gotta love that one. Another classic is the influencer balloons you get when you cross like a million followers or whatever. The yellow giant inflatable balloon of a number—they have that, and it's like some guy hugging it. Then there's another one: courtside at the Lakers game, courtside at the French Open. I could see Nadal's calf, you know, right behind this guy's head in this picture. So they're definitely living it up, and as they should! This is exactly what I want my online casino dealer guy's life to be. This is who I want it to be, and this is how I want them to live. I'm glad that they are doing exactly what they're doing.
14:45	Sam Parr	and you one of them is only 26 is what you're saying
14:48	Shaan Puri	yeah this article might be a little out of date but yeah
14:50	Sam Parr	that is wild they
14:51	Shaan Puri	definitely hit this scale when they were in their twenties
14:54	Sam Parr	Like the youngest, richest young person in the world. Richer than, what's his name, the Sam Bankman-Fried guy?
15:01	Shaan Puri	yeah and younger
15:02	Sam Parr	Or on par with it, and younger. That is outstanding! That is crazy. What a good find!
15:08	Shaan Puri	Speaking of young billionaires, I think the world's youngest self-made billionaire now is this guy Alexander Wang. Do you know this guy? I don't really know him. I think I was in a group chat with him.
15:20	Sam Parr	is that from that company a startup yeah yeah yeah
15:24	Shaan Puri	So, what they do is pretty cool. They basically saw the kind of like machine learning trend. You know, this is going to keep growing. They were like, "Well, you know, one thing that's really hard is when you're doing machine learning, you need the data to be labeled." Right? So if you're trying to teach a computer how to recognize a kitten or something like that, you first have to train it in some ways or be able to teach it when it's wrong and correct it. That labeling process is quite time-consuming. So what they did was create, I think, a giant workforce of overseas people that will label your images for you. If you're a self-driving car company, like Waymo or Tesla, you get tons and tons of footage. Those need to be labeled as, "Yep, that was a dog crossing the street," or "Yep, that's a stop sign," even though it's partially obstructed. So how does that happen? That's human intervention. Humans go and do that. Scale started off as labeling as a service. I'm sure they do a lot more stuff now, but it's pretty crazy that it's like a $10 billion company now. This guy, I think he started it when he was 19 or something. What?
16:35	Sam Parr	so is he cool
16:36	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he was cool. I didn't know him for long because as soon as they're... it's pretty funny. I'm in this group chat that's like four founders. Yeah, four... a bunch of founders. It's like, "Oh, this is kind of like the underground founders hangout." We chill here; everybody's trying to do big things. But then when one guy actually started doing big things, he's like, "I'm busy. I need to leave this now." So it's like the ultimate signal. It's like, "Oh, when it really takes off, you don't stay in these chats." You just sort of go do your billionaire thing now. I mean, you go do your... "I'm actually on a rocket ship. I don't have time to socialize anymore," which, you know, respect to him.
17:14	Sam Parr	Dude, I was gonna show you something that I thought was a major good find, and now it seems like it's achievable given that you just set the baseline at two 26-year-olds who are now worth $10,000,000,000. This one's a little... this one's much smaller but still oddly interesting. Go to the MFM or the $1,000,000 brainstorm document that we have and scroll down. You can kind of see that this is truthful. The guy sent me a picture of his QuickBooks, so you see that.
17:46	Shaan Puri	yeah I'm looking at it
17:48	Sam Parr	alright so this guy named matt paulson so you remember when my twitter got hacked
17:52	Shaan Puri	yes
17:53	Sam Parr	So, there were basically people who hacked my Twitter. They tweeted out something like, "I'm giving away a PS5" or whatever the number is, and just like, "Send me $400, and I'm donating the money to St. Jude's." This guy, Matt, when I got back on my Twitter, I saw that he sent two times the asked amount. He was like, "I just wanted to set it, went ahead and sent you $1,000 just so St. Jude's has a little extra money." I was like, "Oh my god, dude, that sucks. I'm so sorry about this." He was like, "Oh, no big deal." I asked, "Alright, well, who are you that you're this nice?" I clicked out, and he runs this website called MarketBeat. Have you heard of MarketBeat?
18:30	Shaan Puri	Only when you shared this in the transcript, so I did a little bit of stalking at that time because I was like, "What is that?" You know, your tweet was intriguing because you had said something like: > I met a guy who runs a company that does $25 million a year in revenue, only 13 employees, and it was like $17 million of the $25 million was profit. And I was like, "Alright, I'm fully aroused. Tell me more. What is this company?"
18:57	Sam Parr	Got them. Yeah, and so he sent me a picture of his QuickBooks and he was like, "Here's the profit." I mean, keep in mind this doesn't include my huge salary... my huge salary is a part of the expenses, but we actually do $17,000,000 of profit. The P&L that he sent me, it's like I think $13,000,000 of profit. So it's called MarketBeat - marketbeat.com. And for the first two years, it was just him. You go to marketbeat.com...
19:19	Shaan Puri	what it is yeah like what what is the you
19:21	Sam Parr	You go to MarketBeat.com. I always Google "HubSpot price targets" because I'm curious about what analysts think the stock might be in one year. It shows up early in Google—1, 2, 3. Or if you Google "Amazon price targets" or "target price targets," whatever company it is, he calls it a web portal. But if you didn't know better, you would look at it and just call it a media company. You see different headlines and different news. It's kind of like the Wall Street Journal, but really even more niche and just for stocks, specifically dividend stocks. It's just a way to quickly see headlines of what's coming up. So it's kind of like a portal or a data aggregator where you can see, "Alright, this stock has an earnings call on this date." Basically, it's just a place to get information, but it's also part media company because they publish 250 articles a month. They have contractors who they pay $150 per article to write these. He told me, "Regardless, the articles don't actually add to any of our revenue. People come to the website mostly just to see the stock prices and things like that." Right now, the guy has 11 employees—sorry, 13 employees. I have a list of what they all do. He's got 4 developers, 4 support people, 1 ad guy, 1 accountant, 1 content manager, 1 marketing assistant, and him. They make money through subscriptions and advertising, most of which comes from advertising. They've got 15,000 subscribers who pay between $20 and $40 a month, and one ad guy selling all these ads. It's mostly direct marketing, and he's got a bunch of different brands. Sorry.
21:03	Shaan Puri	You're going faster, so just to break down that revenue: it sounded like subscriptions are something like $4 or $5 million a year out of the $25 million. Is that right?
21:14	Sam Parr	He told me there are 15,000 premium subscribers, and they pay either $20 or $40 a month, depending on whichever plan they choose.
21:20	Shaan Puri	so let's call it 30 so that's 5 and a 5a half 1000000 from the subscription from the premium
21:25	Sam Parr	and then the rest being ad revenue
21:26	Shaan Puri	20,000,000 of ads okay wow
21:29	Sam Parr	Crazy, right? There's only one ad salesperson. He doesn't have a team of ad sales guys. He sells directly to large companies, like maybe The Motley Fool or some other stock-picking newsletter, or other financial brands. These could be companies looking to promote their stock or different financial brokers, financial products, like wealth advisors, and things like that. However, if an advertiser is too small, they just work with an agency. They say, "Hey agency, we've got some leftover inventory. Do you want to put your ads in here?" It's just one guy doing the whole thing.
22:01	Shaan Puri	Unbelievable! It seems like the trick for them—and by trick, I mean hard work and strategy.
22:08	Sam Parr	yes by the way they've been around I think they've been around for 15 years
22:12	Shaan Puri	right and it was seo it's it's seo that drives the bulk of the traffic is that the idea
22:16	Sam Parr	I think early on, it had a little bit of a brand. Before I even knew the guy, I would actually go to it all the time just to look because it's there.
22:22	Shaan Puri	The interface is really nicely organized. I'm on the Amazon one right now, and it basically has a bunch of stuff put together. It's like, "Oh, here's the executives, here's the CEO, here's their age, here's their pay." It's like, "Here's the percentage shareholding among these different groups." Yeah, it's like analyst targets, etcetera.
22:39	Sam Parr	It's kind of ugly by traditional web 2.0 standards. Like, it doesn't meet any of the design requirements that Airbnb would approve of, but in my mind, it's perfect. It actually is designed beautifully; it works wonderfully. So it's like a cluttered website - it kind of looks like Drudge Report or Craigslist or something, or eBay. It's this messy website, but I think it's quite good.
