How To Find +$1 Million Business Ideas From Weird Trends (#480)
One-Chart Businesses, Lice Lady, and Micro-Hustles - August 1, 2023 (over 1 year ago) • 58:33
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | This is an example of a business that I call a **one chart business**. I'm full of catchy ideas today!
So, what's a one chart business? There are times when you can look at one chart, and that one chart alone can be your business plan.
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Sam Parr | alright we're live what's going on I haven't seen you in a week I know what's going on forever | |
Shaan Puri | Nice jacket, by the way. It's fresh! Wearing white is... I appreciate that. It's just a choice. | |
Sam Parr | it's a summer move | |
Shaan Puri | it's | |
Sam Parr | a it's a summer move | |
Shaan Puri | you're going you're going to reuben's party or what | |
Sam Parr | no I I don't think I'm I'm not on that list | |
Shaan Puri | It was last year that you were in the Hamptons when Rick Rubin was having his party. You were like, "What's this?" Wasn't there some story about how you hung out with all the limo drivers and the Uber drivers?
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Sam Parr | in the | |
Shaan Puri | parking lot instead of going in | |
Sam Parr | The beach that I went to was five doors down from his house. It's a public beach, and there's a parking lot there. My family and I were just hanging out.
We drove by and saw Henry Kravis, the founder of KKR, you know, a $50 billion guy, pull up in his $2 million Bugatti. We parked in the parking lot and I noticed all these huge black Escalades.
It was mostly drivers in suits, playing soccer, eating sandwiches, and drinking soda. I walked over and asked, "What the hell is this?" They told me, "Oh, it's this guy named Michael Rubin; he throws this party."
I asked, "Who are you driving?" They actually told me who they were driving. I was curious, so I asked, "What's the shtick on them? Are they a good tipper? What's their deal?" They spilled the beans, saying, "Oh, this person's actually broke. He always haggles with us over $500."
So, I hung out in the parking lot at Michael Rubin's party. | |
Shaan Puri | Most relatable blue-collar thing to do is just to go and be like, "Hey, pass the sunflower seeds," and just start kicking it with these guys in the parking lot. I saw.
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Sam Parr | it was like a movie a little bit it was like they're just like playing soccer and drinking coke | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, by the way, the way you described that was definitely like straight out of a favela in Brazil. You're like, "Yeah, they were just drinking Coca-Cola and eating sandwiches while playing soccer in the park in the gravel."
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Sam Parr | That's really what they were doing. I mean, it was fun. You know, it was all like these Long Island guys, like, "Hey, what are you doing?" You know, that type of thing.
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Shaan Puri |
I saw a video of that party, and I think the reaction when they post that video for most people is like, "Oh my God! So cool! I hope one day I can attend this - the white party at Michael Rubin's house."
I gotta say, I saw that thing and I was like, "This would be my worst nightmare."
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Sam Parr | it'd be very uncomfortable right | |
Shaan Puri | Having to look cool... just that alone is already, I'm halfway to hell. Having to look cool, dressed up for... | |
Sam Parr | the evening sean's wearing a mickey mouse t | |
Shaan Puri | shirt right | |
Sam Parr | now just fly | |
Shaan Puri | Yes, exactly. And by the way, I bought this recently. This is new; this isn't like some old thing in the closet. I bought this during my trip just now. So, having to look cool and then going to a place with a bunch of people who are super famous, and then having to like be in... tell.
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Sam Parr | a story | |
Shaan Puri |
Be in conversations and... like try to get into conversations and then be in those conversations? I just wanna go home. I didn't... I just... I already wanna go home and I wasn't even invited. So Michael Rubin, you could lose my invite is what I'm trying to say.
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Sam Parr | yeah it's like you'd rather play their their characters in madden than actually hang out with them | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, I would just start cleaning. I'd be like, "I'm just gonna make myself useful here because the rest of socializing is not gonna work." I'm just gonna Marie Kondo this bitch right now and like start taking out trash. And I'll just join the serving crew, like serving appetizers, because I'd be like, "I know I will have more fun doing *anything* besides this."
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Sam Parr | where do you wanna go from here | |
Shaan Puri | I was looking at a company called after after.com you ever | |
Sam Parr | heard of this after.com | |
Shaan Puri | A very good domain! It's an amazing domain.
So, after.com is "Cremation as a Service." Basically, you can pre-plan it or do it after somebody passes away. The reason I actually want to talk about this is that it's an interesting business on its own.
This is an example of a business that I call "one chart businesses." I'm full of catchy phrases today!
So, what's a one chart business? There are times when you can look at one chart, and that one chart alone can be your business plan.
For example, have you seen the rise in the popularity of cremation? It's popping off nowadays! Cremation is like... it's in right now, like Tide Pods. So, I saw this chart.
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Sam Parr | I thought did did not everyone get cremated | |
Shaan Puri | So basically, cremation in the United States, in the last, I don't know, 20 years or something like that, has gone from about 10% of the population choosing cremation to over 50%. I think it's actually almost 60 or 70% now, which is kind of insane. I had no idea this was true.
Burial rates are going down, and cremation rates are going way up. If you just see that one chart alone, you're like, "Okay, in 20 years, this thing has shifted from a super minority to the majority." That alone tells me there's room for building interesting businesses in this space. It's a one-chart business.
There have actually been several of these that I've encountered over the years. One chart can tell you a full story, and this is one of them. These guys have built a really good business on top of this. I don't want to go into too much detail about their actual thing, but I just thought that was crazy.
This is where what you guys had with trends was kind of a cool business. You would identify trends like this. You would say, "Okay, in the 1960s, cremation was 3%, and then in the 1990s, it grew to 17%. Right now, in 2020, it's over 50%." If that's true, then what are all the second-order consequences of that? Who are the providers for this? Who does the B2B e-commerce of this? Who has the highest SEO ranking for this?
That website's actually going to be way more popular than they realize because this is growing over time. So you take that one chart, and you can actually run a whole business plan off it. | |
Sam Parr |
Wow! So, they... I'm a) yes, you're right, and b) I'm looking at After.com. They, I don't think they've raised money. They're... they're Mormons. They're based out of Provo, Utah. This is wild! How did you find this?
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Shaan Puri |
They reached out because I told people I was buying minority stakes in businesses and investing in businesses. I think these guys were raising money or wanted to... I think they were raising money. They're not trying to sell, at least they weren't then. I... I think they're trying to go big, fundraise. So they reached out.
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Sam Parr | This definitely could be big. It's $25,100. Their TAM (Total Addressable Market) is everyone on Earth.
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Shaan Puri | we're all getting there eventually | |
Sam Parr | dude but they don't own like an oven do they like they just like | |
Shaan Puri |
It's the logistics. So basically what they do is:
1. They get the lead
2. They book the... kind of like the... they either:
- Take the prepayment if you're going to do it ahead of time, or
- Afterwards, they say, "Okay, we will be your provider"
They can do the full logistics. So basically, you know like the Domino's pizza tracker, right? Pickup, drop off, delivery... they do the whole thing. And you could see kind of step-by-step where you're at in the process.
