This episode of My First Million features hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discussing a variety of unconventional business ideas, including “Habit Island,” a high-end, immersive wellness retreat, and a “Divorce Island” concept for those navigating separation. They also explore the potential for “Sean Box,” a physical newsletter subscription service, and analyze the success of “Stanley” mugs and the “Liquid Death” marketing strategy.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, business ideas, marketing, wellness, divorce, newsletters, branding, consumer behavior
Intro and Liquid Death [00:00]
Sam Parr: All right, boys. Here we go. We’re doing double Liquid Death. Crack open a tall one. Crack open a second tall one. It is time for my favorite episode of the year, bar none. Do we have a famous guest? No. Is this idea, is this episode full of insights? Questionable. Is this the annual Drunk Ideas episode of the year? Yes, it is. Sam, we’re here.
Shaan Puri: Why are you so amped? What happened this morning?
Sam Parr: Because it’s my favorite episode of the year and I’m drinking double Liquid Deaths.
Shaan Puri: Is that a, is that literally just water?
Sam Parr: You’ve never had one?
Shaan Puri: No, is it just carbon, it’s carbonated water, that’s all it, right?
Sam Parr: This is like the Austin national anthem is drinking this. It’s like, uh, I still want to go to the hipster bar, but I have to, you know, cold plunge and, um, you know, put sunlight into my eyes in the morning so I don’t actually drink.
Shaan Puri: That’s a drunk idea.
Sam Parr: This is a drunk idea. 100%.
Shaan Puri: So we had that guy, we had the founder of Liquid Death on the pod years ago, like right when we first started, and he was explaining like his idea, and we were like, “Oh yeah, that’s really dumb.” Now the company, I think they’re getting ready to go public, aren’t they?
Sam Parr: Yeah, exactly. It’s the success story. It’s, it’s like that, you know, that one couple on the Bachelor that’s still together after 42 seasons. It’s the, it is the one idea left standing of all the drunk ideas. So, for those who don’t know, Drunk Ideas was this, um, concept we had in a stroke of genius many years ago, which was, there’s a bunch of ideas we wanted to bring up on the podcast as like possible business ideas, but they’re bad. And we know they’re bad. And how we had to bridge this gap, how do we still get this half-baked idea off our chest knowing that it’s not really a great idea? Using the cover of alcohol. One of the time-tested, uh, methods of saying dumb shit is to say that you were drunk. And so, even though neither Sam nor I drink, we call it drunk episodes. And it’s basically where I show up buzzed/tipsy, high on my own supply, and I pitch Sam, usually it was me pitching Sam really bad ideas and him reacting, but then I peer pressured Sam into to coming up with these. It was hard for you, right?
Shaan Puri: Well, what did I tell you? I was like, “I’m not exactly like a preparer to be funny type of person. I’m not exactly a funny type of person in the first place.” But like, you love like preparing this stuff. And your best one ever was actually called, um, “The Very Long Distance Girlfriend.”
Sam Parr: Yeah. Dude, I love the bangers. I was looking through the old list just now and I saw the, uh, the secret camera roll where you don’t want to put some pictures on your main camera roll in case anybody clicks it, so there’s a calculator app that if you push in the the the right numbers in the calculator, it turns into your photo with your secret camera roll back there. How is this not built yet? What, what are the, what are the computer science departments at Stanford waiting for that this is not built yet? I, I don’t really understand the, the hold up.
Habit Island [04:11]
Sam Parr: All right, so it’s an, it’s a new year. And you know with the new year, everybody’s trying to establish better habits.
Shaan Puri: Yeah.
Sam Parr: So this idea is called Habit Island. It’s actually a remix of one of your old real ideas called “Hostage.”
Shaan Puri: Hostage SF?
Sam Parr: Hostage SF, which was Sam’s, uh, weight loss guaranteed business idea, where he just comes and he grabs you, puts you in the back of a, of a white van, and takes you away for 30 days and deprives you of an, of food, so you guaranteed will lose weight. Well, let me just say, when I say I like this idea, that’s selling it short. I love that idea. And to the point where I have now taken your, taken the baton and ran with it. Like I’m the anchor of this 4x100 relay.
Shaan Puri: What do they say in Waterboy? He goes, uh, “Not only can I do that, but yes, I can do that.”
