Sam and Shaan revisit the “overemployed” trend — people secretly holding multiple remote jobs — and explore the ecosystem it’s spawned: mouse jiggler hardware, employee monitoring software (Hubstaff at $22M ARR), and the overemployed.com community. They also cover a French indie hacker who built a free After Effects clone, Shaan’s Waymo experience, and lessons from the Ryan Serhant Netflix show about content market fit.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
The Overemployed Trend Returns [00:00:00]
Shaan: All right, so here’s the deal. I have an update on a story that we talked about about two years ago. Partially I want to tell you something cool, partially I just want to nerd out with you on this topic because I’m shocked by it.
So the pandemic hits — what, 2021 — we all go remote. And you and I start talking about something that was fascinating. There’s this weird Venn diagram of MFM listeners: there’s this ambitious person, and there’s this… let’s say morally flexible person, and they overlap to create these ambitious hustlers. And what do those people do during the pandemic when we all go remote? They do this thing called “overemployed.” Have you heard of overemployment?
Sam: I think overemployed is when basically one guy has three jobs but the three jobs don’t know each other.
Shaan: Yeah. It’s like a culture, it’s a tactic, it’s a strategy — I don’t know what you call it. But it’s very “we,” and it explodes. Basically a small group of people go and get multiple jobs because they’re like, “Dude, I’m working at Airbnb. I’m only working 20 hours a week, I get paid $150,000. I can definitely also try to get a job at Facebook.”
Working remote was the key unlock — it was the key unlock where they could kind of hide.
Sam: This story we talked about, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have talked about it, it’s kind of been popular. But you have an update?
Shaan: I have an update and it’s very fascinating to me. So last week Wells Fargo made an announcement where a couple dozen of their employees — specifically ones who worked in the wealth management unit — they laid them all off. And they laid them off because they found that they were using these devices that you put your mouse on top of, and it’s almost like a treadmill that makes it seem like the mouse is constantly moving on their computer. They also did it with keypads, where they had this device above their keyboard that was typing stuff.
Mouse Jigglers and the Monitoring Arms Race [00:03:00]
Shaan: The reason they did that is because of something that’s happened since the pandemic — software that has absolutely exploded where it monitors employees’ work. This already existed in remote-first companies, but now many people are remote and this type of software has exploded to the point where something like 50% of all employers who have remote workers use some type of monitoring software. “Spy software” is a more realistic term.
Sam: That’s pretty accurate actually.
Shaan: So back to that Venn diagram. Here’s what people are doing: they’re using these things called mouse jigglers. They’re exactly what the Wells Fargo folks were using — like a treadmill for your mouse.
There’s a company called Hubstaff and one called Teramind. They have something like 5,000 companies between them, and they are employee tracking software. They did this survey where they looked at a million users of their tracking software and found that roughly 7% were using mouse jigglers or something like it. And one of the CEOs said the true number is almost certainly higher because they were being really conservative. I was shocked — this market is so much bigger than I ever thought.
I want to tell you about a few people who are winning in this market.
Tech8USA: The Mouse Jiggler Hardware Play [00:05:30]
Shaan: The first one — on Amazon, go to Tech8 USA. “Tech” and then the number eight, then “USA.” This is a mouse jiggler company. By the way, “mouse jiggler” is my new go-to diss for somebody who works at a computer all day. “Oh, he’s just a mouse jiggler.”
So there’s this company called Tech8 USA, based in Austin, Texas. You can buy these things for like $30 or $40, and you can add like a cool design to it — like a USA flag. What they’re doing is basically… they’re helping you commit fraud, let’s be honest. And you can add a cool design to it.
By the way, best sales pitch ever — look at this product description: “A thoughtful gift for loved ones. Our undetectable mouse mover makes an excellent gift for anybody who spends a long time at their computer, whether it’s a hardworking professional or a dedicated student who values convenience and efficiency. This mouse jiggler is a practical and thoughtful present. Show your appreciation and help them stay productive and stress-free.”