22:58	Shaan Puri	We need to put together a compilation of what I'm calling "Sam's Ugly Ducklings." This is an example of Sam's Ugly Ducklings: a website that, like, who the heck even heard of this? It doesn't look super fancy, and it's kind of been around for a while. It's got this niche, passionate audience. Drudge Report is one; this is another. You've shown me like ten of these in the last year, and I think people really dig these. So, we should do an episode that just highlights each one of these. It doesn't have to be like a podcast; it's almost like a screen share. Maybe it's just for YouTube. There's this guy reaching out who's trying to turn our podcast into an eBook or whatever, like a really nicely designed PDF. We should have him do it on your Ugly Ducklings because he's got extensive notes on what you talk about in each episode. Really, this guy in India—I forgot his name—but I'm talking to him right now to get one of these made for us because I think it'd be dope, right?
23:51	Sam Parr	like that'd be sick
23:52	Shaan Puri	Dude, it's embarrassing. I get some people who are like... now there are people who are, I would say, kind of a little more successful in the tech industry that are getting into our podcast. Whereas I feel like before, we were kind of a different audience for whatever reason.
24:07	Sam Parr	like kids almost like kids
24:09	Shaan Puri	It was not just kids; it was more like entrepreneurial individuals. I would say that is definitely a big component of it, which might include kids but could also be someone in their thirties who wants to make a change. Or it's just like, "Yeah, I own this awesome business. I'm based out of Peoria, Illinois." And it's like, "What the heck? Who are you and how did you find us?" That was more of our main target. Now, I'm getting people that are kind of in the heart of Silicon Valley who are like, "Dude, I kind of got hooked on the podcast." And I'm like, "Dude, I've been telling you about this for like two years!" They're like, "Yeah, it's actually good." They ask, "What are the best episodes you have? You have like 200." I was like, "I don't really know." They're like, "Well, what's a web place to find the most popular ones?" I said, "I don't have it." They're like, "Is there a place with summaries?" I said, "Nah, not really." They're like, "Well, you have all these ideas. Is there a compilation of all the ideas?" I said, "There should be." I think I just want to compile all the obvious growth strategies or onboarding strategies that we should have done, but we've done none of them. So, I'm kind of embarrassed about that.
25:03	Sam Parr	I'm not embarrassed it's fair it's working
25:06	Shaan Puri	yeah I know I honestly think it'd help us like I think I think I would want that if I was giving it to a podcast
25:10	Sam Parr	And let me... this is funny. Let me tell you how I found out about MarketBeat: I was reading Starter Story - I like that website. One of the questions is, "What books and podcasts do you read?" And he said: > On the podcast front, I really enjoyed listening to 'My First Million,' which breaks down unique ways that business owners are generating massive profits. That's how I found out about this guy, because he said he listens to us. [This is] the only podcast [he mentioned].
25:34	Shaan Puri	oh nice that's great
25:37	Sam Parr	who told you that they're listening
25:40	Shaan Puri	I don't wanna say their name but you know someone cool
25:44	Sam Parr	That's cool! It's always funny when people listen. Dude, I was with my dad when I took my parents to Europe. I brought my parents to this conference, and they are like, you know, in their sixties from Missouri. They were walking around this conference and they were like, "Oh, we love schwag!" They call it schwag. I think it's supposed to be swag. They go, "We love schwag," which means free stuff. They're like, "Oh, let's go to this company and get this." It's like some European sales marketing company. I'm like, "You know, Dad, no one gives a shit about, like, you know, sales.io. I don't know what they do." Yeah, he was like, "Oh, let's go talk to them." I'm like, "Dude, I don't... you don't even know what that means. I could tell you what it is. They go, 'What do they do?' I'm like, 'I can use words to explain it, but you won't understand.'" And so he said, "Well, let's go get some swag. They're giving away free bouncy balls!"
26:30	Shaan Puri	he thinks it's like shawarma but it's just
26:33	Sam Parr	And he's like, "Let's go get a ball. We're gonna pick it back for the kids." What are their grandkids? They go, "Let's go... Oh, they have envelope openers! Let's go get one for the kids." Oh, they got candy. I'm like, "Mom, this is a Snickers!" Like, you could... this is awesome!
26:46	Shaan Puri	He's just gonna give it to you in the hotel. He's like, "Hey kid, I got you this bouncy ball," and you're gonna be like, "Sweet!"
26:52	Sam Parr	Well, and they're bringing like... they're bringing like Kinder chocolate, you know? Like Kinder... I'm like, "You guys realize that you can get that at 7-Eleven down the street from your house? This isn't special." And they're just grabbing all this stuff, and they brought an empty suitcase because they knew they were gonna find swag in just a pile. So like, I come home, and my 4-year-old nephew is wearing a t-shirt that says like, "Hi, we're here to help with customer solutions." It is... and the kids are bragging that they got that from Europe. I'm like, "Oh my god..."
27:21	Shaan Puri	anyway yeah it's european it's european fashion
27:24	Sam Parr	Yeah, they're like, "What's this brand, Gideon?" It's just... they're just crazy. Then they're at this conference, and they're talking to people. I hear them talking to people, and they go, "Hey, do you like podcasts?" Then they said, "Do you like podcasts? Do you love podcasts?" The guy would be like, "Yeah, you know, I listen." He goes, "My dad calls, and he goes, 'Sam, he says he listens to 8 podcasts. I'll tell him to listen to yours. What's the name of it again?'" And I'm like, "Dad, how do you not know the name? It's called 'My First Million.'" He goes, "Oh, okay, I'll tell him. Hey, so it's called 'My First Million.'" Then he'll come back and say, "Hey, I got you another listener. I made him click subscribe." He's just going out to people saying, "You like podcasts? Oh great, I got you! I'll get you to subscribe." And he doesn't know the name of the podcast every single time. He goes, "What's it called? The $1,000,000 podcast? I listen to it all the time. It's my favorite, but what's it called again?"
28:29	Shaan Puri	My mom does the same thing, dude. She clicks every ad in my newsletter. She's like, "I clicked your ads today to help you!" I'm like, "Mom, I don't know... it's not gonna count, it's not gonna do anything." She's like, "No, no, no, you said you get paid if they click, right?" I'm like, "Well, kind of, but you know, you gotta go buy the thing." And then she's like, "Oh, I'm not gonna buy it." I'm like, "Yeah, you also don't need to click it. In fact, you don't even need to read it. I don't think you're very interested in this subject, Mom."
28:55	Sam Parr	That's hilarious! That is so funny. God, it's so funny. You should've seen them walking around, just putting around this conference, saying things like, "Oh, Sammy, come look at this booth." And it's just... I don't even know what it is! You know what I mean? It's like procurement. I'm like, "I don't even know what that means." Dad, neither do you! You definitely don't know what that means.
29:14	Shaan Puri	Yeah, cool dude. That's so funny you said procurement. So, Ramin, who runs... I mean, he's basically my partner in my fund. Ramin's got this company that's like an old school but baller company based out of Georgia.
29:28	Sam Parr	georgia right
29:28	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so he lives in Georgia. He's in the tech scene, but he kind of lives in Georgia and runs a bit of an old-school, more service-based company that I think his wife's dad started. He took it over and grew it a bunch, and is doing great with it. So, I think the business does like $50,000,000 a year or something. It's a sizable business. I've asked him no less than 15 times, "So, yo, what does your business do again?" He'd be like, "Yeah, we do procurement for SMBs and for whatever enterprise companies." I'm like, "But you get office supplies? I can't wrap my head around what procurement is." And he's like, "You know what the word procurement means, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "So, it's that." And I'm like, "But this... I guess I don't know what the word means then because..."
30:11	Sam Parr	I still don't know like like does does anybody use staples anymore like I don't yeah
30:16	Shaan Puri	And it's like, "Oh," he's like, "It's not office supplies. It's like... you know, you need a vendor for something." But I was like, "So then why wouldn't you just Google and get the vendors?" He's like, "Yeah, but like bigger companies, they just do it differently. They need like this middle man who's gonna basically help them get the things that they need." And I'm like, "You get paid for that?" And he's like, "Yeah."
30:34	Sam Parr	is it like someone who just like knows all the people who do blank and they just it
30:39	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's like you need vendors. I think I still fucking don't know, dude. I'm on explanation number 17. In fact, I just feel bad now every time I ask him or I try to tell somebody else what he does because I'm like... I clearly don't know. It's almost like, you know, there's a spot in my brain where there's just... if you did a scan, it would just be like, "Oh, there's some dark cloud here." That's the part of my brain that's trying to understand procurement, and it's just never happening. It's just like a fuzzy region.
