How to Make Millions With a Modern Day Infomercial | My First Million #221

Sam Parr

I think if you're starting a media company, and if I started it again, if you didn't go subscription first, you're an idiot and you're a fool. Alright, we're live. So, did you see I got Ariel Helwani to agree to come on?

Shaan Puri

I know good job how'd you do that

Sam Parr

A friend, a good buddy of mine, is like best friends with him, and I just begged him.

Shaan Puri

Your outreach... I had never seen you try so hard. Normally, you're pretty cool about things. I don't think you really care about too many people, but I could tell you wanted this one.

Sam Parr

I did... So basically, for the people listening, there's this guy named **Ariel Helwani**. He's got a million followers on Twitter, so he's not *that* niche. Basically, he's like the god of MMA journalism. The reason why he's interesting is because he just quit ESPN, where he was probably making close to $1,000,000 a year as a host. He created a Substack, his own podcast, and he's kind of building like a little media empire. Yep, and so we'll have him on and talk about that.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and you know, the thing that's interesting about him is he's been in it for a while. So, like, you have this phrase I think you've said: "Niches get riches." Basically, which is like, yeah, a lot of people are afraid to go into a niche market. And is it "niche" or "nitch," by the way? I have no idea.

Sam Parr

both all can work

Shaan Puri

Okay, good. So, you know, a lot of people are afraid, "Oh, is this too niche?" I think you have the opposite reaction, which is, "Too niche? Fantastic!" At least that's my understanding. You tell me if that's right or wrong.

Sam Parr

Well, it's the two things: 1. Whenever you start doing something, it's definitely better to start for a very small group of people and a very small niche. Corner that, or at least get big in that, and then expand. 2. The second thing is you can stay in a growing niche and grow with it. But, you know, start your business on top of a huge wave. For example, Twitch video game streaming is a super small niche. They never really expanded, right? It's still the same thing from day one.

Shaan Puri

tried but it's still you know dominant where where it's just gaming

Sam Parr

Yeah, and that niche has just... they're in it. It just is no longer really a niche. Or you have like Amazon, only books, and then you dominate that, and then CDs, and then this, and then this, and then that. So yeah, I think starting small is always the way to go, or is often the way to go.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I think in Ariel's case, what he did was interesting. I know he's a fan of the NBA; he's a big basketball fan. However, he didn't go for basketball journalism, which would have been a more obvious, safe choice. Instead, he went for MMA, which was like this fringe, really niche sport. You know, it was kind of like John McCain in New York calling it "human cockfighting." It's not allowed in certain places, so it wasn't really a very safe choice. But he was the only dude doing it. It felt like, you know, you can go back 15 years and see clips of him talking to people backstage with just budget production value. He was like the guy covering this regularly. Because of that, he has deep relationships and deep respect among the fans. Even though Dana White, the president of the UFC, hates him and has banned him from UFC events, he's still the number one journalist. Imagine, you know, this guy that Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, just hates and bans from the game, still being the number one journalist for the athletes. That's kind of unusual. So yeah, he's an interesting dude with a cool story.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm excited to have him. I actually think that... I think that it's gonna be a hit with our listeners, even the people who aren't into the UFC. I think it's gonna be a hit, but I am a fanboy so we'll see.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's all good

Sam Parr

can I tell you about a business that is built on trust that I'm obsessed with at the moment

Shaan Puri

okay go for it

Sam Parr

alright have you heard of examine.com no

Shaan Puri

what is examine.com

Sam Parr

you've never heard that okay can you go to your computer now you have okay

Shaan Puri

I'm at it let me go there

Sam Parr

all right so I'm going to do it

Shaan Puri

tell you what I see

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Okay, I go to examine.com and I thought it was going to be about books or something. No, it says "Nutrition information you can trust" and then it's just like a giant kind of Google search bar. It's like... for example, oh this is perfect actually. My trainer was telling me about ashwagandha. I see ashwagandha here.

Sam Parr

I I I've been taking that for 8 days now

Shaan Puri

Great! So, it's a supplement. I go here, and I guess the idea would be, "Hey, there's going to be a lot of information." If you Google this, you're going to find a lot of information. But we are a trusted source. We do the research, we put the pros and cons here, and we make it easy to understand. Is that the idea?

Sam Parr

yeah so I'm gonna I'm gonna summarize this so the reason this interests me is I have a friend named sol s o l orwell he's a good buddy of mine I've never even met him but we we went to a bunch of conferences and we were in the same room and we never met up but we became friends and he's a great guy and I just met him as a guy and then I saw his business and it's called examine.com and what it does is they do a a few things so first they get about 40,000 visitors a day and they get those visitors by having this free content so what you're looking at where it examines that supplement ashwagandha but the model in which they make money is that they have a membership that membership has supplement guides and then they also have a thing where they look at all the recent studies and they summarize it to tell you exactly what you need to know and it'll say this is a strong study and the conclusion is this this is a not great study and the conclusion is this and you shouldn't you should avoid it and they do that with all types of studies and basically the what the company is and I I'll explain why I think this is a is a big deal but basically they take knowledge that's locked up or complicated to understand and they make sense of it into a really easy to understand way and so they have I'm gonna give you some stats 40,000 visitors a day 20 employees 7 figures in revenue 50,000 people have signed up for their membership or bought some of the guides and that's only been around for about 2 years the guides have or the membership and so they made money by selling guides and so I bought this supplement guide they have one on like I I have like panic attack problems that I'm trying to fix and they have guides on it it listed all the it said here if these 6 supplements have been proven by clinical trials to help with panic attack and it lists them all and it says take this one if you don't feel anything in 2 weeks pair it with this one and then pair it with this one and they tell you and they go and when you buy it make sure that it's magnesium not magnesium oxate like they tell you very specific stuff and I think this business is amazing it's amazing because they've spent years building up trust so men's health doctor andrew huberman do you know who that is he's that guy who has a youtube where he talks about health stuff he's like kinda going viral right now which is on joe rogan and tim ferris they all everyone's sites examine.com newyorktimessitesexamine.com they've spent years building up trust every word that they write is very meticulous now they're starting to monetize and this model I actually think it's amazing and I didn't at first I was like there's no way this can be a big idea but there's this company called uptodate you've probably never heard of uptodate if you're listening and you're a doctor you probably have heard of this and so it's basically examine.com but for doctors I mean it's been around before examine.com so examine.com is that for nutrition in this business doctors pay I believe $600 a year and they get the same exact thing they get access to a content database that very explicitly and clearly says which clinical trials are proven which are not and what the conclusion is and then summarizes a bunch of stuff guess how much money that makes a year

Shaan Puri

I think a lot. I think... I think probably, I mean, I'm just looking at UpToDate, and I think it has about 15,000,000 visits a month. So that's pretty impressive. I would guess... okay, I'm gonna go high. No, I'm gonna go low. It's always fun to be blown away, so I'm gonna say 50,000,000 a year.

Sam Parr

so the estimate is closer to $500,000,000 a year in subscription revenue

Shaan Puri

I'm blown away. I'm blown away just as I hoped with my low estimate. Because isn't it just shitty when you're trying to...

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

When you're trying to blow someone's mind and then they estimate over it, you're like, "Well, okay, not that much, but it's still cool." And it's like, "God, god damn it!" You know, that should just be a rule amongst friends. If I ask you for a ballpark on something, let me blow you away.