Sam: It’s sort of like when the vape makers… when I was in high school we would buy vape machines when weed was still illegal and they’d be like “yeah, it’s for tobacco” — but they’d put this wink into all of their descriptions.
Shaan: Exactly. Look at this picture — it says “Balance your work life” and just shows someone’s computer with the mouse jiggler running while the person isn’t sitting there. It says “Walk the dog, relax, water the flowers, have a party with friends while your mouse does the work for you.”
Sam: Was there any doubt that the laziness device would be made in America? Of course it’s made here. I thought it was going to be made in China but no, this thing is made here.
Shaan: And I looked up who the founder is and it’s kind of a weird business where they don’t talk about it. I also think it’d be weird to be making these devices if your company is remote. Like, the CEO of this company is probably like, “Yeah, not a chance we’re going remote.” But it’s really fascinating that this business is thriving.
Sam: They stole your dating profile. “Smart. Beautiful. Undetectable.”
Shaan: Ha. So Tech8 USA — one of the winners in this category.
Hubstaff: $22M ARR from the Other Side [00:08:00]
Shaan: The second winner is Hubstaff. Hubstaff is the software that does the tracking to see if you’re using these devices. The guy started it around 2019 as a side project.
If you Google “Hubstaff revenue,” you’ll see he started pre-pandemic, and it was like a side project. He was posting on Indie Hackers: “I just hit $10,000 in MRR. I just hit $50,000 in MRR.” Then the pandemic hits and it explodes. Now it’s doing $22 million in recurring revenue.
Sam: No way. 22 million in ARR?
Shaan: Yeah. And when he started it, he was building in public — he had a Baremetrics page. If you go to their public dashboard now, it’s gone.
Sam: It got too big.
Shaan: Too big to need to grow in public. But this is super impressive. 22 million-plus ARR, started as a side project. It looks like it’s got 15,000-plus paying customers.
Sam: That’s impressive. By the way — would you install something like this? Like, for Hampton? I’m not going to lie, I’m more afraid of this than I am of, like, my wife cheating on me. It would break my little heart to find out that somebody on one of my teams is just running three jobs with a mouse jiggler all day. That would really make me sad. It kind of makes me want to use something like this to find out if someone’s doing it.
Shaan: Yeah, I think I’m open to it. I like to think our company is small enough that I would know. But honestly, if I ask myself whether I’d be open to it — the answer is “definitely maybe.”
Sam: The answer is yes soon.
Overemployed.com: The Community That Monetized the Lifestyle [00:10:30]
Shaan: Now let me tell you the third winner. There was a subreddit called r/overemployed, and when we talked about it, I think they were at 20 or 30,000 members. They had this whole vocabulary — “my J1, my J2, my J3,” meaning job one, job two, job three. They had all these phrases and things.
Well, the moderator of that subreddit launched a website called overemployed.com. If you go to that website, he talks about his background, why he started it. He refers you to personal finance tools — that’s an affiliate play. He reviews different mouse jigglers — another affiliate play. However, he has a community: partially free, partially paid at $300 a year. It’s a Discord community. He has 60,000 members following the overemployed lifestyle.
Sam: I went to try to track this guy down. His name is Isaac. He calls himself a “career polygamist” on LinkedIn. He has a whole blog at overemployed.com and he tells the story about how he had three different jobs and he got pissed off about the situation. It’s like an us-versus-them founder story, but it’s kind of weird because you’re probably not breaking the law — but you’re definitely doing something you’re slightly ashamed of. Or at least as an employer I would be unhappy about it.
Shaan: So there’s this whole community, this subculture of people, that’s significantly larger than I ever imagined. They’re talking about it openly. I went to the website — it says “Welcome to the secret door to Financial Freedom.” And the slogan is “Work two remote jobs. Reach financial freedom.”
Sam: This is crazy.
Shaan: The special thing here was to go back and check in on this story two years later and find this guy’s blog, his community, and Hubstaff doing $22 million ARR. There’s a whole ecosystem that came up around this one lifestyle. You had the 4-Hour Work Week, which is delegation, automation, 80/20 prioritization. And now you have overemployed, which is like the messed-up cousin to the 4-Hour Work Week — “just lie to your company, you’ll work the same eight hours but for three different companies.”