Sam Parr: Not only do I love it, but, but yes, I love it. This is the only podcast hosted by millionaires that will quote Waterboy. And if you’re into that combination of, of redneck and green wallet, we got you. All right, so Habit Island, what is it? I know so many people that want to start putting these good habits together. They, they listen to Huberman, they listen to Peter Attia, they’re, they, they subscribe to Brian Johnson, they’re, they’re paying attention to Brian Johnson’s nighttime erections. They got like all kinds of health in their world. They’re trying to improve their habits. So, Habit Island, what is it? It’s a place that you go. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to buy an old school prison, right? A defunct prison. But we’re going to jazz it up a little bit, all right? You’re going to check yourself in, and not only are you going to check yourself in, you’re going to leave a hefty check at the door when you check in, because this is kind of like prehab. So it’s, you know, when you, when you have a drug problem, you go to rehab, they try to sort of help you recover and fix your habits. Well, this is prehab. This is before you have a drug problem. This is you were just a normal person, but you wanted to level up. You wanted to level up all of your healthy habits proactively. And so you check in, and guess what? You want to establish a habit of sleeping on time, sleeping early? Lights out at 9:30 and no Wi-Fi. Prison wide. So, uh, you know, on Habit Island, we just force you into all of the habits that you need. It’s 42 days. It’s a 42-day experience. They say 21 days is enough to establish a new habit. Double it. Double that. And we’re going 42. And so we have certain period, we just force it. So like, you know, you want to wake up and you want a cold plunge, guess what? Showers are only cold, uh, from certain hours of the day. Or there’s just a plunge and you’re just going to go single file line, hop in, hop out, get your plunge done. It’s pure pressure. Everybody’s doing it. Uh, you want to eat shitty or do you, you know, you want to fix your your habit about eating shitty? There’s no shitty food. We’re only serving super veggie here and, uh, we’re on the Brian Johnson diet by default. There is no other food in this island. So, like Hostage SF, you really have no choice. We’re taking choice out of it, and we’re just reprogramming you with badass habits. Uh, you know, you want to have some mindfulness? Again, we’re killing the Wi-Fi at random intervals, and there’s nothing else to do here. So you’re going to have to get a little mindful with it. What do you think of this idea?
Shaan Puri: It’s great. Have you ever been, have you ever heard of like our friends, Jack does does them, I’ve had a few other friends do them. They go to silent retreats. Have you ever heard of these? So basically, our friend Jack goes to one. He goes to one in Bali, but I’ve got other friends that go to one outside of Austin. And they’re silent retreats for five days. Not only are you not supposed to talk, they actually only feed you light food, so bananas and like fruits and very light food, and you can’t even make eye contact with people. And I’ve got friends that go and do the and in in some of them, you’re not even supposed to read. So no phones, obviously, but you don’t they don’t even want you reading. And they come back from these things and they they act like they’re transformed. Have you heard of people going to these?
Sam Parr: Well, yeah, they say they’re transformed, but they don’t ever say it for the better or not. And I I always question that. Yeah. You changed. Yeah, it’s like that phrase, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you weaker.” Is that that phrase?
Shaan Puri: Well, those are also upsells on Habit Island. So if you want to go sensory deprivation for five days, just for a small extra fee, we have a room that we’ll just put you in and you can come out in five days and see how it goes. Uh, I like the silent meditation idea. We’ll just gag people so they can’t talk for for, you know, a couple hours. Uh, we are going to just a lot it’s a la carte menu actually. You could just sort of choose how transformed you want to be and then again, it’s baked in and you have handlers that are handling everything. I say this in jest, but like every great drunk idea, there’s a sliver of a phenomenal idea in this idea. Am I right? Or am I right?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, no, I’m into it. It’s I mean, you’re just you’re this isn’t breathtaking. You’re just talking about grown-up fat camp and I’m on board with that. I would love that stuff.
Fake AI Influencers [09:38]
Sam Parr: Exactly. See, you have you have a little gift to to sort of reframe that. I like that. That was nice. Yes. All right, let me tell you about something really quick. Have you paid attention to some of these fake AI influencers?
Sam Parr: I have.
Shaan Puri: Some of them are really fascinating. So there’s this one called, uh, what’s her name? It’s Karen, Karen Majori. I think we actually talked about it a while ago. And so basically, it was, this is not particularly a totally fake AI person. It was a real person, she’s a real person, and she made sexy like pictures, whatever, that was like her whole shtick. Then she took 2,000 hours of her video content and teamed up with someone and they made a fake AI version of her, who you could talk to and she’ll send personal videos to you, whatever. It’s kind of killing it. In week one, I believe she did $72,000 in revenue in, uh, I think she’s using Fanvue, which is like a only fans style subscription platform. Well, anyway, it’s worked well. But you know, she appeals to men, whatever. Uh, it’s like that normal like hot girl, you pay to see her like do sexy stuff, whatever. But you know who makes more money doing the same stuff, but just doing a different way, is the Andrew Tates of the world. And so, of course, it’s it’s just some nerdy guys coming up with this stuff, teaming up with like smart women doing these things. We need a fake Tate. And I’ve noticed that like there’s been these guys on Twitter that are fake guys. So there’s one named Derek Guy. Have you seen Derek Guy? His, uh, Twitter handle is, uh, Die Workwear, and he gives fashion advice.
Sam Parr: Oh, he’s not fake. That guy’s real, right?
Shaan Puri: He’s a real guy, but we don’t know who he is. Like you can’t find a picture of him. And like you don’t know too much about what he’s done. Uh, you know that he’s a real guy and he gives great advice. And then there’s, uh, Wall Street Playboys. And by the way, I subscribe, I paid money for a Die Workwear like newsletter. And then there’s Wall Street Playboys, which I also paid for. It’s anonymous guys talking about Wall Street, which I’m not even a part of, but I find it so fascinating because the anonymous angle. What I think we should do, or not we, a person, instead of these like attractive women doing the fake AI things, we need a fake a fake Tate. Fake Tate. Okay. Okay. Because what’s the biggest downside of becoming Andrew Tate or becoming Dan Bilzerian?
