This episode of the My First Million podcast features hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discussing the entrepreneurial journey, mindset, and various business strategies. They delve into the importance of transparency in business, the concept of a “Keynesian beauty contest” in market speculation, and share personal anecdotes about their own business ventures and investments.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Mindset, Investing, Market Speculation, Transparency in Business
Introduction [00:00]
Sam Parr: What happened when you lost $5 million?
Shaan Puri: Welcome back to another episode of the greatest podcast ever created, My First Million.
Sam Parr: How are you doing, Shaan?
Shaan Puri: What’s going on? How are you?
Sam Parr: I’m thriving. I’m actually really hot in this room, but I’m thriving.
Discussing Andrew Wilkinson [00:24]
Sam Parr: Do you want to talk about Andrew Wilkinson? Because I’ve been thinking about him a lot.
Shaan Puri: Is he on your mind? You got a crush?
Sam Parr: Is he on your mind?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, I mean, we did an episode with him. I thought it was great. I think he’s great, and the reaction was great. So that’s triple great from my end. What’s on your mind?
Sam Parr: I just think he’s great, and same thing as you. I just think that he was smart, um, good attitude. I think that the reason I like talking to him is because I’m in San Francisco, there’s this constant mindset that I’m so thankful that I’ve surrounded myself with, which is all these people who like have these ideas, and some of them are really dumb ideas, and they raise a lot of money for them, and they become huge, and some of the dumb ideas become awesome. And that’s fantastic. And a lot of the dumb ideas remain dumb, and just a lot of money was wasted. And there’s just a lot of mentality things that are in San Francisco that I love, but a lot of it has downsides. And it’s nice to hear something from Andrew, who just totally does not do anything that I’m used to, and I love it.
Andrew’s Business Model [01:24]
Shaan Puri: Yeah, I also like how he’s kind of a one-man crew. Like, I know he obviously has CEOs for his companies, and it sounds like he has a partner, but, um, like, I read his blog, that’s him writing. Um, when we’re, you know, when we’re talking on the phone, the strategy is, uh, like, he thought, he was an original thinker. Uh, so he, he basically decided how he wanted to live his life and then lived his life that way. And his decision was his. It was not like, “Oh, I just chose of these five popular paths, I picked path four.” Uh, it’s like, no, he picked path seven, which was just a path that, you know, him and a few other people have made for themselves.
Sam Parr: Yeah, I just always think it’s great to hear from people who do things totally different than what you think you should be doing, and it’s just nice to hear, uh, it’s just he has a fresh perspective.
The “Keynesian Beauty Contest” [02:13]
Shaan Puri: And for those who don’t know, didn’t listen, didn’t care, uh, the things in my opinion that he did differently, sort of like, okay, where did he zig where—
Sam Parr: Why don’t you say who Andrew is?
Shaan Puri: Oh yeah, so Andrew, he owns this company called Tiny. If you go to tinycapital.com, you can see it. And, uh, he’s trying to do the sort of Warren Buffett model where he buys what he thinks are wonderful businesses. He plans to hold them for a long time. He has operators who run them, and he has a holding company that owns all of them. And sort of the net value is, you know, over $100 million for these companies now. And he’s, he basically—
Sam Parr: The way that he’s, and the way that he financed it was he started an agency when he was 19. He’s probably 33, 34 now. Right. And so that’s just been like a little cash cow.
Shaan Puri: Exactly. So started that agency kind of in his parents’ basement type of thing, did that for many years, like, you know, I don’t know, a decade or so, and then, uh, got it to the point where he had a bunch of free cash flow, like, “Okay, what do I do with this money?” And decided to invest it in buying businesses. So, what the way I think he’s zigged when everyone else zagged was, um, the Canada decision. So, contrary, you know, sort of conventional wisdom is you got to be in Silicon Valley, you got to be in New York, LA, wherever, wherever the hubs are. And, uh, he was like, “No, I’m going to live where I want to live, and I’m going to take advantage of some of the arbitrage opportunities of, um, you know, he charged San Francisco rates to his companies he was doing designs for, but he paid his people, you know, local rates for doing the work that they were doing, and so his agency was wildly profitable, and that compounded over like a decade, which is great. Uh, so Canada was one contrary decision. The other one was, uh, buying businesses versus building them. So, uh, building businesses, very sexy, heroic, you’re a genius, you’re Steve Jobs. Um, buying bus—buying, you know, a business that does $2 million in revenue and $1 million of EBITDA, uh, you don’t get that same sort of props, but his take was like, I think that building is sort of fun, and he still does it, but overrated and over-indexed on versus buying, where there’s way more opportunities. Uh, so I thought that was another one.
Traveling to Canada [04:12]
Sam Parr: And I went to Canada. I went and hung out with him for a couple days. Um, we almost did business together, and I was like, “Oh, I can’t find a flight to directly to Victoria.” So Andrew lives in Victoria, which is like a, it feels like a small European town. I don’t know how many people live there, maybe 300,000, maybe less, maybe maybe less actually, maybe 200,000. Um, and I was like, “I can’t find a direct flight.” He goes, “It’s okay, we’ll get you up here.” And he chartered a jet for me to fly there. And it was awesome. It was great. So I’m happy I’m friends with him.
Shaan Puri: For that reason alone, I’m happy you’re friends with him.
Sam Parr: Yeah, he’s a good guy. I think we should have him on the podcast like once a month, uh, at the minimum, and, uh, he should just be a friend, friend of the show.
Sam Ovens [04:56]
Sam Parr: Do you want to talk about something that is that I found on the internet that I think is I don’t know if it’s real or not?
Shaan Puri: Tell me more.
Sam Parr: Okay, so there’s this guy named Sam Ovens. Have you heard of this person?
Shaan Puri: You know, you had mentioned his name, and I was like, “Sam Ovens, never heard of it. Sounds like a fake name.” And then I Googled him, and I saw his face, and I was like, “Oh, I’ve seen this guy on my Facebook feed. This guy advertises a lot.” So tell me about, I don’t know much about him, but tell me about him.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so the way it started was he’s a New Zealand guy. He’s maybe 30 years old, and he, uh, started what he claims is a consulting consulting business, which basically he would talk to small barbers or I don’t know what type of small companies, small local things that wanted more leads, and he would help them like optimize the Yelp or something like that. And I think that that was mildly successful. And from there, he goes, “Well, I’m just going to teach other companies how to do this.” Uh, and so he created a course, and he named it consulting.com. And at this point, now there’s three courses. So the first course is creating a consulting business, which is like you do stuff for local companies, like, um, Teaching you how to be a consultant. Yeah, it teaches his course teaches you how to be a consultant. And so obviously that’s like the model, is you make more money teaching people than actually doing the thing. And so he, uh, it’s cost $2 grand, and he started making money off that. Then that teaches you how to go from zero to some sustainable business. And then from there, there’s a $5,000 course, which teaches you how to go from a $500,000 company to some million-dollar company. And then there’s a higher end, which is $50 grand, and that teaches you how to go from $1 million to eight figures. Right. And his website, like, I don’t know if this is like a get-rich-quick scheme, like I can’t tell because it is so elaborate that it could be true, but it seems so good to be true. And he claims to do something like $50 or $60 million a year in sales with 50% margin.