Sam: I’m surprised and not surprised at the same time at how popular this is.
Shaan: Let me give you one more. And what I’m about to show you is kind of like the equivalent of teaching your children about safe sex but really hoping they don’t do it. Because there’s this guy at theoveremployedguy.com and on his About page he has this long history of how he got J1, J2, J3. Part of the story has this quote: “I had a bad job, I was frustrated, I wanted more money. And then it wasn’t until I heard the hosts of My First Million mention this new trend of people in tech working multiple jobs simultaneously that I was woken up to this badass community.”
Sam: And this is like the second-largest site among the overemployed.
Shaan: Look at this guy’s logo — it’s a dude with three laptops open. I think that’s one of the cardinal rules: you must use one machine per job because they’re going to be tracking you. And he’s wearing a hoodie and a mask, which is like we all kind of agree this is a little strange.
I wanted to bring this story up because I’m not shocked but I’m still shocked. Can I get your take on this? If somebody’s listening — going back to the safe sex thing — you and I have zero desire to do this. Zero. Maybe that’s because we kind of already made it. We sold our companies, we don’t need a job period. But if you were young again, would you be tempted?
Sam and Shaan’s Take: Is Overemployed a Good Strategy? [00:15:00]
Sam: No. I mean, I’d be tempted the way I’m tempted to do anything bad — like drugs — but at the back of my head I’d be like, this is wrong. I would not do this. Career Molly? No. This goes against my ethical code. I’m not in favor of this.
Shaan: Are you not? Me neither. Not just the ethical side — though I’m not in favor of that either. But I’ve always worked in smaller environments where we’re a team on a mission together. If I was doing some other mission while we were on our mission, that would feel like a pretty deep betrayal.
But the second thing is I just don’t think it’s a good strategy. If you are willing to be clever and hardworking enough to figure this out — just either start your own business or crush it at one job. You’ll make more money and work less than you will having to juggle this thing and have to live with the lies in your subconscious at all times.
Living a lie is very taxing emotionally. And you don’t need to do this. One great job, or one big effort if it’s your own company, will pay off. Go up the ladder, or start your own company.
Sam: It goes back to that thing you said the other day — the dumbest person in the world is a professional blackjack player. If you’re smart enough to be a professional blackjack player but dumb enough to use it on a game that’s rigged against you, that’s on you. You’re the wrong middle of the Venn diagram: super smart, hardworking, picks terrible games. And I think this is an example of that.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I don’t want J1, J2, J3. That’s a bad idea.
Shaan: I remember in high school I had this buddy who basically took a water bottle — an Evian or whatever — and he took the plastic label off. On the inside he wrote all the equations for the math test he needed to memorize. It was beautifully done. Perfect handwriting. The equations were sometimes in code in case he got caught. And I was like, “How long did that take you?” He said, “Hours.” And I thought — you could have just studied. The outcome would have been the same and it’s way less risk.
Sam: Perfect analogy. Perfect story. So that’s the overemployed update — I thought it was fascinating.
The Info Diet and Writing What Fascinates You [00:18:30]
Shaan: I wanted to read you something. One of the great things about the internet is it’s such a wide buffet of content. I think a mistake most people make is they go to the fast food chains — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok — and make a content diet of only getting information from big fast food chain social networks. I’m a believer that your info diet matters. Do you agree with that?
Sam: Yeah. My fear is getting influenced by the wrong people. I know you’ve talked about this info diet for a long time and it kind of influenced me. I had this thing where I said, I’m going on the intentional internet — I’m not going to just eat whatever the algorithm feeds me. I’m going to think about what I’m trying to get out of this session and then start opening up Kindle or different things.
Shaan: I have this idea I’m going to create like a food pyramid for the info diet. The way the food pyramid had carbohydrates, proteins, dairy — I think there’s the same thing for information. There are probably proportions you should have of different types if you want to really feed your brain in a healthy way.
