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 you know I think I’ve changed my mind I think that investing is [ ] stupid okay let’s jump right in people been craving a brainstorm and we’re gonna give them a brainstorm can I tell you one thing really quick before we get to the brainstorm yeah let’s do it okay so I’m gonna go buy a car in about three hours and I’m gonna live starting August I’m gonna live in a new city each month for 12 months and it’s gonna be I’m looking for a list of happiest cities so okay how about let me know well I’ve seen that once before and I think it was like you’re talking about us only right I think like Switzerland or Sweden is number one or something yeah I would go to Canada I want to go to Mexico City because I love it but the corona thing I don’t think is under control there at least to drive there I wouldn’t to drive through those cities in order to get there so where are you starting do you know number one I think it’s gonna be Provo is it called Provo or Provost what’s called probably Utah Utah the Mormons like are definitely the happiest so I’m gonna go and hang out with them and and then I don’t know I got a plan it okay well I think that’s good you should figure it out as you go and somebody somebody tweeted this as a reply because I think you mentioned this maybe on the last one and they were like dude you must have the coolest wife who’s just dad to do all this stuff they’re like you think we need to get her on the pod so I have two questions for you about that eh what’s her reaction to your you know life plans like this like crazy life plans is she does she feed into them does she pull you back a little bit and say hey here’s what’s a little more realistic is she just down for whatever like what’s her what’s her down yeah she’s a little more conservative than I am but she’s down but does this seem like a crazy idea this doesn’t seem like a crazy idea at all I don’t think it’s crazy necessarily but it’s an orthodox right like most people don’t do this let’s say it’s unusual I don’t think it’s crazy I think it’s good here why I think this is weird if I told my wife if I said well now we have a baby so that’s probably his place when you were childless yeah yeah I if I had said hey I want to move every month to a different City she would have been like why are we doing all this like no let’s not do that like okay you wanna go on vacation let’s go on vacation I think that would have been a reaction no we’re really pushed for it if I was like I need this she would have done it but it helps that I don’t have kids and we know that we’re gonna have Sara’s 27 so we’re gonna have kids in three years so we’re definitely like let’s just party right yeah that’s good Sonny’s a year older than me and so for day one it’s been like yo buddy I’m on the clock let’s do this okay so that’s one thing that’s one question and then the second question is does she listen to the podcast yeah yeah she does so alright nice that would be interesting to have wives come on because they have to deal like how do they handle like Sarah it’s a handful for her to work with me for sure like because I’m so crazy we should do a crazy happy hour episode one time right night happy hour episode not crazy like I want to do a wild [ ] all the time but emotionally I’m just like [ ] nuts I think a lot of people who create stuff are so she does have to put up with [ ] she’s patient so it’s good my wife is goes crazy on the miner and is down for the major and what I mean by that is like if I if I suggest something that’s a minor change or inconvenience or or setback she overreacts and then if I’m like like she was pregnant and I was like I’m gonna quit my job we’re gonna have no healthcare I’m gonna go do this crazy thing it’s super high risk high reward and she was like okay yeah I believe in you and so like on the major things she’s like the switch flips in her head and she’s like okay I gotta be super resilient now wait did you just reveal something no this was before oh and when she was writing it before before we had a baby cuz I was like look I’m gonna sell this company or I’m gonna end the company but one of two ways we’re not gonna continue this as is like I’m gonna go for the sale hard for 30 days which is too short and if we if we get a term sheet we get a term sheet if we don’t get a term sheet I actually want to just go do something else that I think has higher upside and that’ll mean no salary no healthcare no nothing and if this doesn’t work out well and you moved I mean you I feel like you bought a house and moved on a whim yeah I did that too okay let’s jump it let’s do some of these topics what do you got what do you wanna start okay let’s start with duck duck okay I’ve I was on the James Altucher podcast James was here with us a few weeks ago James is like a like a dork nerdy guy I say this would love I like him a lot he’s like a nerdy guy libertarian guy libertarian audience and I can’t decide if this whole privacy stuff that we’re talking about so hey calm female service launched a few days ago a few weeks ago a week ago yeah its premise is like we’re one of its many promises it’s on privacy okay and so I’m really into this privacy thing the founder of Pandora told me that he is seeing his customers who are middle America people actually care about privacy and when I was on my trip I saw DuckDuckGo billboards everywhere for those who don’t know duck taco it’s a google competitor it’s a search engine and they it’s all based on they don’t track you which like [ ] ruins the business model have no idea how they make money but no no it doesn’t so their thing was like it’s not no ads so they still do search ads but they’re like look when you search for you said you’re gonna go buy a new car when you go search for you know Mercedes versus BMW or whatever you’re gonna search for they’ll serve you an ad they just don’t need to know that you’re sampar that you live in this place that you have life you know they don’t need the personal data for the ads to still be effective because search is high intent they know what you’re looking for so they can serve you of relevant ad and their insight was the slight drop off you get by not personalizing is not so bad if that can become your value proposition that hey we’re not using personal information to serve these ads okay so I just sent you their traffic DuckDuckGo comm slash traffic so here’s my question to you first of all and we’re looking at a hockey stick we’re looking at anomalous and 10 2010 they’re at you know this is this is queries per dare this is average yeah so they average 62 million queries per day I have no idea I mean what do you think Google’s queries per day probably like like 5 billion I mean a brief see if you can find let’s see if you can find Google’s careers today so we could put this so 3.5 billion off ok ok yes corrine Google or duck duck goes at 50 50 60 million a day so the I don’t even know what’s that like 3% the size anyway DuckDuckGo what do you think about that I personally love this and what I want to know from you is do you like deco and do you also think this privacy thing like building products where the main feature or values in like or like the main thing the brain stands for is privacy do you think that’s gonna be it I think it’s a hit I used to think the opposite I used to be of the camp that was like look people don’t give a [ ] like if you just say yeah sure in theory people want privacy if you offer no privacy or privacy but when it comes down to products they’re