Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en so bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies and when you sell a company for like anything north probably 50 million they likely have a banker and i’ve been contacting bankers and my pitch to them is this hey i’m thinking about starting a company in this space you’ve sold a few companies in this space tell me everything about why the this company was bought as well as what the opportunities are that the buyer what they were looking for and uh maybe in five or ten years i’ll let you sell my company and i’ve been able to line up meetings doing this and anyway genius and um i’ve been a part of one or two of those types of conversations and i was like oh wow these guys are like vaults filled with gold [Music] i i met a famous person this weekend um i went and saw jimmy uh is it yang or wang um the comedian uh i think jimmy oh yang or something oh yeah well it’s jimmy oh i forget his last name but he’s uh what was his character in silicon valley jin yang yeah and he’s a comedian and he was an awesome guy and my friend is dating him bri and uh funny in person or not yeah he’s awesome he was awesome like comedy and funny like you just talking to me like were you like wow this person should be a comedian if they weren’t no he was just really insightful and he had like really good strong opinions and he told stories well i mean i think you could actually do it if you were to sit down and write a a bit i actually think that you have the same traits uh but no he was just a really nice thoughtful guy but he was like legit famous to where everywhere we went people would talk to him and it was pretty pretty cool to see and i imagine quite annoying for him because the people who are fans of him because he he doesn’t actually talk like that you know he’s american right right and but yeah well they are fans of him particularly the asian community they love him um because uh well he just like he’s like representing nicely but basically they come up to like like a white guy came up to him and kind of said something a little inappropriate and it was like rooted in like the silicon valley show right and i like they think that he has an accent and things like that and that’s super annoying particularly in awesome where there’s tons of like white bros so i imagine that could be annoying but he was legit famous and it was kind of cool to see when you’re around people who are like you know famous in their world do you how do you act do you like do you go door a treat them like a normal person in fact almost disregard their fame be nerd out about you know asking them a zillion questions about you know the show and what blah blah like you know basically to ask them all the questions they probably heard before but with enthusiasm or see something else what do you do dude so i do i i do b but i do it in a very direct way kind of like the podcasts where where it could tell that i’m like really confident but i’m asking questions up that everyone wants to know so i’m like so you’re like kind of nagging them yeah yeah so it’s like so what’s it like here’s a tiny example i’ve got a friend of a friend who had cancer and he lost his leg and when i first saw him i was like what’s going on man um are you crushing it at pull-ups because you’re lighter now like how many pounds did you lose off that leg and he like really quickly opened up because he was like oh you just got that out you got it we got it all the way it’s not mixing like it’s not here but you’re also uh not making a huge deal out of it yeah yeah yeah and so that’s like how i usually when i’m with famous people so i’m like so what’s it like you’re pretty famous is that cool or is it bad like just very direct and i typically find that it makes people lighten up and they and they’ll and you you are making them in a sense but you’re also like congratulating them and they really will just open up you’re like you’re better looking in person i watch the show yeah yeah you’re way taller than i thought yeah you’re not nearly as slight of bill as i was expecting yeah [Laughter] i don’t know yeah it’s like uh you know i don’t care what people say i think you’re great dude my brother-in-law has the best celebrity move um he see if he sees a celebrity he greets them like a long lost friend so he’ll see like we saw mike tyson and he’ll be like mike what’s up man how you been and he’ll go dap them up and be like because seeing you he’ll just like keep going and they’re just like do i know this guy where did i be like be like george yo how’s houston ah george and then he’ll like just keep going and like just he’ll just make it seem like they are they’re just reconnecting rather than meeting for the first time and i thought what a hack what an amazing hack because these people meet tons of people so they didn’t they don’t remember and so they’ll automatically go with your assumption that you like sort of know each other or your equals in some way peers in some way you ever uh have you ever been to a restaurant and the owner walks around just greeting people and asking how things are of course yeah that is well i had a friend that told me he used to pick up women that way where he was just like i would approach this with the attitude like i wouldn’t act like