One of the cool superfoods — like kale, a nutrient-dense superfood — is to find a baller and then go find their early blog before they made it. I love doing that.
So I was doing this over the weekend. Do you know who Brian Koppelman is?
Sam: Is he a VC?
Shaan: No, Brian Koppelman is the guy who created Billions — he’s a showrunner in Hollywood.
Sam: Oh yeah, yeah.
Shaan: So we were looking up: does he publish anywhere? Does he post his thoughts anywhere? And you want to find things that are five-plus years old. His old blog, old interviews, a course he taught at NYU — things like that.
Shout out to his blog at brian.com. It’s just a plain black-and-white blog. And they’re very simple posts — not the most mind-blowing things, which is in itself an interesting thing. It’s like, wow, this guy who achieved so much — it’s not like he’s writing Shakespearean genius stuff I couldn’t have thought of. It’s like, wow, this is a guy kind of like me who made it in a really unique way.
I’m going to read you one post. The title is “Write What Fascinates You.”
He goes: “This seems simple, right? Of course we should write about what fascinates us and what we obsess over. But so many people approach writing — and especially screenwriting — as if it could be gamed, figured out, or strategized. For the rest of us, we need to calculate less. We need to look inside to find our subject matter, or outside at the world we see, but through a prism of enthusiasm. We must find subjects that are personally animating, inspiring, and engaging to us because once we do, we have a shot at making them inspiring and engaging for others as well. When the story is important to you, when it fascinates you, when the passion is tangible, the reader senses it, and without even knowing why, it gives you the benefit of the doubt. It still takes an enormous amount of effort and concentration, but the huge collateral benefit of telling stories that genuinely fascinate you is this: forcing yourself to sit down and actually do the work is much easier than when you’re writing something because you think it’s marketable or it’s in a genre that’s currently in demand. So calculate less. Write your obsessions. And have a better chance of getting something really written — and turning your screenplay into something that excites and engages the reader.”
Sam: This is awesome. And he wrote this in 2013 — over ten years ago.
Shaan: I think this same advice works for businesses. There’s one way of doing business which is the calculated, strategic approach — you look at markets, create a market map, try to identify a gap, reverse engineer something, do demand testing, AB testing, validate your idea. And the other is you work on things that fascinate you. Either it’s a new technology you think is really cool, a lifestyle you’re curious about, a problem you have that you get obsessed over. That’s where the greatest companies get built. And it’s actually easier — because you’re excited about it and you actually care about the problem.
Sam: Look at today’s podcast — I’m telling you about an 11-year-old blog post and you’re telling me about a subreddit that’s popping off and these bloggers who are overemployed. The reason this podcast works is because we talk about what fascinates us. Nobody else has the same weird taste palette that we have.
Shaan: And it’s really hard to stay unique as you get bigger. Everyone wants you to tone it down. I’m on a rampage about this right now — our titles and thumbnails on YouTube are too YouTube-optimized. It’s calculated to get someone to click instead of being how we want it to feel. Maybe we don’t necessarily need the mass audience. Maybe we need the type of people we want to attract because they’re the ones who are actually going to like the podcast and stick with it.
Sam: I agree with that. And that’s why I like a lot of YouTubers — usually it’s just one person who’s like, “This is my show, I’m going to do whatever the hell I want.” Like this guy I follow, Whistlin Diesel. He’s this guy in Indiana who does the stupidest, craziest stuff. He’s hilarious. He’s a representation of the most interesting YouTubers who don’t really sell out.
Shaan: Let me give you an example of a person who fits this mold wonderfully. You and I are fans of Peter Levels. He fits this mold perfectly.
Pikimove: A One-Man After Effects Clone [00:24:00]
Shaan: I saw that Peter Levels shared something recently and I went down this rabbit hole. There’s this guy — I’m going to struggle to say his name. I believe he’s French. Clement P… I can’t say his last name.
Sam: Look at his name. Honestly I was going to make fun of you but that is not easy.