like oh this is a free good thing and I have to give up all my data all right here you go and so I used to think that people in practice were willing to easily trade privacy and I think that’s still true on the whole oh yes where is the pendulum swinging and so I think the pendulum is swinging more towards people caring about privacy because every these things stack up right so as you you know the more paranoid you get the less lack of trust you have in the system and of the of the big companies it doesn’t matter you don’t have to know which one is the straw that breaks the camel’s back maybe it’s the fake new stuff on Facebook maybe it’s when your information gets breached for the 35th time and you get an email saying hey sorry your personal if I might’ve been leaked but you don’t know where it is but these things just keep happening and to the point where I believe people care more than they did before and they’ll continue to care more that’s number one number two you have to do it on a global product like a product everybody uses cuz it’s still a niche audience all right like you said Google is about 50 times the search query size then induct echo up so like 50 to one and so you need a product that’s used by pretty much everybody for that those ones to add up and be a big enough market for you so I wouldn’t do it on some niche products like oh you do you know some niche mailing you know MailChimp software thing cool I’m gonna make a privacy focused version it’s like no that’s that’s an issue of a niche well if it’s about ego stream it works like hey calm I caught hey calm Global write emails everybody yes it is global but like you don’t need that many users to build a billion-dollar company totally what I’m - that’s was saying though you need you’re only gonna get the sort of 2% let’s say that value privacy enough to make a change and so you know like superhuman did the same thing email such a huge market cool we’ll go get the 1% 2% who are willing to pay 30 bucks a month for a free for instead of free email I think this is anything happening here I pray you how old are you 27 you’re a little old for this question the zoom ray just five years ago no it’s a generational thing I want to know do the 22 year olds give a [ ] about this because the way that the Zoomers the way that they live and think is really [ ] about getting coronaviruses the privacy of their data they don’t care about their body they’re a pretty conscientious group of people i think i don’t know i would i want to know how they think but that was my question okay so here’s another private here’s another opportunity for privacy that I’m interested in do you know that when you go to Safeway so in California we have Safeway in the South you’ve got Kroger and the other South you’ve got Publix what else is there Albertsons Albertsons okay so when you go to your grocery store like your major grocery store you enter in your phone number to get a discount right what they do with that is they understand your buying behavior and they’ll show you they’ll send you stuff in the mail or they will just learn about inventory whatever and this is incredibly effective so effective that there’s a famous story about a woman being a sixteen year old get a woman getting mailed stuff to her dad’s home saying like baby supplies and the dad was like right hey my daughter sixteen she’s not pregnant what he talked about turns out she was pregnant and they knew it because in your party yeah yeah month you know what to buy anyway when you go and buy that ship did you know that you can submit like a request and they’ll send you all of your do not track request well that you could do it do not track and they can send you everything you’ve ever bought oh that’s pretty cool okay I like it so what what would you do with that data yeah I think that’s just an interesting thing you could do in general like a mint calm style I think you could say hey what’s your phone number okay then you go request it on behalf of the customer and you give them cool visualizations about their spending patterns over time and other products they might like but I don’t what do you would I do with that data if I was the company or if I was myself what do you think if you’re trying to build a business I would go figure out other areas where this sort of like linking and tracking will work and so so a lot of people have already done this right like the ad market it’s kind of like porn where porn innovates first okay a close second or third might be the ad market so you know fir Khan who was kind of my co-founder or CTO of my previous company his previous company was an ad tech company and they one of the versions of their app that they made so the company is called app lovin and so initially the premise was what apps are your friends loving we will recommend those apps to you and so it was like if I know what apps you have and I know that you’re my friend because you’re in my address book then it can tell me that sampar loves this app I thought it was a play on McLovin no it was I don’t know maybe that was a side benefit because every love super bad but won it but then all kinds of little edge cases started [ ] them up so they would you know record they would tell me that you love Grindr right like so so first it’s like not everybody’s app behavior they want to be transparent to their friends or their contacts and I think there was one really horrible case where this so then they switched us trying to do this for app installs so they’re like okay if I’m playing a game and it’s awesome I’m sorry forget about it’s awesome I’m playing a game and they want you to download that game because they get paid 9 bucks if you download the game they would show my face from your address book as hey Shaun’s playing candy crush right now tap here to play candy crush - and that was like a super effective ad unit like there were like printing money and I think something really bad happened we’re like the CEO of Expedia or something like that got an ad that like his deceased wife was playing this game or something like that like someone from his address book who had this app was shown to him and he’s like what the hell is this and so it got back to them and they had to turn it off and they would they they did they did a similar experiment around location tracking like have a life 360 thing so yeah you’re really careful with these like data oh let’s use data to give you information about either yourself or others you can get the situation like the dad who finds out a 16 year olds pregnant I long story short privacy okay I have a privacy idea for you I love a privacy idea for you so I just think it’s just because I’ve become like I like the older I’ve gotten I’ve gotten like more libertarian and like [ ] the government like mentality well there’s two things are happening there’s people who bring on a libertarian which is like eff the government and if the man in general and then there’s people are becoming more nationalistic which is like it’s us first them and us first them main sort of keep them out and raise us up and I think in both cases you see this sort of like retreat in both cases it’s sort of it’s not like a shelter in place physically but it’s a shelter in place sort of psychologically behaviorally where you reduce your like openness and your spread it you know in your behaviors and your data in another way so I think people in general when times get a little crazy people there’s a flight to safety and I see I think you see this with investing I think you see