i was the owner but in my head i would act like the owner how’s everybody doing here yeah and i would just and i had that energy and i was able to meet so many people with that restaurant owner energy dude that’s yeah good it’s a good one and so i like at hustle con when we’re hosting hustle account or when you and i are hosting one of our events like you you kind of know everyone knows who you are and and so you kind of know that you have the feeling where you can just walk up to talk to anyone and they’ll know what’s up right you have that energy when you’re trying to meet girls and it’s the best dude that’s so good like i’m just gonna start wearing like a small dish towel and my waist and go to restaurants and just yeah just just walk around just have a drink and just be walking around you know greeting each table making sure everything’s going smoothly for them and you’re not lying you’re not telling them you assumed based on my big restaurant energy here um all right bro i got a few interesting things to run by you do you have did you have a lot left over from last time yeah i kind of did can i tell you about one yeah i don’t know like business slash idea this niche that’s like got my attention right now so um i did i talked about this the other day i went to that the blippi show did i tell you about this no all right so so do you know who blippi is have you ever heard of blippi i don’t know what that is no all right so like remember like back there we had barney or like you know uh like pee wee herman or whatever he’s like it’s like it’s a dude so he kind of looks like peter herman or whatever but he’s more like a barney or you know um sesame street style show so basically there’s a guy who went on youtube created this brand called blippi and he um he’s entertaining so he’d be like oh and by the way the funny thing that he does is there’s no like set he just goes into like um hey we’re at the aquarium but they just go in like after 9pm it’s like closed down and so it’s just they have it all to themselves like hey we’re here in las vegas at this rock climbing studio and so he just uses that to film his thing but he gives it a shout out at the beginning of the video the video gets like 40 million views so it’s like you know it’s worth it to let these guys film there and he just like goes around and he’ll basically just play with toys he’d be like i’m added abandoned chuck e cheese and he’ll go play with a bunch of toys and there’s like music and whatever overlaid and it’s the same guy i’m looking at him now it’s the same guy every single time it is except for as he blew up and got famous then they switched him out with just a stunt double for a bit and so like that guy’s like a substitute teacher sometimes and then sometimes blippi comes back uh but like the main guy is the main guy he wears his outfits like this blue outfit with his orange glasses he like always looks the same so anyways my daughter loved blippi we used to watch a ton of bloopy and all of a sudden we see this ad that says um blippi like the live show is coming to oakland and so we were like oh [ ] and so instantly my wife buys tickets for for all of us in the family we go to this thing last weekend and it’s it’s at the same place you did hustle con so it’s at the paramount theater and it is packed like you know hustle khan was like you know sold out ish this was like sold out sold out like all even the back shitty seat is like sold out and it’s full of parents and their kids and then there’s this like this they basically just created like a little play like a little mini musical one hour because kids don’t have that long of an attention span and it’s just kind of like music and like you know lights and colors and he’s oh dinosaurs oh rocks oh how much should it cost so every ticket i want to say was that venue’s seats maybe like 60 bucks a seat something like that so that’s been used seats between 2500 and 3000 i believe yeah so i think there was 2 000 there and i believe the tickets were something something like 50 60 70 bucks something like that so we’re in like a hundred and twenty thousand and he played four shows in a row um that weekend and then he went to the next city so it was our like no he had done eight shows or he was doing something like that so it was like some crazy like thing where i was like oh wow this weekend they made whatever 800 grand um and yeah the tickets tickets basically range from like you know 60 bucks to 90 bucks and um and the place is lit by the way so like you know he comes on stage kids go crazy he’s like you know he’d be like you know what does the bubble do and everyone’s like pop and he’s like when i say pop can you say pop and like so it’s like not like a quiet show like because kids are loud anyways so some kids just not paying attention like my daughter during intermission was like i want to watch blippi on youtube and so we like had to open up youtube on our phone and give it to her during intermission because she couldn’t like go five minutes without stimulation and so it’s and then they have like the merch and the like the concessions they have like all that [ ] right so it’s like pretty dope actually and i was like wow this is kind of genius they just took youtube ip and this is this guy who was there was not blippi the