Shaan: I think it’s pronounced “Pikimove.” So listen to what this guy did. I looked at his website — it’s kind of hard to figure out. He was a DJ in clubs, but while he was DJing and paying the bills he was also a software developer, making random software. He just released something two or three days ago that’s amazing.
So, we’ve talked about Photopea. Photopea is a free basically — I’ll call it a clone of Photoshop, though I don’t know if it’s exactly a clone, but it definitely started that way. It was created by this guy named Ivan, who’s one of these indie hacker guys who was really open about it. He built this Photoshop clone, which obviously had a huge built-in market, and it took off right away. In 2021 he posted that he made a million dollars in revenue — 90% of that from ads. Then in 2023 he said he was now making close to $300,000 a month from that website. Fifteen million visitors a month.
Sam: Massive. Massive. And for all I know it’s just one person.
Shaan: Well, this other guy — we’re going to call him Clem because I can’t say his last name — what Photopea did to Photoshop, he did with Adobe After Effects. He calls it Pikimove. It’s p-i-k-i-m-o-v-e. You have to go to this website.
He posted it on Hacker News, then Reddit, then Twitter. It blew up on all three. He said he was on a Linux machine, trying to use After Effects, it wasn’t working, it wasn’t doing what he needed. So for the last year he basically just built this version of it for himself and it’s free and now he’s letting the world use it. Very underwhelming announcement — “So here’s this thing, you guys can use this.” On Twitter it gets something like two million views. Hacker News: the number one post. Reddit: massive. It completely blew up.
Sam: I mean, it looks like After Effects. And it just says: free alternative to editors such as Adobe After Effects. Web-based. Nothing to install. Works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Your files stay on your computer — they’re not uploaded to a server.
Shaan: When we talked about Photopea, I think you or I had shown it to the other one — and that was like a miracle-looking product. These are the radioactive indie hackers — the ones that got bit by the bug and now have superpowers. Where one man can recreate all of Photoshop, every feature, in a browser, and it actually works, and he’s willing to give it away for free and just maintain it himself for the rest of his life. And now somebody’s doing it with After Effects.
Sam: It’s incredibly impressive. He tells the story on Twitter — people are like “This is amazing, how on Earth did you do this?” And he’s like, “I just did it on nights and weekends by myself and figured it out.”
Shaan: And somebody in the Hacker News comments asks: “As a motion designer, what features does this have that After Effects doesn’t?” And somebody replied: “I’d say the main feature it lacks is a subscription payment requirement.”
Sam: That’s good.
Shaan: And it was a totally underwhelming launch — he didn’t overhype it. But it’s one of those products where you go to it and you’re like… it’s sort of like seeing a huge Lego setup where you’re just like, yes. The fact that you spent a year putting this together. I’m impressed. I don’t have to know anything about this but it’s just epic, just for being epic.
Sam: If you Google his name, you can’t find photos of him. All his profile pictures are like a shark or a whale — just silly avatars. You really can’t find a lot about this guy. If you go to his website there’s nothing there, he barely explains who he is. This is a true one-of-one. These rare individuals that I particularly love and I know you love too — they’re almost like hackers but they’re not doing anything wrong. It’s a weird subculture of people I’m obsessed with. They’re artists who know how to program. And you can’t find anything about this guy. He’s doing it almost for art’s sake.
Shaan: How long did it take him to make this?
Sam: He said he started in early 2023, so that would be a year, year and a half.
Shaan: Very talented. That’s cool. It looks great. I don’t know anything about After Effects because I don’t use it, but I go to the website and I’m like — this is special.
Waymo: First Impressions from the Self-Driving Future [00:30:00]
Shaan: Okay. I have two topics. You pick: the Ryan Serhant show or my self-driving car experience?
Sam: Self-driving car for sure.
Shaan: Okay. So I went into San Francisco last week for a couple of meetings. The Waymo app is now open for everybody. Are you fully in the loop on what’s going on?