Shaan Puri: On his, so his website is consulting.com.
Sam Parr: Yeah.
Shaan Puri: Great domain name.
Sam Parr: Yeah, but like when you click through it, it all seems so good to be true. Like there’s like video reviews, and I am I know how to like hack that together. Yeah, of course. You can make something look totally legit in like six hours with two Red Bulls.
Sam Parr: But his stuff is so it’s so elaborate. So if it is a scheme, and then I looked at his Glassdoor reviews, and like none it some some some sometimes I think this adds up to be legit, or this adds up to where this is just a massive fraud or scam. It’s very interesting.
Analyzing the Business Model [07:30]
Shaan Puri: And so he says on the website, 20,000 active students. So if we take the lowest paid plan that you mentioned, $2 grand. That’s $40 million a year of, uh, recurring revenue.
Sam Parr: Well, no, it’s not— Oh no, it’s not recurring. It’s just a one-time, okay.
Shaan Puri: So that’s $40 million in sales. Right. Not over, not one, not one. And the sale is a digital course, correct?
Sam Parr: Yeah, so it could be very profitable minus ad spend. Right.
Shaan Puri: So maybe 60% margin or something like that.
Sam Parr: Yeah, it’s super interesting. It’s very interesting, but like So you go from level one beginner, level two master, to level three god. Oh damn, don’t you just want to spend that $50 grand to become a level three god?
Sam Parr: But it’s so interesting because if you like, if you had cash flow each year of like what’s the amount of cash flow that you need each year to where you think that you don’t like that you couldn’t spend that amount? Like $20 million probably, right?
Shaan Puri: Oh, yeah, I think that’s high. I don’t think you’d spend more than $5 million a year.
Sam Parr: Net taxes? Like after taxes?
Shaan Puri: After taxes, yeah.
Hypothetical Spending [08:30]
Sam Parr: Maybe you could, dude. I think what’s $200,000 a month? That’s a $3 million a year. I could spend $3 million a year pretty easily.
Shaan Puri: Doing what?
Sam Parr: I’ve got friends who live in Long Island.
Shaan Puri: What would you do?
Sam Parr: And they spend 80 grand a month. I mean, I would I would just have two huge houses and a full staff to take care of me. I mean, it would be a company. Just I don’t have to take care of me. Just to handle my needs. It would be a company. Right. I would have a handful of cars and two, uh, a nice house and and then another house in the warm weather, and I would fly private.
Shaan Puri: And you’re still under the $5 million, right? That’s $3.6 million that you you just said. So, like, maybe maybe you need 10 as a buffer.
Sam Parr: I just think that you could do it. So, uh, So you’re saying this might be a tremendous business, and it’s a little sketchy. Sketchy detector is going off.
Sam Parr: I wanted to know if you had ever heard of this or if the listeners have ever heard of this, and if this is legit. Some of our subscribers told me they subscribed to it, and they’re like, “I got I got a lot of value out of it.”
Shaan Puri: Yeah, I would believe that. So, so I’ll tell you kind of my closest experience with something like this. So first of all, no, I’ve never heard of this, and I don’t know any entrepreneurs in San Francisco where all my friends are from, uh, that do anything like this. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Um, the closest thing I did to this was sort of going into the Tony Robbins pipeline. And, uh, so I’ve I’ve talked a bunch of times about Tony Robbins, how great he is and blah, blah, blah. I like him a lot. I got a lot of value out of going to his workshop. Um, it was so with you, and I bailed because it freaking out.
Sam Parr: Yeah, and a lot of people get freaked. A lot of people’s preconception is just this is like a cult. This guy’s a snake oil, you know, salesman or whatever.
Shaan Puri: Uh, yeah, like what am I getting myself into? And I I got to admit, like when I went there, I was like, “Okay, cool, I’m going, but I’m not doing any of that dancing shit. I’m just a I’m just here for the information. I’m going to sit down, I’m going to be quiet, I’m not going to yell, I’m not going to hug, I’m not going to dance.” And you were with a friend, sat separately so you wouldn’t be embarrassed if you didn’t I was with my brother-in-law, and we just agreed beforehand, we’re like, “Yo, we might end up doing the dancing shit.” So you sit on that side of the room, I’m sitting on this side of the room, and uh, let’s see. We didn’t see each other except for at the end of the night when the the event would end each day, and uh, we would get back together. But anyways, by, you know, hour one, I’m dancing and doing all the good stuff, too. Uh, but anyways, it was a lot of value, and, you know, it cost me like 1,000 bucks to go to this thing. Um, I thought it was tremendous. And then in the thing, like he upsells, just like this guy does, right? So he’s like, you know, one of the first kind of, um, I don’t know, coaches, lifestyle coaches, business coaches out there, and he’s been doing this for 40 years now. So he went from audio tapes to books to infomercials. Now the internet, like whatever the channel was, he wrote it, and I was like, “I’m the business coach, I’m the lifestyle coach.” And, uh, you know, I I got a lot of value, and at one point he upsells his business mastery class, or his business mastery thing. It’s like, “Okay, if you like this, if you like how you’re feeling right now,” and right after he makes you feel great, um, he’s like, “You know, that table over there is for anybody who wants to grow their business. It’s $10,000. You spend five days with me, and if you don’t get a million dollars of value from this thing, I will give you all your money back.” And, uh, in the moment, I was like, “Dude, I got a million dollars of value today.” You know, of course I would do that. So I didn’t actually sign up for it, but our buddy, Siva, did and went to it. He did? Um, I I believe so. I believe so. And so, uh, you know, sorry, Siva, if I got that wrong, but I’m pretty sure he told me he did. Um, and I have several friends who who actually did it as well, and they said they’re like, “Yeah, it’s great.” And if you have a business that’s doing, you know, if you have a business your size, right? Your business is worth tens of millions of dollars. Um, if you can get a sort of 2%, 3%, 5% lift Yeah. in your business, just through improving your own psychology, your own enthusiasm, your own tactics, uh, it’s obviously paid itself off, right?
The Infrastructure of Business [12:16]
Sam Parr: So who, how does the infrastructure of this work? Like, I’m looking at it now. Does you does Tony Robbins literally have to be at all the things?