Sam Parr

And the company that owns this does the same thing for finance, tax, and accounting, I believe. That whole company is publicly traded and does about $5 billion in sales a year. Crazy business model! I'll tell you why this is interesting to me. This is interesting to me because I love content businesses. I love them. However, there's a huge problem with content businesses: they suck at making money. If you're going to make money in the most traditional way, like banner ads or some type of BuzzFeed-style native ads, I *fucking hate* that model. I love this model. I think that you could use this model for a bunch of different categories, including skin care and beauty. I think that would be the next, the easiest one. According to Sol, what do you think about this business? It's pretty neat, right?

Shaan Puri

Genius! Yeah, so UpToDate makes total sense. I'm surprised I haven't heard of it, but I'm not surprised that something like this exists and works. It just makes all the sense in the world. Examine.com is also very, very cool. I think of UpToDate as kind of like a B2B resource, while Examine is more like a B2C platform. It's for the average person who's just curious. For example, I'm curious about panic attacks, or I'm curious about ashwagandha, or I'm curious about L-carnitine. I hear about these topics; I hear some buzz, but I'm trying to be smart and safe about things. Where do I go that's not just trying to sell me something and not just trying to print page views as a content form? I think that trust is one of the only things that matters. We are in a world of abundance, and trust is one of the key elements.

Sam Parr

And Examine.com, their rule is they don't recommend any brand. So, you can't find any brand on their site. If they say to take magnesium oxide, I was like, "So just tell me which brand so I can just buy it on Amazon." He goes, "No, we can't tell you that. You gotta go and figure that out because if we wait for the day we start doing that, it's the day we start incentivizing the wrong stuff." So, it's a pretty amazing business model. You know who else does this? Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports... you probably don't use it anymore. A lot of people who are younger, or my age and younger, don't use it anymore. So, Consumer Reports is like Wirecutter, but they charge a subscription. That company is actually a nonprofit, so you can actually look up their revenues. They charge subscription revenue, right? What did I say? Consumer Review? Consumer Report? Yeah, Consumer Report. It was around before Wirecutter. I prefer Wirecutter now, but Consumer Report is pretty amazing. They charge subscription revenue; they still do like $120 million in subscription revenue. And they're telling you the best TV, the best microphone, the best computer, and they crush it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so let me just mention Consumer Reports. In the year 2020, they did $212,000,000 in subscription revenue from newsstand and other sales.

Sam Parr

crazy right

Shaan Puri

**$200 million** in subscription revenue—that's insane! **$245 million** overall revenue in 2020. Insane!

Sam Parr

I think if you're starting a media company, and if I were to start it again, if you didn't go subscription first, you're an idiot, a fool, and a masochist. You like pain. If I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I would only start that way. I think it's the best business model.

Shaan Puri

Alright, yeah, that's a good one. I like that a lot. You've talked about this, you know, like consumer reports for other things, right? So you've discussed it for SaaS tools, and then some people have tried that with G2 and others. What do you think about that? What's your latest thinking on that? Because you've been considering that idea for a while.

Sam Parr

I think it's an amazing idea, and someone could still do it. G2 has raised another round of funding, like a multibillion-dollar valuation. I think it still could be done. There's a company called J2 Global. Have you heard of J2 Global? No? Alright, look up the stock of J2 Global right now for me. I... I'm acting like I'm setting you up. I actually haven't looked at it in a while. Is it good?

Shaan Puri

Okay, so J2 Global. Alright, it's trading at **$130** a share. The market cap is **$6,300,000,000**. And yeah, you know, like sort of year to date, it's almost double.

Sam Parr

So, J2 Global, what they do is they own a handful of publications, including IGN, Mashable, PCMag, Offers.com, and one or two more. Basically, they make the bulk of their revenue from suggesting which software to buy in PC Magazine. That's how they generate most of their revenue, and it's a publicly traded company. You can look it all up. I think this model can still crush it. I believe PC Magazine is pretty much garbage; G2 is okay, right? But anyway, I think it's a really big business that so many people are sleeping on.

Shaan Puri

And you know what else? Could you do this sort of trust model for...? I have one idea, but I'm curious what else comes to mind for you.

Sam Parr

skincare and beauty that's what I think it could be done on skincare and beauty

Shaan Puri

What do you do? There's an ocean of brands, and you kind of care about... you know, the problem I think with that is you don't have fear. So that's one really good thing about supplements and medicine: there's like a fear component to it, right? Like, I don't want to actually die or get side effects from this thing or have a, you know, sort of a big problem occur because of the potential benefits of something. Whereas with skincare, I think, yeah, you might break out or you might just want to know which one's better, but it doesn't have that fear component where people are going to look it up and say, "Before I buy this, I've really got to check." So I think that's one of the keys. You know, there's like, "Which one of these dishwashers is best?" I think that's a Consumer Reports thing. It's like, "Oh, I don't want to research this." Like, "Oh, these guys test this for 5,000 cycles and they tell me which one lasts the longest and works the best." Like, okay, that's great. I was never going to do that myself. You know, I think that's one version where it's like tires. "Which tire is the best tire to get?" "Which refrigerator is the best refrigerator to get?" And then on the other side, there's the fear one, like supplements, medicine, sort of like alternative medicines. "What's going to happen from those?" I think those are two especially good categories. And I think the difference of choosing the right category versus the wrong category is a multiplier of like 10x, 10x, or 50x of your outcome.

Sam Parr

I would imagine you could do the same for physical therapy. The reason physical therapy is interesting is that I've had an injured Achilles for about a year now. I've been researching like crazy. If you search "Achilles tendinitis," there’s loads of different information. I've been reading so many studies, and what my conclusion now is this: there's only one way to fix your Achilles tendinitis, and that is to do rest... well, no, no, no, you know what's rest, but it's to do 6 sets of 15 Achilles eccentric drop-downs. What that means is you stand on a curb or a step, and you slowly let yourself fall, then you kind of step up and then slow down. If you do that, and I read study after study, it's almost been unanimous that if you do this for 3 months every single day, your Achilles tendinitis will get better. I had to dig so deep for that, and I think that something like this could exist for physical therapy and injuries and things like that.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, and I kind of agree with you. Right now, my mom has this issue; she had vertigo, but then it kind of went away. However, she still feels symptoms, and the doctor's like, "You don't have vertigo." She's like, "No, no, I get that, but what do I have? I have something; this is not right." And they're like, "Blood work looks fine." Then she has to call back and be like, "Hey, I know the blood work looks fine, but I'm not right. What do I do?" They're like, "Let's do an MRI." Same thing. Finally, they say, "Okay, do this physical therapy." So she literally walks around the house with a piece of paper in front of her that has a letter on it. Her eye has to focus on it, and she moves it to the right while she's walking, and then moves it to the left while she's walking.

Sam Parr

oh my gosh

Shaan Puri

Dude, is this the exercise? Like, maybe it is. If it is, fantastic! But where... how do we know that this is it and that there's not like a much faster, better way? Because previously, when she had vertigo—like, vertigo proper—she went to three doctors. Nobody knew what to do. The fourth doctor was like, "Oh, lay down," and he shook her head vigorously. It's like this known cure, and basically, it loosens up the crystals in the inner ear or whatever. She was fixed in 10 minutes, and she was like, "Wow! If I just hadn't come to see you, how many more months or years would I have just had vertigo?" That's a pretty scary thought.

Sam Parr

yeah I I think that could work or here's another thing do you know you know anything about chiropractory

Shaan Puri

I know what most people know, which is to be skeptical. As our boy Brendan Schaub says, "skeptical hipaa."

