This episode of the My First Million podcast features hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discussing the viral success of their MFM clips on TikTok, the legal concept of the “Right to Be Forgotten,” and the surprising business model behind the 90s phenomenon, Glamour Shots. They also dive into the rapid growth of the Solana ecosystem and share personal anecdotes about the power of networking and the “hostile takeover” of crypto projects.
Topics: TikTok, viral marketing, Right to Be Forgotten, Solana, crypto, Glamour Shots, business models, networking, startup growth.
MFM Goes Viral on TikTok [00:00]
Sam Parr: It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s so much talent being sucked into this thing. These guys are going to build things that actually have use cases and actually, it’s actually going to make it all work. Um, you can’t have this much talent spend all day thinking about this and building in this and have nothing come from it.
Shaan Puri: All right, we’re live. What’s going on?
Sam Parr: I’m self-conscious now because we’re blowing up on TikTok. I just look at myself and I’m like, “Oh, I should have shaved.” And uh, now, now that I have to see myself and I see people, and also the TikTok comments are brutal. Um, they’re, they’re good, but they, you know, they’re like, just want to argue with every point that gets made.
Shaan Puri: So let’s talk, let’s talk about this.
Sam Parr: Now when I see myself, I’m like, “Shit, this is going on TikTok. I better, I need to shave for the next one.”
Shaan Puri: So basically, 10 days ago, or 15 days ago, something like that, like not long ago, we told everyone that we’re going to do this contest where we’re going to give $5,000 to like three people who take our clips and turn them into videos. The best people are on TikTok. So I actually posted the tags down there for you. So I must have made a mistake. I told people to say to, to, to use the hashtag MFM clips. But then I also, I must have said clip as well without the S. And so people are using two hashtags, clips and clip, MFN clip and MFN clips, and some aren’t using both. But if you use those links I, I, I showed you, we have, um, in the ballpark of around 15-ish million impressions from these videos. And it’s mostly young folks who created these TikTok handles from scratch, took our, our content, and some videos have over a million. Some of them have hundreds of thousands of likes.
Sam Parr: They’re great. And uh, do you read the comments?
Shaan Puri: No. What do they say? Do they make fun of us? How we look?
Sam Parr: So any content creator, you go through the cycle of like, you get excited, then you read the comment, and the early comments are good, and then the more popular you get, the comments start to turn mean. And then you just, you, everybody reaches a point where they, oh no, then the third phase is you say you don’t read the comments, but you secretly do. And then finally, you know, whatever, these are the seven stages of of grief or something, social media grief. You finally stop reading the comments because you’re like, this is just too toxic. So yeah, they, they basically just shit on us for whatever we say. Like if we say, um, you put down 20% to buy a house, then all the comments are about ways that you can, oh, oh, you can also not put down 20% if you do this, this and this. It’s like, all right, okay, TikTok commenter, you got me. You are smarter than us. You are going to constantly find some like edge case loophole or, um, you know, mistake in what was said.
Shaan Puri: Do they make fun of how we look or talk or anything? Like, do they insult us?
Sam Parr: No, they don’t really, they’re either like, uh, these guys are annoying. Like they’ll be like, let’s say somebody cuts a clip of one of us breaking down, you know, our monthly expenses or something like that. And then the comment will just, but they don’t know like the, the vibe of the pod. They don’t know why someone would just say that out of the blue, right? It’s not something that people normally talk about. So they’re just like, why did he feel the need to tell us how much he’s spending on eggs? Or like, why is he telling us his body fat percentage? Whatever. They’re just like, there’s that kind, which is, dude, what a douche. Nobody asked, you know, why are you doing that? Then there’s the comments that are like, you know, actually, actually, it’s this other thing. And then there’s some comments which are like, bro, I don’t want, I don’t want that future. No, I don’t, no thanks. You know, because we’ll be like, oh, here’s how things are changing. And they’ll be like, dude, companies just only think about money. And like, you know, comments like that. So those are the three flavors of hater we get so far. Luckily, so far, nobody’s just shitting on our like face and body.
Shaan Puri: Oh, that’s good. That’s a, that’s a surprise.
Sam Parr: That’s a win as far as I’m concerned. Yeah. I, and in general, it’s like sticks and stones may break my bones, but words about my appearance do hurt me.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, just like don’t make fun of my teeth or like hair.
Sam Parr: Uh, you can make fun of my brain. They, um, this promotion has been a home run. Like I, I thought it was going to be pretty good. I didn’t think it was going to be this good. And so what we’ll have to do is there’s like a couple people who I’m recognizing because I, I watch them that are killing it. We’re going to have to have them on the pod and explain how they got so many views. It’s pretty amazing.