Shaan Puri: No. So, well, he does his live events. Yes. So he’s the traveling salesman that does the live events, and he probably does, I don’t know, I’m going to get it wrong, but like, let’s call it 20 to 40 live events a year. A lot. It’s hard work. Yeah, a lot. You know, every week he every week or two, he’s somewhere. And, um, then he has his sort of like army of like coaches that are trained under him. That, by the way, they all seemed garbage. Um, and so he has this, you know, the people who are the actual coaches that will call you and do all this other stuff with you, uh, they are, uh, you know, like, there’s like a a fleet of them. I don’t know, 100 100 people that interested in coaching. And the infrastructure is garbage. Those people are garbage.
Sam Parr: When I met them, I was not impressed. In fact, on the days, so Tony Robbins has been doing this for 40 years to the point where he’s been public speaking on stages, hyping crowds up for like 40 years, right? So he can’t actually do two days back-to-back. So he does day one, and he goes from 8:00 a.m. till 1:00 a.m., and there’s no breaks. Uh, you can go to the bathroom, but you’re missing the action when you go. And he’s just talk in the whole time. He’s on stage, he’s talking, and he’s got 10,000 people in an audience. I’ve been twice now. Um, actually, I’ve been three times. So I should I should correct that. So so the first time I was just experiencing it. The second two times I was observing it because I took a fleet of friends. I bought tickets for my family and friends. I was like, “This is the best gift I can give you,” and they loved it, most of them. And, um, so anyways, he holds people’s attention for like 14 hours straight, which is incredible. Uh, you know, you can’t most people can’t, you know, listen to a six-minute YouTube video and and have their attention held. But then the second day, it’s not him on stage because his vocal cords are shredded. So he can’t speak the next day, and this like his number two comes up. And this guy’s a good public speaker, but he’s not like it’s like Michael Jordan, and then you go down to BJ Armstrong. And it’s like, “Oh, no, I came here to for Michael Jordan.” And so literally this guy just he says stuff, and then he tees up a video of Tony talking 10 years ago when he used to do this like he used to do all four days himself. Oh my god. It’s he cues up the the video of Tony, and you sit there and you’re watching YouTube videos with 10,000 other people, and this guy’s just moderating it. It’s like this bizarre experience.
The Value of the Experience [14:28]
Sam Parr: That’s crazy. I didn’t really sell it very well, but I’ll tell you this, uh, that was probably the best, uh, the best money I’ve ever spent on anything self-improvement wise. If you add up all the books or anything else, it’s not even close.
Sam Parr: Maybe I should do it.
Shaan Puri: You should you should totally do it. Um, I took about 20 people, so I paid for 20 people’s tickets to go. So you paid 20 grand? Yeah, I basically became an affiliate for him. Uh, I didn’t get paid. I just I believed in it so much. I paid for 20 other people to go, and uh, since then, in the in the it’s been four years since then. And, um, of them, I would say four people were like me, where they were like, “Uh, holy shit, life changed. That was the most valuable thing.” So four out of 20, let’s say. And then, uh, another, let’s call it, I don’t know, 15 were kind of like, “That was amazing,” and then I talked to them a year later, and they’re like disappointed in themselves that they didn’t carry it forward. They’re like, “God, it was so good, and I had so much clarity, and I had so much energy, but I’m kind of mad at myself. I just kind of let it fade from there.” Like, I don’t really remember it now. I just remember what I felt then. And, uh, yeah, I guess I didn’t really get too much value because I’m not doing any of the things I wanted to do, you know, after that weekend. And then there’s three or four people that literally left. They were like, “This is way too culty. This is pop science. I don’t like this. I don’t believe this. I don’t like how he’s manipulating everybody. I’m out.” And I was like, “Okay, that’s the spectrum.”
The “Billionaire of the Week” [15:26]
Shaan Puri: Anyone I know?
Sam Parr: Um, Alex from Calm, the founder of Calm. He, uh, hated it, and so he just went for a bike ride, I think, in the middle of one of the days, uh, because he was like, “It’s just too much for me.” And he’s like, “I I didn’t I didn’t feel good in what was going on, and so I left. I rode my bike around the city, and I had fun doing that.”
Shaan Puri: What uh what was the number one takeaway?
Sam Parr: For me?
Shaan Puri: Oh, dude, I have a notepad full that I call the Bible, because I was like, “This is the closest thing that I have to religion,” right? It’s like, religion in in many ways Oh my god. religion is like an operating philosophy for life, right? That’s what that’s what people use religion for in many ways, like, you know, don’t harm your neighbor, blah, blah, blah. Like, it’s an operating philosophy. So this was an operating philosophy. So I’ll give you two of the nuggets, right? So the first one is, um, the quality of your life is equal to the quality of the emotions you have on a day-to-day basis. So what does that mean? It’s kind of a mouthful. But like, we’re both in a good position. We’re very privileged. We’re more successful than we ever thought we would be seven years ago, probably. Like the position we’re in now, seven years ago, us would have been envious of that. Um, but your happiness is not like 10 times more than it was seven years ago, right? Like you’re probably feeling about the same. And the reason why is that, you know, life is not about, uh, you know, what you have and what you’ve achieved, it’s about who you’ve become. And so what most people, um, what most people miss is that if you are, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, it doesn’t matter if you have a family, it doesn’t matter if you have, uh, you know, uh, if you’re famous, if the emotions that you’re feeling on a day-to-day basis are stressed, then you have a shitty quality of life. If you’re feeling anger or upset, then you have a shitty quality of life, regardless of everything else. And so then the question is, how do you figure out how to like change your emotions on a day-to-day basis so you’re feeling good every day, regardless of your situation?
Shaan Puri: What’s the answer?
Sam Parr: Uh, so like the so he gives you three things three like tools. He’s like, “All right, here’s the three ways you can change how you feel.” The very first thing is your is physical. So if you change your uh if you have a radical change in your physiology, he calls it, which basically means if you did a bunch of push-ups, if you exercised, if you ran, if you uh jumped into a cold pool or or why people like taking hot showers to relax. The fastest way to change how you feel is to physically change your body. In fact, um, uh Emmett, who’s the CEO of Twitch, was telling me this the other day, or he he was kind of talking about this on Twitter. Um, people have panic attacks, and uh when you have a panic attack, it’s a really uncomfortable feeling, and most people with panic attacks really want a solution of like, “How do I not get these anymore?”
Shaan Puri: I take medicine.
Sam Parr: And so some people take medicine, and that’s one way to change your physiology, is chemically changing your physiology. Um, what most people try to do is like, uh, people try to help people think their way out of it. They’re like, “Oh, just, you know, don’t be so anxious, and you need to just relax.” I’m like, as if that can help. Um, that’s like, you know, that’s if that if it was that easy, yeah, we would all do it. Um, and actually what science has shown is that the fastest, most effective, kind of quick and dirty way to stop a panic attack is to uh plunge your face into uh really cold water. If you do that right at the start of a panic attack, it will stop it because your fight-or-flight will kick in, and it’ll it’ll override that.