Sam Parr

And I didn't know that. I thought, sorry to chiropractors or chiropractor fans out there, but basically, chiropractic was invented by a guy—I forget his name—but he was like a snake oil salesman. He was full of it. He thought that there were like evil spirits or something in you, and if you adjust the spine, it releases them. Now, some chiropractic practices can help very little, but 90% of what chiropractors do, what we think they do, you can't just adjust your spine and have your headache stop. That's just not how your body works. It's nonsense. Also, the acceptance rate of chiropractic school is 100%. It's like a Google AdSense certification; it's not... you know what I mean? I know I'm going to get flack for this, and yes, there are some chiropractors out there, but a lot of it is nonsense. I think examine.com can exist for all types of parts of the body. So anyway, that's my idea on examine.com. I thought it was interesting. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I'm currently on a vitamin regimen, and I discovered it on there. I thought it was cool. You want to do another?

Shaan Puri

One, yeah, okay. So let me give you another "trust as a service." This is just like a... I'm calling this my **$2 blue collar side hustle** right now. Here's a side hustle that will make you some bucks. It's not going to be a huge business, probably. It's not even maybe going to be around 5 years from now, but I think right now it's a thing you could do. So, are you big on... did you order a lot of food? Because I'm a DoorDasher, right? Like, I...

Sam Parr

I do but not but not like you you do like every meal

Shaan Puri

Well, I got a chef now, but even with the chef, there are still 2 meals a week where I'm like, "Let me just fire up the DoorDash and see what happens."

Sam Parr

dude it's so expensive it hurts me

Shaan Puri

And so, when you get your meal, they all have this sticker on it now that says "safety sealed." All it is, is like, you know, normally it's in a bag and they would tie the bag in a knot. Now, they sticker it to show that no human touched it. The food went in, and then we sealed this.

Sam Parr

because it's like viral videos of like doordash was eating the food

Shaan Puri

Eating food... coughing in the food. I don't even know what the fear is. It's just like, I can't lie. When I see this sticker, I'm like, "Good! Yeah, I'm glad they sealed it." Like, good! I'd rather it be sealed than not sealed, that's for sure. It wasn't even a thing I was thinking about before, but somebody is out there selling branded safety seal stickers to restaurants. I just think that in general, there's going to be a whole wave. If you just said, "I'm going to sell trust and safety as a service," I'm going to sell it to every business that needs to reassure its customers that it is taking COVID safety protocols seriously. Then you can dial that knob up to level 12 of like chiropractory, where you're like, "I'm just going to mail these to everybody." They can put it on themselves. Honor code! This is an honor code system, you know? Just put this sign up in your restaurant, put this mat on the outside of your thing, put this on every doorknob, hang this on every doorknob, you know? Stick the sticker on every cup, you know, whatever. You could just send it, or you could actually go out and verify and say, "Hey, here's our..."

Shaan Puri

You know, safety inspection. We send mystery shoppers out or whatever. We actually create kind of like a Zagat reviews type of sticker or seal of approval specifically for trust and safety around COVID. That's the general idea. What do you think?

Sam Parr

I love it, and I'm going to show you an example of something similar to this. Have you heard of, I think it's pronounced "lead" (L-E-E-D)?

Shaan Puri

lead certified they're like green buildings thing

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I was looking this up. It's a nonprofit, so you could easily see their sales. Wow, they do... I think this is, I'm almost positive, it's run by a nonprofit called the U.S. Green Building Council. I think that's it. Do you know?

Shaan Puri

no but yeah I believe you

Sam Parr

And they do $31 million a year in sales. Basically, I have no idea why buildings are incentivized to do that, but I imagine the business model is such where you pay LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). I guess that's what it's called. Oh, here Dan says he's a former accredited professional for LEED. So that's Dan.

Shaan Puri

dan un unmute dan you

Sam Parr

can on a scale

Shaan Puri

of 1 to chiropractor where is lead certification

Dan

it's nowhere near a chiropractor it's legit

Shaan Puri

And you are a lead accredited professional? What the heck does that mean? Did you pay for this accreditation?

Dan

my company my former company did yeah okay

Shaan Puri

So, somebody paid for you to get certified, and then you charged other companies to give them the stamp of approval. Is that right?

Dan

Yeah, so as a professional, you get one point towards the total you need to become a LEED building. Then there's a ranking scale: silver, gold, and platinum.

Shaan Puri

And it's about using the right kind of light bulbs and the right kind of insulation, that sort of thing, when you're building or renovating your building.

Dan

Yep, stuff like that. Indoor air quality, which is really bad normally. Low use of water, things like that. No smoking and...

Sam Parr

why and why does

Shaan Puri

the building you sound like a leed professional right now bro I feel like I'm getting leed certified as we speak

Sam Parr

why does a building care about getting leed certified look good

Dan

for you that's a good question yeah I think it's a little bit of just wanting to be green

Sam Parr

But there's no incentivization, dude. Like, does the government give you anything, or is it simply just for branding and awareness?

Dan

I don't know. It's been 15 years since I took the exam, so I'm a little out of pace on it. But I'm not sure if there's a big incentive for it.

Shaan Puri

dan how old are you

Dan

I'm 35

Shaan Puri

did this when you were 20 you were a 20 year old leed certified

Dan

might be around a little bit I think I was 22 when I took it

Shaan Puri

Okay, more importantly, I got a lead certification. Go to my Twitter profile real quick to see what you see there.

Sam Parr

Dude, fuck that! I think you are the worst. That is so lame. So, did...

Shaan Puri

you be verified so lame are you kidding me

Sam Parr

sean got verified

Shaan Puri

I think he's

Sam Parr

Got a blue check mark? I think that is the lamest. Dude, you are not one... you're not a man of the people anymore. You're so out of touch for giving.

Shaan Puri

I used to think, "I don't need that." I would ask, "What does that mean anyway? Who cares about that?" Now, I actually prefer not to have it. And now that I have it, all that bullshit is out the window. I am so glad I'm here.

Sam Parr

by the way did you get it

Shaan Puri

So glad I got the blue checkmark. Well, I got it for actual legitimate reasons. First, I wanted it for my ego for many years. I was like, "Okay, whatever, it didn't happen, who cares?" But then people started actually impersonating me and scamming my followers. There were all of these accounts that got created every month. They would DM my followers, like, "Hey, yeah, what's up?" People were like, "Oh, hey, thanks for the DM." And the scammers would respond, "No problem! I saw you follow me. What are you doing with your portfolio lately?" They would scam them into either sending them crypto or buying random crypto shitcoins. They were getting people to buy stocks or send them money to invest in their fund. They pretended they were my fund. So, people were actually getting hurt. It used to just hurt my feelings that I wasn't verified, but then it was actually hurting other people. I was like, "Dude, what the fuck?" So, I was bitching about it.

Sam Parr

I get that... I get that, but that's the only reason I'll accept. I think every other reason is bullshit. I don't... I think they're stupid.

Shaan Puri

What's that? It's a little jealousy I was smelling. I don't know, like, I think you kinda want the blue check mark too. I think the people on Twitter need to help you out.

Sam Parr

I think I'm barely famous enough to get it, but I will not get it. I'm not... you have crypto pros to call you.

Shaan Puri

You tell me right now, you push a button and you can just have it or not have it. No, no, nothing else. Just push this little key on your keyboard. You tell me you wouldn't push that button?

Sam Parr

I give you my word I will not push that button wow but but but if I

Shaan Puri

not as well

Sam Parr

if I end up having scams like you then yes but I've not had that I've not had that problem

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it became like a legit problem. Anyways, so okay, LEED certification. So yeah, basically I think... I think LEED is another good one. Like, I would love if somebody just took on LEED and just called it like, you know, "Green Home." Oh, you're a Green Home Triple Star! Wow, doesn't that sound good already?