Basically there are actual self-driving cars that just drive around San Francisco like taxis. It’s happening. It’s not limited or fake in some way, it’s not a demo. You push a button, it shows up. It’s got your name written on top. You push unlock, it opens up, there’s no driver in there. You get in and it takes you to your destination.
It is magic. I think it’s awesome. It works super well. I would have been pretty nervous to get in one, but I had so many friends who’d been using it in the private beta who were like, “Dude, this thing is so good. It’s better than Tesla’s Autopilot by far.”
So I got in. I feel like here’s a couple of thoughts — I don’t know exactly what I want to say, but I just wanted to come to you with a few random thoughts. You tell me, help me make sense of this.
The first thought is just: I can’t believe this is happening. In my lifetime, we’re just going to shift from everyone driving cars to nobody driving cars. And it’s so obvious the first time you get in one. I had to take an Uber back, and it was comical. It was like the worst Uber experience you could have — it was 100 degrees in the car, he wouldn’t open the windows, he wouldn’t turn on the AC, and every time I asked him a question he was super grumpy. And I was like, I just never want to have a driver in the car again. I went from this seamless, private, fully in-control autonomous experience to what felt like a rickshaw in India.
Sam: So the Waymo experience — how much more expensive was it than an Uber?
Shaan: Like 20–30% more expensive.
Sam: Oh, that’s nothing.
Shaan: Yeah. And there are some small hiccups — it’s more polite than a human driver, so for example if you’re standing right there, it won’t just stop in the middle of the road and block traffic. It’ll go up 30 feet and pull over and you’ve got to walk 30 feet. Little things like that. But man, I was impressed.
Sam: Have you been in one of these?
Shaan: No, but I’m looking forward to it. I have a Tesla and I hate my Tesla — I think it’s a horrible car.
Sam: Which one do you have?
Shaan: The X. I think it’s horrible. But there’s one feature that makes it absolutely worth it, which is the self-driving stuff — you keep your hands on the wheel but I use it all the time and I’m significantly more comfortable with it than with my wife or me driving. I think it is way safer.
Shaan: Let me correct you: in the future, you’re just not going to buy cars. You’re going to push a button and the car’s going to take you where you want. You’re never going to need to own a car.
Sam: I could see that. Something like 40,000 people die in America from car accidents every year. This is going to drastically reduce that.
Additionally — have you ever studied what causes traffic?
Shaan: Tell me.
Sam: You’ll see these gifs or on “How Stuff Works” — “here’s how a traffic jam starts” — and you see one person abruptly stop, which causes another person to abruptly stop, and then it’s like a train reaction. It’s almost more of a psychological problem than a physical one. But when you think about traffic being solved — the margin of error isn’t a human making a mistake. You can drive within 10 feet of the car in front of you because you know you’re not going to hit the brake too late. That’s going to be solved. We’re going to save hours and hours every month because of this. And let alone the lack of death.
Shaan: And parking. Cars have only like a sub-10% utilization rate — 90% of the time a car is just sitting idle doing nothing. That’s going to change. If a car can drive itself, instead of sitting idle it’s going to go earn money for you. It’s going to drop people off and earn cash. So when the utilization rate goes up, you don’t need as many cars total. Way fewer cars being used way more, which means way less parking, way less buying cars. It’s a big change coming.
Sam: In addition to the lifestyle change. In the Waymo you’re sitting in the back. The wheel is just turning itself. You don’t even look outside. We had a full meeting — we could talk numbers and everything because there’s no driver there. It was a productive 20 minutes. And if I wanted to just sleep I could have fully slept.
I don’t know how much time the average person spends in a car but for people with a real commute, they’re probably spending like two or three hours a day in a car — versus what will become either an incredibly productive or relaxing time going from one place to another.
Shaan: I remember explaining this to my parents or in-laws and they’re like, “Well aren’t you afraid that you’re in this machine and it’s controlling things?” And I always say — well, are you afraid when you get into an elevator? I’m not. I trust that the button is going to do the right thing. I’m also not afraid when I fly on an airplane. The pilot is sitting there but it’s basically on autopilot. I am a little bit nervous because the technology is new, but in 10 years it’s going to be significantly better than it is now. And it’s pretty good now. So no, I’m not afraid at all. I’m incredibly bullish. From now on, the cars I buy are all going to have some type of driver assist.