this with the way people act and behave so I think that more people do it when they’re when times get turbulent now a privacy focused idea that I had the other day so moved into this new house need to get internet set up oh [ ] got to play the Comcast game Comcast comes over and of course you know Wi-Fi doesn’t really work great in my house so I was like okay I need to invest in good Wi-Fi because not having good Wi-Fi is like not having water to drink and so I’m like looking for these like Eero these kind of mesh networks that you use in your house I just thought one give you more coverage so I just bought euro but I was talking to FERC on and I was like I think euro sucks well I hope it doesn’t slash because I just bought it but but the idea that I was thinking about was you know how when you what typically happens you have your Wi-Fi router and then on your laptop you’ll have like a VPN so a lot of people have VPNs VPNs are more and more popular some people have it for work some people have it to hide their traffic as they go bootleg movies on the internet and they don’t want it to be sort of traced to them and so VPNs are kind of complicated like to set up like you got to download one you don’t know if it’s malware you’re setting it up the average person doesn’t know what the hell VPN is I was asking I’ve done a ton of research on this market well the idea was actually why don’t you build VPN into the router so you never need it down anything it’s just VPN by default and it’ll thing into the hardware itself and so you actually the the value prop of the router is this is secure Internet and and so there so he so forgot of course like you know there’s people doing this and so I can’t say I’m the first to have this idea but he was telling me about a couple of companies to check out if you’re interested in this so next DNS is one of them ubiquity is another one and so he was showing me a few of these that today are still kind of like you kind of need to be a developer to a know about these or be like know how to configure them to set them up and so I think if somebody takes the zero level of simplicity and design but they make the value prop hey your your internet search traffic your whatever you’re doing on the Internet is private if you buy this box instead of that box I think hard thing behind that the hard thing about these compass so first of all the VPN in businesses I did a I wrote about them because I think that it’s gonna explode and they already are exploding but a lot of them are based in Panama because of the privacy laws there and a lot of them are notoriously scammy and weird they’re also ridiculously profitable like I talked to the one guy he had one it made twenty million dollars a year in revenue and like a hundred million in profit like right stupid but euro do you remember you know euro got bought by Google I think Amazon I think Amazon it like God acquired for nothing these companies are so hard to make money because it cost so much money right yeah I think hardware is hard everybody knows that like ring doorbell you know it gets a billion dollar outcome but like I don’t think it was like ultra profitable at the time I think was strategic the reason it got bought but the reason I think Wi-Fi router is interesting because Wi-Fi is like email it’s like Google search it’s a thing that everybody has every every physical place has a router and so though two percent of that market that cares about privacy I think is still a big market and I think I don’t I don’t believe that it’s so hard to make money because again you like with this Comcast box that I have here I got to pay these guys fourteen bucks a month just for this router to sit here it’s no way this router is worth more than like fifty dollars but they’re gonna make money on me you know break even in five months and they know I’m never gonna like get rid of my router and so so yeah I think that there’s something interesting there yeah also [ ] those guys this episode is brought to you by what do you got okay here’s something interesting I saw the other day all right so by the way this Costco for services that I bear you put freaking awesome but go ahead yes okay you wanna do that one let’s do that wow I don’t know anything about it I pray you got a problem I want to hear but you keep doing what you’re doing then we’ll do that one okay all right so the one I was gonna say is much more pouring it’s so it’s about tax so I’ve been getting into tax stuff now because when you get a little bit of money you’re like oh [ ] why am i paying so much tax is there a way I think rich people avoid this how did they do that I need to learn their game and so I was learning about like a what are legal sort of tax avoidance tax shelter strategies how do you you know avoid paying forty eight percent tax which is what I ended up paying a lot of stuff in California here and so so one of the things that I learned about was so there’s solar credits right so Solar is one of these things that the government subsidizes so if you have a building you can buy solar and you can take a hundred percent of the installation cost as tax write-off so I was like okay that’s cool but okay where am I gonna put that on my house I don’t know and I don’t really dude solar I’m so ignorant when it comes to taxes so when you say right off that just reduces that just increases your income yeah like let’s say you make a million bucks if you’re gonna pay you know 40 something percent 43 to 48 percent tax here in California cuz it’s let’s say it was all ordinary income and and you’re in the highest tax bracket so you’re gonna pay all that in tax now you know if you’re if you have certain business expenses or personal losses or tax offsets you can reduce your your overall tax burden so instead of paying 400 grand in taxes you pay 300 grand which saves you a hundred grand so you gotta buy the damn thing you still gotta buy the damn thing but but if you if you need a thing or you like with solar so this is where I’m getting at so typically with solar it’s like oh well I need power anyways I’ll save every month on my monthly bill and I can get a tax write-off today so there’s a good investment right I’ll take 100 grand I’ll put it in alright 100 grand immediately on my taxes so it’s sort of like I got the thing for free and then I’m gonna get a lower utility bill every month after that right so that’s the theory why don’t but you get it for free I kind of I’m so stupid I don’t know I’m gonna spend an extra hundred grand but immediately by spending that I can write off the hundred grand off my taxes so yes I had to take another hundred grand out of pocket but now I have to pay a hundred grand less in taxes right so you can see how it offsets your tax but no you don’t pay a hug god we said I think I just I’m so fearful of something like such a [ ] idiot I don’t Stu I think I don’t think you might could be wrong too but I don’t think you you spend a hundred grand less in taxes you spend a hundred gram times forty three percent like no it’s like a hundred grand less it’s not let’s say my total tax is if my total taxes do was four hundred grand and I have a hundred thousand dollar offset you know a deduction that I could that I can make so you take my total tax bill four hundred thousand and you reduce it by a hundred thousand so now my total tax bill is three hundred thousand that’s how it works for sure okay okay so anyways I know nothing so I’ve been trying to find what are these deductions how do they work do I do I qualify now interesting market