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

And like, again, you could turn the knob. You can go super legit if you really find ways that you could kind of score buildings, or you could be somewhere in the middle and, you know, build scam... but like, dude.

Sam Parr

I would do that

Shaan Puri

trust as a service is a great business

Sam Parr

I actually think that the health department's scorecard is **bullshit**. So, I had a hotdog stand. I mean, duh, I talked about it.

Shaan Puri

oh really have you told that story

Sam Parr

Yeah, you know, I don't drink either. When they did my health certificate, I just bullshitted through it... hardcore. I mean, my shit was clean, but they had all these boxes we had to check and it was bullshit. On the day that we were doing it, I actually was wearing flip-flops, and they gave me a 95 instead of a 100. So, like, I think it's kind of not [fair].

Shaan Puri

gross toes out while you're making hot dogs yeah nobody wants

Sam Parr

We're outside in 100-degree heat, selling meat that's been sitting there for, you know, forever. It's... it's disgusting. Anyway.

Shaan Puri

I have a... it is super dis... I worked so... my first thing was a sushi restaurant, and we had a commissary. We worked out of a commissary kitchen, which is like a central kitchen where caterers and bakers operate. It's like a kitchen without a storefront. In there were all the food truck guys, and so I saw the hierarchy of like degeneracy. It's like caterers are okay. Bakers are good people; they are nice women who care about their product. They do a great job and are very hygienic. Then, caterers are kind of like bakers. They're legit, but the demands on a caterer are so high. It's always high urgency; they're preparing for a 200-person party or whatever. So, you know, they get things done and will cut through the red tape, but you respect their decisions. Then there are the food truck guys. They think this is a bar; they're just drunk while they're prepping their tacos. They're pretty disgusting. And then you have the hot dog guy at the end. This guy, straight up... okay, so there's like a sink. If you don't know what a three-compartment sink is, you haven't paid your blue-collar dues. Basically, a three-compartment sink is where you do the dishes in a commercial kitchen. The three-compartment sink is just literally full of the dirtiest dishes and just a chemical bomb you put in there to clean them. The hot dog guy in our commissary kitchen would just go and fill up the sink with the hot dogs that he's going to be selling like three hours later. He'd just be throwing the hot dogs around, washing them, drying them, you know, putting them in the other sink to dry off. It's like this guy... there was zero hygiene. I literally don't think I've had a hot dog since because I saw how the sausage was made, and I never want to see it again. So that's my favorite service announcement: don't eat hot dogs.

Sam Parr

I agree. I was clean. I mean, I kept myself clean, but I can see why most don't. You can get away with it; you don't have to.

Shaan Puri

Even counting what's the meat, I'm not... forget the meat. Let's say the meat was pure; the way it's handled is disgusting.

Sam Parr

So, I think you could build a new version of a health department score. Actually, I think that's legitimate.

Shaan Puri

Dude, how many other areas could we just do this? Like, okay, I'm bullshitting about Twitter right now. Could you just do this where you have a content score? You know, I'm just thinking about how safe and kind of non-offensive your content is. Maybe it's something that's around your cancellation score.

Sam Parr

we should do

Shaan Puri

You know, so interestingness or your fan score, like how much your fans care about you. We just bullshit like your engagement score, but we make it really visible. It's like Sam; he may not have the most followers, but his followers love him. It's like we make your Q score. Yeah, you know what Q is? It's like a popularity ranking. We just mix it up. Oh, you haven't heard of this Q score? It's like a thing for celebrities. Yeah, it's a thing for Hollywood celebrities. Like, what's your popularity? It's not an approval rating; it's like your popularity rating. How well do people know you and like you? You know, Obama has a high Q score. And oh yeah, I feel like you can do that on social media with Klout, but just like bullshit the whole thing.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think that's crazy and I think that's good. Klout score... I actually think Klout was amazing. Klout was a company that was around, it was spelled K-L-O-U-T. They had like 100 employees, they raised a lot of money. They ended up selling for $100 million, I think. It was like $100 million of stock in a privately held company. I don't think it was actually that good of an exit, but they [were] great.

Shaan Puri

idea clout early you were just too early

Sam Parr

**Idea**: Way too early. An amazing idea! If it were around now, it would be the best. I actually...

Shaan Puri

thought somebody restart clout and just dm us

Sam Parr

I thought it was a great branding. People still make jokes about clout, like they'll say, "Oh, I gotta increase that clout score." I know what they're talking about. I had a clout score, and basically what happened was my clout score wasn't that great. I have like 5,000 friends on Facebook, though, and so I qualified. And so, McDonald's...

Shaan Puri

the fact that you're justifying it shows how good of a fuck this is how much I

Sam Parr

Would use it all the time. McDonald's would send me a $5 gift card once a month, right?

Shaan Puri

yeah amazing

Sam Parr

It was so cool! I loved clout. I think that could exist and that could kick ass. I think there's a lot of other businesses there.

Shaan Puri

I don't even think you really need to do that much differently, right? Like, I'm sure there's about 20% of things you would tweak, maybe in the execution. You know, maybe you don't have to raise that much money. I think the timing is the biggest tweak that you needed to make. Maybe you change the way it's calculated, or the way you promote it, or the business model—whatever. I don't think you need to change that much. I just think that the time is now. As Donald Trump basically created this thing called "fake news," I think fake news is very underrated. It created a huge wave and there's so much distrust around brands and entities now. People are kind of like the atomic unit of a brand at this point. So yeah, I think that clout should be remade.

Sam Parr

How about the fact that... So HubSpot has a hub. This one woman who works with me just got Scrum certified, and we paid $4,000 or $5,000. And I'm like, "So Scrum..." I don't even know what it is. I guess it's just like a project management [methodology].

Shaan Puri

yeah it's how you manage like engineering sprints yeah

Sam Parr

And we paid $5. I was like, "Who the heck is the scrum decision maker?" Then I realized it was HubSpot.

Shaan Puri

scrum master by the way

Sam Parr

Is it really? Oh my God, it sounds so much more legit than it probably really is. HubSpot has HubSpot certification courses, and if you look on people's LinkedIn, they brag about passing HubSpot certification courses. We gotta talk... I gotta talk to HubSpot. I'd be like, "How did... I'm like, look, you guys are amazing and wonderful and legit, but you weren't always amazing and wonderful and legit. You were just starting out, and you somehow convinced people to trust you and take this seriously."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

how on earth did you do that because that's amazing

Shaan Puri

so they paid hubspot so so hubspot is the collector of the 5,000 dues for the scrum training

Sam Parr

No, sorry, there's a different organization that does Scrum. But HubSpot... you've never seen people brag about their HubSpot certification? So like, if you Google "HubSpot certification," they've got these classes.

Shaan Puri

On multiple platforms, if they tried to brag to me about that, that's an immediate block.

Sam Parr

So, there's like inbound sales, HubSpot marketing software, inbound marketing. If you Google that on LinkedIn, there are so many people who list it on their profiles, like "certified in whatever." There are so many people that cite HubSpot as their thing. And you know how, like, one time if you look up Tyra Banks on LinkedIn, she probably still does this. She puts that she graduated from Harvard. Okay, she went to a Harvard extension executive learning day, and people put that on their profiles. How's that? Yeah, it's like a 2-day program. Look at Tyra Banks. Let's...

