'We went to the ATM and there was $90M' - Our Favorite Rags To Riches Stories

Listener

Hey guys, it's Ezra from Grand Rapids. I was listening to the pod the other day, and I remember you guys saying that getting rich quick is the best way to get rich. So, I'm just wondering, what's the fastest way you've had your life changed by money? Or what's the fastest way you've seen someone else's life get changed by money? Thanks!

Sam Parr

Alright, we were asked, "What's the fastest that either of us, Sean and Sam, have jumped in wealth, and how did it feel?" Or the same question but for some of the people we know. Do you want to go first?

Shaan Puri

no you go I think you you might have a good story here

Sam Parr

I'll talk about a friend first. I was with a friend who sold his company for close to **$1,000,000,000**. I was with him when the money hit the bank. We were at their apartment, and immediately he said, "Alright, I think it happened." We went to the ATM. He previously had about **$300,000** in his bank, which is not a little amount, so he wasn't destitute at all. But he was only 28. When we checked the ATM, there was **$90,000,000** in the bank account. Immediately afterwards, we went to McDonald's and got a number 1 each. We each got a Big Mac, and then we went back to his apartment and watched TV. We were like, "That's pretty cool, isn't it?" And it was really cool; it was pretty crazy. The crazy part is not just the **$90,000,000**, but if you do the math conservatively, looking at historical averages: **$90,000,000**—let's just round it up to **$100,000,000**. At **30**, it becomes **$200,000,000**; at **40**, it becomes **$400,000,000**; at **50**, it becomes **$800,000,000**; at **60**, it becomes **$1.1 billion**; and at **70**, it becomes **$1,100,000,000**. So you can see, it's not just that they have **$90,000,000**; it's a surefire way, more likely than not, that you're going to be a billionaire at some point.

Sam Parr

While you're alive... that was crazy. So, that's one story. Do you have one?

Shaan Puri

I got a couple of stories. We've told this one on the pod before, so people are sort of familiar with it, but I'll do a fast version of it. So, the **$1,000,000 homepage**. Alex Tew, who is a friend—and I think you're friends with him as well—was 21 years old. He was like, "I want to be a millionaire. I want $1,000,000. How do I do this?" He kind of asked himself this question: "How do I make $1,000,000 in the next month or two?" You know, which is not the question most people ask. Nobody will teach you or recommend that you ask this question, but he asked it. And guess what? The brain is a question-answering machine. So, when you ask that question, if you believe that everything is possible, your brain will start to come up with ideas. One of the ideas he came up with—this is back in, I don't know when—was the $1,000,000 homepage.

Sam Parr

was talking like 2007 or 2006

Shaan Puri

Yeah, something like that. So basically, in 2005, he created the $1,000,000 homepage. He was around 19, 20, or 21 years old, and he thought, "Okay, I'm going to make a website that's 1,000 pixels by 1,000 pixels." Each pixel is just a little square, and he said, "Cool, every pixel is a dollar." At the top, it says, "Be a part of internet history." The website is still up; you can go to $1,000,000homepage.com and see all the pixels. He figured that if he sold each of these squares for $1, he would make $1,000,000. Sure enough, on January 11th, the final tally was $1,037,100 by the end of it. So he literally made $1,000,000. I asked him, "How did you get this idea?" He basically built something that was designed to go viral. It was almost so stupid that it worked. Some people shared it because they thought it was fun, funny, and cool, while others thought it was dumb—dumb and dumber. Either way, it evoked a reaction from everybody. You can go there right now and see all the pictures of the pixels that sold. Companies would buy them because they thought, "Oh, if this is going to get a bunch of traffic, then cool, I might get a bunch of clicks if I put my billboard here." A bunch of people have tried to replicate this since, but he made $1,000,000 in, I think, two months' time.