Sam: That’s the way the world should be. At least that’s what I think.
Ryan Serhant and the Kardashian Real Estate Model [00:39:30]
Shaan: All right. Let’s do the Serhant show.
Sam: So I binge-watched Owning Manhattan — it’s just a random Netflix show. Most people wouldn’t care about it, but I happened to binge-watch it and stayed up till like four in the morning. Who is this guy?
Shaan: I just know he’s a silver-haired guy who sells real estate.
Sam: Yeah. He’s a real estate broker, one of the high-end brokers in New York. He got famous because he was on a show called Million Dollar Listing since he was like 25 years old — basically a decade on Bravo TV with a bunch of other brokers. What happened is he leaves the show in like the tenth season, takes a little break, and then comes back with his own Netflix show.
Selling Sunset was this huge hit reality show and the genre of “real estate reality” became a thing — Selling OC, Selling Miami, Selling Sunset — a whole bunch of these. So he comes back with Owning Manhattan. The story is Ryan Serhant — who is like the Ryan Seacrest of the real estate world, this super good-looking guy who loves to be on TV. He left his brokerage, starts his own firm, hires 200 or 300 agents, and the show follows him trying to become the number one brokerage firm in New York.
And I got to say, the show is pretty interesting. You know, he’s good at TV — kind of obnoxious but it grows on you. And then you have the agents all peacocking, trying to have their own brand and personality. You have the house porn, the luxury real estate, the big dollars flying around. And then you have the drama of a soap opera.
Shaan: Why is he obnoxious?
Sam: It’s his style. He does this “cocky funny” thing. He’ll be like — I can’t do it well — but he’ll be like, “Real estate is hard. Not for me. I mean, I make it look easy, but for other people it’s hard.” And he does that in every interview. At first you’re just like, all right, whatever. But over time you get to see the guy sweat because — the way the show makes it feel — he’s hanging on by a thread and each of these deals has to go through or bad things happen.
Shaan: He gives off the vibe of a super Alpha guy — like a high-roller hedge fund guy, but for real estate.
Sam: And also kind of metro. He’s got both sides — the style and fashion and light touch, but also this cutthroat killer trying to win. “Wake up at 5:00 AM, work out, eat healthy, at the office by seven.” He’s intense.
Shaan: Exactly. So why did you want to share this?
Sam: Two things. First, hey, it’s a TV show I liked — if you’re looking for something, you might like it. But the bigger thing: there’s a moment in the show where Ryan is confronting this one young agent who’s basically the controversial guy on the scene. He’s talented but he’s an asshole, right? Super good-looking, fully tatted up, used to be a model in Norway, only 25 years old, super cocky. He’s like, “Why would the next generation of rich people want to buy from some bald-headed used car salesman-looking guy in a cheap suit? They want to buy from me.”
Shaan: He rides a motorcycle everywhere. Fantastically dressed at all times.
Sam: I tried to find his stylist. This guy’s got great style. He has neck tattoos — I’m not buying real estate from a neck tattoo guy, but you kind of want to.
Shaan: If you have a tattoo that goes over your Adam’s apple… I don’t know. That’s the line. I’d want to hang out with you maybe, but I don’t know if I want to do business with you. Like, clearly visible in a turtleneck, you’ve got problems.
Sam: And what about this — there’s a scene at the end where Ryan is confronting this guy because he’s been causing a bunch of drama. And he says something I thought was just really great. He goes: “You spend so much of your time trying to get noticed instead of spending your time trying to be great. If you spent half the time just trying to be great, you’d be so great that everybody would have to notice you.”
I thought that was a wonderful line. I feel like I could forward that as an insult to like 10 people I know in life — people who are very active on social media when they should just be trying to be great.
That guy who did the After Effects thing — he could have been promoting himself, blogging, doing all this stuff. Instead he just did one great thing and we all have to notice him. We all want to be part of this guy’s world versus him trying to push his agenda out there.