31:06	Sam Parr	So, I've got a story related to this. Two days ago, Saturday night, I went out to dinner at a fancy place in St. Louis. We get to dinner and my dad goes, "Hey, the president of NASCAR..." I guess NASCAR like performed or raced, whatever you call it, yesterday (Sunday) in St. Louis. And he goes - my dad likes NASCAR - he goes, "That's the president of NASCAR, like Jim Nantz" or... I don't remember his name. And the...
31:31	Shaan Puri	football commentator
31:32	Sam Parr	yeah the football
31:33	Shaan Puri	I think it was
31:34	Sam Parr	It was Nantz... something. Not Jim Nantz. Yeah, not Jim Nantz. And he... I was like, "Oh yeah, you know, he's sitting with this guy named David Stewart." He's like the 2nd richest Black man in the world, and that... it's pretty funny. I'm like, I knew exactly who that rich guy was because he's worth like 4 or $5 billion. And I start researching him.
31:49	Shaan Puri	and I was
31:49	Sam Parr	Like, yeah, I've seen that guy before. I've seen him in articles because he's like the second or third richest Black man, and he's from Saint Louis. He's like the richest guy in Saint Louis, and he's got this company called Worldwide Systems. You've never heard of that, have you? No? So, it does $14,000,000,000 a year, and it's like the 4th or 8th largest privately held company in the world. He and his partner own the whole thing outright. What they do is they're a systems integrator, and that's one of those words, like "procurement." I heard that and I'm like, "What does that mean?" So, I went on this deep dive. I'm like, "I gotta figure out exactly what they do. I don't understand this." Then, it says they're a Cisco systems integrator, and I went to Cisco's website, and I'm like...
32:31	Shaan Puri	what does cisco do yeah
32:33	Sam Parr	I'm like, they're talking about networking hardware. I read those words and I'm like...
32:39	Shaan Puri	Well, no. The website will just be like "Networking Redefined." You're like, "I didn't know the first definition. Now it's redefined? Great." Yeah, but we...
32:46	Sam Parr	I didn't know we had to change that definition. Then they talk about switches and stuff, and I'm like, "I don't know what a switch is." I guess it has to do with electronics. I just... I didn't have any idea what this stuff did. But I Googled it, and I know that Cisco is like one of the largest companies in the world, but I'm just... I don't know what it is. So I had to research it. It took me forever to figure out what a systems integrator is. Do you know what it is?
33:08	Shaan Puri	Dude, no. I don't know any... I don't know what SAP does. I've been on a mission to understand what SAP does for a long time, and they're...
33:17	Sam Parr	they're european though they got a different word for everything we'd never be able
33:19	Shaan Puri	to figure
33:19	Sam Parr	it out
33:20	Shaan Puri	I feel like sometimes I'm watching TV and it'll just pop up "SAP." I think it means like closed captioning or Spanish or something like that. I'm like, "Oh wait, this is different." Now I'm super confused about SAP.
33:29	Sam Parr	yeah well I don't even know why they named their company after their stock ticker I think it's kinda weird
33:33	Ben Wilson	but they
33:35	Sam Parr	So, a systems integrator basically... what my father-in-law does for a living is if you're like Chase and you have 100 employees working on floor 18, and you're like, "Hey, we gotta move these 100 employees up to floor 43 in the same building," he studies it for a few weeks. Then, you go to work on Friday, and when you come back on the floor at 47, you sit down at your desk, and it's already set up. Everything just works, and there's no downtime. I think systems integrators kind of do that, but if you're a $20 billion company and you're selling like a $3 billion division to another company, they have to go to work one day, and all their computers are new. This new setup exists. Or if you're like a hospital and you're like, "We need an app," it's not as simple as just checking in at your lobby and saying you're there. You have to integrate all this stuff into it. I think that's what they do, but I don't know why they don't just call it like an agency, you know what I mean?
34:27	Shaan Puri	So, yeah, I don't know either. But I do know, like, you know, I guess, jokes aside, there are basically things that are like... like, you know, NetSuite. NetSuite is another one of these where you like...
34:36	Sam Parr	I don't know what what is netsuite is that like quickbooks but different
34:40	Shaan Puri	It's basically like... I mean, I'll butcher the thing, but people use it for inventory management, for example. So, it's essentially a database that's usable in a couple of different ways. It tells you what you have, what's running out, and what you need. It'll help generate a purchase order and do things like that. By the way, if you go to NetSuite's website—I just went to it—it says "complete procure-to-pay purchasing." Oh no, procurement! It has to do with this too. But basically, there are entire companies... I think this is what, you know, like the keyword for what Deloitte and other consulting companies do a lot of. They teach your company that these programs are so unintuitive that there are entire consulting businesses generating billions of dollars a year. They just go to a company like, "Oh, right here on their website, Lovesac uses them." So, you go to Lovesac, and you're like, "Great, you guys sell giant beanbags." They're like, "Yeah, those things are getting a little out of hand, getting a little willy-nilly now that it's growing so much." You think, "Don't you wish there was just a way to have everything organized in one place, in a system that just all talks to each other, and every one of your employees can log in and interface with it?" They're like, "That sounds pretty good." So, I just go set it up on my own. I go to the website, and they're like, "No, no, no, we do that for you. It takes 12 months, and we will add NetSuite to your system. We will add Oracle; we will add these different services to your business. We will integrate them into your current business and train your employees on how to actually use it."
36:09	Sam Parr	Is that what service revenue in a SaaS line is? So if you go to like Atlassian and look at their annual report, there's a huge amount of services revenue. So do they charge... I don't know what they serve or how they bucket in services. I would have thought... does that mean just the software, but...?
36:25	Shaan Puri	I think it's different for different companies, but at the same time this is sort of like if you were to ask, "Hey Sean, what does it mean to blanch a vegetable?" I'd be like, "You know, I think it uses hot and cold water in some way." It's like... I just don't know, right? When you're asking me about these giant enterprise companies that are B2B service/software companies, these are... again, I don't know the first thing about the first thing about this.
36:50	Sam Parr	The craziest thing to me is when I think about these ideas, it's to understand how someone came up with them. So, for example, there's Okta. Do you know Okta? That's what we use for logging into websites and stuff like that. Or there's that one, Snowflake. You know Snowflake, right?
37:05	Shaan Puri	like a data warehouse
37:06	Sam Parr	So those are all companies that were founded relatively recently, like in the 2005 to 2015 era. I'm like, how did a person know that this was a problem and had to get built? You know what I mean?
37:19	Shaan Puri	Well, you're just working in a big company, right? Like, okay, so for example, we were talking the other day about what was it called... the... or like...
37:28	Sam Parr	like we have like you you run like chimp for companies
37:30	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. What was the name of it again? I can't remember the name off the top of my head. I just committed to invest in it. But basically, when we ran a company, or like you ran an email-based company, if I asked you, "What does ConvertKit do?" you're very well-versed on what ConvertKit does. Because you're like, "Well, here's a scenario: you get a bunch of people coming to your website, but you want to grab their email because you're going to be able to market to them later." So, ConvertKit lets you put up a little webpage that grabs their email. Once you have it, you want to be able to tag them or segment them based on whether they paid for your thing or if they're free. Then, wouldn't it be cool instead of waking up every day and writing the same email over and over again, you can automate a sequence of emails? One goes out on day one, another on day three, and another on day ten. It's like you solve a problem in your business, and therefore, you understand what the solutions are, and you can even create them. Well, there's another one that's like... you know, this is basically what happens when you work inside of a large company. You're like, "Oh man, there needs to be a solution for X." You just see a problem and think there needs to be a solution for it. You understand that context because we've spent basically 15 years starting companies from scratch. You started media companies; I started more like software and social networking type companies. We've done content a bunch, so we can tell you all about content. We just don't have that same frame of reference as someone who's been using Salesforce every single day for like 10 years. They understand why you need this Salesforce add-on or app.
39:02	Sam Parr	All the time I'm like, "Damn, I wish I knew how to do this stuff that people charge $1,000,000 a year in subscription revenue." I'm like, "Damn, I just gotta talk to some stupid freaking guy about starting a newsletter." Give the same spiel constantly... I don't wanna talk about how to get your first 1,000 subscribers on Substack, you know? I'd rather get paid like $1,000,000 a year to do X, Y, and Z and, you know, get 100,000 customers.