Shaan Puri

And

Sam Parr

and then he went on to do something big and then he blew

Shaan Puri

It over the course... he blew all the money in the course of the next year, just kind of having parties. He bought a condo, you know, like he did what a 21-year-old would do. He was like, "Oh, for sure, I'm just gonna... dude, I did it so easy the first time. I'm just gonna keep making hits. I don't have to worry about saving this; I can just blow it." Then, I think it was 10 years of not having another hit, trying thing after thing after thing until he built Calm. Calm took several years before it became a thing, and now Calm is, I don't know, a $2,000,000,000 company or something like that in the meditation space. So, kind of an amazing story on his part.

Sam Parr

I started using personal capital at age 20, or maybe it was two years before my exit. I also used Mint.com, which is similar but different. You can manually add stuff, and I manually added enough money that it said my net worth was **$16,000,000** or **$17,000,000**. I had that on there, and I just started seeing that number. Of course, money can buy stuff, but in a lot of cases, it's really just like this number on a spreadsheet. You know, it's just a digital thing. You could put three zeros behind it, and it kind of starts feeling real for a minute. That's what I did. I put my net worth at **$17,000,000** about two years or a year and a half before my exit. When I got paid, I remember thinking, "This feels cool." But then, like 20 minutes later, I was like, "I'm kind of used to this now already. I see that number already." So, I would say I'm still getting used to it, bro.

Shaan Puri

you're you're a manifester

Sam Parr

I am, but you... what do I think? What do we say? We're the "manifest cowboys," baby! I manifest stuff. That's what I do. I'm not a business person; I'm a manifestor, you know?

Shaan Puri

that's pretty good on

Sam Parr

the spot yeah that's what I do

Shaan Puri

cowboys that no small boy stuff I love that

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's what I do. I am not a businessman; I'm a guy who dreams and tries to achieve it. It just so happens that it's in the form of business. But that's what I did, and it made a difference. I actually noticed that here. Here's my thought: I wrote this down. I felt a big difference when I had $20,000. The next big difference that I felt in my life was when I hit $100,000. This is all liquid net worth. The next big difference was when I hit $500,000, and then the next one was $10,000,000. I think that maybe the $40,000 or $50,000 range will be the next one, and then maybe the $100,000 range will be the next one. That's what I think. But I remember feeling like between $500,000 and $10,000,000, I kind of almost felt the same.

Shaan Puri

Right, right, right. Yeah, the first jump was $25,000. We won it in prize money for our startup at a business plan competition. It was like, "Oh sweet, we can work on this for the whole year. This will be the money we need to live on." So, three of us lived on $25,000 for a year and a half or something like that. It was amazing! That was a huge jump because it gave us the freedom for a year and a half to not think about money. We could just try to build something cool. I'll also share something that's similar. Forget getting super rich quick, which I think is a good exercise to do. Like, what would I do if I really wanted to 5x or 10x? If I wanted to make $1,000,000 in 3 months, what would I do? If I wanted to do that, how would I do it? It's a worthwhile exercise. The other one is like baby goals. I heard Kevin Hart on some podcast, and they were like, "Kevin, man, you're now like the biggest movie star in the world. You're up there, bro! You have the huge comedy specials, movies, you got it all. Did you think that you could do this?" He said, "Well, I never really thought about it, to be honest. I just... I didn't think about this huge goal because that would almost seem too different from where I was. It wasn't really even that useful if I thought about it. I could say it, but it didn't matter because I was so far from it. So, I just did baby goals. Just here's a little baby goal: let me get to this."

Shaan Puri

And another baby goal... and another baby goal. I actually think that baby goals are a lot more useful and a lot less talked about than having the big, hairy, audacious dream and goal. You need both; they're both useful at different times. But I would say most people would probably be better off doubling down on a baby goal. Let me give you an example. When I was 21, we were working on our business, our startup. We had a business plan, we had an LLC, and we had all the important-sounding things that we thought it takes to...

Sam Parr

business cards business cards we had a a logo

Shaan Puri

People, we had business cards, a logo, a website, a blog, and investors. We had everything we thought it took to do this. So, nine months go by, and we're like, "This was the sushi restaurant chain." Nine months go by, and we're like, "We've been doing our planning, getting the chef on board, trying to find a location, and figuring out how much it costs to build it out." All the things you kind of have to do to launch this thing. I remember one day just sitting there with my buddy Trevor, and we were just like, "God, I feel like we're just acting business. We're playing startup."