Shaan Puri

See what's going on? Okay, so she did a 9-week program for executives called the Owner President Management Extension Program. Yeah, dude, Harvard makes it unbelievable. I'm gonna break this down actually next podcast: - Harvard's kind of whole business model around online programs - Harvard Business Review, the media company I'm gonna break that whole thing down because it's crazy. I'll...

Sam Parr

Do it with you. I've studied the Business Review a bunch. Alright, can I tell you about another idea or a person actually? Yeah. Alright, there's this guy named Matt. How do you pronounce his last name? From Flabaj?

Shaan Puri

or whatever

Sam Parr

Man, I don't want to butcher this guy. Mick, sorry, Matt. I like you; I just don't know how to say your last name. Mick or Mikki?

Shaan Puri

and then with a wicks at the end mickowitz

Sam Parr

Alright, Mickowitz. I've known about this guy for a long time, but I want to tell you everything that he's done because I bet you know all of his work, but maybe you didn't know he was the one behind it. So, in 1998, when he lived in Australia, he started this company while he was in high school called **SitePoint**. SitePoint is basically a publisher of books, courses, and articles for developers. You can learn HTML, CSS, Java, Ruby, all that. They've never raised any funding and they have about 50 employees. I imagine, if I had to bet, they probably make between **$5 million to $15 million** a year. That's my guess. Well, how do you spell it? **Mickowitz**?

Shaan Puri

group that mitskovich

Sam Parr

mitskovich his name is matt mckmiskovich have you heard of sight? Site. Dot com

Shaan Puri

no is it still around

Sam Parr

Alright, it's still around. So, like, I've heard his story. He was basically like: > "I started this as a forum and then a blog. People would come to my forum and blog, and I was taking like $10,000 advertising checks when I was 17 [years old] in high school. So I dropped out of high school and went all in on this." Then when he went all in on it, his forum on site... People were buying and selling businesses on it, and so he spun out one of the forums into its own business called Flippa. You've heard of Flippa, right?

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

so I believe they prolific

Shaan Puri

he's really prolific because he only even got the 2 of his hits

Sam Parr

Listen, so we started Flippa, which is a marketplace for buying and selling smallish websites, stores, and things like that. They've got millions of users. Flippa is not micro-acquires in the space, but Flippa is considered like the thing. In fact, I think they just raised a little bit of funding—$20,000,000 recently. It's got 100 employees; it's a pretty big business. He also discovered that people in the forum were buying and selling designs, so he started this thing called 99designs, which is amazing. 99designs is one of the best sites that I've used. It's a great place where you basically give them $1,000, tell them what you want, and about 100 designers give you a mock-up of what they think your project should look like. Then you pay for the one you select, and they get the money. They do close to $100,000,000 in revenue and have raised $45,000,000 in funding. From there, he also saw that people were hiring all types of developers, so he started Hired.com. Hired.com, I think, kind of fizzled out a little bit. It might still be around; it's definitely around, but it kind of fizzled a little. They raised $132,000,000 in funding, so it could still be quite big. So that's pretty amazing. Now, his next thing is he's creating... and so this all has to do with SitePoint. He started SitePoint in 1998. His next thing is called Unstoppable Domains. You know what that is? I bet you know what that is better than I do. Go ahead.

Shaan Puri

I do. It's just a way to buy domains in crypto. So, like, I have a domain that ends, instead of .com, it ends in .eth, which is Ethereum (ETH). It's a domain name service; it's a domain registrar for making crypto domains. The reason it's called **Unstoppable Domains** is because when you own that namespace, nobody—it's on the blockchain—can take it away from you. Nobody can switch the rules on you. It is sort of there forever.

Sam Parr

so this guy matt mitcovich has done all of this

Shaan Puri

Started, by the way, I think he joined it. I DM'd him when he joined because I was like, if the guy who's the founder of all these successful companies joins a company, it's like one of the strongest signals that there could be. Just recently, I'm saying this about my friend David Macintosh. He started Tenor, which is a gift keyboard, and sold it to Google for, I think, a couple of $100 million. Then he joined Instacart as one of their executives. So, you know, anytime you're... it's like this person's independently massively wealthy.

Sam Parr

has they wanna join

Shaan Puri

Their own company, and if they want to join, not even as number 1... It wasn't join as CEO, didn't join as CTO, just CPO. He was like, you know, maybe in the top 10 of the Instawork execs. So that's when you know like, "Oh shit, this is like... this is a juggernaut." That's... this person thinks this is a $100 billion company if they're doing that.

Sam Parr

something crazy so the and this guy so

Shaan Puri

Let me just tell you. So, I DM'd him and I said, "You joined Unstoppable. Super interesting move! What makes you bullish on it?" Here's what he said. I'm just going to read it out loud. It may or may not mean anything. He goes, "There's a $1,000,000,000,000 asset class, which is basically domains that people are navigating using the equivalent of an IP address. If Web 3 and crypto are here to stay, then building the identity—like the address for consumers—is one of the most important companies of the decade." Then he's like, "In the normal web, you have ICANN. You know what ICANN is?"

Sam Parr

it's like yeah so it's like a it's like a it's like a committee which is kind of bullshit to me but

Shaan Puri

It's the committee that decides things about the internet. What domains can be used? Can you have a .photo or .biz domain? I can kind of decide those types of things. He goes, "It's one of the oldest monopolies on the internet. It's begging to be disrupted." Crypto gives us a way to disrupt that because it's creating a new ground where they don't have jurisdiction. They don't have rule of law over there.

Sam Parr

That's one of the few crypto examples or blockchain examples where I wholeheartedly agree, and I think that's actually incredibly useful and totally right. I don't know who's going to host the domain or like how that works, but I agree with that idea. Because if you're doing something, I can - or whoever can - pull it.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. Anyway, so then he was just telling me a little bit more about it. I was like, "Yeah, that's great. That's cool." I bought an on-sample domain.

Sam Parr

This guy is amazing! And get this, he's 37. He's only 37 years old. Wild! Amazing! Have you heard of him, obviously?

Shaan Puri

In talking to him... yeah, people don't really know about this guy, or they don't really talk about him, but he's had a pretty prolific career. He's kind of independent and definitely an independent thinker, I could tell. Because 99designs is actually a pretty novel mechanism. It's like, "Oh, what if we created kind of like a design auction?" right?

Sam Parr

it's the best it's the best

Shaan Puri

We used it for our podcast thumbnail, cover photo, or yes, podcast art done through 99designs.

Sam Parr

And check this out: when we did it, HubSpot had all these designers work on this stuff and they made some pretty good logos. But we still went with this guy in the Philippines who made this logo, and it was even better than all of them. The Trends.co website, I had designed on there because... you know, like when you work with a designer, you don't want to be rude to your own designer and be like, "No, this sucks. Can you just do exactly what I told you to do, please?" But you can do that with a freelancer a little bit more than a full-timer. So I'm a fan of 99designs.

Shaan Puri

And by the way, it looks like there's this guy Mark who is his co-founder because it says "co-founder of 99designs, Flippa, and SitePoint." So that's pretty cool. I like when people create this kind of duo, it's like, "Yeah, let's just build a bunch of companies together." I find that to be pretty inspiring, and it tells you something about how somebody is to work with. If somebody wants to keep going back in and work with you again, that's a good sign.

Sam Parr

I've talked to this guy. I actually invited him to Hustle Con two or three different times. He committed, and then some scheduling issues happened, and we weren't able to make it happen. But I've talked to him on the phone, and he's very humble.