39:24	Shaan Puri	yeah I mean yeah exactly and this is why like when I was at twitch when we got acquired I had like I had wrote down I'm gonna walk out of here with like 10 ideas and I I used that import export framework which is like what are 5 ideas that twitch would import a solution for like we need something like when a country needs something they import it they're like the us needs oil we import it from whatever iraq or what afghanistan wherever it needs to come from saudi arabia and so in the same way companies have these pain points and you're like when you're sitting there you're like oh damn if somebody had us if somebody had a magic way to do this we would pay $100,000 a month for this you know we would pay x dollars for this like for example when I was there I I talked about this idea way back in the day but like all hands it's like at our company you know if I needed to say something to the whole company as a startup I would just like literally fucking stand up at my desk and be like hey hey yo headphones we're doing this now the company we've pivoted to this okay good or like you know we we'd be at lunch and I'd just like stand up and say something but like at a at a company like twitch 2,000 people you know there was like this organized every thursday there's an all hands it happens at lunch they do it at lunch because that's where they have like a captive audience of people that will actually sit there and pay attention because they're eating and like and they would do the thing and it had like a presentation and there was like a whole there was like a conductor of the whole ceremony and then there's like a q and a and they needed like this question and answer thing then they needed to stream it to remote employees it was like all these things they had to think about and we were just stitching together like these 4 different tools like we use this for the q and a we use this for streaming we use this for the presentation we use this for new employees whatever and I was like oh if somebody just made like a really good like all hands software I'm pretty sure you could get a company like twitch to pay like 25 to $50,000 a year for your software and it would need to be secure it would need to be you know easy to stream on your phone it would need to have the q and a integrated like etcetera etcetera and I believe that to be true and like I could go validate them I could have just gone and talked to like you know the head of the all in the the all hands thing and be like hey if this existed would you buy this and like I saw that problem because I was there before that I didn't even see that problem
41:37	Sam Parr	yeah and we had talked about it it was like a high school newspaper but for your company
41:42	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and by the way, "Workshop" is the name. It just came to me now. So what's the URL? Use workshop.com. It's pretty sick. We've talked about this before, which is an insight. We all have services like Mailchimp or SendGrid; there are a ton of different services to send mass marketing emails to customers. But there's actually internal marketing too that happens all the time. A company is like a small tribe, and you constantly need information and sort of propaganda from the top that needs to get to your employees. Whether it's like, "Hey, remember this Friday we're doing Casual Friday," or "Don't wear underwear this Friday," you have to get some message across about what's going on. Or it's like, "Hey, we had these wins in the company. Congrats to this team for launching this safety feature that saved us whatever." So what News Workshop does is basically create a little Mailchimp for inside your company, allowing you to do lists...
42:37	Sam Parr	they but did they launch this because of our podcast or were they already
42:41	Shaan Puri	Working on it. I think they were already working on it, and we just got connected. Somebody pointed it out to me, they're like, "Hey, these guys are doing almost exactly what you're talking about." I reached out, and the guy was awesome. He said, "Yeah, we had this past company that was successful. We kind of, you know, like this is our second merry-go-round. We got the team back together to do this." Then it's like, "It's working! Hey, we just signed this client, this client, this client—big name, big name, big name!" They showed me the chart of revenue, and I was like, "Oh, this is like so spot on." I really think that a tool like this is going to exist, and it's going to work.
43:15	Sam Parr	yeah this is sick
43:17	Shaan Puri	And the design is really good. Like, if you go to the design of the page, it's... clearly these people are good at simple products. And that's kind of all you need to do to be able to build something like this. It's like, yeah, they're soft, clean, simple, easy to use.
43:31	Sam Parr	And they have the use cases: For employee engagement: - Change management - Company alignment - Hybrid work - Mergers and acquisitions - Internal marketing It's pretty sick. Measuring performance... yeah, this is awesome.
43:43	Shaan Puri	And like, you know, you send these emails out normally in your company. You don't have the open rate, you don't have the open tracking, and you don't know who's actually engaged or who's not in your company emails. You can't test the subject line difference and be like, "Oh, this one got way more people to respond to the engagement survey" or whatever we sent out. So, it lets the internal communications team do their job better. They didn't really have a tool before this.
44:05	Sam Parr	I can't find this client info
44:07	Shaan Puri	have you
44:07	Hubspot	Heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform. It shares its data across every application, so every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot: "Grow better." Are you angel investing actively right now?
44:24	Shaan Puri	yeah you you stopped it right or you like took a break I
44:28	Sam Parr	Well, I've taken a break because, A, the markets, and B, because I'm working on this. I got my... I could talk about it a little bit, but I got like 20 customers already for my new project.
44:38	Shaan Puri	Oh nice, okay, let's talk about this for a second. Let's do the angel investing thing first, though. I heard something interesting. My initial reaction was to do what you're doing, which was like, "It's just... I don't know, the world's crazy. I lost a bunch of money. Everywhere I look, prices are going down. You know, stocks are going down, crypto's going down, everything's going down. Maybe I should just bunker down for the season and chill out a little bit with investing in these high-risk, illiquid startups." But at the same time, then I heard somebody say something. I think it was someone on the "All In" podcast. One of their guests said something like, "Actually, are you slowing down?" and he was like, "No, this is the time to speed up." Because, you know, the last few years, I was getting pretty worried. I thought maybe it was time to slow down because valuations were getting really high. There was just too much capital flowing around. Everybody was throwing money at everything. And you know, when you would do a deal, it would be like, you wouldn't be able to get all the information you need. It's like, "Hey dude, we're closing. You're either in or you're out." You don't have time to do a certain level of diligence. He said, "I actually think that those vintages of companies, right? Like a vintage of wine, like the 1985 Bordeaux was so good. That happens in startup investing too, where certain vintages turn out really good and certain are kind of dry. They don't have any big winners." If you look, basically after every kind of market crash or recession, the next three years are some of the best vintages for startups. This happened after the 2000-2001 crash, and the next vintage that came out had LinkedIn, had Facebook, had a bunch of large companies.
46:12	Sam Parr	I agree with that, but the valuations... maybe it could have. It feels like it's changing week by week. But like, two weeks ago, when I was looking at a few deals, the valuations were still quite high.
46:22	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I think they are coming down, and they're coming down week by week. You're absolutely right. You could be disciplined on that, where you're just like, "Oh, you haven't gotten the memo that what used to be $50,000,000 is now $22,000,000, and what used to be $20,000,000 is now $8,000,000." Some people just haven't got that memo yet, but a lot have.
46:41	Sam Parr	Oh, right. So I'm waiting... like that amount, just a few more weeks maybe. Until... so that's when I say "wait," that's what I mean. Because we were talking to people and they weren't budging, and I was like, "Well, alright, we'll wait."
46:53	Shaan Puri	right
46:53	Sam Parr	And now I'm getting emails from some portfolio companies. You can see their cash balance and how much money they have left. It's like, "Damn, man!" I think there actually might be a lot of things going out of business in 6 months.
47:04	Shaan Puri	I think there absolutely will be. I mean, I've been getting a ton of "Hey, we just raised this extra money." A lot of smart founders are basically taking the bag while it's available just to give themselves a buffer because, like, who knows how much worse it's going to get? But the value is still coming down. So, I actually think that this year, next year, and the next basically two to two and a half years are going to be kind of an awesome vintage of startups to be investing in. You're getting all the... you know, none of the big trends have changed. The world's just getting more tech-enabled. Tech is just going into more and more industries. The size of the prize is getting bigger. There are more and more people coming online. Machine learning and all that stuff is making things better. All of that is still true; it's just that the prices got cut in half. So, it's like, "Oh good, I'm..."
47:44	Sam Parr	I'm on board. I'm just like, wait... I just think that there's been this discrepancy for about 2 to 3 weeks. I think it will get fixed in about 2 to 6 weeks.
47:55	Shaan Puri	yeah
47:55	Sam Parr	you know I I think that's gonna happen pretty pretty soon
47:58	Shaan Puri	should we talk about your your thing now or do you wanna do a devoted with that
48:03	Sam Parr	Well, we could... Yeah, I don't want to do a devoted thing because I'm not going to announce what it is entirely yet. But we can kind of talk about it. Basically, I'm kind of going back to my roots. I'm launching this new thing... I'm not even saying I'm launching it. I'm more so launching enough of it to prove or disprove if it's a good idea.
48:22	Shaan Puri	okay
48:23	Sam Parr	And I've gotten like, I forget the exact amount, but it's tens of thousands in revenue in the first two weeks.
48:32	Shaan Puri	amazing and
48:33	Sam Parr	and I didn't tweet about it once
48:35	Shaan Puri	So tell me this: What are you doing differently this time around than you did last time? The last time you started this rodeo was maybe 6 years ago, something like that? Yeah, and so now you did the whole Hustle chapter, you got acquired, you went to HubSpot, you saw a bunch of things, you met a bunch of people, you got smarter, wiser, all that stuff. You've got some hair on your chest now, so it's like... What did you decide? "Alright, this time I'm doing these things differently." Or was it...?