Shaan Puri: One time I One time I accidentally ate brownies that my roommate made, and they turned out to be edible brownies, and I don’t smoke weed, and I hate weed so much. Like I don’t do any of that, and I ate a lot of these brownies, and I was like, “James, I’m flipping out.” He goes, “Yeah, I’m sorry. Those were weed brownies.” And I I started having a panic attack, and I went and got in a cold shower, and that was the only thing that helped.
Sam Parr: Oh, nice. Okay, yeah. So so that’s fastest way to change the way you feel is your body, either through heat, cold, or getting your heart rate up and exercising. Um, and it doesn’t have to be like go for go to the gym. It can be like if you did 10 jumping jacks, you will feel different than you did but right before that. Uh, the second one is focus. So what are you going to focus on? Um, uh so so you uh, you know, where you place your focus is going to judge how what your brain is uh what your brain is basically signaling to your body of how to feel. So if you’re focused on pain, then you’re going to feel shitty. If you’re focused on how somebody did you wrong, how this guy cut you off in traffic, you’re going to get outraged. Uh, but if you focus on things you’re grateful for, if you focus on things that are going well, if you focus on things that are uh that you can trust, that you can rely on, you’ll feel different. Um, and then the last one is um, I think it’s like language. So language or story, which is basically the words you use and the story you tell yourself. The big the big idea, and I recommend this to anybody who’s like in business, which is the quality of your results is linked to the quality of your decisions, and the quality of your decisions is linked to the quality of the internal monologue you have. So the conversation you have with yourself ends up dictating the decisions you make, which ends up dictating the results you get. And that’s kind of what I pulled away from the whole thing. And then it’s a whole bunch of strategies to do that better.
Shaan Puri: I think you just saved me $1,000.
Sam Parr: Well, you got to get up and dance, otherwise it doesn’t stay.
Shaan Puri: This is awesome. I like learning about this.
Sam Parr: Yeah, I always hesitate to talk about it because it’s like kind of preachy, but I think it helps some people.
Shaan Puri: It’s never preachy when you can make fun of it. So like you you do a good job of making fun of something and then you explain what it is. So that’s never preachy.
Sam Parr: Okay, sounds good. Um, all right, let’s do let’s do something a little different. Let’s do uh we started this joking segment called the Billionaire of the Week, Billy of the Week, and um, I think we should actually continue it.
Shaan Puri: I loved it. I uh your guy, Xavier Neil, I went and looked you talked about him two weeks ago, and I went and read all about him. He mostly speaks French in all of his talks on YouTube, so it was kind of hard to you had to read along. Um, he’s badass. I love that guy.
Sam Parr: Okay, and you had one that you were thinking about. Who who’s the billionaire of the week?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, let me pull up my notes. So his name is Michael Lobe. Have you heard of him?
Sam Parr: I had not.
Shaan Puri: Okay, so Michael Lobe, uh in the ’90s, I’m pulling up my notes, he started this thing called Synapse Group. And basically what they did was, this was before um a lot of things were popular on the internet, and so they patented I don’t know how they did this. There must have been something unique about it, but they patented uh the online subscription model.
Sam Parr: I don’t Yeah, I I don’t know like how that there there’s some really nitty-gritty things that are a little bit beyond what I’m able to understand. But But hold on, they made money off that patent? Or they just patented it, but everybody does it?
Shaan Puri: Well, so they they just created a unique way to do it, and I think I don’t know exactly how it worked, but basically, Time Magazine, Meredith, which is a huge magazine publisher, all these magazine publishers would pay them money to get them more subscriptions because this way in which they were able to get people to renew subscriptions must have been fantastic and it worked really well. I don’t understand how it worked then. Basically, what it seems now is like a really robust affiliate network. So like Meredith will cross-sell Meredith, which is a $3 billion company based out of Minnesota, I believe, bought the company Synapse for a lot of money, and they deployed it across all their brands. So it’s kind of a it’s it was hard for me to He made it big through the Synapse Group, which was a magazine subscription thing, right?
Sam Parr: Yeah, it definitely made him wealthy. It didn’t make him a billionaire, but it made him he definitely got wealthy. What made him really wealthy was with his co-founder of Synapse, he went and started Priceline. And Priceline eventually, I think are they are they owned by Expedia or are they their own thing?
Shaan Puri: Uh, I’m not sure. So, let’s just check it out. Booking, Booking hold.
Sam Parr: Booking. So, it it now it’s just a huge, you know, huge thing. So that that made them very wealthy. But what’s interesting is after that, he started um like the the what you used to be part of, just like a a a rich entrepreneurs playground where they just launched companies. Right. And it’s called Lobe and Lobe.nyc. And they’ve started a whole bunch of companies, um including a company called uh I believe it’s called ScriptRelief. Do you know what that is?
Shaan Puri: No.
Sam Parr: So, what you do is you go to it, they started companies uh like or they used to they used to own ScriptRelief, and then they renamed it to something else. But basically what you do is you go to the website and you can get discounts off of your pharmaceutical drugs. And so like if you want to buy if you have Xanax or some type of acne medicine or something like that, somehow they they get they get access to these deals, and you use that coupon code at CVS, and you get a discount, and ScriptRelief gets paid for sending CVS business.
Shaan Puri: Do they they made that business uh we talked about on the podcast called Thanks, uh that B2B gifting thing. It looks like it’s in their incubator. Yeah, so they own a bunch of stuff, and he owns a lot of them. And a business like ScriptRelief was making something like $100 million a year in profit. Um, and so some of his companies are really big. Now, here’s another reason why he’s interesting. Do you ever watch that TV show Billions?
Shaan Puri: Yep. Love it.
Sam Parr: You know the house that Bobby Axelrod bought?
Shaan Puri: Okay, yes.
Sam Parr: That’s his house. That’s Michael Lobe’s house.
Shaan Puri: Oh wow, okay. And Baller. Last year or two years ago, Michael Lobe had a big party, like a fundraiser, like a sophisticated thing, and his son brought some friends along, and some of the 18-year-old friends got drunk and started pissing on the front lawn and just looking like a fool. And so Lobe punched one of the kids in the nose and broke his nose, and might go to jail for it. He he he just punched this kid one time, but he hurt him pretty bad. Is he going to go to jail for just that?
Sam Parr: They’re they’re trying to get him to go to jail for that. I mean, that’s assault. If you if you hurt someone, you can definitely if you want a billionaire, you definitely could go to jail for that. I I they’re trying to get him to go to jail. I have a feeling he’s just going to write a fat check. I mean, Yeah. The kid was is probably just a rich snobby. So where’d you see this scripts thing? This is not even on their website.
Sam Parr: I talked to people who work there.
Shaan Puri: Ah, Sam doing his thing, investigative journalist Sam. I like it.