Sam Parr: You have to be them.
Shaan Puri: You actually have to be them. Like, I don’t want to go to jail in Romania. I don’t want to get canceled and say all this cra- or I don’t want to have to say this stupid hateful shit in order to like get famous. I don’t actually want to do any of that. But like, I like the idea of having a really big audience. I like the idea of selling Hustler’s University, but I don’t want to live that life. I don’t want to trap myself in that box. So I’ve been following this one that you have on here, Emily Pellegrini, which sounds like a bottled sparkling water, but it is actually, as you wrote here, a 23-year-old fun-loving girly from LA. Did you write that? That’s amazing. And basically what this person is doing, so, uh, she’s this fake influencer, she’s she’s an AI, she’s an AI generated girl, but she looks real. Uh, but she’s kind of like too good to be real. In fact, they intentionally made her, they actually asked AI to generate like the average man’s dream girl. And so, you know, there’s like guy hot and girl hot, like girls think a certain girl look is hot and guys think a certain. This is guy hot.
Sam Parr: It’s like Kate Upton versus Kate Moss.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, yeah, well said. And so you go, uh, she’s got like 200,000 Instagram followers and that’s in like a year. Um, and basically what they do is there’s a real person behind it who films the video, but then they deep fake it to switch the body and the face of this AI girl. And there’s like, they show the Instagram DMs and there’s like celebrities, politicians, athletes sliding into her DMs. Like and they I don’t know if they don’t know if she’s not real or they just don’t care. I’m not sure. But when I saw this, I was like, “Oh, okay.” You know, we thought AI was going to take the job like jobs of like, you know, blue collar workers and stuff like that, because I saw all those Boston Dynamics robots that like robot dogs that can lift boxes and stuff. Actually, AI is coming for like the Instagram thoughts. And like that that’s who’s going first is is like only fans and Instagram models. Um, but I like your twist here, which is everybody’s doing hot girls. Nobody’s doing ultra masculine guys, right? Like just train Hey, GPT, GPT-5, I know you’re in the middle of a training run, just pause. You need to watch these videos of Andrew Tate and Bill Burr and my club. Yeah. My club and that guy who chops wood on TikTok and is hot. And like, you need to like train the most powerful AI I need like 10,000 GPUs pointed at that and it’s going to come out with just this absolute savage gentleman, 50 Shades of Grey motherfucker who is going to just take over social media, um, and get tons of subscribers.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, we need a fake Tate, a fake Hermosi, whatever it is, someone who says what they have to say, but makes it so I don’t actually have to live that life. So, you know, I could talk to talk, but I don’t have to walk the walk. And when they get canceled, because like what they did was they were like, “Oh, this Emily Pellegrini, she’s that.” Guess what? She’s got a sister, Fiona, blonde, if you’re into that, right? You just copy paste. You copy paste all the different variants of what people’s dream personality and body and face are. And uh, you create all the variants yourself and you you own the One of the guys who uh, one of the uh, one of the people who is behind uh, one of these things, they were an agency and they had a higher influencers and they were like, “This is a pain in the ass. These influencers suck.” And so they just made their own and that’s kind they like pivoted their agency, like started making these and that’s like the whole thing. This is the next social network movie, right? Like you know the social network movie starts with like Zuckerberg getting rejected from the like uh, the whatever the houses of the frats at Harvard and he like, you know, as his revenge is like, “I will create the social network that everybody on earth will use instead.” And that’s what’s going to happen here. It’s like, I’m so sick of these influencers. Wouldn’t it be a shame if I replaced all of them and controlled all of them, right? Like wouldn’t it be a shame if they just did everything I ever wanted, you know, at my whim? And that’s what’s going to happen here. And the reason this is interesting is like, I because I know based off my behavior, I am buying advice or buying content from these anonymous people. I’m not buying porn from these people. Yeah. Uh, like like gross. Like that’s almost, I mean, maybe in the future one day, but these anonymous I never say never. I’m not dogmatic. You know, I’m open-minded. But like, I just think that these anonymous Twitter handles are actually really cool. Uh, you know, the car dealership guy, have you seen what he does?
Sam Parr: Yes, I’ve seen him. I bought a car from him.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, that’s crazy. You bought a car from him. He’s got two I’m never going to pay $5 a month. Bought like $100,000 car from this guy. You literally bought a a a fancy SUV from him and you don’t even know who he is. I don’t I don’t know if you know who he is or not. I don’t know who he is and I ask him for advice. He’s got 600,000 followers now and he does this car I know. And I wish I didn’t know. Life was better when I didn’t know. Sometimes it’s better to not know. All right, let me do the next one. What do you got?
Frivolous Lawsuit Company [16:30]
Sam Parr: I’m going to hit you with uh three names of ideas and I want you to pick. Frivolous Lawsuit Company, um, User Lose It Gym, or Better Than Google.
Shaan Puri: Uh, I want to hear uh the Frivolous Lawsuit and then Better Than Google.