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Sam Parr | The... this is wild! So, to your first point, our good buddy Jack Smith, you know, he started Vungle and sold it for $750 million. It was making $1 million a day in revenue.
I asked him, "Jack, why'd you start Vungle?" He said, "Well, I just saw that mobile games on your phone were going to be really popular. I just saw a chart, I think he said from a Forrester research report. He said, 'I just saw this chart that says mobile games are taking over the world.'"
He was like, "What can we make on top of that?" And that's why he came up with Vungle, which was ads in a game. So, he built an ad network. It was the same thing where he thought, "Oh, that's a thing! Let's just get on that tidal wave." It doesn't matter which surfboard we pick; let's just pick a board and hopefully it will catch.
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Shaan Puri | and | |
Sam Parr | and that was like the same thing | |
Shaan Puri |
Jeff Bezos says this is how he decided to quit his job. I think he worked at some private equity firm that's famous. He quit his high-paying job and was like, "I'm gonna go start an internet company."
Why an internet company? He goes, "I read a stat during my research for the firm that the internet is growing 2,300% per year. That blew my mind, and if that's true, then I'm gonna go build an internet company."
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Sam Parr | That line is a beautiful line. We actually use that quote on the front page of Trends, where he goes, "I started to... I saw a report that said the internet was growing by 2,300% per year. Nothing grows that fast unless it's in a petri dish."
And he's like, "That's when I knew I had to start something." So, I wrote a list of ideas of things that we could possibly sell on the internet, and we just so happened to choose books.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. They chose books because he was like, "Oh, what is the advantage of the internet? You could have infinite selection because there's no shelf space limit, right? There's no physical shelf."
So he's like, "What has a wide selection? Okay, what also won't go bad? It can't be perishable; it has to be durable. And then what is easy to ship?"
And so he's like, "You know, those three." And he's like, "There's market demand for it. Cool, books will be the place where we start."
By the way, I just found Steph Smith, former writer of Trends, had a great tweet about this, actually. So I just pulled this up while you were talking, while I was looking for the quote.
She said famously, "Jeff Bezos had this stat that made him quit his job. What are the generation-defining stats of today? Here's number one."
Here's what she had:
- The cost of mapping a genome has fallen by 100,000% over the last 15 years. It went from like $100,000,000 to less than $1,000. So mapping genomes, if that's true, if the cost is dropping like a rock, what could be done off that?
- The second: college tuition has outpaced how much people earn by 10 times. Here's this one chart that shows people's earnings over time and the cost of college over time. It's like the cost of college is going way up. That's a one-chart business right there.
- Cyber insurance loss ratios have increased for years despite exponentially growing rates. Your loss ratio is basically how many claims you have, so cybersecurity is becoming an exponential issue.
- The percentage of men under 30 not having sex has tripled in the last decade. Before, men not having sex was like, you know, 15%. Now it's 30% of men under the age of 30 who are not having sex.
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Sam Parr | before the age of under the age of 30 | |
Shaan Puri | so you just made it nice so yeah | |
Sam Parr | I'll leave | |
Shaan Puri |
A couple other ones you had in here:
1. It used to be that 8 hours of sleep was the norm on average. Now people get 6.8 hours, so the sleep industry and the effects of not sleeping are going to go up.
2. The electronic system in a car was 5% of car cost. Now it's 50% of car cost. It's not just self-driving cars; cars are basically rolling computers.
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Sam Parr | Dude, those are brilliant! I've definitely started stuff because I've seen things like that.
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Shaan Puri | I remember sitting with one of the founders of Calm, this guy Alex, and we were at lunch. He just burst out laughing out of nowhere. We were like, "What?"
He goes, "I just realized that there must be like 10,000,000 people a day dying on Facebook."
I said, "What?" He replied, "Facebook must have so much churn just due to death. They probably have millions of users churned because they died every day. That's insane!"
And he just starts laughing.
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Sam Parr | and you're like hey alex like you freaking autistic weirdo like he's | |
Shaan Puri |
[Laughing] So far, he was like, "Can you imagine millions of people churning because they died every day from your product?" He's like, "What do they do with those profiles? How does that work?" And he's like, "What? There's a team of people just like the morgue at Facebook, just cleaning up these dead profiles?"
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Sam Parr | well they could sign up for after.com | |
Shaan Puri | More people died during lunch today than use our product. You know, like more people on Facebook died than have ever used our product. He's just laughing uncontrollably.
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Sam Parr | You're like, "Yeah, that's hilarious, Alex. That's so funny."
So, this is my first time recording back in Austin. Basically, most summers between May and October, I go to New York because I have family there, and we like to stay there. This time, we only did it for about 6 weeks, and now I'm back.
Every time I come back, I get this immense amount of stress because typically, when I go, I stay for 3 months and I only bring a carry-on. I basically bring a pair of Crocs, a pair of workout shoes, and one pair of nice dress shoes. Then, I bring 2 workout shorts and 2 workout shirts, and I just clean them regularly.
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Shaan Puri | Crocs, workout shorts, a box of Captain Crunch, and a switchblade... mhmm, yeah, that's called summer ready.
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Sam Parr |
To do with the yo-yo... like those little other pager things on my belt. Yeah, I got my Yomega, my Crotch [likely referring to a yo-yo model], it's a Bubblegum [possibly another yo-yo model or color], and I'm good.
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Shaan Puri | okay so you so why why do you say you're stressed out what do you mean you're stressed stressed by what | |
Sam Parr | Because, alright, so I bring nothing. Basically, I bring very little stuff and I rent a furnished place. In my book bag, I bring two lights for the podcast, an extra cell phone that I hang up, and that's my camera, along with this microphone.
I come back to my house and I realize I've got a closet full of stuff. I've got two cars that I have to check on. I'm like, "Alright, I gotta make sure that the battery didn't die." I have a motorcycle, and I gotta make sure the battery didn't die and the tires are full. I've got this cold plunge where I gotta go and make sure I filled it with water, and I gotta clean it.
I just have like... stuff. There's just stuff to maintain. I saw a picture of our friend Sahil, and he had his baby, Roman, a beautiful baby. But in the back, he had literally three barrels. They were barrels, not buckets; they were barrels of toys.
I see all this stuff that I have now, and I'm stressed out about it. I've gotta go ranch an hour and a half away, I gotta go check in on all this stuff, and I'm freaking out about having kids and all this other stuff. Sarah's making a baby shower registry, and I see all this stuff, and it's so much stuff. It's freaking me out, man. I don't want any of it.
I'm wondering, I don't think you freak out over this because I think you probably have a lot of stuff.