guy on stage was just some you know theater kid who like didn’t make it you know and it’s like all right plan b i’ll be i’ll be blippi and um and so it was like they took the ip but they made their own show out of it and so i started looking into this and there’s a company that does this called vstar entertainment awesome so vstar what they do is they go license these kids brands and then they put on kids broadway basically and they tour around the country awesome and so uh and blippi’s just a guy with a guitar right or were there more tournaments no guitar he’s just just him he just watched so were there any instruments or was it just like a soundtrack just soundtrack and like lights and like uh stage props so yeah so he he always kind of like like you know if they came out as sharks like a bunch of like little backup dancers came out as sharks and then they whatever like that’s an awesome mini theater show right and so v star entertainment they do another brand that you’ve probably heard of call or you may have heard of called paw patrol it’s basically another kid’s cartoon so guess how much this is my like kind of triangulation guess how much they sold in paw patrol tickets last year just take a take a guess 20 20 mil 40 million dollars 40 million dollars in event tickets in event tickets for and that’s just the tickets not the murder that was just last year and 22. uh i don’t know it’s like this is like the just before coveted numbers so like 2019 2020 something like that wow so they got bought by cirque du soleil so first so the back story is some guy decides oh you know what like he’s watching sesame street he’s like sesame street should do a live show and he goes and he basically raises 500 grand from this guy he mortgages his house gets an extra 25 grand out of his home equity so he’s got 525 thousand dollars he goes and he gets the license to sesame street he started with the sesame street show and then muppets and like you know but that must have been years ago this was like 1980 something like that yeah and then um this other guy was doing it they merged and then that whole thing gets bought by cirque du soleil last year is it cirque du soleil by the way like guess how much cirque du soleil revenue was have you ever read a cirque show no i’ve not but i do know that the guy who started it uh is a canadian guy he’s a billionaire i read dan blizzarian’s book and they talk about that guy a lot i think he’s like i mean he started a circus so he’s like or yeah he’s really eccentric and wild and everything so it made him a billionaire how much revenue does it make um ben have you been to a cirque du soleil show cirque du soleil did a billion does a billion dollars a year in revenue which is insane 10 a five or ten percent of all las vegas tourists go to a cirque show when they’re in town is that what what’s that cirque is that the is that they have like 10 shows right it’ll be like they have oh and then they have zoomanity they have like whatever and the beatles yeah i know all about it and i’m i’m into it and it’s publicly traded or at least it was before it was acquired by private equity right private equity owns it now and um and it’s a pretty badass business the idea was do a circus but no animals so it was like only human performers and to do that they did like crazy acrobats and like great costumes it’s basically its own genre at this point though right and so he built that thing into a real juggernaut and so cirque then bought blue man group and v star entertainment and so they got blue man which is like an ad they what they had said was like we do 10 million in ticket sales a year for cirque du soleil blue man adds another 2 million and then um and then v star adds another 2 million but they’re all like different ticket prices but like they do 14 million in tickets uh sold per year and so this this like live entertainment thing really has caught my attention because i think as the world moves more and more digital the the like the demand for like these one-off experiences like hey let’s get out of the house and go do something i think it’s just gonna keep going up music festivals that’s a winner and then there’s like uh i think plays and musicals are gonna be a winner i think they’re gonna be bigger than they were before even though the world was digital and in fact because the world moves digital what do you think about all this i 100 agree and so earlier today i sent you a notion doc of some of my notes on i’m interested in peer businesses which is basically like you pay money and you’re part of a club and you meet up with them and i i can’t talk too much about what the names of the companies were but they were doing like uh one of them does a hundred million a year in profit and it’s basically two or three meetups a year and there’s executives paying fifty thousand dollars a year to be part of them and i think actually these are gonna completely boom i think conferences right now are interesting but those are really hard this actually seems way easier to pull off um all types of meetups airbnbs i’m 100 on board that i think that in person is is the move yeah i and i think that so then i started thinking like what are the other opportunities and so i think a you could just like go compete with these guys on like either