Sam Parr: All right, Frivolous Lawsuit. Um, so I don’t know if you know this, but like uh my e-commerce business got sued recently and I didn’t come to you and I didn’t cry on your shoulder, but it didn’t it didn’t feel good.
Shaan Puri: Can you say like a ballpark reason?
Sam Parr: It’s the same reason every e-commerce business that gets to any scale gets sued, every single one. ADA compliance. You know how outside of buildings you have to have like the ramp for like anybody in a wheelchair to be able to get into your building? But how’s that pertain to a website? Websites have the same thing, dog. They have a accessibility requirement by law, which means it needs to be like let’s say so let’s say you can’t see color. It needs to allow for like the gray gray scale shit. Or let’s say you’re blind, it needs to be able to be uh used by screen readers. So basically, the text to speech needs to be able to navigate like if you move your mouse, it’ll say hovering over menu, click menu. Got it. Okay. Under the menu, you have this, this, this, this. And so there’s all these little rules around this and it’s like a total conversion killer if you do it, right? Cuz like first you have to put this ugly badge on your site that like takes the place of where you would put your upsell or like your pop-up that’s like, “Hey, check out now” or “give us your email address.” Instead, it’s like ADA compliant. And then you have to do all this work that’s like not going to drive sales, um, in order to maintain compliance.
Shaan Puri: Did you have to pay a lot of money?
Sam Parr: Uh, well, we’re still negotiating, but like on average, these will settle between 10 and 20 grand.
Shaan Puri: Okay, got it.
Sam Parr: There’s just a law firm out there that all they do is they file this suit. They use the same six plaintiff names. It’s like uh I’ll just make up a name like, you know, Rebecca Jones. And it’s like, “Oh, wow, Rebecca Jones has sued 3,000 companies this year.” And uh why is that? Because there’s a law firm whose whole business is and it’s like a major law firm, but there’s like a major law firm in New York whose whole business is they just file these cases non-stop every single day for every site that they can find, um, that does this. They’ve automated the frivolous lawsuits in the e-commerce space. And you talk to any e-commerce owner who’s like, you know, been around for a couple years or has, you know, does over 10 million in revenue, and they’ll all tell you the same thing. “Yep, we got hit with it, pain in the ass, can’t fight it, just settle 10, 15,000 bucks and uh install this app, this app costs $1,000 a month that keeps you compliant.” It’s a whole racket. And um, you know, it’d be one thing if this was actually like, you know, a legitimate complaint, but these are not like from people who actually have, you know, any actual issue with the websites. It’s just this like lawsuit uh, you know, this frivolous lawsuit thing. All right. How do I make my pain into my pleasure? What if we did this to the AI companies? Because there’s an infinite number of AI companies right now, all with a huge amount of funding, and there’s a huge gray area around what’s legal and not legal when it comes to AI. So for example, OpenAI would buy New York Times for plagiarizing for plagiarizing. Uh, you know, if you go to uh OpenAI, if you go to ChatGPT and you say, “Hey, uh, draw or like make make me a picture of two brothers who are plumbers, um, that like to eat pizza.” Guess what? It’s going to show you Mario and Luigi. It’s going to generate that art. That’s not their IP. They can’t just create art of Mario and Luigi, but they do because that’s what they were trained on. I am stunned that somebody’s not just suing every AI company and being like, “Cool, I’ll settle for 20k, go ahead.” Or 50k settlement, uh, but otherwise, you’re just going to be wrapped up in this, it’s going to hurt your future fundraising, it’s going to be an issue for you, it’s going to be more people are going to come attack you if if I make this loud. I think there’s a lot of money to be made if you hate your life and are a complete asshole and want to do that. There’s some people that are angry drunks. That’s like an angry drunk idea. It’s like, “Oh, that friend, you get so drunk that he does things that none of us can defend.” And if you talk to any lawyer who’s like, “Hey, can you help me with this?” They’re like, “Let me guess, it’s blah blah blah and blah blah blah.” And you’re like, “Yeah, how’d you know?” They’re like, “Cuz they’re the only ones doing this.” Cuz they file 10 10,000 of these a year.
Shaan Puri: And they own another law firm that helps defend the uh e-com companies. What a racket. Let me let you bake, man. What else you keep going for the second one, the Better Than Google.
Better Than Google [20:56]
Sam Parr: All right, Better Than Google. So, I’m talking to my wife and uh I don’t know, do you know about this mug, this Stanley mug? Do you know about this?
Shaan Puri: Dude, it’s it’s insane. I think they grew from 70 million in sales to 700 million or around that in 24 months.
Sam Parr: That is correct. In in uh not 24 months. In 2019, they were 70 million and then 2023, 2022, 2023, they’re at 750, so like three years.
Shaan Puri: That’s that’s insane.
Sam Parr: Do you know the backstory of this by the way? It’s pretty fascinating.
Shaan Puri: No, I I know that it it’s an old I mean, like I’m from Missouri and in Missouri, it’s like Carhartt and Stanley. So it’s like Carhartt is what construction workers would buy and that’s what I would I remember for Christmas, we would go to the hardware store and get a new coat from Carhartt. And then in in the Stanley mugs used to be thermoses that you’d put coffee or like soup in for lunch or for construction workers at lunch. Yeah.