Sam Parr

yeah you're playing house

Shaan Puri

It's like, you know, "Oh, come over, let's play house. Let's play doctor." It's like we're playing business because we got this... and literally, it was embarrassing. We had a binder of a business plan that was like 300 pages, and we used to brag about how well thought through our business was. Like, we've thought through every detail. What are the boys?

Sam Parr

binders full of them

Shaan Puri

what the uniforms will be what yeah binders full full of plans

Sam Parr

in this case

Shaan Puri

And we had like, "Here's how we're going to do employee promotions." We think that the way companies work is all this stuff that didn't matter. Again, at 21 years old, I was too dumb to know that this wasn't what was important until we took it to a meeting and got sort of laughed at. The guy was like, "Oh, this is your business plan?" We were like, "Yeah," and we thunked this binder onto the desk. He was like, "I'm not reading this." We were like, "Oh yeah, that's okay, but we just wanted to show you we've thought it through." He goes, "That means you're thinking about the wrong things."

Sam Parr

and we're like oh so we kind of

Shaan Puri

were getting we get this feeling like maybe we're doing this wrong this is about 9 months in maybe we're doing this wrong so we're just sitting there one day we're like alright why don't we just like for the weekend let's just make a business and like let's just try to make $1,000 like can we make $1,000 in a weekend 48 hours as a challenge to ourselves can we get to $1,000 and I swear I learned more about like actually building a business in that 48 hour $1,000 challenge than I did the entire year of like working on the business because we were like okay how would we do this what's a product that we think people want we don't you know instead of like being married to our current idea it's like well what's a simple product that like people want and my buddy was like oh we used to live in boulder he was like trevor was like you know you ever seen like every time we walk around campus all the sorority girls and like frac guys they all have these wristbands on like the livestrong band but they have this like stack of wristbands and he's like there's this new one that's like a really thick one it's like triple the size and it's like I don't know that seems to be in he's like what if we made those like that seems like that's pretty simple like to to to sell those and we're like oh yeah you could just like customize it you could put like you know the hustle on it or you could put like milk road on it or you could put like your brand name or your your frat name or whatever on it that'd be cool I think we could sell like a bunch of those and so we're like okay what should we call it and like everything that we had been super thought through and thoughtful about we just like did in 5 seconds like what's a good name what's a good name for these like fat like wristband things let's call it the fat band and then we created the fatband.com bought it on godaddy for in 5 seconds logo here let me just use impact the like thick font okay impact that's the that's the logo boom done product okay let's not try to have the best product like is there just something on ali we had heard of alibaba as like is there something on alibaba or aliexpress that we could just get these like made I didn't even know the word drop shipping but we figured out that same concept ourselves we're like oh dude you guys buy these for you know 17¢ and then if you include shipping it's only this much if we sold each one for a dollar 50 like that would work we could do it we'd only need to sell whatever it was like we only need to sell 700 bands in order to make a $1,000 and hey that's actually we could even be profitable if we did it it's like alright well how do we sell this thing we only have you know like 24 hours left and so we just started like posting on our own facebook pages and calling like anybody who we could think of to be like hey would you do you want this for your sorority do you want this for your your group and like we found one girl who he used to date who like basically she bought she was like oh my parents are having an anniversary party and there's like 200 people coming I'll take like 250 of them and we like made a sale and we're like yeah just like read out your credit card I don't even know how we took the payment like we didn't even have anything to take payment we just like took the payments on our paypal list or something and dude that feeling of getting to $1,000 you can see the smile on my face I still feel that how good that felt that weekend and that was when I first was like oh this is what it feels like to do something real everything else we've been doing is fake and like I it was so obvious to me and it changed the way we did our main business too and like that thing paid for like you know a little bit of side hustle money as we went