Shaan Puri

I'm

Sam Parr

a big fan of this guy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, me too. Okay, so he's kinda like our little... you know, internet founder of the week. I don't know, we need a name for that. We have the "Billy of the Week," we got the "Blue Collar Side Hustle," we need something for just founders who are badass, who have done like...

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

serial serial serial entrepreneurs

Sam Parr

yeah this guy's great alright you wanna you wanna do 1 or 2 more

Shaan Puri

Yeah, let's do some other ones. Okay, so do you know this company, Guthy-Renker? I bet you know about it, and I bet most people do too.

Sam Parr

don't know about it

Shaan Puri

Tell me all about it. So last night... Alright, I've been on this binge. I gotta just say, I've been on this binge. I'm rereading the book that really got me into being like, kind of like a startup founder.

Sam Parr

can I guess can I guess

Shaan Puri

guess

Sam Parr

think and grow rich

Shaan Puri

No, but that is a good guess, especially if that's not what we're talking about. I actually haven't read that book, so I want to read it now after reading about Guthy-Ranker. But I am rereading *The 4-Hour Workweek*. Your bud, Tim Ferriss, wrote this book. I got it right when I was starting my first company. I started my company before this, but once I started reading it, I was like, "Oh wow, there are people like me out there who think this way." This guy's got systems about this. I just started figuring this stuff out, and this guy's been doing this for a decade. Great! I got what you call the "4-Hour Fever," which is what happens right after you read the book. That's my own term because I've given this book to maybe 50 people since, and they all get the 4-Hour Fever right after I infect them with the book. And it's already been a long time ago.

Sam Parr

we already live the 4 hour work week life

Shaan Puri

So now we live it. I went back and I'm rereading it, right? I'm like, "Okay, I'd rather... yeah, I want to reread the classics." So I went back and I'm rereading it. I just want to see, you know, what of it do I still believe in, what of it do I disagree with, and what's changed. Anyways, it's pretty interesting. I'm taking a ton of notes. I texted you this while I was reading it: "Let's write a bestselling book, 10,000,000 copies sold, the next '4-Hour Workweek'." Then you're like, "Okay, easy." I was like, "Alright, perfect," because I'm serious about that. I'm obsessed with this. I've just been writing content. I've been writing and reading all weekend long. I've just been binging. I'm up till 4 in the morning every night doing this, and I'm pretty convinced that we could put out an amazing, amazing book. So anyways, that's like, you know, just calling my shot. I'm going to do that.

Sam Parr

well don't be surprised we're gonna use well I wanna be involved let me let's yeah

Shaan Puri

That's what I'm saying. I invited... I wanted to do it. I'm like, "I'm doing this either way." But I was like, "What would be the best?" I go, "What if the best writer I know partnered with me on this and we traded off chapters?" So, like, I can say something, I'll write a chapter, and what I want you to do is basically read it and then write what you would write right after you read that. So it's like, you know, "I totally agree with Sean on this one. I have my own story of how I did that," or "I disagree; I do it totally differently." I just think that if we play off of each other a little bit, it can become a very interesting book. There aren't many books out there that are like that. That may all change, but that's what's in my head.

Sam Parr

I also think that we should do... There's one book that had a pretty fundamental change in my outlook. It's called "Founders at Work" and it was by Jessica Livingston, the woman who started Y Combinator with Paul Graham (they're husband and wife). Basically, it was just interviews, but for some reason, it was really special. It was just interviews transcribed. I think we could do just interviews and write our analysis and reply to the interviews.

Shaan Puri

I read that book on a plane. I still remember it because there's a chapter in there about Hotmail, and I just remember reading that book and being like, "This is awesome! Is this what it's like to start a company or be around people that start companies? This is fucking awesome!" And you know, by the way, I hope this podcast ends up being that for some number of people in the world.

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, that could be our first book if you want. Because that's like a pretty easy and actually amazing idea, and it could be fun.

Shaan Puri

I don't even care about the details. I just know **10,000,000 copies sold**—bestseller! For some people, this is their version of *The 4-Hour Workweek*, what *The 4-Hour Workweek* was for me. I want this to be that for like a whole, you know, **1,000,000 people** out there. I think that would just be amazing.

Sam Parr

so let's talk about gunther raker can I tell you what I know and you could tell me if it's true or not

Shaan Puri

yeah explain them I I did a deep dive on them last night so I mean

Sam Parr

Fill in gaps, alright. So they are a marketing and IP owner. They own like a... it's a business that markets other stuff. They mostly don't develop their own products, but they buy products or they license them. It started by a guy named Steven Guenther... is that his name? There's a...

Shaan Puri

Guy, one of his last names is Guenther... Guethe, not Guthe. And then the other guy's last name is Rinker. So that's it.

Sam Parr

And they started, I think, as early as the early eighties. They were in marketing and they basically bought infomercials. One of the first big hits was when they bought the rights to the book *Think and Grow Rich*. They created infomercials and direct response copywriting ads that they put in magazines. They sold a huge number of this book—like 1,000,000 copies. Then they just rinsed and repeated that model. Eventually, they bought Proactiv. They own Proactiv and a bunch more products. They probably do a billion dollars north of $1,000,000,000 in sales, and they use the same type of model. Go ahead.

Shaan Puri

so so it's an infomercial it's a direct response company which basically they've made their name by doing infomercial based sales and they do about between 1 and a half to 2,000,000,000 in sales a year they own brands that you've heard they they they they brought brands to market that you've heard of like proactive also tony robbins his kind of personal power like audiobooks think and grow rich so okay so here's kind of some of the cool stuff I I found out about them okay so how did it start 1 of the guys I think gutty he had started a company and this is how funny the world works and why really all you gotta do is just get in the game and start making shit happen because nobody could have predicted this path right so he starts a company that just does audio cassette production so like copying so like you have a cassette you want more copies of that cassette send me the send me the original recording I'll make you a bunch of copies so it's basically like these guys are fucking like kinko's right like it's just like a printer for audio cassettes and he gets this order and this guy says hey I need 200 to 250 or sorry I don't know why I said that this is a small number basically the guy wanted almost almost a 100,000 cassettes made and he goes 100,000 what are you making and you know it ended up being 50,000 copies of a cassette that was about real estate about how to make money doing real estate investments and he's like wow this is that's amazing and he looked up the company and the guy was selling through infomercials so he goes to his buddy rancor and rancor at this time I think had his family owned like kind of like a a resort like a tennis resort or something like that so I think it probably comes from a good family so he goes hey dude this guy ordered for me 50,000 copies of this cassette it's amazing forget making cassettes like let's do this infomercial thing that must be amazing and so they go okay what are we gonna do we need a product and so they that's when they were like hey what's up what's something we're both into it's like they both had made their bones they both really love this book think and grow rates so that's when they went and bought the rights to it for a $100,000 they ended up making $10,000,000 in the next 3 years off of sales of think and grow rich right they basically bought the rights to think and grow rich and they produced this infomercial they hire this football player frank tarkenton to do it they go if and I by the way I watched the full 30 minute infomercial last night at 4 in the morning I'm like I'm like watching this thing and

Sam Parr

you could find it on youtube

Shaan Puri

And it has 875 views on this video. Basically, it's this infomercial that starts with a production featuring people giving testimonials, but they don't tell you what the product is. It's like, "You know, I always wanted to own my own business. I was so tired of working for somebody else, and then finally, I felt like this is the solution broken down into tactical steps." But they don't tell you their names, right? Then, there's an interview with the founder of Domino's. He says, "I never went to college. I had the lowest GPA in my high school class, but I read this book, and afterwards, it became my blueprint for how I started Domino's." It's like, "What's the book?" They just get you salivating. What's the book? Then, three minutes in, Frank Tarket comes on and says, "You know, the richest people in the world—Andrew Carnegie, the Rothschilds, and whoever else—all these people. Andrew Carnegie commissioned this guy to go study what the most successful people on Earth, the Rothschilds and others, were doing. He went and interviewed all of them and packaged that knowledge and wisdom into a book that's been a bestseller for years. It's the book that executives say is their secret weapon." It's just like, so it's such a hard sell, but that's what infomercials are. Once you get in, you're like, "Alright, I'll buy it. What is it?" So you're like, "F*ck it, I'll order the thing." That's how they sold "Think and Grow Rich." It's kind of like an amazing infomercial. I recommend you go watch it if you're kind of a marketing person.