the same brands or other brands so like what they did was the v-star guy took tv ip turned it into a live show the blippi guy is doing is taking youtube ip and turning it into a live show and i think you could just even do this for more so like i think you could even do like we’ve talked about religion which is the greatest free ip in the world so i think somebody could do this for religion which would make it extremely kid-friendly in fact kid-focused like christianity show basically i think you could do this for dinosaurs or science as a generic genre because like if kids love trucks and dinosaurs or whatever and you could just basically create the like the show you know day with dinosaurs or something like that and once you get like if you have a certain level of quality moms will spread this and they will talk about it and they will like in their mommy groups they will help you sell these tickets and um and i just feel like there’s a like it’s not that hard like you build one show and you sell that one show a thousand times right like the show goes on tour mamma mia has made like i don’t know some stupid amount of money just being the same show on tour with replacing the the low-cost actor yeah anytime i’m trying while we’re talking i’m trying to find the numbers so we used to so we did events but we would do like these this thing called hustle con which was like our big one where like thousands of people would come but then we do this thing called 2x and 2x was basically from like 7 p.m to like 10 p.m and it was basically we got 15 or 10 women all who were in tekken business not that many of them were like well known but they would have 10 minutes to like tell a story and we would charge like 25 but then we would get tens of thousands of dollars in sponsors but we got to the point where we could pull this off like kind of like almost weekly in other cities and when we started doing this the hustle wasn’t that popular but we were making like i think like 30 grand a night when we were doing it and we had one employee running it right and she would use a team of contractors and then we wouldn’t supply anything like i think we had free wine but i don’t know i don’t even think it was free i like we wouldn’t supply anything but then we have corporate sponsors and we crushed it and in my head i’m like i can always fall back on this to make a living because it was so much easier than people thought right yeah that’s pretty good for a tech bro um a tech bro business like all of you you you were running one of the best like women’s entrepreneurship events yeah because you got labeled wrong dude yeah they’re i’m like an onion man there’s layers so but basically like we used to do this thing called pizza and 40s where we would do a meet up and i would interview someone and they would drink a 40 ounce and when the 40-ounce beer was done the talk was done but then like women were like this is like there’s all dudes here and so we created like a like a wine version and that had like way better it was like like cheese and wine i don’t even remember but that had way better engagement and so we’re like oh like let’s pursue this vein like this there’s clearly an opportunity here until we created 2x which uh comes it’s like 2x chromosomes which i thought was clever i stole it from reddit uh but anyway we would do i think we did 10 or 12 uh in one year and every single time it was like 20 and 30 grand and the cost the cost was nothing the cost was renting the venue which cost like three thousand dollars and we would make like 20 grand but you also you had readers in every city right so that’s how you sold the tickets is that yeah yeah but we weren’t basically the speakers sold the tickets the reason why we had 15 speakers was was i was like i bet each 15 will get 25 people to come plus our like a little bit of our engine like this is easy and you weren’t making the money off the tickets you’re making enough sponsors really anyway the tickets the business model was the tickets paid for the event and then the conference was all or the sponsors were all the profit but when it’s there’s two things going on one like women so whenever you have like an underserved community like sponsors definitely are willing to pay more and two it was like a b2b component so it wasn’t kid’s component which i think would alter the economics but my point of it is that i think that it was far easier than people thought and it was way more rudimentary and raw than people thought and it worked we just used splash that i think if you google like 2x the hustle you’ll like see like the splash that is basically eventbrite it was nothing special and it freaking worked that’s dope um all right what else we got um all right uh let me uh i just got kicked out of the document all right i got it so one thing tell me what you what you think about this one thing that i’ve been doing as i’m now starting to like get back into the game uh or thinking about it so i’ve been setting up calls with bankers so bankers which i didn’t even know what those were bankers when someone wouldn’t like sarah my wife went to japan yeah and she would like i would always make her friends were like yeah like i uh you know i’m a banker i work at a bank i’m like oh which branch uh and so bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies and when you sell a company for like anything north of probably 50 million they likely have a banker and i’ve been contacting bankers and my pitch to them is this hey i’m thinking about starting a company in this space you’ve sold a few companies in this space tell me everything about why and it’s so much bankers need podcasts like why are they why are these guys not talking well they can’t so much info no but they talk like generally speaking they don’t they can’t talk about any specific deal but like they know a lot dude and they actually know everything it’s like you’re you’re accountant it’s like accountants you know everything yeah they know everything and they’ve been telling me so much information so i like they’ll like basically they’ll say here’s why this company was doing well here’s why it was succeeding here’s why they bought it and i’m like all right great what uh what other companies was that buyer trying to buy and why and they’re like well they always struggled with blank and i’m like boom thank you and then i’ll say like um you sold three businesses in the same space which one was more fun to run and so like for example i’ll give you i’ll give you a concrete example the business that i’m interested in now we’ve talked about a bunch it’s like a vistage so which is basically a peer group so companies that it’s like a group of 10 or 40 people who all have a similar job title and they meet together and they discuss their problems and it’s like a safe space to discuss [ __ ] you can’t talk about the internet and some of them do huge one of them i can’t say which does over 100 million in profit a year and they’re just like meetups in real life and i’ll just be like well what job titles was uh gartner or whoever buys these companies what job titles are they trying to get to and they’re really struggling to uh to reach and they’ll just tell me i’m like oh great i can create a community around that and i think i could build it to sell it which what i want to know from your perspective is that even a good plan building to sell so part of me is like yes it’s clear path to make money another part is like it’s kind of lame though yeah well i think where you’re at now let’s take three three options build to sell that which is basically optimizing for like oh is there a sort of like a flip is there a is there a buyer on the other side of a business like this another one is build to win which is basically like for example when i talk to these bankers what i’m trying to figure out is what which of these businesses is like not a special snowflake where it’s like oh that’s actually like a rinse and repeatable model like i didn’t like that founder didn’t like catch lightning in a bottle at the perfect time and it’s their perfect background and they got really lucky about this one thing it’s like oh those i don’t want to emulate i want to emulate the one where it’s like hey i think somebody could start that same business today and do equally well or do do just as well in this one adjacent space and like you don’t need to be a genius uh with that and so that’s the second part of it which is like build to win it’s like optimizing for something that’s going to work and then there’s the last one which is sort of like you know build for fun or build for mission which is like go for something that like you something you would never want to sell that you’re willing to do even if it’s low likelihood of success i think we all know the answer is to do that bucket right like i think the question is like how many how much security do you need before you go do the thing you know you should do well or it could be a combination of authoring like it could be like you enjoy winning or you enjoy this space and you want to make it successful but there’s a great clip from you and uh what’s uh free what’s what’s uh all in david freeburg there’s a great clip that i shared that you and him had where he basically said that founders always sell themselves short and they go for these small ideas because because they think it’s more reasonable but when doing that they kind of screw themselves because it’s actually easier sometimes to do much of grander bigger ideas because that attracts the crazy types of people who you want to work with um you’re interested in competitive not every joe is going to try to you know do it like you know going and trying to you know start a railroad business or whatever versus an fba business it’s like well they’re both going to take all your time so that’s equal money well you’re gonna go have to go raise money from investors one will let you just raise you’re still gonna get the money you need from investors just one you maybe raise more at a higher valuation and the other one you’ll raise less at a lower valuation right like but did you agree do you agree with him i i do agree with him and i’ve thought this for a very long time i remember uh back in the day did you ever hear about this thing called the unreasonable institute i don’t even think this is around anymore that’s a great name it’s sort of like the same guys who did summit it’s not it’s not actually the same guys but it’s the same it was like the same idea it was like right the unreasonable institute was basically this like it was based on this