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Sam Parr

hubspot grow better so I've built maybe 7 or 8 different businesses whether that just be like a real estate thing or the hustle or core or just whatever I think almost all of them I got to a 100,000 in sales before I filed an llc and the reason I do that is momentum and like people are like ben's laughing and people are like oh it's illegal 1st I don't think that's illegal you can use your social security number and like get a lot of this stuff like you can like enter your social security number and second I have no idea it actually might be illegal but like I don't care because I'm willing to like sacrifice those things and get in trouble for the sake of momentum because momentum is like the lifeblood like when you're going because once you start getting sales it gets addicting and you like taste you taste it and it works out amazing listen to this so there's this so I tweeted out that I wanna dress better and this guy who's got like a fashion instagram thing what's it called like well built style I I or something like that he dm'd me and he's like hey like look at my instagram like I I might I think it fits what you want and and I go yeah this actually is great he goes tell you what I'm gonna make you a presentation on all the things that you buy just send me a pinterest board of the people who you admire and like your personality and I'll study your instagram and study your twitter to understand your body and your personality things like that and I'm gonna send you a p a powerpoint with like image like it looks for you and then just a link to buy like all these clothes and I said alright great what's in it for you he goes if you like it pay me $300 and so he spent like a week doing this and he sent it to me I was like this is sick man I would have paid way more than $300 by the way and I just he goes he goes well that's awesome here's my email just paypal me $300 and I did it and this is a beautiful perfect example of a person who just they just did it they did it the right way and it just worked and like then you do that maybe 10 more times and then eventually you quit you create a questionnaire on your website and then you like do a pay half upfront and then you do this and then you do that and then you hire a couple more people like it turns into shit really fast we don't plan like well how many people would buy this you really just think like well how big do I want it to be and like would a 1000000 people buy this over the course of 3 years yeah maybe that sounds about right alright that's cool let's do it and that's typically how it works for me and I think that's how it should work for most people in most cases not all the time some guys are starting big companies like car companies and shit like that and that does require planning but for most people most of the time this works

Shaan Puri

The question was about getting rich quick, and I think my takeaways are as follows: There is a benefit to actually thinking through, "How would I do it if I wanted to?" Let me not just pretend to be morally opposed to the idea of getting my outcome faster. It's fine; getting rich quick kind of gets a bad rap. But I think we all would love to reach our dream outcomes faster if possible. So, we might as well ask the question: "Could I get there really fast?" and see what the brain comes up with. You're not obligated to do it. The second thing is, instead of focusing on getting rich quick, I would say focus on getting revenue quick, especially if you're early in your entrepreneurial career. Getting any revenue quickly will make the whole thing real. You'll stop playing startup and actually be in the game. You'll feel what's real, and it will force you to focus only on the stuff that matters. You won't end up like me with a 300-page binder full of business plans. It's almost like a caricature of how dumb that was. I took it to the extreme end of the wrong way to build a business—super over-planning and never going to market to actually try your thing. The "Fat Band" thing that I did was by far the best thing I did early on in my entrepreneurial journey. I didn't get rich off of it, but in a way, I did because I actually learned how to do a business for real. That skill ended up helping me become wealthy; that experience did.

Sam Parr

It was enough money to get like a blooming onion and maybe a steak dinner at Outback Steakhouse. So I consider that a success, right? That's all you want.

Shaan Puri

Now, we were big on that fondue place. Have you ever been to a fondue place? I feel like you're one of those lactose intolerant people. You're probably... I could see that you're lactose intolerant.

Sam Parr

Dude, there you see? I look like the embodiment of a glass of milk. It looks like I just eat potatoes, milk, and corn all day. Like, when I talk about...

Shaan Puri

That fashion guy, he was like, "You know, I think you got potential. You're a tall, tall drink of water." It's like, "You're a tall glass of milk." That's the way I describe you.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I get it straight from the udder every morning. Yeah, I mean, look at me. I'm like a...

Shaan Puri

melting bar of chocolate I'm like

Sam Parr

A melting piece of fudge and you're a tall drink of milk. Yeah, yeah. If corn were a human, it would look like me. Yeah, you ever thought about how to put corn on the combat legs? Yeah, yeah. Alright, that's the sign that we're done.

Shaan Puri

see you