that I saw so my my father-in-law was like yeah you know with solar I was like I don’t own a building he’s like yeah if you own real estate you know you can depreciate the real estate you can do solar as I kind of owned a building so what do you want me to do here he’s like well you know technically you could buy the solar for another building and lease it to them and then you write off your hole and your capex whatever and so what I found was there’s this business so if you ever noticed there’s a long way of saying if you notice when you drive by schools that schools all have solar panels on top now and so if you see in California especially you go every middle school high school is just got solar panels all along the roof and the way this works I found out was companies like Chevron and Exxon or whoever they want so they want tax credits and so what they do is they go to the school say hey we will buy solar for your school and they buy solar panels for the school it becomes a tax write-off to them the school leases it from Chevron and so Chevron gets a monthly payment from the school and the school gets lower utilities without ever taking a dollar out of its pocket so I thought this is very interesting and it sort of I don’t know much about this yet and so I’m a I’m gonna dig into this but it seems like there’s a there’s a business to be had for basically pairing up schools churches other types of entities that want solar they want a lower utility bill they don’t have the money to invest to do this whole infrastructure thing and businesses which are looking for tax write-offs and just make it where you push a button the project happens and you receive your paperwork that says here’s your deduction and here’s your income stream coming from the lease so I think there’s a business to be built basically pairing up the two sides of the marketplace a physical building like a school or whatever that needs that wants solar it doesn’t to pay any money he doesn’t to do any work and a company that’s looking for tax write-offs that that’s willing to go give that school solar in exchange for the tax write-off love it I’m gonna tell you something even similar as well and this is in the same vein of half very half-baked 10% baked 1% begged most highway medians and government property or public property has grass and the reason it the reason it has grass as grass is the cheapest way to cover land okay but grass is actually incredibly expensive to upkeep like if you’re in a median you have to mow it like the way that the math works out it’s something like I forget the exact there’s there’s math behind this but and then plus having to mow it and water it and do all this stuff it’s incredibly expensive and in LA I have to remember the numbers but in LA I think that like 20 or 30 percent of all water went to watering lawns right and so what they did was they tested this out and they gave turf to their residents they just gave it away they go here bull here will do it for you yeah and it reduced water usage significant amount and I started thinking about it I’m like that’s kind of interesting what if you just went to the government and you’re like I’m we’re just gonna let’s let’s just turf all the all the medians in America right and I cuz I heard that NPR they did this whole this whole this whole thing they like about how bad grass is and I was like that’s pretty amazing I got a look into this and I have not looked into it so this is what I sound like there’s a [ ] it this whole episode but no let me give you one more okay say here’s okay here’s the general theme of these really random ass topics we’re talking about is when you look around the world and is what I’m now training my brain to do when you look around the world and you see some item or object or patch of grass just think to yourself how did this get here and what you realize is there is a business underneath every single thing like this is what going back to when we said you know in offices you got that poster about like the kind of HR hazards or whatever like the super stupid labor law poster you have to come in here I think it’s a huge business that’s a Hellmouth I was blind to this right I just saw this poster I didn’t ask how it got there I didn’t ask why it had to be there why every office has this but whoever asked that question realized there’s an opportunity here and they started laminating these [ ] posters and making 50 million dollars a year giving you this annual poster that you have to update in your office so that’s the the test for the for the listener is start to look at the world and say how did this get here who wanted this here what is the economics of this again oftentimes the that that’s a good great point Sean a lot of times when people they don’t think about that stuff and it what if you dug deep a lot of times you could realize that there was some bureaucratic decision that was a [ ] horrible decision right yeah and there could be opportunity could be a totally busted so a lot of times there is like a scrappy entrepreneur who comes up with something cool like that sign business other times it’s like well why did you guys decide to like make the screws 5 inches instead of 6 inches it’s like because like the six on the keyboard was worn out right right alright so here’s another example of these like hidden in plain sight businesses all right you go to a you go to a airport you take a flight you go to baggage claim ok cool night nine times out of ten your bags there now the other ten times out of the out of 100 or whatever you know your bag is lost and they recover it but there still ends up being this point three percent of luggage that’s never claimed and the number point three so it goes to ninety-nine point seven percent of luggage I believe is gets claimed and so 0.3% of luggage is just unclaimed baggage so I saw this business called unclaimed baggage what they have done is they went and they partnered with every airline and they said - we will take the unclaimed baggage because they have some protocol like I don’t know what it is like after 21 days if no one claims it now we’re just stuck with this [ ] and somebody was like hey that is not [ ] that’s a suitcase and that’s some stuff inside and yeah so they were like David seen the 16 minutes episode on this it was like I’m not serious Bama Birmingham Alabama I believe you’re play there based somewhere random it’s the yeah they have a physical store in where’s yeah Alabama Scottsboro Alabama yeah I know this company well I love it so you can go to their website Unclaimed Baggage comm it’s there’s things as the nation’s only retailer of lost luggage that caught my eye anytime you say only that means I locked up an exclusive on this [ ] I’m so happy that I can be the only player which means I’m gonna extract a lot of value here so what they do is they donate a bunch of stuff that they get into bags to charities cool there’s a feel-good component to this they take orphaned bags and they recycle them they sell them or they donate them and those three combined or a business and so this was just like to me such a cool clever idea I couldn’t find like their revenue I didn’t have a chance to check but you can go on the site and it’s like to call again unclaimed unclaimed bag it’s like you’ll buy this there’s a Rolling Stones collector’s limited edition leather motorcycle jacket for five hundred dollars up on up for auction on this thing what’s the call uncle unclaimed baggage unclaimed baggage calm well we could find this out I I remember sixty