Sam Parr: Nailed it. Exactly. It’s a it’s like a 100-year-old brand that was like construction workers would use it to keep their coffee hot all day while they’re on on site. And then a couple years ago, this mommy blog out of Utah was like, “We love these. We love these mugs.” And they were like, “We love this drink.” And then they they gifted it to some influencers. They were like, “Hey, on behalf of us, like they’re called The Buy Guide. On behalf of on behalf of The Buy Guide, they gave it up.” And somebody at Stanley noticed it and they reached out. They were like, “Hey, thanks for doing that. Hey, you know, do you think your audience would like this? You guys seem to be big fans of this jumbo water bottle.” And they were like, “Yeah, we are.” They were like, “How about we do this? How about we give you guys 5,000 of these cups to try to sell through your site?” They’re like, “Okay.” So they scramble, they get warehouse space, they post it, and in like five minutes or something like that, it sells out. And then they do it again and it sells out again. And then Stanley was like, “Whoa.” There’s this like cool mom market that we’re not really touching. And the moms were like, “Yeah, this is great cuz every mom wants to be hydrated. We’re all like chronically dehydrated. Um, this, you know, this drink is cool. It’s whether I have ice coffee or hot coffee, it’s like this mug is great. Um, but the colors suck.” And they were like, “What do you mean? These are classics.” You know, who doesn’t want like dark moss green and like, you know, construction red? And they were like, “No, no, no. You need pastel pink.” And so they created some new colors and then it fucking took off and it became the thing. And then all these crazy moments happened. I don’t know if you saw that one where it uh a car caught fire and burned. Did you see this video?
Shaan Puri: What, and the Stanley mug survived?
Sam Parr: There’s a Stanley mug in the cup holder and it’s untouched. The whole car is like scorched. Like the whole car is black and just like destroyed. And she’s like, she picks up the Stanley mug, the the the straw is a little melted, but the cup is still good. And then she shakes it and the ice is still inside. It’s like, this kept my drink cold even through a fire. And then the guy the Stanley was like, “Holy shit. This is amazing.” And they were like, “Get this woman on a plane out here.” They bought her a car and they gave her like a bunch of Stanley and like it went super, super viral. All these mugs have this. Do you remember the Nalgene bottle? We’re going to go way back into the drink drinkware history. Nalgene bottle. What what was the whole thing with Nalgene bottle? You could run over it with your car and it wouldn’t break. Do you remember that was like their I didn’t even know that. No, that’s amazing though. Which, by the way, like we tested it, it definitely broke. But that was like the thing. It’s like these things are so strong. They’re indestructible. You can run over it with a car and it won’t break. Right. Cuz that’s the problem I’m having with my water bottle. Well, yeah, or being in a fire and needing your ice. Cars keep running over it. Yeah. Yeah, you know the Stanley was just like, they’re like, “Okay, new marketing plan, arson.” Um, all right, so back to my uh Better Than Google idea. All right, so my wife is in these groups, these Facebook groups that are always tipping her off on these things and I’m like, “What is this group?” And she shows it to me and I go, “Why is this called Better Than Google?” And she’s like, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just like.” I’m like, “What?” And she’s like, “Yeah, there’s like this influencer, she has this group for her like kind of fans or whatever, but they call it Better Than Google.” And I was like, “Because?” She’s like, “Cuz if you ask a question here, you’re going to get a better answer than Google. Like you’re going to get 10,000 moms who have actually tried things, care, are not sponsored, and are going to like answer your question.” And I was like, “That is such a good name.” I sh- I finger to the lips my wife and I go, “This is a drunk idea. I need to go write this down.” Because Better Than Google, what an what an amazing premise and so true, dude. Do you remember back in the day, this app called Jelly that came out? Uh, no. What was it? So the creator of Twitter was like, “My next act is this company called Jelly.” And he came out with this app and this app was like, it’s kind of like Quora, but it was like, you know, Quora is old, it’s like desktop-based and Quora is um just full of Indian people. Like this is completely full of Indians. Like I think half the daily users are like in India or something crazy. So Jelly came out was like going to be the cool version of it. It was like, you ask a question on your phone and it’ll ping your friends, like any of your contacts, as well as one degree removed. So it’s only friends and friends of friends. And Jelly for like seven days was the greatest app of all time. It was like somebody would ask a question about like, you know, what microphone is best for podcast, and you would get like Tim Ferriss to reply and then, you know, because he’s a friend of a friend of somebody. And the problem was it was just a bunch of tech guys who don’t actually have that many, uh, you know, sort of day-to-day life questions. Like, you know, in the same way that you know, I call my mom, you know, once a week to say hi and and just chat, be a good son, whereas my sister will call my mom 10 times a day asking her for her opinion about like which, you know, which trinket she should get from Ross. Like, you know, she just has to like get an opinion on everything. And so I think women is the right market for a product like this. People who want an opinion on everything and want to discuss and want to get answers and want and want high trust recommendations. Um, so I think this idea of a vertical Google where it’s moms asking questions to other moms. Dare I