49:01	Sam Parr	Early on, I was against outsourcing or hiring anyone overseas, or hiring cheap labor or hourly labor. I was like, "No, I want to create jobs, and I want to do salary positions with benefits." Now, I'm not doing that. Eventually, maybe we'll add some people like that, but right now it's about how to automate this and how to get someone overseas just to do this like a machine. I just don't really care if I don't have any employees, and I'd prefer being alone. So that's the big difference. The second difference is... well, the same similarity is that I'm doing it all by hand, and this is totally the right move. I stand by that. Before, I wrote everything and sold the first ads. This time, I'm doing the same thing. I'm literally doing the cold emailing, getting them on the phone, doing the sales, listening to them. I'm doing that constantly, and getting those reps in is actually really impactful. You can actually see what's happening. By the way, I got that revenue—0% of the revenue has come through our website. It's all been from cold emailing people on LinkedIn, getting them on the phone, and then just sending them a Stripe account.
50:03	Shaan Puri	Amazing! What else is different about your mindset? I bet there's more.
50:09	Sam Parr	Way more confident, for sure. There is still a sense of urgency, so like wanting to move fast and thinking, "I have to get this done." I have to do this, but more so, I have to get this done while also remembering that I may be doing this for like 20 years.
50:25	Ben Wilson	right
50:25	Sam Parr	So, having this longer-term, this longer horizon... What I learned with my business: we sold around year 5, and the truth is, most of the value created between year 5 and year 6 was probably more than the value of years 0 to 5 combined.
50:40	Shaan Puri	right
50:41	Sam Parr	And I wasn't impatient because I'm happy I did what I did. It unlocked a lot for my life. But had I not... I said this a bunch of times: if I was already wealthy, I would never have sold. Real value seems like it comes... Now, I've only experienced a business from around year 5, but it seems like maybe there's something that happens in year 5 or year 6 where value is created. And then, who knows? Maybe someone who's owned a company for years is like, "Man, 20 or 30 is when like... shit magic really happens." So, I don't know. But I do think that year 5, if you bootstrap, is around the time where you're like, "Alright, I recruited some actually good people. I've got people helping and everything." But, like, I don't know. Do you agree that year 5, year 6, or year 7 is where some crazy stuff happens?
51:21	Shaan Puri	I think it's just generally true, right? Like, you plant seeds, and you water them. You're looking at them, trying not to just dig up the dirt and be like, "Why the heck aren't you growing?" But at some point, those things do start to grow. We're seeing this with our e-commerce business too. My buddy told me, "There's this magic moment in e-commerce where you've brute-forced enough of the building your brand and getting new people to try you. Every month, your returning customers just come back because they love your product. You don't have to remarket; you don't have to spend money remarketing stuff." Then the business goes from being this giant cash suck to a giant cash cow if you do it right. We just started to hit a tipping point where you could say... and it's not every month, but there are some months where I'm like, "Whoa, what just happened?" And it's like, "Oh yeah, that's what's happening." We actually...
52:14	Sam Parr	just
52:15	Shaan Puri	Last year, we brute-forced and got a bunch of people to love our product. Then, they came back and bought again. A bunch of them came back and made purchases this month, to the point where it outweighed all of the new investments we were making. Like, wow, that's nice! At Twitch, we were always doing these planning exercises about profitability targets. I can't say too much, but basically, we had profitability targets. I think Emmett had said something like, "Yeah, from pretty early on, we modeled it out, and it was like, it's gonna take about 10 years probably." He mentioned a huge number, saying it would take "X billion in revenue for us to break even." I thought, "That's just a crazy idea." We need to get to $1,000,000,000 in revenue for this to be profitable. But it did play out that way. That's exactly how it was unfolding. It was like, "Whoa!" I hadn't even really considered that. Amazon, I think, had a sort of semi-similar story. For about 15 years or something like that, Amazon was unprofitable overall. The difference with Amazon was that the individual divisions were becoming very profitable after a reliable cycle—let's call it a 4-year cycle. For example, books became super profitable, but by the time books were getting profitable, they were investing heavily in CDs, music, and other things. So, the total always looked unprofitable, but they knew internally that this was just a clock that goes... you know, every X, it's gonna take 4 years or whatever it is for this unit to get profitable. Once they were all profitable, this thing was going to be unbelievable, which is where it's at now.
53:46	Sam Parr	Trusting that process is really hard, particularly for first-time entrepreneurs. With [Jeff] Bezos and [John] Emmett, or I guess... you know, after like 10 years, it's like, "Well, not exactly a first-time founder anymore," but you know what I mean. Well, I'll say the...
53:57	Shaan Puri	The way I'm saying the Twitch one right now sounds a bit like a master plan. Like, I could see this coming and I'll... whatever. It's like, no, it was more like, "Oh shit, we got users! Oh fuck, the costs are really high. What if we raise money? Okay, what do we gotta tell these guys? What do we gotta tell these investors about how they're gonna get their money back? Maybe this business model will work and maybe on this timeline." Then, like, we update that information every two years. I think Twitch had a thing where it's like, "We're gonna be profitable in three years," and they've been saying that for the last six. You know, that's just been a thing. But it's very common actually for businesses, right? It's like, yeah, entrepreneurs are generally pretty optimistic. Elon has been saying self-driving cars will come out this year for four years. You know, it's like entrepreneurs are usually right about the actual assessment, and they're wrong about the timeline. Somebody gave me this great phrase: "Don't confuse a clear view for a short distance." It's like, imagine you're driving. You see something so clearly, but it looks like it's just right there, just right around the corner. And like, actually, that corner is like a ten-year odyssey that felt like it's gotta be just two or three years away.
55:00	Sam Parr	The last big thing that's different between now and then, you know, having some experience versus no experience, is the ability to say no. It's like, "Oh, well, you're saying you don't want this product. Therefore, I guess I should change it." It's okay if you don't want it; you're actually not who we're going for. My takeaway from this is not that my product is not good and people don't want it. It's just that I now know I shouldn't target people like you. Instead, I should only target people like this other person. That's a huge realization. The vision is that we're going to be this for these people. Eventually, maybe it can expand beyond that, but for a while, this is what we are and this is who we are for. If you don't talk to people who you think you are for, then it's okay. They're just not the right target market. I just targeted that customer poorly. You should only be one thing for one type of person and go deep on that. Oftentimes, people will say, "But that's not that big." But a) sometimes it is that big, and b) that's okay. You just gotta get that initial traction, and then more opportunities will present themselves. You have to be this one thing for this one person and ignore everyone else.
56:11	Shaan Puri	so my sister has a business I don't know have I told you about her like cloud kids thing
56:16	Sam Parr	Well, I know she's a babysitter. That's a little... that's not actually accurate, but like daycare, right?
56:22	Shaan Puri	It was, I guess, kind of like an in-home daycare. Then it became like a preschool. After that, it evolved into an outdoor preschool. Whatever it was, it kind of evolved.
56:29	Sam Parr	yeah by the way sorry I didn't mean to call that babysitting
56:32	Shaan Puri	she would've punched me
56:33	Sam Parr	In the face, and I knew that wasn't right. I knew it wasn't babysitting. I was like, "I called it." I was meant to say daycare.
56:39	Shaan Puri	So yeah, that's okay. That's it, that's right. But during COVID, she pivoted to an online model, like a lot of businesses. They went from, "Oh shit, brick and mortar is really hard right now," because, you know, every month the government is changing the rules on what we can and can't do to operate our business. So she created this thing called Cloud Kids. If you go to cloudkids with a "z" preschool.com, let me see if that's it... yeah, cloudkids with a "z" preschool.com. So go to that website real quick and just look at this. I actually think she's done a pretty good job with the website.
57:14	Sam Parr	cloud kids it's cloud kids what
57:16	Shaan Puri	Cloud Kid. Alright, I'll just put the link here: cloudkidswithazpreschool.com. So, check this out. Helping her with this has been pretty fun because she built this in Wix. I'm like, "Wix? Oh, it looks great! Who's using Wix?" Then I was like, "Alright, you need to change the headline. You need to add a video. The video needs to be not like a full-on video, just make it look like a teacher teaching something."