one word unreasonable in the way that the hustle is built on this one word hustle and uh trans is built on one word trends and so the unreason was it was exactly that it was like it’s going to take unreasonable people to do unreasonable things for the world to move forward and it was like very inspiring and then they met with all a bunch of people a bunch of people who did that the sort of elon musk types who went and did unreasonable things and then you start to look at it and you’re you know all things equal you know i guess like your inputs are sort of the same it’s just your time and energy and then like the outputs can be very very different because the inputs aren’t the same because it is possible to build something pretty cool and not work that hard but it’s kind of impossible to build something huge and not work very hard all right who do we know and let’s do real examples i’m not saying it’s not true but who do we know that’s building successful awesome businesses without working too hard well how about suli i actually don’t know what’s his schedule does he grind constantly he works hard yes he works hard so then no one you don’t we don’t know anyone but you and me like maybe i’ll give you one nuance on it he got there faster than the normal person so like it looked like it came easier but that’s just because he was better it wasn’t because he worked like he he wasn’t putting in a tenth of the hours he was putting in the same number of hours and getting there ten times faster which is i just think that like there’s a world where you have business a and it doesn’t grow nearly as fast and you’re working 40 hours a week and then you have business b that’s growing significantly faster and you have to work 100 hours a week like that that is a reality yes that’s true that’s what i’m talking about i’m not talking about like very little i’m talking about normal versus not normal there’s also things like this podcast or like people who have like newsletters or blogs or something like that where it’s like or they teach a course it’s like you know like unless you take your buddy neville right so neville i don’t think you and me well because but i’m doing multiple things right so it’s like on each one i’m not putting in as much time but like overall i’m working harder and if i didn’t do those other things that one thing would just expand in time i would just do more i would say wait how often are you working now a day normal work hours uh not normal hours but i work like a the equivalent of eight hours a day got it just not all to it not not all continuously all right but back to what was the original point so my my point was like uh is it is this really true that you can kind of like chill and win and like no i i didn’t mean to say i mean chill less or sorry chill more work less okay wait so then bro if you agree with friedberg which i think i do why are you not going after like one big grand thing like i started a newsletter that’s not exactly like you know that’s not like world changing entirely it’s neat but i would put it on a six out of ten in terms of like maybe a five in terms of like big ideas right yeah i i agree with you the reason why is because to me it’s not a bigness contest it’s a do i have a clear picture of what i want like my life to be and then can i like do i have a crystal clear picture and then can i make that happen and it’s like knowing what i want and then getting what i want and so what i wanted was not to work the hundred hours right even though i even though i agree that’s cool it’s fun and if i did do it um i do think there’s all these extra benefits you’d get amazing talent to come join you you’d make a bunch of money you’d uh have a bunch of fun like there’s there’s great benefits if i did the big one the the big big big one but i decided that like what i wanted yeah yeah what i wanted more was more like the 40 hour a week but hours spent on doing these types of things like i love teaching teaching’s not the most it’s not the most like world-changing unreasonable institute style you know like let’s go land a rocket on mars type of idea but i have the most fun doing it so i’m just optimizing for like a different thing rather than bigness i’m optimizing for like you know my own enjoyment and so that’s why i’m not going after that so i need things that are sufficiently interesting so that i’m interested and big enough so i don’t feel like i’m wasting my time it’s not maximally big right i feel you well to wrap up the bank thing i think it’s it was it’s been kind of interesting i’m going to continue doing it maybe i’ll uh uh i didn’t ask these people who i spoke with today if i could talk about what we discussed so i’m not going to bring it up but uh very useful i sent you the notes they were cool they’re great and also this technique um whether it’s a specific technique or a similar technique it’s like there are people who just know a lot of things um you know people who invest other people’s money uh accountants bankers people like um you know vcs are like this they see they see hundreds and hundreds of businesses a year and so it’s like those people if you want to like speed dial your learning you can go to them and you can get basically free learning off of off of them alright that’s it that’s the episode you