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Shaan Puri | I got all of it | |
Sam Parr | but I for 1 am freaking about it have you did you you don't live lightly at all | |
Shaan Puri | Bro, "Living Heavy" might be the title of my autobiography. I mean, what are you talking about, "Living Lightly"? Yeah, I indulge. Our kids have tons of crap—that's what kids do. They bring a bunch of stuff into your house.
I got a dog; dogs bring lots of crap. I got some crap too. There's just stuff everywhere. I literally have a ball pit, a tent, and a fort. You know, I have so much stuff in every single room. If you saw this room I'm in right now, you would want to pass out!
But I gotta say, I'm no therapist, but I kind of feel like what you're experiencing is actually "fatherhood fear." You're just redirecting it, misguiding it, and pretending that you're worried about the stuff. I think this is some underlying fear that life is about to change. You're about to become a parent, and you're about to lose your freedom. I think it's expressing itself in some weird ways, like when you get hives because you're worried about your math test.
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Sam Parr | I get a little nervous, and you might be right. But also, I get a little bit nervous just about all the stuff I have in general.
So, I was talking to my buddy Dennis. He's a single guy and he's got three cars. He said, "I have all these cars, and I have to go run them to make sure they're okay because I haven't driven this thing in a month. I gotta go drive it around."
I'm like, "Dude, it's like we all wanted this stuff, and then we all got it. Now we realize we just have to take care of it."
If I see someone with a Ferrari, I'm like, "Man, if you get a flat tire, that's like a $10,000 repair to get it to where you need to go." You have to repair it and fix it, and everything, right? It just takes so much mental space.
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Shaan Puri | and so what are you gonna do you're gonna give it all away you're just gonna cry about it what's the situation now | |
Sam Parr | The situation is you have to be a **conscious consumer**. I think that's my "woo woo" phrase of the week. But basically, I have to be really, really careful.
So, I'm going to the baby registry and I'm like, "If it's not a book, we shouldn't ask for it." We should actually say to people, "Don't buy us anything." I'm just trying to say that if you want something and they sell it at Target, you have to walk there and get it.
I don't want all these boxes around the house. Isn't it crazy that we buy stuff, it comes from Amazon, and then we have to pay $1,800 to get junk to come and take it away? We had given them $300 to throw away all the stuff, you know what I mean? The boxes... it's weird.
So, I'm just going to buy less stuff. That's basically what I'm going to do. I think that's the answer.
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Shaan Puri | You're on the right side of history. Although, I think with kids, it's a different game. For example, one of the reasons I got a lot of stuff is...
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Sam Parr | Saying "you're on the right side of history" is such a woo-woo way of saying "I agree." It's like the phrase "the right side of history" is what political people use. You're on... | |
Shaan Puri | the right | |
Sam Parr | side of history | |
Shaan Puri |
You know why it works? Because you're talking about the most minor personal pet peeve, so I gotta elevate it by saying "you're on the right side of history," making it feel a little more grand. Okay, that's a little trick.
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Sam Parr |
You don't... I think it's weird that you don't experience this. I think a lot of people are experiencing this right now, and they're... like when you go to some people's homes, they have a basement full of stuff. And I'm like, "Dude, a cluttered room is a cluttered brain" in my mind.
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Shaan Puri | I hired a guy to come over and clear my calendar. He took so much crap out of our house. We removed everything from the garage. He took a whole dining table, chairs, a rug that I didn't like—just loads of stuff away.
It felt like, you know, the satisfaction when you pop a zit or something like that. Yes, I popped my house as if it were a zit. It does feel great when you get rid of stuff and lighten the load.
But what I would say is one of the reasons I had a lot of stuff, as a parent, is because you end up... I don't know, not everybody does this—there are better parents than us—but we bribe our kids a ton. It turns out that the thing you want more than a neat and tidy home and a light footprint is like 13 minutes of relaxation.
And you know how you get those 13 minutes of relaxation? You stop at freaking Dollar General or whatever and buy some crap that your kid's going to be excited about playing with for like 30 minutes. And that's all you need. If you have that, alright, it's worth it. We'll get rid of that later.
So having stuff that your kids can play with is how you get to be on the internet. If you don't want to be on the internet, cool, keep your minimal house and entertain your kids with your bare hands. But if you don't want to do that, you better buy the ball pit, the slide, the nugget, and all these little things so that they have stuff.
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Sam Parr | To do Target. You've got the Target grocery cart and the Target checkout.
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Shaan Puri | Scanner says, "Oh, let's play grocery store. You go shopping and buy everything, and I'll be sitting over here on my laptop."
Then they do it, and another 9 minutes pass. I'm just 9 minutes closer to freedom, to the day that they're old enough to go to school.
So, you know, this is a really... it's a tool for survival, is what I'm trying to say.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, and the last thing on this is the reason I love going to New York. When I go, I say, "San Francisco and New York." I lived in San Francisco for 10 years. You're outside of San Francisco now, New York as well.
It's a land of ones and tens, meaning everything about that place is either a 1 out of 10 or it's a 10 out of 10. The beauty, the energy, the excitement? 10 out of 10. The crime, like seeing the homeless people do stuff, feeling like it's a third world country sometimes? That's a 1 out of 10.
Austin is a land of 6s and 7s. Everything's mostly pretty good, mostly all the time. It's never going to blow you away with inspiration, but it's always going to be like, "Oh, this is nice. I feel nice."
Whereas, you know, you walk around the city of New York and sometimes you're like, "This makes me feel alive." You know, it's like I just want to inject this energy in my veins. Then other times you're there, you're like, "I need space. I need quiet. I'm freaking out."
What I'm trying to figure out is, what's a good life? Is it surrounding yourself with ones and tens, or is it surrounding yourself with 7s all the time? That's something that we're debating at the moment. | |
Shaan Puri | I mean this that's a big life question what do you think the answer | |
Sam Parr | is I don't know yet I'm I don't have to make my decision yet but I was wondering if you've ever thought about that | |
Shaan Puri |
I've never thought about it as well as you just put it. What I would say is that I learned this thing a long time ago, which is: **one choice is no choice**. Because if you only have one choice, that means you really actually have no choice.
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Sam Parr | yeah just inertia | |
Shaan Puri | Two bad choices just tells you that you need a third choice.
So, I think what you're actually saying is you need a third choice. Like, you know, the thing that worked for me was living in California but in the suburbs. This way, you avoid the crime and stuff like that.
You do lose a little bit on the energy and the kind of ambition around you, but you can kind of hack around that a little bit. So, you get the weather, the beauty, and the California sunshine—all that good stuff—without the downtown San Francisco crime and, you know, recklessness and lawlessness.