57:39	Sam Parr	oh dude this looks amazing
57:41	Shaan Puri	Exactly! So now it's really good. It used to be like, you know, "get info," now it's like "free trial." Right? Like just optimizing the landing page with her—like headline, sub-headline, button, hero image, you know, reasons to buy, all that stuff. She's working with people on Fiverr and Upwork to do these designs. It's actually turned out pretty good. So she created this thing, which is basically like these small group classes. Let's say you have your kid at home, either because they're just like my daughter—she's too young to go to school right now. We don't want to send her to full-time preschool, but we want her to learn something every day. It takes a ton of energy to sit there and be the engaging, patient parent, keeping your kid's attention and saying, "I'll teach you how to write the letter W today." But with this, I sit her down in front of the computer, get the materials in front of her with paper and crayon, and the teacher is so good. They'll be like, "Alright, you know, hi, high five! Let's sing our welcome song!" Then they do all the things. For one hour, she gets screen time without the guilt. She gets engaged; it's like cartoons, but it's not cartoons because she's actually learning stuff and getting better. So she created this service, and I was like, "Dude, this is actually a pretty good product." She's hired these teachers, and the teachers are like in Florida and different places like that. Then she calls me and says, "I'm just struggling so much with the growth." I was like, "Alright, well, tell me what..." She's like, "It's just not working."
59:08	Sam Parr	what what were the numbers
59:09	Shaan Puri	And so she gives her the numbers, and she's basically like, "I was like, okay, so let's draw the funnel." She's like, "What's the funnel?" I'm like, "Alright, just imagine like at the top, you know, you're getting leads—like people who come to your website. Then some of them give you your email, some of them sign up for a free trial, some of them actually show up, and then some of them become fully paid customers." So we drew that funnel out. It's like, "Oh, actually this conversion rate is kind of awesome." I was like, "Why do you..." and then I was like, "So what's your cost per lead? Is that really high?" She's like, "No, it's not high at all." And this is with like, you know, this $50 a day, $100 a day ad budget. I just put in like, you know, $100 and I just wanted to see what would happen. And I was like, "Wow, this is actually like, this business is kind of amazing." So you pay back your customer in less than a month. She's like, "I don't know if you say so." I'm like, "Yeah, like that's what your numbers say. You basically pay back before your ads bill is even due. That's like the ultimate thing you want with an ads-driven business: to get the revenue from a customer profitably before you even pay your credit card bill."
01:00:06	Sam Parr	And to give the listener context, prices range from $40 a week to... so you could... alright, I understand. You can get classes for one day, two days, three days, or four days a week. They all range from about $160 a month to $400 a month. It's basically... the tagline is actually quite good, although the website needs a little work. I clicked on the FAQs and it goes to the privacy policy, but that's alright. Live online preschool classes: the number one live preschool program from home. We provide the curriculum, teachers, and friends. Right? And so that's great. Then there's a video featuring this woman who works for her. You don't have a white sister, do you?
01:00:47	Shaan Puri	yeah it's one of
01:00:48	Sam Parr	My teachers, and it is great. I am all about this. This is beautiful. By the way, the art is actually really good.
01:00:54	Shaan Puri	yeah I
01:00:54	Sam Parr	think it's a group
01:00:55	Shaan Puri	It's pretty good, right? So, the reason I bring this up is because you're talking about handling a "no" or handling an objection. What I learned when I was diving in is that your funnel is not broken. Your website is good, your services are great, and your retention is amazing. I was like, even your ad's return on ad spend (ROAS) and payback are also amazing. So, I asked, "What are you talking about?" And she's like, "Well, I mean, I talked to so many people, and they all just don't come back from the free trial." I'm like, "But you're converting 20% or something like that from free to paid. That's like..."
01:01:30	Sam Parr	yeah
01:01:30	Shaan Puri	Best on the internet. She's like, "Yeah, but I talked to 8 moms that were like, you know, we can't do it for this or this reason." I was like, "Yeah, but 8 out of 10 is 8 out of 10." That means 2 out of 10 yeses. That's a 20% conversion. That's, again, amazing. The numbers back out where this business is like an awesome business. I think what will happen is the psychology. I told her, "Hey, if you want to close more people, call everybody who just did your free trial and see if they'll convert to pay." They'll be like, "Hey, I'm the owner of the school. How did you like it? So glad I saw I dropped in on the class. I saw she was doing great. Do you think you want to continue? Do you want to do more classes?" And if payment's a problem, you can say, "We can help you with the payment plan." Because a lot of the people who are doing this are from Detroit's inner city. There are a lot of people that are basically like, "Hey, I can't pay for full-time caretaking. I can't pay for even full school." In Detroit, for example, what I learned through this was that the public schools are full. So you just can't send your kid. Can you believe that? People are like 6 years old and they're saying, "Yeah, the school's full and I can't afford private school." I've never heard of public school being full, and that's what's going on in Detroit right now.
01:02:39	Sam Parr	Dude, is this your sister's? Just like, "Move over, Sean. There's a new big Swiggy D at the house."
01:02:46	Shaan Puri	Well, the funny thing is, she's got a better product in business than I have in any of my businesses. In terms of all the core metrics, they are stronger than all of mine. The product offering and retention are stronger than anything. The problem is, not a problem actually, she doesn't want to do world domination. She's like, "No, this would be great if we got to like 50 students." And I'm like, "Well, then you'll want 100, right?" She's like, "No, because that'll be way more work. At 50, I already have these great teachers. I can handle 50. I just want to fill up my occupancy." And she truly is like, "Well, because when I do that, then I can go work out in the middle of the day. I just want my lifestyle. I can go to my daughter's day."
01:03:21	Sam Parr	you know sean
01:03:22	Shaan Puri	you know
01:03:22	Sam Parr	she has something that you'll never have
01:03:24	Shaan Puri	oh no oh no the e word enough yeah she she does
01:03:28	Sam Parr	I still have enough... My mother-in-law, she's like, "Hey Sam, can I drive you to the airport?" I was like, "Why?" She goes, "Well, it's 2 hours to get there. I need you to explain to me how online commerce works because I want to start a store." This was 2 or 3 years ago when I did the ride and I told her how to use the store. Now she's got a business doing like half a million a year, and I was like, "So why don't you scale this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? You could be like... I'm always like, you could be like the Black Martha Stewart, like crush this!" And she's like, "But I like taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off." And I was like, "Oh, alright."
01:03:55	Shaan Puri	Right, well, if you made more, then you could take Tuesdays and Thursdays off. She's like, "I could do that right now."
01:04:01	Sam Parr	so yeah it's the same exact thing that I'm like but but but
01:04:05	Shaan Puri	But, just to finish on the rejection thing, what I learned was that when she called people and 8 people in a row said no, it was completely demoralizing for her. She started to question everything. It's like, "Am I going after the wrong market? Do I have the wrong product? Am I priced too high? Am I this? Am I that?" I think it's really important to be able to back out numbers. I've seen the same mistake in fundraising all the time. It sounds kind of silly when it's like, "Oh, my sister's at a little preschool. She has a 20% conversion rate." Obviously, that's good! Even if it was 10%, it would still be great. It still works. But she got demoralized by hearing 8 no's in a row on a Monday morning, or not even hearing no's—just not hearing back from people. I'm like, "Yeah, yeah." But then I talk to founders and they're like, "Dude, raising money is so hard! I need to change this, change that. Can you help me with my pitch?" I'm like, "How many investors did you pitch to?" And they're like, "We talked to like, you know, these 4 last week." I'm like, "4? This is a numbers game! This is a sales funnel. You're selling your equity in your business in exchange for money." What you're doing is getting highly emotional and taking it personally that somebody doesn't want to fund your business. In reality, yes, you should be learning how to pitch better. Maybe, in the end, you will strike out, but you don't even know that yet. You haven't hit enough people.
01:05:25	Sam Parr	Dude, what a lot of people realize is that a 1 to 3% conversion rate is normal. This kind of means that maybe you'll go over 29, and on the 30th one, you get a "one." That's like, boom! Now you're 1 for 30, or that's a 3% conversion rate. You're good! Yeah, or maybe on your 99th one, the 100th one, boom! 1% out of 100, that's good. That's why I always joke with Ben. I'm like, "Mormons are probably the best salespeople," because convincing someone to join a religion has like the lowest conversion rate ever. And then you hear that you could sell Salesforce, and that has a 2% conversion rate, and you're like...
01:05:57	Shaan Puri	piece of cake
01:05:58	Sam Parr	This is the easiest thing ever versus conversion of apparel. Ben, how many... I don't know if that's actually what you did, where you tried to get people to quit whatever religion they were in and join your crew, but how many people do you think who were like either atheists or in another team, and they just said, "Yeah, cool. I'll join your thing"? How many people... what's your... what was your percentage rate?