minutes but it did a big like expose on the a while ago and it was like oh uh they they have like tens of thousands of square French right yeah they’re huge huge facility there the other one that’s like this which i think is more popular people know about this more is the group that takes the okay you go to a hotel you use you know two squirts of shampoo out of the mini bottle and now there’s still three squirts left and then you check out and they can’t they don’t want to give that empty half-empty bottle to the next guess so they ditch it and so some guy was like wool that’s a lot of waste of plastic and shampoo and so someone started going into hotels and partner and said I will take all your used shampoo bottles conditioner bottles body wash whatever and so they built a huge business just recycling this I love that they take it they reuse the goods they donate certain things to charity and it’s such a good business it’s like doing good while doing well and I think those are great I love that here’s why I just googled so Doyle Owens is the founder of Unclaimed Baggage he’s he’s dead now he died recently and if you google I’m he’s just like an old Southern right white looking to I mean just a normal ass looking dude and a guy who watches Billy Madison three times a day well the reason why I like him is because or I like this is because I think that people tend to overcomplicate things and like I’m very passionate about the mission of reducing waste just like you just don’t like the idea of don’t consume what you don’t have to consume it just don’t be wasteful I was raised Catholic I’m like this idea of like gluttony and like waste it just as it’s in my blood like I hate it this [ ] guy this is like the definition of just like turn and [ ] into goal of just like right she’s just like it’s a super simple it’s not fancy it’s an Alabama which you know I’m from the south so but no disrespect to the south but like people look down on that [ ] because I think they’re in Silicon Valley that they’re special and he’s just that this guy reduced waste significantly and got very wealthy in the process right loved it and created he probably created maybe thousands of jobs for like low income people this guy is the best I love this if you have if you know about a business like this I’ll call the hidden in plain sight you know super simple ideas just things that when you look around the world most people just take them for granted and then somebody out there’s like no wait how did this get here who picks this up when it’s done what’s the business of that tweet those at me I want to know what other businesses are like this out there did you joint did you make a life to get them do you make that term up no I think they use that term for like serial killers that are just in society so like that’s where I’ve heard it it’s criminals in some way but I don’t know yeah it’s a phrase do Doyle Owens is this guy’s name who started Unclaimed Baggage I love this guy Doyle I hope you listen to this he’s dead sorry I said you know dad I’m looking at his obituary he’s dead damn this guy is [ ] awesome don’t no one go into this market I want this family to be I love this family three seconds of silence for Doyle [ ] there’s a big New York time this is I got to cover this on the hustle this is a super interesting story an example of this that you guys covered on the hustle is the mannequin lady in Oakland yeah takes you know I guess either used or damaged mannequins out of stores cuz again what are you gonna do with this hunk of plastic like who needs this mannequin and she’s just got a warehouse of mannequins and then ships them out and makes it killing so so there that’s another example of these Oh like these are parts of the world that you didn’t realize are businesses all right Aubry you give us Casco for services what are you thinking here so this is kind of like a pin duo dual thing right so yep shop in bulk you get a discount so this is a two-part thing so what you would do is you would go to these companies SAS companies to say looking Adobe and say hey what kind of tears what kind of pricing you know discount per tier would you offer let’s say hey if I can bring a hundred customers we can offer 10 percent discount five percent discount of our normal prices the second thing would obviously just you know have a website where people can kind of create groups and claim that discount right you can call them pods clusters let’s say you got a 10% discount for 50 people the website will show hey 40 people already in this pod ten more you guys get to clean this discount yeah what you’re describing is group buying and it could be great a few companies that do something similar to this are app sumo stack social I think does it they’re they’re good companies I know and then there’s a new one called um is it called secret or ghost you know talking about Sean no ghost is like a blogging platform so I think it’s called secret or something like that anyway it’s called secret I think I’m looking at them I was gonna partner with them in some capacity it’s an interesting business model that a lot of people have tried founder’s card is another one that’s like a probably a twelve million dollar a year business it’s it’s an interesting business no one has actually made this scale wonderfully and I talked to um I’m gonna name drop a little and at the backstage of hustla con we had the founder of we were not the one that’s in the news but the other one Miguel is his name and he and what they did with they I don’t remember how many tenants they had maybe fifty thousand at the time and he said they launched just like rewards card where they got group discounts and he said no one used it and that shocks me because what you’re describing Abreu I’m like yeah ever you want to save money of course you’re gonna use that but for some reason people don’t do it I don’t know why businesses that have made this work in an indirect rate way are RetailMeNot they kind of make it they made it work a little bit I mean it’s that company sold for like a billion dollars I think I mean it was a huge exit or maybe it’s still independent but large business what do you think Sean I like group buying I have a friend who taught me a lot about group buying car he was telling me a lot about group buying companies everything was fascinating but I don’t retain any of the I didn’t retain any of the information so we’re gonna have to ask him to come on and explain some of these group buying companies alright let’s move on to the next one I have some other interesting things first did you know Jeff Bezos was adopted yeah by keeping that keep it dead I don’t think he was adopted as an orphan I think his like mom remarried you know his dad left or his parents got split his mom remarried and as does he have it so talked to his normal I don’t think so because for Father’s Day he posted like this is my dad and so I don’t know that’s like a well I read his bio he considers his Cuban father which I think is a step like he’s a Cuban guy as his dad dad his real dad yeah and I just thought was crazy like imagine adopting the wealthiest man in the world Steve Jobs was adopted I too and then he met his birth father at a restaurant and his birth father didn’t know that that was oh I didn’t know that I am a pianist and then when he went to the restaurant and he saw his birth father Steve knew whose birth father was and the birth father goes oh my god Steve Jobs is at my restaurant I cannot leave this and like flipped out over it I don’t think he Steve ever