Right to Be Forgotten [40:19]
Shaan Puri: Right. And let, let’s talk about this for a second because, um, I think there’s something interesting to learn here. So you have said many times, I’ve grown a lot of things. I’ve grown an email newsletter to multi-millions. I’ve grown a subscription business to multi-millions. I’ve, uh, you know, grown a, whatever. You’re like, a podcast is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to grow. And you say that. I think it’s just kind of a cool thing to say in general. Do you agree with that?
Sam Parr: I, I agree with it in the sense of it has, there’s no like easy growth hacks to growing a podcast. Um, there’s no, there’s no just like button you can push. Paid ads don’t really work. Nothing really works like that. The good news is once somebody actually subscribes to your podcast, they become like a really loyal fan and they like feel like they know you, so it’s got a lot of value, but it’s hard to get that easy growth. This is the first, and we tried a bunch of shit. We’ve tried, what we did nothing initially. Then we tried placing it in our email newsletters. We tried, um, bringing on big name guests. We tried, um, paid ads. We tried, uh, a whole bunch of different things. None of which really like kind of felt like it was really working, but the pod kept growing organically. This is the first thing. Oh, by the way, we also tried making our own clips, paying an agency tens of thousands of dollars a month to be making really awesome animated clips of our content.
Shaan Puri: And they were great.
Sam Parr: And they were high quality clips, but it didn’t lead to this. This was different. This was, hey, anybody, open playing field, just go for it, and we’ll give out prizes to the people who are actually good at it, merit-based, right? And what they’re good at is they understood TikTok, whereas like, we suck at TikTok. We don’t know how to create content there. They pull clip, they pull the right clips because they’re actually listeners and fans of the show. So they know which clip is actually going to be interesting versus like, you know, some random employee at our company being like, oh, you know, at the 42-minute mark, let’s use that one for the clip. These guys will pull like 10 that they think are interesting and put them out there. And, um, and they’re motivated because they’re like, shit, if I do this good, I can get a million views on this and I can go, you know, I can get five grand from these guys. Like, that’s a pretty sweet deal for, for doing something, you know, pretty fun. So this has actually worked.
Solana Billionaires [6:25]
Shaan Puri: Yeah, it’s pretty wild. And like some, there’s one guy who basically took our Rob Dyrdek episode and I looked at his feed and he, I’m not, I don’t think I’m exaggerating. It’s 50 clips in a row of like, he basically just took it and just divided it up. And like three of the 50 All he did was he just took our talking out and just every time Rob talks, he, he grabs a clip, which is smart.
Sam Parr: Yeah, and in his whole feed, I looked at his feed, it was all that one episode. And like three of them had like 500,000 views.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, so go, go follow them. I think MFM Cuts is one on, on TikTok and Twitter. There’s MFM Clips, then there’s a bunch of other variations of that name.
Sam Parr: All right, I want to tell you about something interesting. I, I got a few interesting things to talk to you about, okay? Um, so let me tell you about something that I was thinking about this weekend. So, I’ve got a buddy, uh, you kind of know them, and we, I’m not going to name them. But a few years ago, he did something, he was accused of doing a crime that was a horrible crime, one of the worst crimes you could commit. And he was the, uh, he was an executive at a company, and it made the news. So, six months later, after he went to court, he went to trial, the government dropped the case because it was a horrible misunderstanding. He didn’t do what he was accused of doing. And they exonerated him and they go, we’re sorry, we were wrong. We, we, we called this one wrong. And the first time the story went out, it made all the headlines. And if you Google this person’s name, it came up on top. But what didn’t come up on top was like six months later, it said, charges dropped, uh, the, the misunderstanding came about for this reason. This person lost their job because of that and lost obviously a lot of money. And I was, I’ve always thought about this and I listened to a podcast this weekend and it was called, um, the Right to Be Forgotten, and it was by Radio Lab. And so this, it’s this idea of the Right to Be Forgotten, and it’s in Europe, it’s actually a law. Um, I don’t know exactly what the law says, but it says like, if something isn’t particularly newsworthy, um, but you’re writing about it anyway and it really hurts that person more than it provides value to the common or to like a reader, you have to take it down. And there’s a couple of newspapers like the Boston Globe as well as, uh, in this particular podcast, they looked at this, uh, company, uh, this newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, and there are stories of like a cop emailing them and he’s like, look, you wrote about this time that I lied about, uh, some paperwork and I ended up getting fired. I didn’t hurt anyone and now I can’t get a job at another as a police officer anywhere else. By the way, can I fill in the gap on the Right to Be Forgotten for you here?
Shaan Puri: Yeah.