01:06:22	Ben Wilson	so let's see I had
01:06:24	Shaan Puri	did you convert anyone
01:06:26	Ben Wilson	Yeah, I converted in the low thirties. I'd have to look, but I was 32 people on my mission. So it was 2 years, and oh man, how many doors do I think I knocked on in that time? I mean, it was a couple hundred or a thousand. It was hundreds of doors a day, every single day for 2 years, right?
01:06:47	Sam Parr	you knocked on a 100 doors a day
01:06:49	Ben Wilson	easily easily a 100 doors a day
01:06:52	Sam Parr	what country hold on
01:06:53	Shaan Puri	we're doing some public math this deserves it let's say
01:06:55	Sam Parr	well yeah while you do it let me ask you a question what country
01:06:58	Ben Wilson	so I was in el paso texas but I was speaking spanish
01:07:02	Shaan Puri	So, if you did 150 doors a day, which you're saying is easily an estimate, every single day for 365 days over 2 years, you knocked on 109,000 doors. You did 109,000, and you did 32 out of 109. So that's... 0.02% or something like that. It's like, yeah, fractions of a percent.
01:07:33	Sam Parr	Dude, how about the fact that your friends were all going to these cool places in Africa or South America, and they sent you to El Paso?
01:07:39	Ben Wilson	Yeah, but I mean, what you know? My brother went to Prague, and my sister went to Moscow, but...
01:07:46	Shaan Puri	we had we had what's the name austin from lambda school which is now bloomtech
01:07:51	Sam Parr	he went to russia
01:07:52	Shaan Puri	He was in Russia or something like that. He said he converted 0 or 1. He was like, "Oh, because we'd asked him what would be good." He's like, "One would have been great, yeah, for where I was."
01:08:01	Ben Wilson	So that's the trade-off you make. Like, yeah, my brother and sister were in much cooler places in Eastern Europe, but Eastern Europe is hard, man. Like, really hard.
01:08:10	Sam Parr	But I thought, like, so I guess you're dealing with mostly Mexicans or some type of Hispanic? Yeah, all of them. They're the most hardcore Catholics there are. They are. They're willing to bail.
01:08:19	Ben Wilson	So, what you've got to realize though, El Paso is very transitory. A lot of people just got there from Mexico, and so it's like, "Ah, well, I'm not really going to my church that I used to go to. Maybe I'm looking for something new." Like, my life is already changing, I'm open to something new.
01:08:33	Shaan Puri	can you you
01:08:33	Sam Parr	Facebook has a similar feature; it's called "Recently Moved." Those are great people to target. It's true, "Recently Moved" is an awesome group of people to target because they're changing their lives.
01:08:43	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you have like a weight loss thing... Ben, can you give me the speed version of what the pitch is? So you literally physically knock on a door, I open up, what happens?
01:08:55	Ben Wilson	yeah so essentially what we're taught to do is
01:08:59	Shaan Puri	no just like do it
01:09:02	Ben Wilson	man
01:09:02	Shaan Puri	in spanish
01:09:03	Sam Parr	yeah do it to me do it to me it it no hablo ing you gotta leave it alone so
01:09:08	Ben Wilson	You guys gotta bear with me. It's been... okay. So, I'm 34. It's been 13 years.
01:09:13	Shaan Puri	you did this a 100000 times you know this like the bad year abcs
01:09:17	Sam Parr	so
01:09:19	Ben Wilson	You know, I'd say, "Hi, how are you? My name is Elder Wilson. This is my companion, Elder Lopez. How are you today?" You know, just whatever.
01:09:29	Sam Parr	hi good I'm doing great nice to meet you
01:09:31	Shaan Puri	gosh how gosh
01:09:32	Ben Wilson	I'm sorry hold on let me think about this
01:09:34	Sam Parr	what do you want
01:09:34	Shaan Puri	okay we'll give you a second we'll put you into it
01:09:37	Ben Wilson	I can get into it but like how would I first first start that's what I'm trying to think of
01:09:41	Sam Parr	how many times did people tell you to f off
01:09:43	Ben Wilson	I couldn't begin to tell you
01:09:46	Sam Parr	I mean more often than not do
01:09:47	Shaan Puri	they train you or you just sort of figure out how to sell
01:09:49	Sam Parr	the stuff
01:09:49	Ben Wilson	You go to... well, so you have 3 weeks of training if you're speaking English. If you're learning a language, it depends on how difficult the language is. I got 6 weeks of training, I think.
01:10:00	Sam Parr	Do you carry mace? No, no weapon, no nothing. Do you have a whistle?
01:10:06	Ben Wilson	No, I think maybe the women might be up to their own discretion. Maybe they do some stuff like that. I have a friend who got stabbed... He was in Honduras. Like, a good buddy of mine got stabbed on his mission.
01:10:18	Sam Parr	I guess I can just put
01:10:20	Shaan Puri	him on lethal and weapon here
01:10:22	Sam Parr	yeah but I
01:10:23	Ben Wilson	I'm trying to think about how I... you know, it started off with just like, "We're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." You start off by asking them questions like, "Do you believe in God? Are you someone who believes in God?" "Yeah, oh, you know, what do you believe about it? Do you go to a church?" "Oh yeah, I go to a church." So you start with kind of relating to them about their faith. Then you say, "Well, you know, our message is that you said you believe in Jesus Christ. We also believe in Jesus Christ from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What we believe is that the same Christ, the same church that Christ established when he was on the earth 2,000 years ago, was lost for a period of time. No one had the complete truth, but that it's been restored again—the exact same church. So that's why we're out here trying to talk to people. If you knew that was true, that Christ's church was back on the earth, the same one that he established, is that something that would be interesting to you?
01:11:23	Sam Parr	oh my gosh this is awesome just a sales call
01:11:26	Shaan Puri	The Wolf of... yeah, the Wolf of the Village. Yeah, the Wolf of Provo. This is...
01:11:32	Sam Parr	great yeah
01:11:33	Shaan Puri	Dude, that's fascinating, man. I feel like, by the way... you know, to whoever runs the budget at the Mormon Church: me and Sam are available for consultation if you need some tips on how to brush up that opening script. I think maybe those first few lines... maybe we could give you some other hooks, maybe some other ways in because...
01:11:53	Sam Parr	Also, have you seen the trends on TikTok where it's like a baby or something running away? They overlay audio that says, "Excuse me, ma'am, can I talk to you about the Lord Jesus Christ?"
01:12:03	Shaan Puri	or can
01:12:03	Sam Parr	I, you know, can I talk to you about the Lord? Ma'am, have you been to church lately? Ma'am, where are you going? Can we please talk? It's like always some funny running away. You guys should pounce.
01:12:12	Shaan Puri	On that note, would it be valid to pursue your mission through TikTok? Like, if you were to say, "I'm going to make amazing TikTok videos that go viral and help spread our mission," could you do that? Or does it have to be door knocking?
01:12:23	Ben Wilson	Well, no. During COVID, a lot of missions kind of went to social media, essentially. Now, you gotta realize that your mission is like a rite of passage. For two years, when I was 19 to 21 years old, I didn't have any contact with my family except for writing them an email once a week. Then, I got to call home on Christmas and Mother's Day. That was it. I was completely separated from my past life, doing this extremely hard thing. So, during COVID, missionaries did start doing social media missions because they couldn't go to people's doors and talk to them. But my impression was, "Man, that sounds like it sucks." You missed out on the rite of passage. I wouldn't want to do that for two years; that doesn't sound fun at all.
01:13:12	Sam Parr	just exploring yourself losing your virginity going to parties converting people
01:13:16	Shaan Puri	well the funny thing is like
01:13:18	Ben Wilson	no
01:13:19	Sam Parr	this shit baby it's definitely not fun
01:13:21	Shaan Puri	You're saying, "Man, that sounds like it sucks. I wouldn't want to do that." And like when you describe not seeing your family and having to, like, whatever you said, you know, the thing is, yeah, like if you're going to wash your knees every day or whatever.
01:13:36	Ben Wilson	You want it to be hard. You want it to be like this life-changing, difficult, crazy thing that you do with your life. Not like sitting behind a computer for two years.
01:13:45	Sam Parr	that's the difference between mormons and and gentiles like
01:13:48	Shaan Puri	yeah exactly there's
01:13:49	Sam Parr	a bunch of heathens
01:13:50	Shaan Puri	Dude, I spent my whole life avoiding hardship. Like, what? Yeah, well, I would be in the military or, like, you know, the Mormon Church or whatever. If I really wanted to lean into difficulty, I've spent my life running away from it.