Sam Parr

By the way, they bought that in 1988. So, a $100 is the equivalent of... is this true? Only $225,000? So, it's only 2.2 times. The takeaway here should not be, "I can't do that nowadays," but actually, if you look at the infomercial and if you Google "Guthrie Raker infomercial breakdown," or if you just go and make your own, and you look at it, break it down, and copy it word for word, and you break down the sections and apply that section to a sales letter right now, it will 100% continue to work.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Like, if you see their infomercial, the ladies are going to be wearing like 1980s clothes and the guys have weird haircuts. You know, like, "Oh my God, it's so old." No, it will continue to work.

Shaan Puri

And TV infomercials at the time were like dirt cheap. When they did "Think and Grow Rich," they just bought TV space in six small TV markets. You could buy the midnight slot or the 2 AM slot, and these were essentially free. They needed some programming to fill airtime, so these started out really, really cheap. Now, it's gotten much more expensive. For example, let's take Proactiv. I think Proactiv, at its heyday—this is maybe 10-year-old data—was spending about $250,000,000 a year just on media buying, specifically on infomercial space. If you watch a Proactiv infomercial, Justin Bieber was their signature person. Proactiv was basically saying, "Hey teens, you don't have to have acne; you can get rid of your acne this way." Justin Bieber was the teen idol with great skin. They also had Adam Levine, the Maroon 5 guy, and many others. They would get paid $5 to $10 million to appear in a Proactiv infomercial. That's crazy money for an influencer; that's a big influencer spend. This is just influencer marketing done at level 12, as I like to say. Proactiv is the maxed-out version of it. They own a bunch of brands, like Glow by JLo. It's like, "You want JLo's skin? Buy JLo's Glow." Then it's, "Oh, you want this other supermodel's skin? Buy her thing." It's very much around skincare because that's one of the sweet spots—big market and celebrity endorsements go a long way. The two big niches are skincare and fitness. I would say there are three: skincare, fitness, and self-help. Tony Robbins became a household name using this on the self-help side. On the fitness side, they had a bunch of different brands, and Beachbody took the same playbook. They created P90X and the Beachbody program using the same idea, and they became competitors.

Sam Parr

There's a guy... I'm trying to think of what it's called. It's called "Mind" something. I'm trying to look it up, but basically there's a guy... It's not "MindBody," but it's similar to that word. I can't remember what it...

Shaan Puri

was mindvalley

Sam Parr

mindvalley yes I knew exactly what I was talking about

Shaan Puri

there's a guy like the philippines or thailand or I don't know where they're based someone

Sam Parr

Like, yeah, there's some... I don't want to be disrespectful, but there's some weird stuff going on with this company. I don't know what the truth is, but basically, if you look at this company, Mindvalley (mindvalley.com), they do this now. Basically, this company probably does $50,000,000 a year in sales. What they do is buy programs from people. They have one called "Lifebook," one called "Omvana"—I think that's a yoga thing—and then they have "Evercoach." I actually don't know what some of these services are, but they have a bunch of these. What they do is find people who have a yoga course or some type of program. They have programs on sleep, they've got programs on yoga, and they have programs on meditation.

Shaan Puri

Health, wellness, and hippie-dippie shit, you know? It's like a combination of very legit practices to, you know, like tantric astrology or whatever. It could be anything.

Sam Parr

And they're experts on long-form copywriting, which is basically an infomercial. They're really good at buying traffic, and they make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, all bootstrapped. If you want to look at the internet version of this, there's also Agora, which is a $1.5 billion company. Another version of this is we had a guy named Craig Clements. His business is called Golden Hippo. They own, I think, 8 or 9 brands, and if I remember correctly, didn't he say they do like mid 9 figures in revenue?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think Golden Hippo, our buddy Craig's company, is on par with Guthy-Renker in terms of success. I believe Guthy-Renker does over $1 billion in sales, so you know, it's the next level. But Golden Hippo operates from the internet. Instead of TV infomercials, they basically just do it with long-form blogs and long-form embedded videos. So if you ever go down the rabbit hole, like I've tried to do, I've tried to figure out and look at some of his brands.

Sam Parr

they hide their brands they hide

Shaan Puri

It's very hard to find them really well, but when you do find one, you're like, "Oh, okay." Then it's hard to find where they're advertising. It's like, okay, so they buy a display ad through Taboola on some random article, and it's for a toe cream for toe fungus removal. Then you click that, and you watch a 40-minute video that auto-plays with no pause or skip button. By the end of that, you're like, "Goddamn!" If you ended up making it there, you're almost certainly going to buy this token. Then you subscribe to the SMSs, and you get text messages from this legit doctor who you know is the face of the brand. It's kind of like Rodan and Fields, which spun out of Gunther Raker. They created Proactiv, so I think it's two dermatologists that created the formula for Proactiv, and then they left to create Rodan and Fields, which is a multilevel marketing company. They created their own new formulations of this one they owned. I think that's a multi-billion dollar company as well.

Sam Parr

And if you're on your computer listening to this, one of Golden Hippo's brands is called Gundry MD. I think Dr. Stephen Gundry... he's kind of famous. I think he's not famous in my world, but I think he's actually famous in the mainstream world. **GundryMD.com** is our website. Go to that website and look at it. They make it look like it's a small, almost mom-and-pop thing.

Shaan Puri

first thing peak mobility + it's all about you mobility you you love mobility mobility

Sam Parr

And they even sell dog food. It's... it's a pretty wild business. I think this is their most popular brand. This brand, if you told me does $100,000,000 in sales, I actually wouldn't be surprised. But if you didn't know better, you go to it, you would have no idea.

Shaan Puri

Right, and this is all about gut health and plant-based eating. You know, I get their text messages all the time, like, "Don't get leaky gut syndrome; buy this thing." It's very fascinating. The reason I like bringing these up, or what you brought up, is that I think all the companies you mentioned today are cool. If you work in our circle—most of our friends who are successful internet entrepreneurs, tech people, or Silicon Valley executives at big tech companies—they will have never heard of any of this. In fact, I did a breakdown of one of Golden Hippo's flows and I sent it to all the execs at Twitch. I said, "Hey, I went down the rabbit hole of this..."

Sam Parr

little bit

Shaan Puri

of a

Dan

they laughed

Sam Parr

at you they laughed at you

Shaan Puri

They were just... fascinating. They went back to doing, you know, spending millions of dollars on Facebook ads that just said "Download Twitch." It's like, okay... is there any creativity we could do here? I just showed you one of the most creative things, and nobody really cared. Nobody asked any follow-up questions. Some people were just like, "Cool, so send it to me."