Sam Parr: So, so basically, it’s a law that says search engines should have to remove links about your past if under certain circumstances. And it came about because there was a woman, an actress, who had, who was in a movie and then it got dubbed, um, so there was a, the film was called The Innocence of Muslims. And then her, her original line, um, or her original line got dubbed over, and then they made, it made it so that it looked like she was saying, “Is your, is your Muhammad a child molester?” Right? So that was the clip. And she starts getting death threats and like people go crazy about this. And she’s like, what is this? Like, why like, okay, this thing got dubbed. Now this clip got on to into the search engine and it comes up if you search my name or certain things. And, um, it’s causing, you know, like harm to me in my personal life. And so she sued Google in 2014 and ultimately they, they upheld it, which was, um, you know, uh, like she would like to have it have the film forgotten and stripped from YouTube. Unfortunately, uh, the Right to Be Forgotten, which is recognized in the EU, is not recognized in the US. And so it’s a, the EU does respect this as they’re, they’re tighter on privacy with GDPR and things like that, and the US does not.
Shaan Puri: So, yeah, and so in the US we don’t have that. But it’s kind of interesting because I’ve personally have seen this hurt people. But you think like right now, like let’s say that you’re at a bar and you’re drunk and you call someone like a really bad word and it’s on, uh, Reddit and they find your name, you’re screwed. Like to the point of like your life is going to be hurt meaningfully for like the next decade. And like you should suffer some consequences for someone calling something something rude, but not like that serious, you know. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about this business, about this reputation management business. Have you ever researched it?
Sam Parr: Yeah, my former co-founder used to work there, so he used to tell me stories all the time.
Shaan Puri: Great. I want to hear all about it. And I know a little bit about this because listen to this. So one of the companies is called reputation.com. So there’s this porn star named Sasha Grey. So do me a favor, type in Sasha Grey on your Google and click images. This Sasha Grey, uh, doesn’t, she’s not an actress anymore, not a porn actress anymore, but she was like a very prolific porn actress. When you click images, what do you see?
Sam Parr: I’m here. Okay, so I see a bunch of headshots of her. I see no real porn. Well, I guess I guess some scandalous stuff, but mostly No like porn.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, mostly just pictures of her, uh, fully clothed or like in a bikini.
Sam Parr: So one time at the Hustle, right when we first launched, I helped write this article about Sasha Grey and she hired this firm called reputation.com and she basically wanted to retire from pornography and become like an actor and whatever else, something different. Uh, and she hired reputation.com to hide or like basically blog a bunch and write a bunch in order to get the porn images to go down. And I remember when we wrote this article, reputation.com did something kind of funny. And if I would go on my Google Analytics at night, I would look at real time and there would be thousands of people reading this article and I saw that they searched Sasha Grey. And so reputation.com manipulated it so the article that we wrote about reputation.com and Sasha Grey came up number one if you Googled Sasha Grey. And at night when people are going to look at porn, they Googled Sasha Grey and they landed on our article. It was pretty wild. I would see it at night every week or every night it would go up. And so I got crazy fascinated about reputation.com. And so for this segment, I wanted to talk about, um, reputation.com. I think there’s Yext and there’s Sprinklr. And these are businesses that do like four or $500 million a year and all they do is reputation management. What what do you know about reputation.com?
Sam Parr: So he used to tell me stories like, you know, I asked him, I was like, oh, what’d you do, you know, before this? What was your job before that? And eventually he said reputation.com and I got fascinated like you. I was like, what is that? So he told me, he’s like, you know, here’s a scenario. You’re, uh, a senator and your son, who has the same, you know, John Chambers Jr. I sorry, sorry to any John Chambers out there. Let’s it’s a hypothetical. So your son who has the same name as you basically, gets a DUI or gets arrested for battery or something like that. So now, anytime somebody searches John Chambers, this mugshot’s going to come up or this bad news story is going to come up. And he they basically they go to reputation.com and they say, I would like this to disappear off the front page of I would like this to disappear. And reputation.com says, I can’t make it disappear. The internet sort of is a is uncontrollable, but I can get you off the front page of Google. And they’re like, that would be amazing. And they say, for the low, low price of $120,000, $75,000, whatever it is. It’s expensive. expensive, significant, because they know people are, by the time you’re at reputation.com, you’re bent over the barrel. You they can charge pretty much whatever they can get away with. So like, you know, a NASCAR driver, a politician, whoever, people of interest, people who wanted their their names or their kids’ names to get out of the bad news. And so they had a team of engineers that were just, it’s a constant cat and mouse game to figure out how to beat Google. So like, he my my co-founder told me, he’s like, one of the big the biggest days at the company was when we figured out, you know, Google has the autocomplete, right? So you go, you type Sam Parr, it’s going to be Sam Parr the Hustle, Sam Parr net worth, Sam Parr wife, Sam Parr is gay. It’ll be like all these like the same 10 queries for everybody, right? And what he figured out was that when you type, you know, Sam Parr, if it used to say felony, like F would now say friend instead of felony. Like it would they would figure out how to even finish the autocomplete because even when they were good at getting you off the front page by blogging, by promoting other articles, whatever, getting them higher ranked, if the autocomplete was still always suggesting felony, then people would click it and they would search for felony and it would be reinforcing, then Google would search for it more. So they needed to clear that. So there was just constant cat and mouse game to understand how is Google doing, how is Google deciding what goes where, and then how do we content farm or manipulate this in some way that will change what the first page results are because 98% of people don’t go past the first page or something like that.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, and so it’s amazing to hear about that. And then there’s a company called Yext, uh, Y-E-X-T. They’re publicly traded and they do, I think that they are just a direct competitor to reputation.com. They’re publicly traded. They did $390 million, I think, last year in revenue. Their market cap is not very good. It’s like four or five times revenue. Um, are you looking at it?