say trillion dollar idea? I don’t know, but that’s that’s what I’m thinking. What do you think? Better Than Google is some of the best branding. You you had that is the best thing I have heard in so long. There there was another uh phrase that we had said recently that I was like, “That’s a beautiful phrase.” This is the top Better Than Google. That is such a funny, that is like If DuckDuckGo can get like 100 million users for guys who are like, “I don’t want Google to have my cookies,” like then Better Than Google can work, all right? Any doubters out there to BTG, just go to DuckDuckGo and tell me that this shit wouldn’t work. Do your uh DuckDuckGo user voice again. Privacy is everything. I don’t know why they’re like a gargoyle also. I don’t want Google to have my cookies. You’re like Kevin from the office. You know my location. It’s like, yeah, man. You’re at home, bitch. Always. I know your location. Better Than Google is brilliant, man. This is awesome. I love Better Than Google. This group only has uh 17,000 people. I just requested to join. Am I going to be the only guy in it? Yeah, we’re early, dude. You got to do what our friend did. Our friend just changed his profile uh gender on Facebook to female. By the way, it had 2,300 posts last month. Sorry, go ahead. Crazy engagement, right? Yes. I’m on to something. So, um, so my friend switches uh her friend switched their gender to female on Facebook because they were like, “Yeah, you need to see the ads that are being served to women.” Like if you want to be good at business, like you this is a non-starter. You’re trying to use Facebook and Instagram as a dude. Like you’re not even it’s like you’re on the outside of the club with your ear against the wall trying to hear the music. It’s like, might as well just come in. You only get like flannel shirt ads. That’s literally all I get. It’s just ads for flannel shirts on sale. It’s a flannel shirt and you scroll and it’s like, “You sure?” It’s flannel. We got another color if that’s the problem. It’s just scrolling. It’s just one long conversation from the flannel company to you. Yeah, it’s like we have both colors, red and black. Oh, cool. We have both. This this is awesome. I love Better Than Google. You got any other ones?
Sean Box [29:13]
Sam Parr: So, we need to create Sean Box or Sandbox or MFM Box. Man Box? No, not Man Box. It’s got to be named after someone. So, it’s not a thing anymore. But my friend Neville did this thing years ago, and I bought one before I was even friends with him, where all he records this video of him and like you even see the recording where he’s like, “All right, is the camera on? The camera’s on? All right, good. Hey everyone,” and he starts talking, and he creates this mystery box where it has three letters written in there uh about like different copywriting techniques that you can use, as well as like a letter from him on something he learned that month. And he goes, “I’m only going to sell, I think, a thousand of these, and I’m going to charge $100 because I got to like actually make all of these boxes and it’s a ton of work.” Uh, and he sold out right away. And he has all these photos of people consuming the box because it felt awesome. And he would get these like, he would just use USPS packaging, so it like felt like it literally came just from him. Right. And I’ve and I’ve heard about Agora. Agora is that big newsletter subscription that we’ve talked about that does like a billion dollars in sales, and we call them a newsletter subscription, but they actually make a shit ton of money from literally a physical newsletter. And newsletters are all the rage right now. I think we should go the opposite route and literally create something on printed white paper, a physical newsletter. I think you could charge $100 to $200 a month for it, where you actually type something out and then you could put like a book or something or something interesting that you’ve consumed that month. And I think you could charge a lot of money for this for a Sean Box. Did that guy DM you about this idea yesterday? Cuz some guy literally yesterday was like, “You need a Sean Box. I’ve done this for other people. Here’s what it could be.” And I was like, “What? I don’t really understand this. Send me an idea.” And he goes, “I’ll send you a Google Doc tomorrow.” Uh, so this is a coincidence, as they say. I think this is a cool idea. Your price sounded a little bit high, but maybe not, right? Maybe if you put enough value in the box, right? Cuz like the problem is you just kept saying, “You literally type words on the paper.” And I’m like, “Okay, yeah, that’s that’s like saying, and then you stand on the stage and the words come out of your mouth.” It’s like, all right. So, what’s in the box? So, what’s in the box? You got to say it like that if you’re going to say that phrase. That’s from the movie. Um, so what Neville would do is he had three envelopes. One had a swipe file where he would print out the best ads or sales pages that he saw that month and he would explain why he liked them. I believe the second thing was like a lesson that he learned, and the third thing he said, he goes, “This is a mystery. I’m not actually going to tell you what it is.” Uh, and so he wouldn’t tell people what the third thing was. And I so I don’t I don’t actually know what he would norm normally send. But he would do these things and he would take pictures of him like actually putting the labels on the box. And so he felt like it was coming straight from him. And people love them. It was so funny to get these. And he would like, sometimes he would handwrite stuff and just literally like copy it like a fax machine. It looked like it felt like a fax machine copy. It felt totally analog and old school. And the whole point of this is, instead of the inbox, email inbox, let’s just do the exact opposite. And we can and we can take it one step further. You can’t even buy it online. You have to send a check to Sean’s house. You have to print off a coupon. You’ve