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Sam Parr |
I think what I'm gonna do, and we could wrap up here... I think what I'm gonna do is we're gonna rent a place for 1 year in Westport, Connecticut. Never in a million years did I ever think I'd say I'd live in Connecticut, but I met this woman who I'm gonna talk about, Dafina Smith. She goes, "I know what you're going through. I went through the same thing. We found this place called Westport, Connecticut. 60 minutes outside of New York City. It sounds crazy, but come and visit me." I went out there and I was like, "This..."
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Shaan Puri | is nice | |
Sam Parr | So, I might do Westport, Connecticut. I can't believe I might be a Connecticut person, but I think that's all we might do. Speaking of which, do you want me to talk about her?
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Shaan Puri | yeah tell me the story | |
Sam Parr |
I met this woman at a Hampton dinner. I sat next to her... basically, her name is Dafina Smith and her company is called Covet and Mane. You could check it out. It's "Covet" like you want something, so "Covet," and then "Mane" like hair, M-A-N-E. Are you on the website?
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Shaan Puri |
Yeah, there's just like... you know, I don't wanna go to Rick Rubin's party, but this party that I'm looking at right here looks amazing. This is just like beautiful women running through the... like just holding hands and running through the sand, which is just hilarious.
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Sam Parr | dude so check this out so she started out in real estate just doing normal stuff but her parents own a beauty supply like store like a brick like a small store and so she starts helping them out and so she starts saying like oh let's create a website and we'll sell hair extensions online so you I I don't know if your wife uses hair extensions my wife does sometimes hair extensions basically it costs sometimes 2 or $3,000 for really fancy ones sometimes cheaper 500 to a $1,000 and they basically like weave this they basically like sew extra hair into your hair and it makes it look really nice for a woman and she starts selling this online she's like this doesn't really work that well the way the way that I thought it was gonna work so instead what she does is she invests around a 100 to a $150,000 into starting this business and what she does is she starts hollering at different beauty stores and she creates like an invite system where she's like look we don't have that much inventory and we wanna like onboard people effectively so you just apply and then if we can like make this happen we'll start sending you our product and our product is really high quality and then also we can start sending you some customers because we're gonna do really good with the marketing we're gonna send people who want our particular type of hair and hopefully when you go and get hair you'll tell your friends oh I got this brand of hair you can go to their website and see who deals their stuff well anyway she only has 6 employees in her 1st year of business they did $4,000,000 in revenue and they're in year 4 or 5 and they're doing tens of 1,000,000 in revenue by year 2 she was already in the tens of 1,000,000 year 4 she's doing many tens of 1,000,000 they have like 2 or 3 agents agencies who work for her but only about 6 full time people and if you go to their website they're killing it and I was like how what are you doing so well she's like man we host these like meetups where it'll be like tons of women who own these beauty supply companies so or like you know like literally a brick and mortar like beauty store and we do like these parties where we like teach them a little bit about how to run their business we'll have speakers who like have best practices and then also like if they happen to want to apply to sell our product we'll do that and that's like basically how they're getting most of their customers and it's a super fascinating company because a it's just a simple ish website I mean it's nothing like crazy fascinating her the the hair is of high quality which by the way do you know how they get hair from this | |
Shaan Puri | no is it donations | |
Sam Parr | It's real hair. It's usually from India. In certain parts of India, it's like Holi or something where they shave their heads. Or they go to China, where you can pay people and they'll cut their hair, and you buy their hair from them.
So, it's real hair, and there's a process to get high-quality hair extensions. She built this company on the idea of going out to these hair salons. It's super fascinating because, A, this is an industry that I knew nothing about, and B, I actually think things like this could be pretty huge. It costs $2,000 to $3,000 to get this done in some cases.
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Shaan Puri |
So, I forgot... I actually went down this rabbit hole a long time ago because a guy I had dinner with once (you know, when I used to host these mastermind dinners) worked at this company called Maven. Did you ever hear about this company?
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Sam Parr | yeah they they they raised too much money I think | |
Shaan Puri | They raised like **$30,000,000** from Andreessen Horowitz, Serena Williams, and Jimmy Iovine. You know, every cool person you can imagine.
So, they raised all this money, and this guy Taylor came to dinner. He was, I think, like the COO or something like that. They're based in Oakland, and he was telling us about this. He was basically one guy explaining to five other guys who have never done hair extensions about how crazy this business is.
He's like, "Yeah, you have these stylists. The stylists are basically like independent contractors. People follow them from salon to salon, wherever they're working. They're trying to book them." Then the stylist has to go and procure the actual hair. They go to these warehouses or wholesalers to buy the actual hair, and they get the hair from India.
I remember going on a YouTube rabbit hole about how they get the hair from villages in India or China or places like this because that's where the bulk of the hair gets imported from. I learned how they get paid, you know, whatever dollars for their hair. It's kind of a controversial thing, like, is this exploitive? There are rumors of people being forced to do it, which is not great.
So, there's all kinds of stuff in the supply chain about ethically sourcing the hair. There are some great videos on YouTube about this if you're ever curious. I recommend this as a fun rabbit hole to go down.
I don't know what happened with Maven because I think they raised a lot of money, and I haven't heard about them in a long time. It looks like they raised **$40,000,000** more to go into Walmart. I mean, it looks like they're still around.
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Sam Parr | on 6,000,000 in total they've raised $76,000,000 a lot | |
Shaan Puri | I don't know why, and no offense to Taylor—I hope they succeed—but there's something about companies with this pattern.
It's usually an underrepresented founder going after a space that white tech startups ignore. Then they raise a mega round from celebrity investors, and you kind of don't hear about them anymore.
Maybe they raised too much money. Too much money can break companies. This happened with Tristan Walker's company, Walker & Company.
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Sam Parr | walker brands they made like a razor for black men to shave their head I think | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, or their beard or whatever. I think that was a great idea, that was a great model. But when you raise that much money, it puts so much growth pressure on the business. It can sometimes break it.
I hope that this didn't break it, but I've just seen this happen several times now. I start to notice a little bit of a pattern.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, it says in a press release that they've done $120,000,000 in revenue. But they phrase it in a way where I think that means the company's lifespan. They've done $120,000,000 in revenue, but yeah, it's stupid.
I think that your cap table is like one of the very few things in business that is an irreversible decision. It's very challenging to make up for that mistake.
This is why this woman, Dafina, when I met her, I started talking to her. I asked, "Are you on social media?" She said, "A little bit, but I haven't decided if I actually want to go all in on it." I was like, "If you Google this lady, you'll see her name's Dafina Smith. You could be a huge deal if you wanted to."
I mean, what did the kids say? "You got the riz." She's got the riz! She's this very charismatic, very pretty, tall, composed woman. When I see her talk, I'm like, "Oh man, you're like a proper CEO. You got the it factor."
But she's like, "I don't know if I actually want to be famous or if I actually want to go hard that way." I said, "Well, whenever you want to, I think you'll kill it."