Sam Parr: I’m I’m on I went to reputation.com. I just wanted to see the latest. Like you wouldn’t even know when you go to this, um, what they do because it says, this is their headline. First, it looks like a hospital website, like a nice health tech website or something like that. Then it says, a world of interactions demands a platform of action. It’s like, we’re a fixer is what it should say.
Shaan Puri: So, but here’s the problem. By the way, maybe they change what they do. I don’t know.
Sam Parr: I think they still do it. I think they offer like a a a smaller package. Um, uh, like like when we wrote the Sasha Grey article, that was in 2016, they had like a $13,000 package. Um, but the problem is there there’s there’s kind of two problems with this. The first is that the results aren’t guaranteed. Like you can’t guarantee that it’s going to work, which is, I guess that’s not a problem, but that’s just how it works. You know, you when when someone calls you, I get these calls all the time because I own domain names and I forgot to hide my name. It’s like, hey, we’ll put you on the first page of Google. Like that’s a scam. You can’t just promise that. But the second thing is that if you’re an individual, if you’re just someone who like said some stupid drunken thing to someone one day and now your name’s all over the place, you you it’s really, really hard to to like unless you’re willing to pay $100,000, which is what a lot of this stuff costs, it’s incredibly challenged to manage your reputation if you’re just like a person. And so I was thinking about like, is there anything interesting in that space? I actually think that there could be something. I like this company called uh, Do Not Pay. Do you know what Do Not Pay is?
Sam Parr: Yeah, I love Do Not Pay. The guy’s the guy behind it’s awesome and it’s a great idea.
Shaan Puri: So Do Not Pay, it started by this guy and I actually didn’t research this. I’m just all top of my head. It started by this guy named Josh Browder, I think, Browder. And he’s young, like I when he started it, I think it was like 21. Oh, 25. Okay. Well, no, now I think he’s like 25. When he was started, he was even younger. Yeah, he was obviously. And uh, he was like a, like it was like a prodigy type of thing. And originally, the business existed to help you fight parking tickets automatically. But now they have a bunch of features like it’s basically all basically all sticking it to the man. So the another feature is like, we will, um, sue, uh, we will sue cold callers on your behalf or something like that, right? They’ll also do like, um, you know, we will unsubscribe you from stuff that you’re you’re not using that you pay for. You know, just ways to save you ways that you do not pay, which is why it’s a great name and a great idea. And I think there’s a world where like a do not, you could use a do not pay service like this to help manage your reputation online. And this is a a need that I think we’re actually going to see more and more and more of. It’s like a very like exponential thing where it’s like more and more people are going to be written about and more and more people are going to need this. And I don’t know, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. What do you have any do you have an opinion on that?
Sam Parr: I don’t I don’t know where the new opportunity is in this one because I think it really depends on it’s kind of like you need Google to exist for reputation.com to exist. And so it really it’s about thinking, okay, there was a version of this on social networks that people were doing like, um, I remember this one guy came to me and he was like, great entrepreneur. He he ended up not doing this idea, but like I always thought it was a great idea. Others have done it, which is um, when you everybody has social media where they post stupid stuff, uh, when you’re younger or when you’re just drunk or whatever. And so what they do is they go to companies and they say, hey, we ran a check on all your employees and we found these red flags and um, you know, you should be aware of how you’re of what, you know, who you’re hiring as well as what they’re saying and representing your company, how how they represent your company elsewhere. So they end up getting contracts with companies to monitor and clean up uh, and then they’re not like tattletailing, they’re sort of like an hey like an insider helping you out saying, hey, you have this employee who’s saying this, you may want to take action. But the action might just be to letting the employee know that we flagged this as potentially controversial and maybe they want to delete it. And so it’s a monitoring service for social media reputations and social media controversies, which I think is a great great idea. It just sucks that you got to do that. Well, it sucks that the world is the way it is. It sucks the world Well, some people think, oh, it’s good, it holds you accountable, but in reality, it’s just a bunch of like, you know, don’t say don’t say what you really feel is really the result of most of this because people just get afraid to say anything because they’re worried about getting canceled. Um, so and your buddy liked working at reputation.com? Were they like, they were by the book?