Sam Parr: I just talked to people who work there. So if you Google and let’s see, Michael Lobe uh uh Google Michael Lobe ScriptRelief. It’s it’s on his LinkedIn.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, I see it now.
Sam Parr: Um, it’s renamed something else though. Do you see what it’s renamed to?
Shaan Puri: I’m checking, but you know, logging into LinkedIn is like, you know, taking the first 10 steps into hell. So, uh, I’m going to try this now. Uh, ScriptRelief was recently sold to United Healthcare. Over 5 million users.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so it was sold to someone else, and now it’s called something else. Um, but he just has like a web of companies, and he’s just super interesting because uh Dude, this is going to sound weird. When you look at this guy, do you do you think this guy looks like a billionaire? Does this guy look like a successful guy?
Sam Parr: No, that’s why he’s interesting to me. He looks like a guy who would punch a kid in the face. Yeah, he looks like a guy who’s like bitter about his life and punch a kid in the face for that reason, not punch a kid in the face because he’s a billionaire and the kid pissed in his pool. No, he looks like he would be punching kids in the face regardless of what his financial status was. That’s why he’s interesting to me.
Shaan Puri: So I have such a Look at his mugshot. Google his name and look at his mugshot. Like he looks like he looks like uh he looks like a tough guy. Yeah, he looks yeah, he looks like a tough guy. He looks like an enforcer that a billionaire would have. He he’s a billionaire, but he looks like a billionaire’s enforcer.
Sam Parr: Yeah, that’s why I think this person’s interesting because he’s Oh dang, they have a picture of the kid who he punched in the face. Yeah, he fucked him up. He punched him up that. He broke his nose. Oh man, I did not expect to just see those two side-by-side. That’s, you know, this is quality this is quality Google image searching.
Sam Parr: It’s good, right? And look at that kid. He definitely has a punchable face.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, well, the kid looks like he did something. He’s even he’s like kind of smug in the picture. He’s got a broken nose, he’s in the hospital, his shirt’s covered in blood, and he’s got a little smirk on him. Yeah. Super interesting person, right?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, so okay, I like this guy. I I never even heard of this guy. I feel like you know a bunch of these guys that are like the uh either media titans or like these other like New York You know New York rich people. I only know like San Francisco or like Dubai rich people.
Sam Parr: I know them because I spend time on Wikipedia, because my way of building businesses is I like to see what has worked, and then I I reverse engineer how it worked, and I I’m like, “All right, I’m going to deploy that on my company.” Um, and when I’m reverse engineering things, I’ll like read about the company. Right. And then I’ll see who started it, and I’m like, “Oh wait, that guy started it. Oh, but he was friends with this person, and they partnered previously. I bet he had access to That’s probably how.” So like I like under so I just like reverse engineer things.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, I like that. And then you call people, which most people don’t do. You get on the phone and you start calling people who work at the company, and you get that extra 10% that you needed to get the Right. Well, that’s what helps because I’ve I’ve made friends with someone who started his thing. So now if I want to meet him, I I have an in.
Shaan Puri: Right.
Sam Parr: So okay, so I have another example of what you just said. I was going to save this guy for next week, but we’re going to do a double billionaire of the week. So we’re doing a double Billy special. Get get your get your Billys right now. Richard Burton. Okay, so have you heard of this guy Richard Burton?
Shaan Puri: Is it Burton Snowboards?
Sam Parr: No. Um, so this guy started a couple of different companies. So just if you just Google Richard Burton I did earlier, and nothing came up. Uh, oh, did I my saying his name wrong?
Shaan Puri: I think you got it wrong because I did Richard No, no, okay. He Barton, sorry. Barton, not Burton. Okay, so Richard Barton. Uh, so this guy started Zillow. He also started one of your favorite sites, Glassdoor. Um, he also started he has three. So he has Zillow, he has Glassdoor, and which what’s his other one? I was going to research this for next week, so we’re just going to do this live here. Um, and he did Expedia. He did Expedia. Board of Directors on Netflix. He did Expedia, Zillow, and Glassdoor. What a fucking baller. Like, okay, so So he did Expedia? Yeah, so okay, so how how did this happen? So I listened to this interview with this guy like five years ago before this podcast even started, before this podcast was even a little, you know, sperm in my balls. And when I when I looked at this guy, the one thing that stood out to me was he had a very simple thesis that he used to start all these companies, which was information wants to be free. So okay, what does information wants to be free mean? So he was basically like, “I’m going to bring transparency to industries that are that are not transparent.” And so he, you know, let’s take Zillow for example. Before Zillow and these sort of online house you know, house search companies existed like Trulia and all this Redfin, stuff like that, um, the MLS listings were something that only the agents and brokers had access to. And so this is they were gatekeepers. They were like, “Oh, you want to know what’s on the market? Let me literally print out the MLS papers and I’ll show you show you these and I’ll I’ll tour you through these companies.” That’s a great line, dude. Information that went and information wants you got to Information wants to be free. And so, uh, so then he did the same thing in travel, right? We had travel agents who were the brokers who you had to call and be like, “Hey, I’d like to get a flight, and I don’t want to pay too much.” And you just trust that hopefully this agent is going to do going to do their job. They’re going to know all the different options, different times, different airports, and they’re going to find me something that fits my needs. And Expedia was just a search bar that would just tell you, “Here’s all the flights. You decide. Here’s the information. You don’t need to go to a travel agent anymore.” And uh Glassdoor is the same thing. You wanted to know what’s it really like to work there? And employers have no desire to put that out there. They don’t want anybody to know any of the bad things that happen in, you know, in the working environment of their company. And employees were often scared to do it because they would sign things that would be like, you know, non-disclosure, um, whatever, non-slander, I forget what the term for it is, non-disparagement. And uh so Glassdoor was unleashing the information about what’s it like to work at X company. And so I love how this guy literally on one thesis has started three multi-billion dollar companies, um, off that one premise. And so that was when I when I did what you’re talking about, I reverse engineered how did this guy do it? It wasn’t, oh, how did he build Expedia? How did he build Zillow? It was, how did he even get this idea? Oh, okay, what other industries today lack transparency where I can open them up? Okay, what are they? Uh, dude, well, if now that’s a billion dollar idea I need to to have. Let’s let’s talk about all the spots. So, I think the let’s think of some. One of them is, um, pricing for enterprise software. Right. What they do is they find out how much money your company makes, and then they go, “Okay, we’re going to charge you this.” Right. I like that. I like that a lot. Like I hate the call for pricing uh model. I mean, I I hate it, but it works. We do it. Um, so AngelList did this uh in in a way as well when um you were able to figure out uh who’s invested in what. That used to be like sort of not easy to find information. It wasn’t sort of like totally guarded, uh but I I’m literally just looking at the tabs that I have open, right? Like Yelp. Yelp is something like that, too. You know, how is it what is it like to eat there? The