told him he was his son that’s amazing I didn’t I didn’t know about that okay I have another company that I think is cool I want to talk about that’s it you’re just gonna save Jeff Bezos that’s the whole subject I just thought imagine adopting someone who became Jeff Bezos that’s crazy okay let me tell you a quick tip that is a business Companies House that’s the name of it and then there’s the equivalent of Australia did you know that in Australia in many of the countries in Europe if you’re a privately held company that’s above like 40 million in revenue I think you have to submit an annual report yes I didn’t know that I went to the Australia’s version and a British I’ll show you the version it cost 5 per port it's called Companies House for Britain it's completely free I just like looked up all these cool companies and you can see how much like dividends they make right if my friend started this in in Great Britain also called due diligence this is called do deal is his company and I think it's like a massively last I checked it was like a massively successful company and I was like how are you getting all this private company data he's like oh it's just like you have to make it available here so what we do is we just aggregate it present it make it searchable and I was like oh my god like you know Jesus how you know hey I wish that existed in the US and B what a simple beautiful business to do I'm looking at the amazing did you find anything interesting from these or did you want to shout them at his cool tool so what was the one I'm gonna check out the Australian one it was what house company house that's Britain it's free I don't know what it was just easy to use like am i I know it's not Companies House is easy to use the Australian one it's not easy it was called the Australian AAS I see Australian Securities and Investment Commission I guess that's their equivalent of the SEC right and it cost money so I looked up a research business that was similar to mine and I was curious and the founder just pays himself ten million dollars a year and it's in there I just looked at the financials it's pretty big it's called them you probably notice a BIST world yeah yeah yeah it was well I didn't realize that's how big 100 million so you don't wanna million idea is and these might this might exist already but you can build a layer on top of these just to make them more user-friendly searchable it's sort of easy to use clean up the data in some way and those can be pretty pretty awesome businesses import genius is a great example of this you know publicly available customs data that they make a it's not even that easy to use but they make an interface that makes it very sort of simple and easy to find the data that you're looking for and so you know if there's some entrepreneur in Australia who wants to take ASIC and make it more of a consumer facing website or maybe that exists but that would be a cool opportunity what else so I saw this company I liked called a line I almost hesitate to even talk about it cuz I'm like very interested in it may invest may use it may like the teeth thing not the teeth thing it's it's pretty cool so you know how lambda school sort of popularized income share agreements they you know basically I train you you go get a job you have to pay me back out of that sort of like a novel way of doing student debt so income share agreements are getting more popular as lambda school has sort of proven that they work so all the lambda school clones I don't think they've proven they've worked I think that they're proven that some people are interested in them and what income share agreements yeah I'm critical of them yeah I don't really know why you would be critical and why are you critical first of all I don't I think that the bootcamp idea is just unrealistic okay but that's different that's not as different I don't know I I'm not well-versed on it yet so I don't my opinion is I'm skeptical which is okay here's what I think is in that here's what I think is a very valid skepticism of it hey you're making a you're making this sound like a totally new thing this is just a different form of student debt like I go to school and then when I graduate I have to pay back X dollars for my education that's student debt that's how an income share agreement works and that's also how student debt works so a lot of people who are like uh you know student debt evil student debt big problem in the country income share agreements novel disruption and really they're both just debt instruments that work it has that different I didn't have student debt luckily but but you know I friends who are still sort of you know paying that off and so so anyways I think that's the valid that's the valid criticism which is this is not that different the income share is not that different you know the one difference would be with student debt you owe it regardless of whether you get a good job or not for income share agreement you only owe it if you get a high paying job so the incentive is kind of a line for the school to train you up and help you get a good-paying job which is your goal as well as a student so I think that's a that's a fair counter but but anyways my point is it gives your agreements whether you like them or not they are getting more popular they've sort of worked non-existent five to ten years ago and now they're getting more popular and it's a financing instrument and so what a line is doing I think the websites hello align calm they basically made like sort of a stripe for income treatments so it's just a way for anybody who wants to set up an income share agreement to do so with like sort of one line of code type of thing they take care of the whole income share agreement process so let's say I which is true I have ideas for new education models new schools new ways to teach people and help them earn more money I could now shut up and set up an income share agreement website like without having to do any of the sort of Finance you know compliance like all that work that I would normally need to pay a bunch of lawyers and spend a bunch of time doing now I just get it out of the box so it's like when Twilio made SMS you know an easy thing to use out of the box or talk box made it easy to use video streaming or stripe made it easy to credit card processing now these guys did it for income share agreements which i think is a very clever niche how big are they what's the attraction any brand new i think they're an early access right now i'm on board with that i don't think i would invest because i'm not investing in i don't want to invest in private companies right now because i have i'm just a [ __ ] but I'm just [ __ ] fearful at the moment I've been the stock I'd rather be the stock market but that's cool I would put I would I would put I would I liked it enough that I would be close to putting my money where my mouth is on it right I don't think I would invest either but I just think it's cool that somebody built this and also I think it's a good example of identify nice trend a lot of people do this when BOTS started getting more popular they're like cool here's a bot maker or voice you know echo gets echo gets big and people start buying a bunch of Amazon echoes and then people made it easy to make voice apps using things like voice flow I think you want to be on the edge where is this a trend if it is a trend I can spin up the super simple website the more service like you know oh maybe email marketing is gonna be a big let me build a really easy way