Sam Parr: He was like, technically, it was super interesting to figure out how we do all this stuff. And he, you know, he’s like, he always says this thing like, at one point we had indexed every person on the web. And uh, we had like them and they were clustering their reputation. Um, and so, you know, I think it was technically very interesting, but obviously like sort of soul sucking and boring as well. So he, you know, bounced.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, I think I can see that. But it it is an interesting problem I’ve been thinking about. Um, all right, let me tell you about one more thing. Um, all right, so I was reading the information, uh, theinformation.com and they had an article about Solano. So I told you about this on Slack. So there’s this Solano, sorry. I don’t know anything about it really other than just getting Yeah, don’t out yourself here as a as a crypto nobody. Yeah, I’m not. Yeah, I don’t want to act like I’m an expert here. I’m not. I just I I I I I’ve read a lot about it though, but news articles. So, Chris McCann, I knew this guy named Chris McCann because he had this thing called Startup Digest, and that’s one of the reasons why HustleCon became popular is because I would email Chris and I would say, hey, can you please put this in the email? And he had this email called Startup Digest. It started in San Francisco and he would email email each week different, uh, events happening in San Francisco, different startup events. This was when the startup community was much smaller and everyone wanted to go to events and it was just, here’s a roundup of cool events happening. He eventually expanded it to different cities. He sold it, not for a lot of money, probably a 100, probably six figures, I bet. But he kind of worked his way into Benchmark where he like was just an employee there. And somehow or another, invested $250,000 into, uh, uh, what’s it called? Is it Solano or Solano? Solano. I’m a fucking noob. He invested $250,000 into Solano and the information wrote an article about how that 250 turned into a billion dollars. Is that crazy?
Sam Parr: In probably, I think three, three years, maybe four years max. Uh, yeah, it’s insane. I sent you, um, I sent you somebody else who also has made multiple billions of dollars, um, from their Solana investment. I sent that last week to you. But but basically, Solana has gone from Oh, like the fund? Yeah, so Solana has gone from, let’s see, I mean, it was like sub a dollar, um, not long ago, and now it’s $200, uh, per coin. And it’s basically, it’s what is Solana? Solana is a competitor to Ethereum, if you know what Ethereum is. If you don’t know what Ethereum is, just fast forward this segment, you probably don’t care. So, um, Solana is like a competitor to Ethereum and it’s recently is, okay, so this time last year, Solana was $1.54, and, um, when it launched, when it did its ICO, it was just under a dollar, I think it was. And so, um, and that was only that was, you know, a couple years ago, two years ago or something like that. So basically, if you even just take last year, $1.54, you put $100,000 into that and now you have, I think $20 million, something like that. Um, I’ll I’ll I’m actually going to do some public math here for everybody. Yeah, $20 million. So, um, Solana has had this insane run-up, and it sounds like he, I think through, he’s in this fund called Red something, Red Circle or some shit like that. Race. Oh, race, yeah, race something. Um, they were like the seed investors in Solana. And, um, you know, that’s the right project to be a seed investor in, is a crypto project that becomes a, you know, multi-billion dollar crypto asset. And sure enough, you could turn $250k into a billion dollars. That’s kind of insane. I don’t think it was his personal $250k necessarily, but even if it was the fund, Maybe. The the article made it sound like it was, but even if it’s not, that doesn’t change much. The insanity. Yeah, it doesn’t change much because he still is going to walk away with nine fig over 100 million, some figure like there. But this article, I was reading about it and they basically like saying there’s like a lot of really high profile tech folks at traditional tech companies giving up amazing things in order to like flee to this crypto thing. And I’ll give and I want to ask you a question about that, but example, like this woman, Sandy Carter, VP of, uh, Amazon’s cloud computing, she left, uh, to join Unstoppable Domains. Brian Roberts, who was the CFO of Lyft, he left to join OpenSea and he said, I’ve seen enough cycles and paradigm chips to be cognizant when something this big is just emerging and that we’re only at the beginning and it’s just going to get bigger. We had David Marcus, he basically led, uh, Facebook’s cryptocurrency thing. He bounced to start his own thing. Uh, the, uh, this one dude left, uh, Google in order to become Coinbase’s chief product officer. And when it went public, his stake was worth $600 million. And then of course, Jack Dorsey bounced from Twitter in order to work at Square and it’s like definitely involves crypto. Oh, they just renamed, they renamed to Block because they were focusing on blockchain. Block. But, um, it’s crazy. And my question to you is this, have you ever seen someone create that much wealth that fast? And do you have any stories of people who you know or know of that are doing this and like what their stories are? Because this is crazy.