01:14:03	Sam Parr	We are not the same. Oh yeah, we are not the same. Yeah, then it is.
01:14:09	Ben Wilson	like a big cultural thing it's hard to explain how excited I was for this academic 2 years
01:14:15	Sam Parr	Oh my God! Well, that's why you're probably going to be more successful than both of us.
01:14:21	Shaan Puri	and happier and
01:14:22	Sam Parr	and happier yeah and more emotionally healthy
01:14:24	Shaan Puri	A ton of respect for anybody who does that. I also have even more respect for whoever was able to convince people to do this. I think that is one of the greatest organizations that has been created, with such a strong pull that its members would take such a large movement to support it.
01:14:46	Sam Parr	like and they're obligated to convince 10 other people to join
01:14:50	Shaan Puri	yeah I'm trying to get somebody to give me their email address for like 2 seconds and I'm like oh this is
01:14:54	Sam Parr	so hard
01:14:54	Shaan Puri	like yeah they have
01:14:55	Sam Parr	To give you 10% of their income, they gotta give you 10% of their income and go and recruit about 50 more people. It's the greatest thing ever.
01:15:02	Shaan Puri	Two years of your life, 10% of your income, all of your social capital, and probably something else that I don't even know about.
01:15:09	Sam Parr	we can't pay taxes either because we're giving it all away
01:15:12	Shaan Puri	well let me tell you my
01:15:13	Sam Parr	it's the it's the sweetest deal
01:15:15	Ben Wilson	In the world, it is a great deal. 10% is cheap on what you get in return.
01:15:21	Shaan Puri	wow oh wow amazing and you have to believe it's the greatest deal in the world
01:15:25	Ben Wilson	I I will say that
01:15:27	Shaan Puri	even better
01:15:28	Sam Parr	Wow, amazing! I didn't enjoy this, man. I've never seen them. I'm convinced now. Do you guys want more?
01:15:35	Ben Wilson	So let me tell you this: I do pay 10% of all my income. I donate a ton of time; it sucks all my time. I dedicated two years to be on this mission. I give up a lot, but at the same time, if I move anywhere, I show up at a new place, call the local congregation, and a bunch of guys come help me unpack my boxes and move in. I go to church, and immediately I have like a dozen friends. People invite me over to dinner for the first few nights that I'm in this new city. If I need a job, there's someone in the congregation who will help me find one. If I'm ever down on my luck and need food, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will provide me with food and make sure I don't go hungry.
01:16:21	Shaan Puri	You just described being a famous podcaster. Also, by the way, Sam just went on a road trip last year and was like, "Hey, who wants me to drive their car?" People were like, "Here, here are the keys." Then he said, "Hey, anybody's wife want to cook me dinner and, you know, give me a massage?" People were like, "Honey, honey, it's Samson's town."
01:16:41	Sam Parr	maybe I
01:16:42	Shaan Puri	maybe I
01:16:42	Sam Parr	am mormon
01:16:42	Shaan Puri	after all exactly
01:16:47	Sam Parr	I mean I I look like it maybe I am mormon maybe I should do a dna test
01:16:52	Shaan Puri	Jokes aside, I also don't want to have the wrath of God, if He does exist, against me. So, you know, I think it is pretty awesome. Also, I think people study what makes people happy. In the end, I think the biggest one is...
01:17:02	Sam Parr	always religion that's always part of it
01:17:04	Shaan Puri	Well, I think the biggest one is quality time spent with people you care about. This includes a combination of family, friends, communities, and your spiritual community. So, what you're describing is basically that.
01:17:18	Sam Parr	sounds awesome
01:17:19	Shaan Puri	Meaningful relationships with people who have kind of an unconditional support for each other is great. It's something that everybody would sign up for, depending on the situation and the cost.
01:17:30	Sam Parr	I do think believers in a religion live longer than non-believers, and I also think they're happier. I was curious about that.
01:17:37	Ben Wilson	Sean, are they going to have a succinct pitch for why it's great? We need to send you on a mission, Elder Corey.
01:17:43	Shaan Puri	I would love to go knock on a hundred doors. I really want to just do door-to-door sales, just to see if I could do it and how it would work.
01:17:50	Sam Parr	The pitch needs to be: "Excuse me, ma'am. Do you know what the average life expectancy of an atheist is? Now, what if I were to tell you that Mormon believers... it's this. Would that interest you?"
01:18:01	Shaan Puri	we I don't know
01:18:01	Ben Wilson	If the church would go for this, we should do a YouTube series where we send Sean with a couple of missionaries I could hook you up with in the Bay Area. They could go knock on like 100 or 200 doors with them and see what it's like. Offer your thoughts and then give them some observations and tips from that experience.
01:18:22	Shaan Puri	Well, I would like to just go sell my own fake religion and see how well I could do. I don't know where we could do that, but I need that kind of fresh slate. I'm more of an entrepreneur, not an intrapreneur, if you know what I mean. So, I gotta create something from scratch here and keep all those tax benefits to myself. I've actually considered this many times—creating my own religion—because I do have my own philosophy, my own belief system. I do share it with others, and it's a life operating system.
01:18:51	Sam Parr	and I don't like taxes
01:18:52	Shaan Puri	and I think that it's fantastic to to own a religion or to you know own a church of of a religion
01:18:57	Sam Parr	and you're indian
01:18:58	Shaan Puri	so you know
01:18:58	Ben Wilson	you you can be a guru like people expect that you know
01:19:02	Shaan Puri	I know, I mean when I had the longer hair, I was much better suited for this. But, you know, if I like Sam, what would be your opening line? Like, where, what direction would you take it? Like, he was like, "Hi, I'm Ben. Do you have a moment to talk about...?" I would...
01:19:12	Sam Parr	"Have said exactly..." I would say, "Excuse me, ma'am. I know this is so strange, but I gotta ask you a quick question: What would you say if I told you that the average life expectancy of an atheist was 72, but the average life expectancy of a Mormon is 84? Would you wanna know why?" And I think they would say, "Yeah, I guess." "Well, you see, it's due to..."
01:19:29	Shaan Puri	you wanna see your grandkids someday yeah like
01:19:32	Sam Parr	Well, because when you believe in a religion, it means this, this, this, and this. And it just so happens our religion... I would sell them on the.
01:19:38	Shaan Puri	well that's why it was good when he he started with do you believe in god right because yeah I get
01:19:42	Sam Parr	to get the losers out of the way
01:19:43	Shaan Puri	Well, no. You gotta separate it. Are you talking to an atheist, or are you talking to somebody of another religion? Because you can't... you gotta know which way you're going there. The other way is, you know, you do the thing where you're like, "Hey, you know, I was just at your neighbor's house and I thought I would pop by." Just so you're like...
01:20:02	Sam Parr	I hate when I get home I'm in
01:20:03	Shaan Puri	The neighborhood, I would say, "Which leader?" Yeah, I was at the Johnson's across the street. I thought I'd stop by because, blah blah blah, or like, you know, I really just wanted to chat with you for a minute. Do you believe in God?
01:20:18	Ben Wilson	or I
01:20:19	Shaan Puri	You know, maybe go with something like, "I was just wondering, have you seen this video?" I'm just holding up my phone of that TikTok of the baby being chased away. You know, I'm just trying to stun them into not automatically rejecting me. Right? Like, how do I get some curiosity? Which would be something like, "I'm going around the neighborhood. I'm just asking, do you go to church regularly?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, awesome." I would follow up with, "Would you say you believe in God?" And they might say, "Yeah, I do believe in God." Then I could ask, "Where did that start? Was that from your parents?" They might respond, "Yeah, my mom was super religious." And I could say, "My mom too." Then I would try to do something like that. That's off the top of my head how I would try to build rapport quickly by getting them to talk, you know?
01:21:02	Sam Parr	stick to podcasts stick to podcasts
01:21:06	Shaan Puri	hey give me give me a 100,000 reps at this I think I'd be pretty good by the end
01:21:10	Sam Parr	yeah better than ben in having to think about it
01:21:12	Shaan Puri	yeah ben's response made me think he might he might not have gone on that mission after all
01:21:16	Ben Wilson	hey sean I 32 converts you've got 0 so far so you gotta get on my level
01:21:21	Shaan Puri	I just don't know how you forgot the script you said a 1000 a 100000 times that sounds a little suspicious
01:21:26	Ben Wilson	over a a decade's a long time sean a decade's a long time
01:21:30	Sam Parr	alright I gotta go bathroom I'll talk to
01:21:32	Shaan Puri	you all
01:21:32	Sam Parr	in a little bit
01:21:33	Shaan Puri	yeah

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