review system. It it organized and made public information that people wanted that was not super transparent before this. Yeah, I mean, housing, he did that. There’s a lot of there’s there’s so many good ones. Um, salaries, he did that with Glassdoor. There’s a lot of Is Glassdoor do salaries? Yeah. So there’s there’s one that I use that’s in the tech world called Levels. I think we talked about it once before, but they do it where with just the like kind of tech companies. It’s like what what do people at tech companies make? And a lot of people are been doing this on um inside companies. So inside Microsoft, for example, they created an anonymous Google Doc where you can just put your level, your job category, like engineer or designer, product person, whatever, and uh your salary and your pay. And then you can figure out, am I underpaid? But this but this was even in like more specific. It was like in a company. These are people now like and it’s not just Glassdoor where it’s like just a few who um kind of go and post this stuff. But um they’re get like these these companies are having these like really rich documents with thousands of people contributing and and right now those are just Excel docs. I wonder if you could take the just the salary component of maybe what’s in Glassdoor and do it in a better way inside companies so people make sure they’re not getting the short end of the stick within their own company right now. That’s interesting. Um, another one is freelancers. Um, so like Freelancers what? Freelancers and agencies. So the problem with a lot of this stuff is when we’re trying to hire some agencies to do WordPress development, I have to back channel and go find out from people who work with them what they were like before because once I sign up to an agree with them, I can’t I won’t find out unless I’m a week in if they suck or not. Right. And it’s like, oh my god, I can’t believe that. I can’t believe I’m in. And that’s the same thing with like payroll software, too. Like Gusto looks good, but when you sign up to it, you don’t realize like what you like and what you don’t like about it. Right. So we have a couple friends who are doing things that are trying to um uh put out, you know, they’re trying to make information become free of what software do companies use. So like a lot of people would want to know, what does the hustle use? What do you guys use to send email? What do you guys use for analytics? What do you guys use for your pay paywall? What do you use for trends? And um like I know Ryan at Product Hunt, they’re doing this with something called stacks or your stacks. And uh they want to know what’s your software stack that your company runs on. And it’s an interesting idea. Like he’s designing it kind of like a social network, but the value in the end, if you if you get there is, oh cool, I can now go see, okay, if I’m building an Airbnb type company, what do they use to run their company? What do they use for analytics? Do you think that that is that working? Well, it’s really tough to build, right? This is one of those things where really valuable if you get there, really tough to get the information in because you have to get the incentives right. Uh later on, you have the incentive to come to the site because you want to see what other people use. But what’s the incentive to post? And so he’s trying to make it fun and interesting and cool to post, um by making it like very visual, like sort of a like a good at doing that. a profile for your company, right? Like of like, yeah, we use this stuff. And uh so I don’t know the numbers on how it’s doing, but I do think it’s an interesting experiment and I think if they did it, it would be the most valuable thing that Product Hunt has built because it’s a it’s just inherently extremely there’s a great business model on top of that if you can show what software people use. That’s cool. I agree. Um, that’s interesting. Um, I love this idea of information needs or information wants to be free. Yeah, and I let’s think more about that. So I think we’ll come back with an example of information today that is either behind a walled garden or it’s incomplete and uh if you set it free, it would make people make better choices or or save them money or whatever it is. Like maybe it’s something in the insurance space, maybe it’s I don’t I don’t know exactly what, but I’m going to think about this because I think this is a formula for building really big companies. Yeah, for me, it’s how much things cost, like uh like freelancers and and lawyers and things like that. That’s that’s always bothered me. I I don’t like I like my lawyer could be like, “Yeah, we charge $700 an hour.” And when I was first getting going, I was like, “I have no idea. Is that normal?” Right. And on the other side, it’s also how much companies make, right? Like you love it when you hear that a company is public or it’s a nonprofit, because you’re like, “Yes, I’m going to get to their financials because they have to report.” But all that You know who does that? Pitchbook. For private companies? Yeah. Well, and they do it in a really interesting way and they’re owned by a publicly traded company. They do about $120 million a year in revenue. What they do is like $25 grand for a Pitchbook subscription, right? Really expensive. And they do about 120, they’re owned by I think it’s called Morningstar. Uh or it’s a company Brightstar. I think it is Morningstar or Morningstar is like the mutual fund thing. It’s yeah, it’s owned by one of those things and I I just read their their earnings thing. Um Morningstar, it is Morningstar. And they are the mutual fund thing, too. And they uh what they do is they do a bunch of different things. The first thing that they do is they crawl the web and they find SEC documents and they find like all type they just crawl and find data. And they have a team of like 300 people who just hit the phones all day and call people and get the information. Right. Uh and then the other one that’s uh like that is, you know, even for podcasts, when we look at the top charts and we’re like, “All right, how do we become the number one business podcast?” We don’t know how many downloads they get. We don’t know how many downloads they get, right? There’s this idea of how much something how much is being earned, how much is something making, and how much does something cost. I think that just generally would apply to a whole bunch of different spaces that you can you can use for this. Yeah, that’s why I use a SimilarWeb because they show me how much like traffic they guess traffic. Love the dope ones of this. Uh do you use Second Measure? Yeah, they’re great. They’re great. I think they’re a little bit expensive. I don’t know what they are. Uh yeah, if you don’t know what they are, it’s a Second Measure takes credit card spending data and um can tell you essentially like how much money something is making just by analyzing how many people are charging Spotify per month, and then they’re like, “Okay, cool, right?” Imagine Spotify was not a public company, you’d be able to see here’s how much revenue that they’re making. They do this with like the delivery companies. Which delivery company is winning? Well, they can just check this huge data set of credit card spending and say, “Okay, it looks like GrubHub’s in the lead, and then second is DoorDash or whatever.” And so Second Measure is super powerful using a source of truth, which is credit card data. I don’t know how they get at it. Whenever we talk about this stuff, all I want to do is just like end the podcast and make my days 50 hours long and just start everything. Research everything. This whole this whole data or make information or find it Information wants to be free. That whole concept, that’s amazing. That’s the test. I want people to listen to this podcast and be so excited, and then I want you to feel anxious. I want you to feel stressed that you don’t have 50 hours in your day to go do this. And uh that’s that’s how this should feel. I’ve heard a bunch of people say like, “Yeah, I have to keep pausing the podcast to like, A, write shit down, B, take a breath, C, think of think about what’s going on,” and then I resume it. And uh yeah, that’s what we want. It’s that that high value. Uh you want to talk about one more thing? Yeah, which one? You see you you look at the list, tell me which one you want to do. What happened when you’ve lost $5 million? All right, I didn’t exactly lose $5 million, but I uh did not make the $5 million that I could have made. All right, so this is called Sean’s Shitty Investments. This is a new segment we created just now. And I’ll tell you about two uh bad investments and one good investment I made. So, uh I was talking to a friend of mine, a guy who had been I had been advising this guy about his startup. This is maybe four or five years ago. I’ve been advising him. He didn’t live in America. He was building a product for international uh his product was around international students applying to US universities. And uh making it easy. If you don’t know, if you live overseas, like I I finished high school in China, so I saw this firsthand. If you’re in China, you’re in India, you’re in Malaysia, the goal, like your life goal is to go to a US university. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a good one, but it’s to go to a US university. And US universities overcharge for for that. And um And they get in trouble for that too sometimes. Yeah, actually right now there’s a bunch of stuff in the news because they charge like three times more for international. And for just the state is in trouble because they have like 60% Chinese uh nationals there and they’re like Right. What the fuck? You guys are charging 60 grand for these kids. Exactly. So, um so anyways, I was helping this guy, great founder, really like the company, was really interested, but I was at a point at that time financially where I was like, “Okay, if I’m investing in startups, that’s a pretty irresponsible investment because, you know, when you invest in startups, high likelihood of failure. So you need to place like 25, 30 bets. And so if you say, “Okay, I’m going to place, you know, 25, 30 bets, and each bet’s going to be 25 grand, like I basically I need to have 500,000, I need to have $750,000 uh that I’m going to put into this, which means that can’t be like your whole net worth, uh which is like my this would that would have been more 75 7 750 grand at that time would have been more than my whole net worth. And so I knew I didn’t have the the sort of uh bankroll to do it. Uh but that was an excuse. I could have found a way, I could have wrote the check anyways, I could have banked on myself making more in the future like I did. And bottom line is I didn’t. So I would have been the first check into this guy’s company, and my sort of $25,000 check, which I was very, very close to writing, would have become uh $5 million stake in this guy’s business by now. Wait, how Wait, when what’s the name of the company? Um, I don’t know if I should say the name. And how well how big is it now? I’ll just tell you the name, we’ll bleep it out. So the it’s called a and um so he he told me uh that they just crossed, you know, the billion dollar valuation. And um and so I don’t know if they’re exactly at that. I don’t know if they’re a little over, a little under, uh but the point is they’re they’re doing well. And um and so yeah, I was kicking myself because that would have been a a big investment. This has happened to me This has happened to me now two different times where I could have I could have been one of the angel checks into a business. I thought it was a good business. I didn’t pull the trigger and uh those two would have combined to be worth, you know, $10 million plus by now. What was the other one, Calm? Yeah. Uh so this company, this um studying uh abroad company, they’re uh do they make a lot of revenue or is it just Yeah, revenue. And even then, uh like this was they were pre-revenue at the time, but I was doing the math and I was like, “Wait, like they had an LOI signed by a bunch of universities, and I was like, “Wait, so if they just match supply and demand, like this thing’s going to make money.” But didn’t have enough conviction. And is it just a lead gen site? No, no, no. It’s a full software tool that let that actually does the application for the student. Uh blah blah blah. So the the university pays money. Oh, so it’s a SaaS company. It’s a free SaaS tool for the user, and then it’s a lead gen on the other side where when a kid gets accepted, they get paid that way. Got it. And they do they charge the universities money? Yeah. Like thousands of dollars per student. Got it. So okay, so they don’t charge the money for the software. No. The the software is used by the the actual student, the end customer. Um so anyways, it was a it’s a great business, big miss on my part. Happy for the guy though. He’s an awesome guy, and I really uh I like this guy’s energy a lot. I I you kind of sometimes you meet people who you got who just have good energy. I don’t know how to describe it, but he was one of those people. So And you lost money on MGM? Uh so no, not again. So basically I haven’t talked about this on the podcast, but I uh during COVID, I decided to to mess around with option trading, which, you know, famous last words. And uh so I was literally like this is how dumb I am, right? So uh so I don’t play in the finance the public markets that much. I just do very simple things. I just buy companies I think are good for the next 10 years or I buy index funds. Um I don’t do a whole I don’t do like day trading, I don’t do, you know, leverage buying or leverage I don’t do shorts. Uh but I was like, “You know what? Uh I don’t see any way that MGM, uh which is MGM Resorts, I was like, “I don’t see any way that their business doesn’t go down with this COVID thing.” And uh so I was thinking about it and it it went it got cut by uh like 75%. So the stock price dropped from I don’t know, it was like 25 uh dropped from 30 down to like 12. And um and I was like, “Yeah, I still think that this thing is going to go down.” And so I’m literally on one tab, I have like a Khan Academy video of like what the hell is a put. And on the other hand, I’ve got my Robin Hood account and I’m like just pushing buttons. And uh so I pushed a bunch of buttons and I placed this trade which basically said, “Okay, I think MGM is going to go down.” And uh you know, I bought $2,000 worth of options and like let’s see what happens. And it turns out MGM did go down, but I needed it to Once I understood my own trade, which was like after I placed it because I was again just pushing buttons, um when I was looking at the like confirmation, I was like, “Oh shit, this is a horrible trade.” Like I I just basically said that this is going to go down 40% in the next seven days. I was like, “What a stupid bet.” So how much did you lose? Two grand. I lost it. So I was like, “What a stupid bet.” So that’s my bad the two bad investments that I wanted to share. On the other side, on the other side, I bet really big into Bitcoin when it dropped to like uh 4,500 recently, and uh now it’s back up. So that one made back the money uh from for the my shitty option trading in space. I I completely stay away from stocks. I only buy S&P 500 or Facebook stock. And about two weeks ago when it was at the bottom, I was like Facebook. I was like, well, no, uh when the whole market was real low, like the lowest point, maybe 10 or two weeks ago, I sold most everything, and I was like, I was like, I think it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse because unemployment and unemployment comes out and it’s the highest it’s ever been and or the unemployment uh work claims. And then the stock market goes up 20%. I like I just don’t understand how this I don’t I don’t understand how this works at all. Um because and then I applied for the loan for for that Trump enacted, and I’m like, “So you’re telling me we get free money? That sounds great.” But you when you start thinking about it, you’re like, “I’m going to pay for this eventually. Like somehow I’m going there’s no such thing as free or we’re going to pay for it eventually.” And so this money it just this whole situation, it doesn’t make sense to me because the stock market should be going down. This is Yeah, and it will. It will. This is a this is this is a sort of a dead cat bounce or like sort of a false rally. But forgetting forgetting the market right now because I don’t know shit about it and who also, who cares? Not that interesting. It’s a speculator’s game. Um the there’s a a phrase I learned that I thought was pretty cool. It’s called a