Sam Parr: Well, I’ll say the first thing is that you’re right that there’s basically a giant black hole that’s sucking up all the talent in the world and it’s called crypto. And it’s almost a self-fulfilling, there’s a lot of people who don’t believe that crypto is a thing or they think it’s massively overhyped and they say, you know, give me one example of a real use case of this thing. Nobody’s actually using it for payments or Web3, there’s no real Web3 products. And it’s sort of they they’re they’re there’s some truth to what they’re saying. Uh, I I wouldn’t say that they’re completely off base. It’s like a valid critique. Um, I don’t think it’s true, but it’s a valid criticism. But the there’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s so much talent being sucked into this thing. These guys are going to build things that actually have use cases and actually, it’s actually going to make it all work. Um, you can’t have this much talent spend all day thinking about this and building in this and have nothing come from it. That’s like the biggest like takeaway for me of like, even if you’re the biggest crypto skeptic, there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy here, which is that it’s sucked up all the dev talent, sucked up all the smartest people, sucked it, it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind of feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I want to have him on to tell his full story because it actually has like a bunch of twists and turns, um, that are like kind of amazing. So I’m going to ask him if he’ll come on and share it. I don’t know if he’s willing to. Well, I know them. Uh, yeah, you know them. Um, I don’t know if they’re willing to share, but if they are, it’s going to make for an amazing episode. Uh, I’ll ask him if he’ll do it next week.
Shaan Puri: Did they, um, did they earn the, did they, uh, sell, do they have USD or like some type of stable currency?
Sam Parr: Um, no, they’re they’re still in crypto, like 100 or 100 plus percent because they, you know.
Shaan Puri: But, but, but, but is it stable like a bit like a a popular thing?
Sam Parr: Uh, it’s a mix of popular things and like, you know, high risk, high reward stuff. Yeah, they got everything’s liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I’m done, I’m going to Malibu and I’m going to chill and I’m going to pretend that this year never existed and I basically won a lottery, they could do that.
Shaan Puri: Because we have a buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he’s like, I can’t sell it. So it’s like That’s different. That that’s like, uh, those are like either illiquid, like, oh, there’s this coin, but it’s not listed yet. Or it’s liquid, but there’s like no trading volume whatsoever on this coin. And so like, yeah, if you have $10 million and you go to sell even 100,000, it’ll crash the price of the coin. That’s not what this is. That’s that’s a different thing. Um, that’s a what that is is I I I make a million coins, I keep 999,000 for myself, and then I sell one of them for a dollar and oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it’s like, no, it’s not really. You you there’s such a such a small amount of the supply out there being sold, it’s not indicative of the true price. This is what I’m talking about is not that situation.
Shaan Puri: Is there any other person? All right, so you have a story of someone who did 500,000 to 15 million. I just told you about this guy who in like two or three years And by the way, this person non-technical, never was a trader or financial person. Like they would own like a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn’t know how to spell blockchain. Um, you know, like this person is that’s why this blows my mind. It’s not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It’s an awesome amount of money for anybody. But what’s crazy is the point A to point B, it makes no sense. It’s like, how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It’s mind-blowing to me.
Sam Parr: So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did 250,000 up to a billion. You just said 500,000 to 15 million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?
Shaan Puri: Uh, personally, you’ve talked about this guy, you talked about somebody, right? That you’re Yeah, I have a friend that that they they did 1 million to 100 million.
Sam Parr: Yeah, so I think At its peak when Bitcoin was uh 60,000. So I don’t whatever it’s at, discount it.
Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one. Uh, there is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this uh product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey. You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day from school, he used to get on and chat. And he didn’t chat in the other rooms that had 13-year-olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be in the startup scene. And, um, I think he was maybe 13 at the time. Okay, so fast forward, it’s been like six years since then. So now he’s like, let’s say 21 or something like that. He it’s been it’s been a while. And, um, he created some, but he was he’s a technical guy. He created a a protocol. Like I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like how’s your startup going? And he’s like, oh, it’s startup’s okay. We haven’t been focusing on it for the last few months. And I was like, oh, I know, man. It’s tough. You just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot and find something. And he’s like, actually, like we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random like side chains. And it was like a what up, blah, blah, blah, some bunch of terms I don’t even understand. I you know, it’s a it’s a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah, blah, blah. I’m like, okay, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Uh, and he’s like, yeah, the market cap of it like, you know, basically like the market cap of it is like 900 million right now. And, you know, I think he cashed out $10 million in this. He’s like, he’s like, dude, it’s been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it’s at 200 million. And he’s like, I was able to like take out like a life-changing amount of money. I took out 10 million. He was he was like, he was asking me because he goes, I heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water story. I was really moved. Like I’ve set aside seven figures to uh donate. Um You’re like, what? I was like, you’ve set aside seven figures? Like like are you seven years old? What How did this happen? Where What What has happened in this amount of time? Like I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online. Like you’re donating millions of dollars to charity now? Like what is Again, a and b, it broke my brain. And I don’t mean this as an insult to them. Like All this is to say that if they were if they were only 15 then, so they’re still only like 19. Yeah, I think they’re 20 now or 21, something like that. It’s been like seven years since we made that thing. So, um, you know, it’s not it’s not mind-blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I I really like this person. That’s why I used to hang out with them. That’s why I we I used to work with one of them. I think they’re really smart and we’re going to be normal person successful. It’s like when, you know, I went like my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galichi, who’s like this super famous Instagram star now, and she’s like has her own TV show on Bravo. And it’s like, wait, that’s the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school? Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, wait, that’s her? Like, that doesn’t even look like her anymore. Like, yeah, she’s had some work done, right? It’s like just mind-blowing to know a normal person who’s like, yeah, that’s a cool normal, they’ll they’ll do well in life. To be like, no, actually, they’re like one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn’t make any sense. Like, you know, it’s not it’s not that that was their skill set and they tried, tried, tried that thing for 10 years and finally hit. It’s like just out of nowhere they just did this thing and it hit. And crypto is this amazing thing like that. And by the way, I want to say something. When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was like so I was happy for him and I like him and all that, but I was also like I was like in my head, I was just like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait, with the the friend that used to work for you? Both of them. Both the same reaction. Yeah, because it feels weird because you’re like, oh wait, you kind of looked up to me and I was the master. Yeah, I’m your mentor, but now, now I’m like, you know, way less successful than you. Uh so like what just happened? You just like catapulted really crazy like between the last time we caught up and now. There’s there’s jealousy there. It’s easy. And I just wanted to say like, you know, an interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this? Um, there’s a part of me that I’m not proud of, which gets jealous of it, but that used to be like, it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn’t really acknowledge that that’s what I was feeling and I would kind of find reasons why it was like, ah, that’s just luck or um like, you know, well well, they probably are taking a bunch of risk and they might lose it all and I’m kind of secretly rooting for it to not not all work out just so perfectly as it has. That’s gone. But I still got a little bit of that like jealousy paying left. And I’d say the interesting thing is my my coach said this to me, he goes, uh, you know, you’ll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure. And they’re not focused on your success, they’re focused on their failure. Your success has reminded them of their failure or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack. And uh, if you notice that in yourself, you want to be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you’re like, oh, these people are haters, like, uh, you know, just understand what’s coming on. They don’t actually hate you. It’s uh, your success has reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that’s where their attention has gone. And so, uh, yeah, I wanted to share that because I I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, but these stories were so mind-blowing that I could I was like, wow, I this I I don’t even know what to say. I feel lucky to know who I know, which we have the same group basically, that I’ve like these stories that sound unbelievably true. Um, I’d be like, yeah, I know that person. Um, I saw it. It it was wild. So like an example is Moiz Ali selling native deodorant for $100 million two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for like six or 10 months. Um, and that was almost half the journey. It’s actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about like this isn’t like a one-to-one correlation because there’s other components here, but like I was thinking about this, I’m like, Jamaica is a very small country. There’s not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the 100 meter dash. And obviously there’s some genetic, there’s a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can’t be significantly different than America. And, um, and I was thinking like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by like, it’s just normal to be great at something and and and that makes it normal to work hard and you’re like, well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don’t like freak out, you just get it done because you that’s what’s expected. And I kind feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It’s like, well, you just want to spin something up and if yeah, if you’re willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it’s for sure, like it’s easy. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And it’s kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, look, it’s really simple. You just do this, this and this. Of course, you got to dedicate every Right. You have to dedicate tens of hour, you know, 50, 60 hours a week for like many years, but yeah, it’s very simple, straightforward. Well, the first example you gave with Moiz was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you, right? Like in the in the in the in Founders Dojo or whatever that was. Hacker Dojo, Founder Dojo? Founder Dojo. Like I think he was interested at first, if I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And he was like ordering mattresses and like measuring them and like seeing like, oh, that’s too much work. Mattresses are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is like, my sister was pregnant and she couldn’t find a uh deodorant that had didn’t have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. And it’s like, dude, I know you. You were like, all right, how do I build I want to make a business. I want to sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like Kleenexes, mattresses? Uh, too big to ship. Okay. Scratch that off the list. Deodorant, small, under one pound, ships easily. People use it every month. It’s a renewable. And there’s a niche and there is a genuine problem for it. But like I know you, dude. There’s a there’s a real story and then there’s the narrative. And like I like stories, not narratives. It’s just which is both but it’s not bad. He was just like seeking problems to solve. He’s like, boom, found it. And I respect that. Uh I I like that and that’s how I think. So, you know, it’s normal to me. The there’s something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick, you’re like, there’s a just a respect and and for me like total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like for example, I remember when you started the Hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event and then you were like, I’m going to do this thing and then I came to your office with you and John and it was like like it was like we went into a room that was like a conference room that was like the size of a bathroom and like you had a presentation and like I listened to it and I was like, okay, this is cool, but like what about this, this and this? And you guys were like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. And then you like you started with these like long form your your original thing was long form stories and then you like kind of was working but not really. You’re like, I’m thinking about switching to this like newsletter thing, just daily news. Skim is doing it, it’s working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche and I think it’ll be even better. And so seeing that, then it’s like, cool, seven years later, Sam, whatever, I don’t know how long it’s been. Seven years? Was it seven? Uh, we sold it about five. Okay, five years in, Sam sells the thing and it’s successful. Nothing but props, respect, and and joy of like, wow, that was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you. There’s a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick and a difference of actually this happened in 12 months. Um, you didn’t get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you all you hear is like, I tried this thing and it just hit. 100X, 200X. Like what? Uh, you know, it’s it’s feels more like a lottery and it feels less like the hard work thing. I think that happens a lot in crypto. That’s a little difference there. The second part is I remember when uh I moved, so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn’t you just like come to Silicon Valley like Yeah, I just showed up. Just showed up. I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically I I went to a meetup and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about startups. And I went and I spoke and everybody at the end was like, yay, you know, great talk. People afterwards were like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, my buddy was like, what’s wrong? Because he could see I was just like kind of upset. He’s like, what’s wrong? You didn’t like it? And I was like, I was like, I don’t know anything about startups and I’m like the thought leader here. This is like I’m doing something wrong. Like this is like I feel like not imposter syndrome, I feel like idiot syndrome. It’s a blind leading the blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups. But if I’m the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They’re not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about like startups? Is it you guys are the startup scene? They’re like, yeah, these guys did it great. Oh, where are they? They don’t come to these events. No, they moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay, maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first, just to mentally be like, all right, I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don’t know why. For me, that was just like a I think I could just do it like over like I did it in one night before I could move. It was like faster than moving was just to change my phone number, just make a statement. And then I remember being like, all right, I’m going to move there. I’ll figure it out. And I quit my job, you know, on the spot and I was like, I’m just going to move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a job, literally one job. And uh, they didn’t hire me. They were like kept stringing me along and I was like, all right, fucking up. This was the one I ended up working at Monkey Inferno. There was like a slow process, two-month process. So finally I was like, all right, fucking I’m just going to move there and if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll get this job, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll get some I’ll do something else. What was the title? Just product manager. Uh, like I was just the first PM there. So I I finally came and when I came, they were like, all right, why’d you move? Like why’d you why’d you come here? And I was like, well, uh, you know, I wanted to see what’s in the water here, right? Like if this is where all the smart people are, this is what the startup are, like, what do you guys know that I don’t I don’t know? And I was thinking it’s about tactics. It’s about operations. Maybe people are just like, literally this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. It’s sucked it sucked up like $20 billion of venture capital every year now. And, um, all that funding, all that talent is going to kill is going to create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what’s already there today. So, there’s that. Now, to your question, have I seen somebody get rich this quick? I want to have my buddy on. I have a friend, uh, who used to work work with me, and I caught up with them and his story, he basically went from like, uh, average like an average job, like you wouldn’t look at this person and say, oh, that’s a star career. And, um, they were good, they were doing well, obviously, but they were doing like normal person well. And they went from normal person well to making like to personally making like $15 million in the last year, just by they they basically quit their job and they went down a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in DeFi and they started playing with all the DeFi projects, investing their money in DeFi, and they didn’t have a huge base of capital. They had, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half a million dollars, if and if you have no path in your career to being like a a, you know, a deca-millionaire, right? Like if you don’t have a path where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to have fuck you money, to go from no path, no no like reasonable storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you good salary and that’s that, to that is amazing to me and awesome and like, you know, just like blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi-billionaires who were like prodigies and like invented the protocol or invested 250k in a random token. It’s like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, oh, instead of investing in Apple, Google, and Facebook, I’m going to invest in crypto and turned a normal amount, a normal like life savings amount of money into a life-changing amount of money. And I