to email a mass list and track the opens and whatnot and sure eight times out of ten that trend is is gonna be is gonna fizzle out or end up being much smaller than you think but being early really matters in these spaces and so I think that's cool here's another niche thing that I thought was cool it's something called agent fire so this is a website for a real estate agent it's like a Wix or a Squarespace specifically for real estate agents so it's like push a button here's a real estate agent website this company is doing a hundred thousand dollars a month and what's interesting is that there's a guy you should follow his twitter handle is vin rob VI n RB and it's guy Robin Vander Heiden and what he's doing is he is I don't know I've met the guy yet but his claim is I help people productize their service so here's what happened he request oh my god somebody was making a service to do this for agents like you pay me X dollars I'll build you an agent website and what he helps them do is turn that into just a specific standalone SAS product they'll just let an agent do it automatically so now there's no human service in the loop and he hosts a bunch of he tweets out a bunch of examples of profitable niche services that have turned into products and so I thought this is kind of a goldmine of like cool little ideas and hacks an agent fire which is the one which is one of these which is a guy who was doing this as a service turn it into a product now doing this is amazing whose many requests like I mean you said who he is Rob is this guy raising money I don't know he's based out of Singapore everything about this I'm interested I'd like to ask guy I think people should follow him because he's tweeting out gold and he's only got you know two thousand followers so most people aren't looking I love Rob I'm following him now alright let me wrap it up at the one thought yeah we've talked about we've had a bunch of people on here or investors and we had a friend is raising a fund right now you know I think I've changed my mind I think that investing is [ __ ] stupid I would have bet a thousand dollars you're gonna say stupid I would have been wrong cuz he's so [ __ ] stupid but like why is investing stupid I would love to hear why investing is stupid tell me if I am being like just a baby here in like but it's just like I just find this like financial arbitrage [ __ ] to be so boring and like meaningless okay and I watch the TV show billions and I'm like oh that's cool like they're doing all those big things it looks exciting and then I'm like well those guys are losers like they're not actually adding to I mean they're just they're wealthy and they're accomplishing dreams so I respect it but I also I'm like oh my god that's so soulless and that's what I think like a lot of like I've got friends that create these websites that like they're already wealthy and they're building these websites that are like they're just hawking [ __ ] and they will admit that they are I'm like the [ __ ] the point of this and that's kind of what a lot of investing is but the friends Hawking [ __ ] that's different than investing right that's just like selling some degree for money right it's fun it's it's definitely from a similar yeah it's just like why like I like if you're already can if you already have a little bit of cash which if you're still trying to get your hair you know go go you got to go for it but if you already got a little bit of cash like do something cool and meaning so ok so here's here's I'll give you two to thoughts on this okay the first is an example that supports your case and then I'll give you the feel good reason why you're wrong so the support your case so I mentor this guy who's 20 years old and he's at this point where like he tried to do some stuff I kind of didn't work out and now he's like [ __ ] do I need to go get a job I need to pay my bills I don't want to go move back home with my parents and so he's like he's like about to take this job and he's like should I you know leave this entrepreneurial path and go get a job because I you know I need to pay bills in two months and I don't think I can spin something up in the next 60 days that will get so profitable that I'll be I know I'll be able to pay my rent and I said you know I empathize with the problem but I said you know let's just slow down for a sec before you go take that consulting job let's just let's just talk things through for a second so I said how much money do you need to live every month what's your burn rate two grand two grand fantastic and I was like so let's say you wanted a year of runway to go try some [ __ ] you need to come up with 12 months times 2 grand you need to come up with 24 grand I said I know you do some investing in the stock market you're kind of a degenerate you know you like to pick stocks attractive like Bitcoin and [ __ ] I was like because at the beginning of the conversation he's like you know am I good the thing that's going well is my investments I've done well the things going bad is about to have to take this job for my my bills oh hey well those two things don't add up I was like I was like do you have enough money in the stock market right now that you could just sell and you could use to live off of to chase your entrepreneurial dreams he's like yeah I could but then I'd have to sell and I don't want to sell cuz I'm getting you know good returns I said okay let's do the math real quick what do you think you could generate per let's take just a twenty four thousand that you need I don't know how much money you have you don't have to tell me let's take the twenty four thousand that you need how much do you think you generate per year in return average he's like fifty percent I was like ok Minnie Warren Buffett you think you can do 50 percent a year but let's let's assume you're delusional number is correct and that you could do it consistently which is the hard part you could do it for one year for sure but consistently generate 50 percent so let's say you you do the Warren Buffett you you invest perfectly you get your 50% way above market return and you're 24 grand has turned into 36 grand now like fantastic congratulations you made 12,000 like you are still nowhere near where you’re trying to get with your goals and if you and how many years would you have to continue to get this absurd return for you to be with where your goals I was like not that many but that would never happen you would never happen right you never get the 50% so anyways I was like you’re talking about this year going and trading all your time for money at a consulting gig when instead you could just sell some of your stock get 24 grand of runway and you could live for 12 months and give yourself a bunch of shots on goal to try to build something that you believe in and you’ll learn way more you’ll have way more fun and you’ll have way more upside than if you go take the consulting job so like you’re crazy so he was of the mindset of well I heard that rich people invest so I want to invest and I want to get return I want my money to work for money he had kind of heard all these things and was in was investing for that reason so I think investing doesn’t make sense when you have very little amount of capital overall and you’re trying to go invest that capital and then you’re trading your time for $4 in other ways now the other so that’s the argument for times when I think investing would be stupid is when you know if you take a normal return the amount of money that you’re making every