Keynesian beauty contest. You know what a Keynesian beauty contest is? Okay, so have you ever heard of the sort of economists uh I forgot his full name is like John Maynard Keynes or whatever. Um anyways, he’s a famous guy in the the world of economics, Keynesian economics. And a Keynesian beauty contest describes this uh phenomenon where let’s say there’s a what you think the stock market should be is, here’s the asset, here’s the company, you can buy some of their stock, and you buy it if you think that the company is going to become more valuable than it’s priced at today. That’s what we think should be happening. But what’s actually happening is this is a speculator market, right? It’s a speculation-driven market. And so you don’t and in a short time horizon, you don’t you’re not betting that the company is going to uh improve and actually generate more revenue and whatnot. You’re just betting that other people are going to think this is more attractive. But they’re also betting that other people are going to think it’s more attractive. So it’s a Keynesian beauty contest is where you’re not actually judging the beauty of it. You are thinking what the other judges would think about this thing, and they’re thinking about what the other judges would think about this thing, and it becomes this sort of speculative loop. And um that’s my sort of Wikipedia page of the week. That’s that’s that’s exactly how things are working, and it just annoys me so much. You have so much more control over your life when you actually run the business. Right. And there’s also a great phrase, which is sort of in in the short term, the stock market is a popularity contest, and in the long term, it’s a weighing machine. And um I think that really describes it well, right? So like this is also for private companies as well. In when you’re when you’re raising a series A and you’re a hyped company, it’s a popularity contest. And when people are like, “How did this valuation? That doesn’t make any sense.” It’s like, “Yeah, it makes sense if you if you understand that this is currently a popularity contest.” But over the long haul, it does not remain a popularity contest. It becomes a weighing machine. And if you’re full of air and there’s nothing there, like your value will go down. And so for all those people who don’t understand those valuations, uh that’s why. It’s frustrating. I’m just so I don’t I don’t do anything in that world because it’s just not I I don’t know anything about it and I don’t want to know. I it makes me too angry. Okay, cool. Uh do you want to squeeze anything else in or you want to we can wrap it? Tell people about the other podcast you guys are doing. Yeah, we just launched one with Moiz Ali, which you should go on it, Sean. Um I had a I went on it to help Moiz’s uh interview better, but it’s called Exit Strategy. So Moiz started this company called Native, and he started it me and Moiz started our companies in the same office, and so I saw him start it from nothing. I saw him get the idea and start this thing. And he started this deodorant company called Native, and 20 months after starting it, he sold it for $100 million in cash, or maybe 28 month months. And so he decided to launch a podcast because he is looking for a new project where he’s interviewing other D2C founders and he’s talking about scaling and selling their companies. It’s called Exit Strategy. If you Google The Hustle Exit Strategy or just look it up on on the uh Spotify or podcast store, you’ll see it. Yeah, I started listening to it. Um I’m like five minutes in, but uh so far so good. We’ll see how it goes. Moiz is crazy. I told my feedback to him was uh for the next episodes, be lean into being crazy. Don’t hold back. Yeah. That would be my advice as well, which is um don’t I think when you’re when you’re a really interesting person and actually your opinions are more interesting than your questions in many ways, um you need to make it a a conversation, a debate more than a interview because I think what’s going to end up happening is that Moiz is going to be end up being more interesting than most of his guests. And so what he should do to raise both people’s levels is for him to just act how he would normally act in a conversation with that person. Rather than If anyone knows Moiz, he like he says the craziest stuff ever. And and he’s a great guy, but he’s a loose cannon, and I love that about him. So I need him to remain as a loose cannon. Right. So check it out. Exit Strategy. Uh we want the the podcast family to get bigger, stronger, better. Every badass entrepreneur who wants a podcast needs to go to the Hustle and push a button and start their podcast with the Hustle. But like, it should be badass, interesting entrepreneurs, not uh, you know, sort of Joe Schmo who wants to start a podcast. Yeah, that The podcast should be the least interesting thing you’ve ever done in your career. Yeah, we want experts. We want experts who are charismatic, not charismatic people who hope to be experts. Right. And also not experts who are not charismatic because nobody wants that either. Yeah, but yeah, so that that’s out. Um and uh Yeah, and keep leaving reviews. I I read all the reviews. Everyone keeps yelling at me because they say my mic sucks. I so I ordered a new one, but everything’s backordered, and I have a new mic coming. Yeah, Amazon doesn’t know essentials uh the essentials are micro. All right, let’s read one review. Let’s do a reviewer of the week. Let’s give somebody a shout here. So I’m going to scan these for one second. Okay, so uh three stars. Sam could learn how to talk into a mic, but both these guys are very knowledgeable and give investing a fresh young spin. I’ve been listening just since it was just Sean, spelled my name wrong, and loved it. But when Sam came on, it became different. Sam gets excited, and his voice pops into the mic. Yeah, but come on, that’s the excitement. Um Sam should listen to the podcast. Not going to do it. Tough to listen to yourself. You can tell Sean speaks softer, Sean misspelled again, and tries to get Sam to quiet down, but it’s not working. That’s not true. I do not try to get Sam to quiet down. Okay, cool. Uh do you want to let’s let’s look at another low low review. I think these are more interesting than the high reviews. Although I want the high reviews, but let’s just do another one. Well, we have like 800 reviews and almost all are five stars. The only ones that aren’t five stars are the people who call us unethical, which is bullshit. The people who say that uh my mic sucks, which is bullshit. And then the people who just call us bros, also bullshit. Well, no, that’s not bullshit. I am a bro. A bro means a man. Yeah, that’s that’s me. Uh all right, CS Value says, “Very smart guys, would not recommend.” Hell of a title for a review. And so these guys are very smart and you’ll certainly learn a thing or two about making money by listening to this podcast. That said, it’s not worth the subtle recalibration of your moral compass. I don’t know. That’s a decision for each listener to decide. Okay, so then they say, uh these are not high integrity people. Here’s their examples of why we’re not high integrity. We asked people to sub and unsub to game the podcast algorithm. Give me a break. Yeah, a joke. Um, laughing about lying on a job application and getting caught. I didn’t laugh because I thought it was good. I laughed because that’s the way you deal with heartache. Right. I laughed to cover the pain. Don’t you understand? Yeah, like I said how I I I said how that was a horrible move and I got what I deserved. Right. Uh casually dismissing a host’s criminal record. A host. We didn’t That was me. Yeah. No one dismissed my criminal record. They said it’s stupid. I shouldn’t have done it, and that’s why I changed my lifestyle. Gotcha. These guys are definitely sharp guys and good at hustling, hacking, and scheming, but this is not content I would recommend anyone putting to their brain. You know what? Fuck them. If that doesn’t make people want to listen to this more, I don’t know what will. That’s there’s our clip for Instagram. I like how you’re looking around like, are we still in the studio and we have our staff to like clip it? It’s just your wife behind you. Uh okay, cool. Let’s get out of here. We’ll be back uh Tuesday and uh yeah, see you. Enjoy. Share the pod.