So, I saw when she started telling me her story, I had no idea that this stuff could be this big. She told me some of the numbers behind it, and I was flabbergasted at this type of business.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, that's crazy. So, her model is this kind of direct-to-stylist model. There are a few other businesses that are like this. Have you heard of StyleSeat?
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Sam Parr | yeah I like styleseat my wife used it for a little while what what exactly is it though | |
Shaan Puri | There was a period of time, and this happens a lot in business, where one idea can work across a couple of verticals—not all verticals, but a couple. If you figure it out, it makes sense.
There was a time when Mindbody Online was getting popular. It's basically the idea of directly booking yoga classes and Pilates classes online. Then, there was the rise of the instructor—the celebrity instructor. This happens with Peloton; it happened with yoga and Pilates. People started to realize that you're not coming for the venue; you're coming for the specific instructor. The same thing is true...
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Sam Parr | And by the way, that Mindbody company... So, Mindbody was software for yoga classes originally. I think they went public. I think it's like a wildly successful company.
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Shaan Puri |
It's like a $1 billion company with very old-school software. It wasn't like slick, new, fresh... but people started to realize that the same thing was true for stylists. You don't go to the hair... Some people go to the local, you know... Like me, my selection of where I'm getting my haircut is based on what is the closest place to me in that moment when I have 30 minutes. I'm going there.
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Sam Parr | yeah yeah which great clips is available at the moment I just who's got a big enough bowl to put on their hair | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, I just got a haircut in LA. I went to this fancy place because it was the nearest option. I sat down, and then the stylist started cutting my hair. He asked, "Oh, what do you want?" I was like, "I don't know, can you cut my hair like the standard dude cut? I don't even know what it's called."
He said, "Okay, I think I know what you're talking about," and he started. I thought to myself, "You fake!" because he was going so slow. He was cutting every individual hair with his scissors to make it awesome. I then said, "Actually, I have different instructions. Could you give me the best haircut you can in 15 minutes?"
He was like, "What?" I replied, "Yeah, I only want to be here for like 15 minutes. Could you just do your best inside a 15-minute time slot?" He was unsure, saying, "I don't know if I should be offended or if this is exciting."
He agreed, "Alright, 15 minutes. Can you put a timer on?" I said, "Yeah," and I set a timer. Then this guy cut the crap out of my hair for 15 minutes. I told him, "Wherever you're at when you're done, let's just call it." He said, "You can come back later. I’ll finish." I was like... | |
Sam Parr | it's like it's hair it'll it'll be it'll be it'll be back where it is in 5 days | |
Shaan Puri | It's alright. He's like, "I won't charge you." I was like, "You couldn't pay me to come back." You know, I'm done. I don't want to spend time with my hair.
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Sam Parr | dude I go to these orthodox jewish guys in brooklyn | |
Shaan Puri | cares about my hair I go to these I | |
Sam Parr |
I go to these Jewish guys in Brooklyn, and I love them because it's all about efficiency. Then I'll end up just sitting down at the chair anyway and be like, "Tell me about Uzbekistan. I wanna hear some stories."
But what I really want is a place where they're just gonna call me "bub," and there's gonna be a handwritten sign that's hopefully misspelled that says:
> Haircut $28
> Beard trim $8
That's what I want. Like, you better have Scotch tape in that drawer of yours, otherwise I'm out.
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Shaan Puri | If you take credit cards, I'm out.
Yeah, so anyway, I don't know how I got into that. Anyway, Style Seed made it easy to book a stylist, and I think they got valued at nearly $1,000,000,000. Melody, the woman who's been running it, has been doing this for like a decade now. I'm really curious to see how that one plays out. She also raised a bunch of money and was kind of going for it.
But this hair salon and barber thing is kind of big. I don't know if you've seen Squire; that's another $1,000,000,000 company in this space.
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Sam Parr | what's squire squire is the same thing for barbershops | |
Shaan Puri | So, it's basically like barbershop booking software. It's an app that lets you book your barber. Mobile barbers were always like, you know, picking up the phone while they're cutting someone's hair. They pick up the cordless phone and say, "Yeah, come on in. What's your name?" They can't even write it down because they're cutting someone's hair at the same time.
So, Squire just kind of streamlined that process. I think they might do payments as well. Providing software to these brick-and-mortar small businesses is really a hard niche. But if you can do it and get the product-market fit, the scale is really big.
There is a lot of these small, fragmented markets. If you can actually figure out a product that works and a sales model that works—which are the two hard things—these businesses could be a lot bigger than they sound. It may seem like, "Oh, software for hairstylists, who cares?" Well, it turns out there are actually a lot of them.
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Sam Parr | I would never want to work in that industry because I think it does seem impossibly hard. But if you're into it, it can work. | |
Hubspot | Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?
See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: "Grow better."
Let me give you a blue-collar side hustle. We haven't had one of these blue-collar side hustles in a while, so we're bringing it back.
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Sam Parr | but you like you like took one flight and you were around blue collar people and you got inspired | |
Shaan Puri |
I left my house and, you know, I was around somebody who listens to the podcast. So, shout out to Brisha! She owns this amazing restaurant in LA. She... I don't know if you know this, but she listens to the pod and she's like, "Every time you guys shout out your like 4 female listeners, I'm like, 'Yeah, that's me! Woo hoo!'" You know, I feel so good and then...
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Sam Parr | dude a lot of women are offended by that I don't say that anymore | |
Shaan Puri | I still say it because I say it with endearment, you know? I lead into the joke. The problem is, the joke's not that funny. So, you know, it may not be the right thing to lean into, but I'm committed.
So anyways, I go to her. She has this restaurant in LA.
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Sam Parr | how'd you meet her | |
Shaan Puri | She had taken my power writing course and volunteered to participate in a live teardown of her website. We reviewed her site because she sells these michelada drink mixes. It's kind of like a mobile business; she has a restaurant, but then she also has an e-commerce side to her business.
Anyway, I did a teardown of her website and didn't pay much attention to it afterward. But Ben, my business partner, keeps in touch with everyone I meet. He somehow has tabs on everybody. He said, "Yo, she's blowing up in LA." I asked, "What do you mean?" He replied, "She got this restaurant, and it's getting really popular. Her brand is getting really popular, and she's got a podcast that's gaining traction." He's like, "Yes!"
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Sam Parr | what's her full name let's get we'll give her a proper shout out what's her full name | |
Shaan Puri |
Prisha Lopez... okay, so she's got a cookbook. She's kind of doing her thing, she's got a lot of stuff going, which I think is pretty fun. She got a book called "Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling" by Prisha Lopez. I met her and her brother.
So anyway, she invites us. She's like, "Hey, you're in LA, you're having meetings anyway, come to our restaurant." And... you know, whatever. We come to her restaurant, she serves us this amazing meal. You know, we talk about restaurant owner energy...