got to write in your name. Yeah, I didn’t tell that one. No, we’re going to take it we’re going to take it a step further, dude. Ridiculous stuff gets noticed. That was like that last drink that you just didn’t need and now you tomorrow is is messed up. All right. Yeah, you took it one drink too far, but that’s a good drunk idea. I kind of like this idea. A printed out newsletter box that comes to your mailbox instead of your inbox. I like the idea and this is cool. I didn’t I didn’t know about this. I remember back in the day there was a service that did this and they partnered with Tim Ferriss. They ended up dying, but it was a quarterly subscription box. I think it was called Because they tried to make it Yeah, they tried to make it too like uh like here’s what I’m Yeah, and here’s what I like I remember when I started the hustle, that’s what I wanted to do. I was like, “We got to seem big. Let’s say we all the time.” And I’m like, “No, F that.” Like now that I know that like mom and pop is better than big, you know, big corporate company vibe, keep it keep it lame or not lame, keep it kind of like uh like uh thrown together. That’s the way to do it. I want to see a USPS box. I want to see some of the tape all messed up when you like tape everything in there. That’s the way to do it. So, I got an idea for you. I’m drinking this Liquid Death and like you said, this is probably the best best case scenario of a drunk idea, which is like it’s just sparkling water, but it looks like a beer, right? That’s what this is. It’s sparkling water, but in a beer can. And um so then if you’re at the bar and you just want to drink water, but you don’t want to look like a wuss, you get Liquid Death, right? And it’s like, I don’t know, man, but it actually worked out. They uh Shane Shane Gillis on uh some podcast, he was like, “What’s Liquid Death?” And someone explained to him, he’s like, “Where do they make it? Flint, Michigan? Like what like is it it kills you?” He was like, “Is that the is that the water of Flint?” That’s good. Um so I I in that same vein, let’s remix, right? What is it? Great ideas, great artists steal ideas and copy them or something like that. That’s the that’s the phrase. We’re going to do that. So, I don’t know about you, but ever since I gave up drinking, I really don’t miss it. Don’t miss much about it. Did you did did you actually give up drinking or is it you’re like, “Oh, I haven’t drank in four months, let’s just keep going.” It’s the latter, but that ain’t as cool as like, you know, saying I gave up drinking. And someone asks why and you’re like, “Oh, you don’t want to know.” I have a dark side. So, so the um the idea here is the one thing I do miss, the one part that’s really fun about drinking that you can’t really replicate not drinking is taking shots. Or just having that celebratory moment with a group of people where everybody get, “Let’s do shots.” Oh, we’re doing shots. No, I don’t want to do the shot. We’re doing it. We got to do it. Give 10 shots. Let’s do it. Everybody get your shot. Boom. You take it. You’re like, “Oh, god, that was rough. Give me the lime,” right? That whole thing, I miss that. I like that. When when when have you done that? My whole life when I’ve done that. I was always the the let’s do shots guy, right? Like I was the try-hard guy at the bar. I was always trying to do shots. Yeah, but when at what era of that was like probably 15 years ago that you were doing that. Yeah, but I miss it. I still miss it to this day. That’s how good this idea is. So, shots are one of the great bonding mechanisms that humans have ever come up with, up there with, you know, fire and hugs. And I feel like we, us, healthy, sober guys with two packs, we’re we’re missing that part of that ritual of bonding. And so here’s what we’re doing. Just like Liquid Death put water in beer cans, we’re going to make healthy shots that go in bars. So here’s what it is. It’s a shot you take that’s just like fucking turmeric, ginger, like all the shit that gives you the same like, oh, face puckered up feeling of like a vodka shot or like a tequila shot, but it’s just going to be good for your your gut. It’s like it’s actually just a gut shot. And uh, oh, we’re doing gut shots. Yeah, gut shot, gut shot. And people are just going to go nuts for it. That’s the that’s the last part that I didn’t tell you. People are going to go crazy about it. Have you ever had some so someone sent me some non-alcoholic gin and it was I drank I tried it and everything and it was the worst. It was horrible. And then our friend Justin Mares, amazing entrepreneur, he’s got this new order or this new non-alcoholic wine called Shirley, uh as in like, “Shirley, this is a dumb idea.” Uh, no, I’m joking, Justin. It’s all right. But like I’ve had some of these like non-alcoholic beverages. I think it’s so stupid other than non-alcoholic beer. Have you have you tasted some of these non-alcoholic beer? So you just didn’t like this one gin. It’s actually what you just said. Because here’s the difference is beer, I drink a lot of non-alcoholic beer because I find it like it tastes great to me. Like I actually thoroughly enjoy that taste and it and it feels good. And there is like a placebo buzz to be honest that you can Let me ask you a question. When you were drinking, were you drinking a lot of gin regularly? Was that your go-to drink? Did you enjoy gin? No, it was no light. Didn’t like normal gin? Not going to like fake gin. Were you drinking a bunch of white wine back when you were drinking heavily and had good times? No. Exactly. So, the reason you like the non-alcoholic beer is it reminds you of the good times and these other things. No one actually drinks that shit though. No, does anyone actually like whiskey? Like people say they do and I’m like, “I don’t believe you. I think you’re lying.” That’s what I’m saying. They drink whiskey because they have this sort of like status thing plus they like getting drunk. Shots, you just like the bonding moment of taking shots together