Sam Parr

send it to me yeah

Shaan Puri

I sent it to you. It's crazy to me, and so I feel like there's a lot you can learn from these kind of under-the-radar brands or non-traditional [brands]. A lot of people just write them off. They're like, "Oh, infomercial: sleazy. Affiliate marketing: sleazy. MLM: sleazy." And you may be right about... like, these aren't the best products. They're maybe the best *sold* products, but look, I'm trying to get great at sales. So why would I not look at the best sold products? It's like a no-brainer to me.

Sam Parr

this was a good one I think

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it's a good one. This is definitely sort of unusual—potentially gray hat. Trust and untrustworthy businesses, you know? I think it's going to be entertaining. So, yeah.

Sam Parr

Can we wrap up with... well, let me wrap up first of all. Gone, 3 Rakers, amazing! I would love to see your notes on that if you can share them. But also, I want to wrap up with the one thing that you said on Twitter. You mentioned you wouldn't call me to invest in your company because I'm risk-averse. You said this, and I want to explain myself because that felt like a dig at me. I don't think you meant to be rude, but I took it as you being rude. I think a lot of our friends call me this as well. You guys are so wrong! I just don't take dumb risks. So here's my philosophy: from age 20, I said, "By 30, I'm going to make enough money that I never have to worry about money ever again." And so that's when I started my company. Many would say that was incredibly risky. I would say, compared to the average Joe, it was, but it wasn't that risky. Then I got the money, and I invest in safe stuff. But here's the thing: when I find something that I love, I go all in on it. What you and a lot of our friends do is spread your investments like wildfire. I try to go all in on a couple of things. So I don't think I'm risk-averse; I just pick and choose differently.

Shaan Puri

That's true. Okay, let's say I was starting a company. I think I know what your answer would be, but let's see: If I was starting a company and... 1. I either didn't have an idea and said, "I'm gonna start a company" 2. Or I said, "It's gonna be in this space, but I don't know exactly what" 3. Or I set an idea that you're like, "I don't even get that" or "That sounds kind of dumb or fuzzy to me" ...would you just invest then, or would you want to wait? Because you know I would let you in at any [point]. So, you like...

Sam Parr

Well, what I would ask is one question: Are you going all in? Is this going to be your only focus?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

if the answer is if the answer is yes I would be like

Shaan Puri

and I wouldn't raise money

Sam Parr

I wouldn't I wouldn't even ask the valuation I would just say okay

Shaan Puri

So that's what I think the answer is, and that's kind of the... The person asked a good question. I did a Twitter... kinda like, I don't know, like an AMA [Ask Me Anything] where I was like, "You know, just shoot me questions." My wife took the kids out to Target, I got an hour, I want some immediate rush of Twitter love. Let's just do some Q&A. And the person said, "You're raising money for a company. Who are you? Who's the first person you call?" I said, "Here's my first five phone calls..."

Sam Parr

and I basically name them name them

Shaan Puri

I don't really remember what I said so I I'll

Sam Parr

Tell you, Souli Ali, I totally agree with that. He's an amazing operator and a very good investor. Scott Belsky is also an amazing investor. Good signal to everyone. The third was...

Shaan Puri

justin kalbeck I think I had on there

Sam Parr

who's a I don't know him well but he's an amazing investor

Shaan Puri

and then I had balaji I think I had on there they put balaji on

Sam Parr

okay obvious reasons

Shaan Puri

yeah pretty brilliant had one more person who who else is on there I don't know I can't find the tweet

Sam Parr

I forget who the 5th person was as well

Shaan Puri

let's let me know

Sam Parr

But I'm not offended that I didn't make that list. I'm offended that people think that I'm **risk-averse**. I had a friend text me, "Do people think you're risk-averse?" and I was...

Shaan Puri

like oh

Sam Parr

I think they do but I think they're wrong

Shaan Puri

The first person I had was Michael Burch, the person who backed me with my previous company. So that would be my first. Here's my reality: you know, I'm answering these questions fast, but in reality, I would actually not go to two people first. Those two people would not be Scott Belsky or Balaji. There are two reasons for this. I don't actually know them that well. They're not like my homies. With Balaji, I consider us kind of friends, but we never hung out. We're cordial. Scott Belsky is the same sort of thing—there's even more distance, actually. So, you know, I have respect for them, but I can't say they're like my homies. In reality, my first five calls would be to people like you, Sully, Michael Burch, Ramon, and a bunch of my true friends. I'd be like, "Hey, I'm doing something."

Sam Parr

like family yeah

Shaan Puri

It makes you like family, exactly. And so that's like the true answer for Twitter, you know? I kind of... I didn't want to put only people that people would not recognize their names, you know? So I put a couple of people that they would know in there. It's also kind of aspirational, like who would I want to be in my company? I think Scott Belsky is an amazing product person, so I think that's just like an amazing person to have on there. I think Balaji [likely referring to Balaji Srinivasan] ...

Sam Parr

and he's like the greatest I mean he's one of the best angel investors in the world

Shaan Puri

Right, so he's done well, and I think he's well connected. I believe that's useful to have. Balaji also represents a different kind of signal. He's super intelligent and comes from the future, which is generally helpful. I think having him adds credibility. If you only have your friends there, it doesn't necessarily help you get the next investor on board. Investors look at who else is invested, and if they don't see a name they recognize or respect, it doesn't carry the same weight. It's kind of like they don't see the Harvard stamp of approval on there. So, you need that mix in there. That's my justification for it. But yeah, in reality, I would, of course, call you.

Sam Parr

I know but you said I don't care about that I care about oh

Shaan Puri

then I told other people that you're risk averse

Sam Parr

I think that's crazy I think that I put the smiley face

Shaan Puri

that means it's a joke the smiley face means it's a joke

Sam Parr

Oh my God! You think that I'm... and just to wrap it up with Tom and Scott Belsky. Scott Belsky, his grandpa started Kaplan.

Shaan Puri

oh really no way I did not know that

Sam Parr

Yeah, his grandpa started Kaplan and sold that for like $80 or $100 million in, I think, the eighties or nineties. So it's like, you know, that's the equivalent of like $300 million today. When he was 24, he invested $15,000 into Pinterest when it was worth $3 million and $15,000 into Uber when it was worth $3 million. He did this while he was running his company called Behance, which was mostly bootstrapped until like six months before they sold it. They raised a Series A, but prior to that, it was bootstrapped. When he sold it, he owned, I think, 75% of it. He sold it for about $150 million. So he made probably $100 million from the sale, probably $100 million on Uber, and $100 million on Pinterest, give or take 50%. And now he's next in line to become CEO at Adobe.

Shaan Puri

gangster

Sam Parr

which is like the 40th largest company in the in the world yeah

Shaan Puri

Total gangster and good dude. Just a fun, fun hang, which leads a lot to...

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Financially successful. When I met with him... I met with him a while ago, and like, he's really good-looking. He dresses really nice and he's like... *fucking dreamy*. He's so optimistic and so happy. Whenever he talked, I was just like, "Dude, whatever you say."

Shaan Puri

yeah he looks like the guy from maroon 5 adam levine

Sam Parr

exactly he

Shaan Puri

looks like that guy

Sam Parr

he's very good looking and he's nice as hell he's really nice

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay. We should wrap it up before we just totally... you know, totally. That's it. I... I... gay.

Sam Parr

for gay for belsky

Shaan Puri

Gabe Ribelsky, I was trying to think of something that would be appropriate to say. My mind only went to dirty words, so I'm...

Sam Parr

gay for belsky I'm hardcore gay for him I like

Shaan Puri

him a lot alright we're out of here