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Sam Parr | she had it | |
Shaan Puri |
She literally has restaurant owner energy. Like, we walked in, we're in her place, she's like, "Sit down." Food just starts appearing. We're not ordering anything. She's literally making my plate by hand. She's feeding me like I'm a baby. She's like, "Try this!"
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Sam Parr | was it free did you have to pay | |
Shaan Puri | I wish I could have paid. She's like, "Your money's no good here." The restaurant owner's energy was flowing; I loved it.
I literally, when we walked out, our buddy was like, "Wow, is that what it's like to own a restaurant?" And then our other friend was like, "This is how every entrepreneur makes the mistake of owning a restaurant. They experience the 1% amazing feeling when you host people at your restaurant and not the 99% of actually running a hard restaurant."
So, anyway, we're hanging out. She's like, "I love the pod. I love the blue-collar side hustles." I was like, "Oh yeah, I haven't done that in a while." She goes, "I got one for you." I go, "What is it?" She goes, "The lice lady."
"The lice lady? What are you talking about?" And so she goes, "Dude, I have kids that are in school, and if anybody in class gets lice, everybody has to get checked for lice. Not just all the kids; your whole family basically has to get checked for lice."
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Sam Parr | I'm thinking of the pigeon lady in the park who has pigeons all over the place. I was thinking, like, it's a woman that just has lice all over, like hanging on her shoulders, that she feeds up crap.
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Shaan Puri | go to | |
Sam Parr | that's not it | |
Shaan Puri | Go to one of these websites, I don't know, like **lice treatment la.com**. It's a mobile lice testing service.
So, what she said was, "Yeah, basically somebody inevitably gets lice in school. Everybody then has to get tested before they can come back. You can't return until everybody gets tested and certified clean."
You can either go to a location or, if you want them to come to you—because it's time-consuming to book an appointment somewhere—there's a nice lady you can just text in LA. You text her, and she's like, "Cool, I'll come out there."
It's **$300** for her to come out and test you and your whole family, plus like **$50** a pop or something like that, or **$100** for your certificates. Basically, she makes, you know, like **$500** to **$600** for doing this test for the whole family to get cleared.
She serves like these **8 districts** in LA, and that's her territory. There's another lady out on the east side who serves her territory, and they don't cross paths. Otherwise, there's a bit of a showdown.
So, she's like, "Yeah, this lady's making tens of thousands of dollars a month just booked out with these lice inspections and treatments." I was like, "Wow, this is awesome! I mean, who would have ever thought? This is amazing!"
Because, you know, she comes over and checks **4 or 5** people in your house, and it's a whole process.
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Sam Parr | Deal, dude! A lot of them have pretty cute branding. This one's called **lice lifters.com**, and then there's **hair helpers.com** and **thehairangels.com**. They're all just made on pretty simple WordPress sites.
If you go to SimilarWeb, they get great traffic. They've just crushed it on Google reviews and Yelp reviews. Some of them, like **licelifters.com**, have locations in Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. It's almost like a franchise.
This is super fascinating! This is really fascinating. | |
Shaan Puri |
Right, like it's... you know, "Life Busters" here we go. "We will come get you." It's crazy. Yeah, they... this is like a little model that I think works locally. If it works locally, you could do it in a bunch of locations. If you do it in a bunch of locations, you could even franchise it out or go nationwide if you really got aggressive with it.
So I kind of love this little blue-collar side hustle. It's one of these hidden-in-plain-sight niches, right? It doesn't take a genius to pull this thing off.
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Sam Parr | dude if you go to lifebusters usa.com the one you're on I mean | |
Shaan Puri | I made that up by the way is there actually a | |
Sam Parr |
Life Busters... I just googled Life Busters. LifeBustersUSA.com, they have a couple dozen locations. No, this is real! A super fascinating thing. Yeah, this is cool.
How much does it cost to have a Life Buster come to your school? I bet you it's like $1,000 for the day or something.
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Shaan Puri |
None of them do clear pricing on their website, which is how you know it's kind of a rip-off. But you know, they've got you in a hard spot too, right? It's like a locksmith. They come over and they're like, "Well, this is a 1988 [model], it's gonna be an extra $500." You're like, "Well, am I really gonna tell you to go home and call another locksmith to price compare?" It's impossible, right?
No one has more power on earth than a locksmith when they're at your house. Like, it is *over* at that point. Do you know what I mean?
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Sam Parr | You know, that's like a huge scam, right? Have you ever read about locksmiths?
I knew this guy from Israel who ran one of these things. He was like, "If you Google 'locksmith Nashville,' there are like 8 out of the 10 listings on Google. They're all different branding. I own all of them."
He basically has like indentured servants. He gets my friends who come in from Israel and says, "You have to work for me for 2 years." He sends them leads, and the name of the game is you go to the person's house, tell them it's $200 on the phone, but you actually charge them $400.
It's known for being one of the most shady things there is—the locksmith industry. Have you not ever heard about that?
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Shaan Puri | Never heard... never met an honest locksmith. A guy comes to my house, and he's like, you know, first he takes forever. It takes so long that by the time he gets there, you're already worn out. It's like a negotiation without him even being there.
Then it's too late to call somebody else. You just want to get into your damn car or your house.
Then they show up and they're like, "This is gonna be trickier because this is a house." Well, yeah, of course it's a house! It's like, "Yeah, it's got studs, so we're just gonna be... I have a stud fee."
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Sam Parr | stugs and | |
Shaan Puri | I'm like, "Stud fee? What are you talking about, bro?" And he's like, "Oh, like there's oxygen in the air. I'm gonna have to charge you for that."
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Sam Parr | it's like and oh it's made out of wood | |
Shaan Puri |
And literally what happened... The last locksmith, the guy came and he tried to charge us $600. We were like, "No way!" Just out of principle, no way. [We told him] "You stand here. I'm gonna break this door down with my shoulder and get it repaired for double."
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Sam Parr | what's he like alright fine a $100 | |
Shaan Puri |
No, he stood there and he watched us break the door down with our shoulder. Then we paid $1,200 to get the door repaired. Wow, I gotta tell you, never felt more satisfied paying the $1,200 because that *[expletive]* didn't get my money.
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Sam Parr | what did he say when you smashed the door down very alpha of you partial like breath | |
Shaan Puri |
Well, dude, imagine the intent. Imagine the moment of anticipation when I'm about to charge. I've only ever seen this shit in movies. I have no idea how much force this is gonna take, and if this fails... if I get slammed into this, you know...
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Sam Parr | it doesn't break I hurt | |
Shaan Puri | My shoulder and I fell down. The absolute worst-case scenario! Now we have to pay this guy, and I have to go to Kaiser instead. I was like, "I must get through this wall." You know, like moms can lift cars when their children are in need. My ego was trapped, and I had to break this door down. There was no other option, and of course, I came through in the clutch.