Shaan: Are you becoming introspective lately? Is this a thing? Are you doing the work, as they say?
Sam: Someone made a comment to me where they said, “Sam, I could tell what phase of life you’re in by listening to the podcast — I hear what you’re talking about and who you’re getting influenced by.” I’m kind of doing the same thing looking at you. It’s exciting to see the quotes you’re interested in and how you’re thinking about how you want to live.
Shaan: If you spot it, you got it — that’s the rule. This resonates with me because there’s a part of this that’s true for me and true for people I care about and want to shake. So yeah, I’m very into this.
Sam: You also have a large fanbase of young men on YouTube who look up to you and think you’re cool. Which you are. They would be shocked at how basic your TV choices are.
Shaan: So true.
Sam: You and my wife will text about like the Challenge or the Bachelor or whatever. I love that this is the one part of you where you are mainstream — you’re into this stuff.
Shaan: I just try to keep in touch with the common folk.
Sam: Look, you’re a very complex person with deep taste and a rich personality, but this is the one part where you’re just like the rest of us.
Shaan: Everybody’s like that, right? You like to go build Legos in your free time. When we want to switch the light off we don’t want it dim, we want it off. When I want to relax I want to go mindless, veg out, fully indulge in a non-intellectual pursuit. And even then — you can see — I somehow turn that into podcast content and lessons for life when I’m supposed to just be looking at people’s pretty outfits. I can’t really fully turn it off. But I try to go do the stuff I truly enjoy without trying to also make it cool and intelligent.
The Serhant Media Empire: The Kardashian Model for Real Estate [00:46:00]
Sam: This guy Ryan — he gives off a vibe I found very off-putting at first. Like, I feel like you’re Grant Cardone or something. But I got to know him and I’m like, oh no — you’re the real deal. You’re just intense and legit. He has a company called Sell It — sellit.com. Have you seen it?
Shaan: No.
Sam: It’s like a course and one-on-one training business for real estate agents. It could come off scammy, but when I go to the website I do not get that vibe at all. I’ve heard rumors that this business is doing something like $30 or $40 million a year in revenue. And he’s building up a legit media empire of courses.
But here’s the thing I buried the lead on — the reason I wanted to talk about the show. I watched it and I go: “Oh my God, he’s doing the Kardashian model.” But instead of selling $9 lip gloss, he’s selling $9 million apartments.
What I mean is he’s using the Netflix show as the greatest marketing vehicle for his own agency. He has hit media that creates more business. It’s perfect content market fit.
The Kardashians used media to build their beauty empire. He’s doing it to build his real estate empire and his sales empire. And the funniest tweet I saw on this was somebody goes, “The greatest sale Ryan ever did was selling Netflix an eight-hour infomercial without them realizing it.”
Because the show is an infomercial for him, for his brokerage, for his agents. It entertains you and it’s profitable for them — good media and good business. And once I saw this I was like, applying that to one of the highest-ticket items in the world, luxury homes at that — that is a very powerful combination.
You’re just going to keep seeing examples of this content market fit happening. Where people figure out a way to make really juicy standalone entertainment that is then going to inherently market them and their business.
Shaan: We have a couple friends who bought from him, right?
Sam: Yeah. And I asked our buddies about the experience and they were like, “Yeah, he showed up and he was there — actually doing the work, showing me around this $8 million apartment.” He was real. So I think this guy’s a workhorse.
Shaan: Yeah. The New York energy, right? The New York hardcore overdrive personality.
Sam: No, I’m a big fan of this guy. He was one of those types of people I learned about and I’m like, I don’t like you at all. And then I started learning more and more and now I’m like, oh, you’re awesome. You’re legit.
Shaan: You come to respect the hustle.
Sam: I respect this guy a lot. It’s kind of like what I said about the Adam’s apple tattoo: not for me, but I still respect it. I can’t imagine grinding that hard. But I love that he exists. All right, I think that’s it.
Shaan: All right, that’s the pod.