and the almost rite of passage of taking a nasty rough shot together. This is a good idea. I’m telling you, I know a good idea when I see one. This is a good idea. Your idea is stupid. This is not a good idea. You’re just telling me to bring like a juice bar into a normal bar. All right, that sounds like a good idea. Yeah. Point proven. Um, do you have more or do you want me to keep going? You do you do one more. All right. Wait, let me pick. Uh, just stand back and let let the man cook. I think it’s really what what needs to happen here. I said I said I’m going to let you bake. That’s how that was my attempt at trying to be cool. It was cook. I’m so fucking lame. Uh, what’s still what’s still Sean boiling today on the pod? Yeah. Let them fry. Let them fry. Do uh Divorce Island. Oh, Divorce Island. Easy idea. Again, question not even maybe a drunk idea, maybe just a good good solid idea. A lot of people getting divorced. We all know that. Half marriages ending in divorce. Hard to get back on the horse. If you ever talk to a divorced person, it’s hard to get yourself back out there, get in the dating scene, you got baggage, you don’t want to start back, it’s you know, you’re going back to level one of relationships after you’ve been in this like, you know, deep deep relationship. We need Divorce Island. We need a place that you go. It’s sandals. It’s a sandals resort for people who just got divorced. It runs quarterly, so every season there’s a spring Divorce Island, there’s a summer, fall, and winter class. It’s like Y Combinator, but just for people who recently got divorced. And you apply to get in, then you go, and you’re going to be with a bunch of other people who also recently got divorced. Even ratio, guys to girls. Actually, maybe it’s uh maybe it’s actually a little skewed, maybe we go 60/40 uh to make it a little bit better. And um it’s just a place to and the just the slogan is, “Get back on the horse.” And we actually offer horseback riding on Divorce Island also as one of our first date options. And you it’s just a place where you know everybody here is in the same boat. This is a safe space. Everybody here has the same intentions. Everybody here would love to find love again. But everybody here is also and there’s no stigma because hey, we’re all on equal footing. We’re all recently divorced. Yeah. So, uh a few a few episodes ago, you were suggesting how you should buy a school campus um and turn it into a college or redo it. Then you said you wanted to create Habit Island. And for some reason, you went with prison. You said you’re going to buy a prison. Just good value. Uh yeah. That’s straight up a value play, okay? Yeah. Now you’re talking about an island. I think you need to start acquiring land, my friend. It sounds like uh you need you need your own little Disneyland. Divorce farms doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. But there’s got to be just some shitty resort that’s struggling and it’s like, look, you don’t have the best beaches. The weather can be a little temperamental here. Um we really need to refurbish this thing, but we just don’t have the capital. You know what? You’re never going to win the the the the the luxury resort vacation game. But you can become number one in divorce getaways if we just reposition the product. And that’s what I think we should do here. Uh cool. Uh Can I give you um just a quick one for the road? What do you got? Actually, I got two for you. I got two for the road. Double or nothing coffee. It’s a coffee shop where, you know, instead of at the end where it’s like, do you want to tip 20%, 30%, whatever, it just says double or nothing. And it’s basically you flip a coin and it’s either going to be a free coffee or you’re going to pay double for it. And the double goes to the baristas. Why is this a great idea? Have you ever heard the phrase asymmetric upside? Cuz that’s what I’m offering you here. A coffee really only costs a a coffee shop like 40 cents or something. But they have let’s say the price of the coffee was four bucks. If they can get eight bucks out of every um, you know, every other customer here on this coin flip, that’s a lot of extra dollars coming through the till. And worst case scenario, you’re just giving up a free coffee. It only costs you 40 cents in the downside. And so I think that there’s it’s a good bet. I think it’s going to be like a slot machine. We’re going to slightly skew it. So it’s double or nothing, but I didn’t say it’s 50/50. It’s actually going to be more like a 70/30 chance of you paying double. Maybe maybe that’s a little too aggressive. Whatever the legal limits are for slots, we’re going to go all the way to that. And it’s a place for people who like caffeine but also like to take their chances. Dude, the the tipping thing at those places is crazy. The the place that I go to, the default that it starts at, the low end is 30%. Uh if I owned one of these places, I’m just going to fuck with people and make the default 300%. And then the second one is 400% and the third one is 500%. I saw one the other day. These guys are getting out of hand. I saw the screen and it said, “Do you want to pay 15, 20, 25%?” And then it just had the amount of student loans that that person at the cashier owed. No way. And I was like, this Is that true? I’m like, I’m like, I’m like I think that’s drunk ideas. Um That’s a wrap. Uh it’s going to be a little while till we come up with some new ones and we have another one of these. But if you like drunk ideas, you got to go to our YouTube, you got to comment because Sam never wants to do these and I’m always the one being like, “People love it.” In reality, I have no idea if people love it. I love it and I assume that people love it. So I need you to either tweet at us, our our Twitter handles are in the description, or go to YouTube and just do us the favor, say more of this, more drunk ideas. Got to bring it back. Uh because otherwise, there’s no way Sam’s going to let me do this again. All right, that’s the pod.