So, you know, it ended up working out after two or three solid bangs. The key was I didn't fully commit to the first one. I gave it a tester, just kind of like, "Let me do it over here on the side." And like, when we get to the edge, then the middle is the way to go, right? Where's the point of weakness?
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Sam Parr |
I can see you standing there, licking your finger to see which way the wind's blowing. You're just... calculating. Like you've got a piece of chalk and you're doing a little math to figure out the best point of entry.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I was just doing things to stall. I took my shoes off. I don't know why. I was just thinking, "Okay, what am I going to do?" | |
Sam Parr | get this door down can you like warm up your hands | |
Shaan Puri | I don't know why I needed to perform for this guy. I could've just told him to leave and done it in my privacy. But I had told him, "That's a rip-off! I'm gonna break this door down."
Alright, so let me tell you, this is actually a good segue to a topic I wanted to talk to you about. I didn't know how we would work this in, but it worked out perfectly.
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Sam Parr | got it | |
Shaan Puri |
So there's this phrase that I love, which is "I'm looking for a triple A locksmith." What's a triple A locksmith?
Back in the day, when they had the phone pages or the Yellow Pages, people would go to find a service like a locksmith. It's...
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Sam Parr | like doing 4 4 minute abs instead of 7 minute abs you know you gotta just | |
Shaan Puri |
Exactly. You could differentiate on many things. You could say, "We're a locksmith company. We're honest, we have good pricing, we are..." But nobody knows that. They're just looking in the Yellow Pages. They don't know how to find you or find out anything more about you. They're just going to go based on which locksmith stands out.
Guess who stands out the most? The one at the top.
And so I call it the "Triple A Locksmith" idea because people started to game the system. They're like, "Oh, instead of calling themselves 'Smith's Locksmiths' - which would be far down the list - they would call themselves 'A Locksmith'."
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Sam Parr | and then | |
Shaan Puri | Some other guy was like, "No, no, no, we're AA locksmiths." So, AA locksmiths would show up first in the list.
Then, another guy comes in and says, "No, no, I'm AAA locksmith. AAA locksmith!" Because they're going to be first on the list, and actually, that's all that matters. Being first on the list is going to get 80% of the calls.
I love this story because it shows me that you want somebody who... I always said when we were hiring engineers, I want to hire AAA locksmiths. This is someone who can do the job on the engineering side, but just 10 to 15% of their mind is thinking about, "Hey, how do we get more customers?"
"Oh, if I just put two A's in front of my name, I'll be at the top of the list. Dope! I'll do that."
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Sam Parr | that that that that immigrant it's like that immigrant hustle | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. I want the engineer who has just enough of that little moment of micro hustle where they figure out, "Oh, this little thing is going to help me get a little bit further in life."
I was thinking about these micro hustles because, again, I left the house, started to observe things, and noticed how broken some industries are. So, I'm out to dinner.
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Sam Parr | how long were you gone for | |
Shaan Puri | 5 days... an eternity.
Okay, I go to dinner and I'm sitting with some friends. This happened five times. We went to dinner every single night while I was in LA. Every single night, the same thing happened at dinner.
We eat, and at the end, the waiter comes up and says, "Can I get you guys a dessert menu?"
"Dessert! Everybody want dessert?" His voice is going up like a hot air balloon. Then, everybody at the table awkwardly looks around.
"You want... did you want any? Did you want dessert?"
"I'm good, I'm good."
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Sam Parr | that's a that's a rookie waiter move you you set the you just set it down | |
Shaan Puri | Even if you just set it down, it's the same sort of thing. So I said, "Okay, what's the micro hustle move here?" If I'm a waiter, I'm looking for these moments where you... because I meet a lot of people that are like, "I love the pod! Yeah, I want to do my own thing someday, but currently, I just have this job."
They're like, the gap between the current job and running their own successful company feels large in their mind. And here's the way to shrink that gap. Well, the real way to shrink that gap is just to do it. But let's say you're not just doing it yet.
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Sam Parr | yeah teach me about some teach me about some shrinkage let's go | |
Shaan Puri | yeah you're an expert maybe you should actually explain this yeah yeah yeah oh I'm preaching to the choir here so so I'm | |
Sam Parr | like how do you | |
Shaan Puri | So, I'm like, how do you start to think like a business owner? Think like a little bit of a hustler when you're in your job.
Find the moments where you could hustle inside your job. I'm not talking about pitching your boss an idea; I'm talking about just going rogue and making some things happen. Learning how to be a AAA locksmith and how to use human psychology to your advantage.
So, at the last dinner, I see this guy. This guy's a little more clever. Instead of just saying, "Does anybody want dessert? Should I bring a dessert menu?" he comes to me at the side of the table and says, "I'll leave this with you to order dessert for the table."
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Sam Parr | I'm like | |
Shaan Puri | Oh shit, that was smooth as a mother! I was like, "Wow, I guess I am the head of the table, the man of the house." I do need to provide for my friends here, you know? I need to give them an experience.
He just whispered to me, "This is our little secret. You just tell me what you want, and we'll surprise him." I thought that was a smooth move. I started thinking about how I could take it even further.
So, everywhere I went, I began brainstorming this little micro-hustle moment. With this dessert thing, I said it would make it more fun. I asked, "What if they actually set down a thing?" Because most people, when it comes to dessert, think there are only two answers: yes or no. But there's actually a third answer. Do you know the third answer when it comes to dessert?
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Sam Parr | no what | |
Shaan Puri | I'll have some if you want some. That's actually where everybody lands. It's like, "Yeah, I'll do one if you're doing one," right? This is how people feel about things.
So, I thought somebody should actually just set down a little thing in front of everybody and say, "Alright, here's a restaurant. At the end of the meal, there are three little buttons I can put in front of you."
Button number 1: "No thanks, I'm fine."
Button number 2: "Hell yeah!"
Button number 3: "I'll have one if everyone else wants one."
And on three, we do our reveal. We make it fun; we do the reveal. If anybody says yes and anybody says, "I'll have it if everyone else is having it," say no more.
Would you guys like the brownies or the truffles? Oh, okay, truffles! Yeah, let's go!
I think you could add on like $40 to every ticket if you just did it this way.
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Sam Parr | Dude, I love those games like that. It's like the In-N-Out secret menu.
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Shaan Puri | yes you know | |
Sam Parr | know what I mean like I love these games at restaurants that's my | |
Shaan Puri | Favorite thing: a lot of life is just played in your head. If you're just sitting somewhere, the challenge I give everybody is: how do you play a little game in your head today?
You say, "Alright, let me add a little showmanship. Let me add a little restaurant owner energy to what I'm doing right now. Let me add a little psychology to what I'm doing right now."
If you do that every day, you become a different person. I fully believe this. You literally become a different person and you have more fun versus just going through the motions as you were before.