month is not every year is not gonna change your life and you’re locking up money in the stable what’s the second point cuz I think the second point have to be better than the first point the first point that you made was that well only of us if you got a lot yeah exactly if you if you don’t have a lot I’d rather you use that money if you’re entrepreneurial if you’re one of the five 5% of people who actually want to build a business or do something on their own you’re better served investing in yourself and investing in buying your time back yeah and and and going taking about shot uncle now the second is is investing stupid well I think you’re kind of right that it is not the most exciting thing but excitement is different for everybody but here’s the cool way of thinking about investing like for anything to work you need leverage right so you were on the hustle but day to day you write zero emails probably you don’t write the daily email you don’t do the trends report this podcast is the most active thing you do for the Hustle is that correct it we could say yes for a sake of argument okay so first sake of argument your argument is correct I’m leverage so you’re leverage because you got a bunch of humans doing work for you cool another form of leverage is media so we’re gonna talk for one hour and this is gonna get listened to for hundreds of thousands of hours out there so media is another form of leverage and then the last one is capital capital is another form of leverage and so here’s the cool way of thinking about it which is if you have capital investing is your way of allocating capital to things that are either a gonna return the most or big and I like change the world in a way that you care about and so capital is your way of influencing the way that the world goes because you get to assign units of energy to different companies and causes that are that are gonna go do do do I get that I think that’s a great point I think that what I’m completely burnt out of it’s just lame-ass investments what’s a lame-ass investment like you don’t have to use a name if you want to kind of code name something like I’ve got a friend that gave a lot of money to some like an investor who’s gonna buy a bunch of multifamily real estate and it’s simply a like I’ve don’t ever see this I don’t touch it like this is a 7% this is simply an asset class and it’s just a thing on a spreadsheet and I’m like oh my god that’s so boring like but like I just I can’t decide if I’m being a little like [ ] hater or yeah but my or like when I have we have some friends who are buying companies and they just look for anything that like checks the boxes of does net churn this and is the acquisition cost this and that’s it that’s all I mean like mechanical yeah yeah and I get it and I’m like all right that’s great way to make money but it’s just like so [ ] lame sometimes I’m like oh my god you guys like can you like can we please do something exciting so okay so here’s the here’s the rub okay let’s say you don’t invest you’re gonna either a park cash and on the side and do nothing with it probably lamer than investing in it and having the cash grow or be you’re gonna what’s the what’s door number see so what else would you what a what would you prefer to do with your capital besides invest or leave it in cash either start calm and even if that means I don’t run them or that’s investing yeah I’m not saying investing I’m using I’m using investing because I can’t think of a better word no investing is cool I mean investing is great but I’m just saying like arbitrage is again starting a company is arbitrage but I think you understand what I’m saying yeah I get where you coming from I don’t know I I just I just hit me last week where I’m like oh my god this is I don’t want to talk about a carry fee ever again or I go like this is just so [ ] lame when like you see like like I think it happened when I was traveling I’m like I just see these normal ask people at the gas station and they’re with their wives and kids and like they’d like I would I’m Way more fascinated about how do I just make that person just a little bit happier or a little bit better not like how do I eat out a little more profit out of this service do the same like it’s like I saw these I remember be at this gas station and I saw this mom give her kid like a like a generic coke and I was like like help this mother like Oh either afford or learn that this thing or that thing is now is like how can we help her make a better decision maybe better decision easy not how do I get a 5 per second I think I actually understand what you’re saying now which is it’s not that investing is stupid it’s not that putting money in someplace and getting a return is stupid what you are starting to get annoyed of or or tired of is the amount of the amount of your mental energy that goes towards thinking about how to reproduce a where do you devote mental energy and not we’re just money go it’s kind of like I get that money you gotta do something with the money might as well put in a place that’s gonna grow might as well fund a company that’s gonna do something but it’s about mentally spending cycles thinking about how do I get 7% verse 8% versa tax efficient 9% versus just mentally spending those same cycles thinking about something else if I kept reading a book talking to a person building something cool writing a song whatever it’s gonna be is that is that more accurate yeah like get out of this financial arbitrage circle-jerk and actually make a difference and have an exciting wonderful life yeah both myself and others I’m with you on that I’m with you on that I catch myself doing that all the time where I’m like how many hours is my brain spending on you know in this financial game and there’s some so amount that’s correct but it’s very easy to slip into more than more than what you need more than what’s adding value I love that TV show billions and I’m like oh man like Bobby ox raw rod this powerful billionaire guy he’s going to war versus other people that’s [ __ ] awesome I love that yeah he’s an alpha and then I’m like but he’s also just a jerk-off who’s just trying to like squeeze pennies out of this thing of that thing and it’s complete nonsense right you know what I mean yeah I think you know I think what also happens is important which is in your 20s you’re trying to figure out what you like twenties in many ways about feeding ego it’s like whether you’re partying trying to make friends trying to date people trying to you know get your get your name on the map in you know your career or your industry I feel like a lot of people including myself their twenties are spent feeding the ego and then your 30s are spent figuring out that okay my ego is either full or it will never be full and I actually want to feed the soul in some kind of way actually want to be more conscious of how I spend my time and my energy and and then there’s this constant push and pull of like maybe I just want to make a bunch of money like maybe I’m not ambitious enough well I think you can over money focus and there’s like these debates that I have my head I sounds like you do too I think you could do both and I think that I guess the point is I’m beginning to realize I love the builders more than the alligators like yeah yeah yeah exhibit fucking-a builders over alligators all day okay yeah good that’s a good that’s a good way to end the podcast I put if you if you listen to us meander through that last five minutes hopefully either with some value in the end [Music]