So this is my little rant on finding that little micro hustle. Be the guy who figures out how to do the dessert menu in a way that makes everybody feel good and actually gets everyone eating dessert. Because there's a version of that for your job, whatever your job is.
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Sam Parr | the mini riz the little mini riz | |
Shaan Puri | You did this at The Hustle. We talked about when you did the "Everybody gets a $100. Let's go to Costco and see who gets the best thing," right?
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Sam Parr |
Yeah, it was the best. That was our team-building activity. We had, I think, 12 employees. We gave everyone $50 and said, "You can team up or you can do it on your own, but at the end we're going to vote." We had three awards:
1. Most useful gift
2. Your favorite gift
3. The most tasty gift
You had to try to win one of those awards.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, and I love these stories of people who just take the ordinary and sort of add a little extra to make it extraordinary.
Alright, anyways, that's my rant.
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Sam Parr | who who who were you at dinner with or who'd you go to la with and did you did anything amazing happen | |
Shaan Puri | A lot of amazing things happened. I wanted to actually write my notes and send them to you so that we could do an episode just breaking the whole thing down. There was so much that happened.
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Sam Parr | you recognized a lot do you get recognized a lot | |
Shaan Puri | at all actually really la's got real actual famous people so | |
Sam Parr |
Maybe people don't know that you're like 6'1", I think. Because a lot of people, I think, would be surprised how tall you are. When I go to LA, I mean... I get stopped a dozen times a day. I think maybe I just stick out more than you do, maybe, but...
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Shaan Puri | it could be | |
Sam Parr | I'm shocked by that or you're just super unapproachable which I could see that as well | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I think that's actually more of it. I must have just, you know, whatever, resting bitch face or something because nobody's really coming up to me that much. It happens actually here in the Bay Area, but when I was in LA, I don't think it happened one time. So that was good. You know, it's always good to go through your roots, as I say.
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Sam Parr | you're not from la | |
Shaan Puri | no I mean like | |
Sam Parr | but okay my humble | |
Shaan Puri | non famous roots yeah | |
Sam Parr | where who'd you go you went with ben probably sully anyone else | |
Shaan Puri | no it's just me and ben went and then sully lives down there so he joined us for half the trip | |
Sam Parr | well I wanna hear all about it so I guess we'll have to wait | |
Shaan Puri | I got some other quick ones I want to hit you with. These are some quick hitters.
So, I'm going to call this my **weird AI tool of the week**. I don't know if this is going to be a recurring segment, but it might be because there are a lot of weird AI tools out there.
Click this link. There's a company right now in Y Combinator called **Roundtable** (roundtable.ai). I saw this post on Hacker News. It wasn't the most popular post, but I found it and thought it was fascinating.
So, this guy goes...
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Sam Parr | because that's what you do that's what you do you got to find | |
Shaan Puri | you find the good shit exactly so I was I was I was deep in the bag and I found something so they posted this loom video that says hey check this out we at roundtable we use ai to simulate surveys they go they go you know research user research and market research is really important but it's expensive takes time to design and analyze and run the run the research so here's what we do we use ai to simulate a survey and I was like what and they go yeah basically ll like llms the new tech that's behind like chat gpt is great at simulating what something something like a human would say and these guys just took it to the nth degree so they go you write a survey with a bunch of questions you define your audience like I want people who are 45 years old or older right and so you could say for example are you interested in buying an e bike and it would say yes is answered 28% of the time but if you narrow it down you say let me filter only people who own a tesla now yes is 52% of the time and you know for example if you say where did where did you learn to code okay you could ask that question people will say one thing but if you say how old are you if you say only 45 years old or older then everybody will say books if you say younger than 45 70 76% of people will say online and so you know it's kinda crazy that basically like and you can say what what's the most important factor for you choosing an airline to fly and and like 5% of people will say leg room but if you filter it to say people who are 6 feet or taller it jumps to 20% of people saying leg room and so I saw this and I was like what the hell like does this defeat the purpose of the survey like you're literally just gonna make up the answer and give it to me but then I guess humans are actually a lot more predictable than we think this thing is trained on like the entire internet's data set and I just thought this was remarkable and I couldn't believe like is this actually gonna be the case that you can actually just ai could just fake answer your surveys and tell do your user research for you doesn't that sound absolutely bizarre | |
Sam Parr |
So it's not there yet because one person, he goes, "Hey look, I ran a survey. I said 'Was the moon landing fake?' Option A: Yes, Option B: Moon." 94% of people voted.
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Shaan Puri | moon and | |
Sam Parr |
But that said, I actually do think the same results would come if you asked people that exact same question. Like most people would be like, "Oh, it's lamp," you know what I mean?
I think I know what you're saying. You're saying you meant to put "yes" there, so... But this is like a really thought-provoking idea.
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Shaan Puri |
Yeah, and honestly, I haven't even spent enough time actually figuring out if this is literally a joke or if it's like the next big thing. And that's kind of interesting... Anytime you get something that's like either:
1. It's satire
2. This was actually started by the union
3. Or it's genius
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Sam Parr | It's like you driving around being like, "Ah, forget it, I'll be a taxi." Did I ever tell you about the time that I ran the disco?
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Shaan Puri | By the way, that's not how Uber started, just in case you didn't know. One man just decided, "I'll be a taxi."
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Sam Parr | But did I tell you that I used to do that? No?
So, for two New Years in a row, my buddy Joe and I rented a Zipcar minivan. We wore... if you Google this, you'll see photos of me doing this. We wore fake afros and disco clothes. I'll try to find it, but it was called the "Disco Frisco Taxi."
We would drive around, and if you look up "Disco Frisco Taxi," you'll see my name. You'll see "Disco Taxi." We would drive around and be like, "Hey guys, where are you going? You wanna go to this place? Alright, cool! How about $30?"
They would say, "Alright, cool." They'd get in, and we'd say, "Alright, you entered in the Disco Frisco Taxi! Spin the wheel! You can win a juice box!"
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Shaan Puri | To you by the makers of the Touchy Feely Wheelie, which is the thing I do Monday through Friday.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, it's like, "Alright, your destination is my house, my home." Alright, yeah, let's go.
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Shaan Puri | So, you basically made your own **Cash Cab** and you would just charge them like $200 because it's New Year's and they're desperate.
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Sam Parr | We would be like, "How about $50?" and they would say, "Alright, cool." So we would make like $1,000 a night on New Year's. It was the Disco Frisco taxi.
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Shaan Puri | so serious | |
Sam Parr | I don't remember where I'll be even going with this, but yeah, roundtable. Cool. I'm into it.
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Shaan Puri | really good really good I like that where do | |
Sam Parr | you wanna go from here we're wrapping up | |
Shaan Puri | yeah let's wrap it up | |
Sam Parr | alright that's the pod we done |