By playing, you agree to uListen's Terms and Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service.
Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.
Great conversations run long. Their best ideas don't have to.
uListen is free on iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, and Claude.
See howTranscript
65 min read · 12,919 words- 0:00 – 10:22
The Jewish Ed Sheeran
- SPShaan Puri
In most areas of life, you shouldn't be hoping for, like, the miraculous save, right? The one thing that's gonna turn your business around, or the person who's gonna meet you and just give you that opportunity, just hand it to you. But there is an exception. [upbeat music]
- SPSam Parr
All right, Shaan, I wanna make you feel good. I wanna make the world feel good. I saw an inspirational story this weekend, and I wanna share it with you. And it's gonna involve a li- some, some audio, and it involves pop culture, which you don't know anything about.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
So I, I think that some of our listeners might know about this story, but I think it'll be particularly cool for you. Uh, all right. So there's this singer-songwriter guy I love. His name's Noah Kahan. Have you heard of Noah Kahan?
- SPShaan Puri
Noah Kahan. I can't say I have.
- SPSam Parr
He describes himself as the Jewish Ed Sheeran. So, uh, he's, like, a good singer-songwriter. He's a great singer. He's go- but he's got a little folk in his, in his sound, almost like Mumford & Sons meets Ed Sheeran, but based out of Vermont. Like, do you know anything about, like, the-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Do, do you know anything about, like, New England, like, folk music?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm into that kind of music, actually.
- SPSam Parr
Like The Lumineers-
- SPShaan Puri
Yes
- SPSam Parr
... type of, type of deal. Um, he, uh, graduated high school and decided not to go to college, and was able to get a small record deal right out of school. The record deal, it was only okay. That sounds like a big deal, but it's like you just kinda barely get by, and they're almost, like, buying an option on you that you're gonna be, like, a, a big deal. He has a couple songs that are kind of hits. I think one time he got to go on The Stephen Colbert Show and play one of his songs. But again, that's not... I mean, that's a, that's pretty awesome, but if that's all you're known for is doing it one time, you're still kinda like, "Ah, shit," like, "I gotta go get a job. I'm not sure if this is gonna work." So the pandemic hits. He's living in LA at the time, trying to make it big, but he's like, "Shit, what am I gonna do? I, I, I guess I'll just go back home to Vermont where my parents live and I have a little bit more space." And he kinda, like, gets depressed, where he's, like, eating bad food and smoking weed all day, and he's like, "What the hell do I... am I gonna do with my career? I can't go out and play. Like, I'm a nobody right now. What am I gonna do?" So he's like, "Well, TikTok, I guess, seems kind of neat. Let's try that." And so he starts posting some of his songs on TikTok, and a few of them do okay. I think he gets, like, 50,000 followers or something like that. Uh, so again, it's like a, a mediocre success. But then one night he comes up, it took him 20 minutes, and he writes a verse to a song. And the song is called Stick Season. And he plays this one verse on TikTok.
- SPSpeaker
'Cause I see you when it rains. And Doc told me to travel, but there's COVID on the plane. So I'm fucked. I'm fucked. And I suck. And you suck. And this sucks. Fuck.
- SPSam Parr
All right. So this is just a 20-second video that he posts on TikTok. It, it's good, but he posts it, and, like, two or three hours later, like, no one replies. He's like, "This sucks. I'm just gonna delete this thing, but let me finish kinda getting high," 'cause he was, said he was eating edible-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... when he posted this. He's like, "Let me finish getting high." He ends up passing out and sleeps through the night, and he wakes up, and this video gets like 200,000 likes and, like, 100,000 comments. And he's like, "Shit, I better finish this song and actually complete this song, 'cause it sounds like people like this verse." So this all happened in about 2021. So he finishes that song. It blows up. Now, two weeks ago... This guy's from New England. Last week he sold out Fenway, Fenway Park, the stadium, for like-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... you know, whatever, 50,000 people. And he brings his parents on stage. Click play, Arie. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
I love Vermont, but it's the season of the sticks. And I call your mom, she forgot that I exist. Three weeks and I don't know. There's a new girl writing on my wall.
- SPSam Parr
So he writes that song, he puts it out. It blows up. It goes viral. The guy, in a matter of three years, goes from just a dude in his parents' house playing on TikTok, posting a verse of a song. And what's funny is that in 2019, right when he was doing this, he tweeted out, he goes, "I'm probably not gonna ever sell out Madison Square Garden. In fact, I'm probably not even gonna sell all the shows that I, that I, uh, have for this tour. But as long as you'll have me, I'll keep writing some songs." And he played Fenway Park and sold it out. And actually, a few days ago, he sold out Madison Square Garden three nights in a row. And I wanted to share this story with you because it makes me feel awesome.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
It also shows that if you put your shit out there, this is what the internet's for. If you put your stuff out there, even if it's incomplete, people love seeing progress.
- SPShaan Puri
Dude, uh, that's right up my alley. So I have two or three things that that reminds me about. The first is, I forgot who it was we were talking to recently, but we were, I was having a discussion, and the, the idea came up that in most areas of life, you shouldn't be hoping for, like, the miraculous save, right? The one thing that's gonna turn your business around, or the, the person who's gonna meet you and just give you that opportunity, just hand it to you. But there is, in content, an exception, which is that in content you're really one hit away. And just because your earlier stuff hasn't taken off doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, so you get a lot of false negatives. But then sometimes you get these breakout positives, and this is an example of that, where, you know, the guy goes to sleep with no com- You know, he's basically planning to just delete the video, thinks it was a bust, and he was just one hit away from his entire life changing. And there's something that's pretty magical about that when it comes to only a few areas of life. Like, I think this is true in m- m- all the arts, so movies, music, content, but also even games. When we had Dan Porter on, he was talking about his company, and his company was failing, and he basically had a few weeks left- And he's like, "Let's make one last game, and I'll make it this time even though I'm not a game designer." And he just made Draw Something. This like stupid simple app that just took off like wildfire. And so being one, being one hit away, it's sort of a last bullet in the chamber that you can, uh, that you can think about and, and, and sort of continue to, to operate with some, with some hope on. I think that's pretty powerful.
- SPSam Parr
Which, which implies, by the way, that you're taking lots of shots.
- SPShaan Puri
Dude, so my most viral Twitter thread was that Clubhouse thread when Clubhouse was like, you know, all the rage. And I came out and I, I posted this like really long thread, like 30, 40 tweets long, about how I thought, you know, everybody thinks Clubhouse is gonna take off or is, is the next big thing, but I don't think it's gonna work. And the very first comment was this guy who worked at Facebook, and when we were getting acquired by Facebook, he was like the principal engineer who was like vetting all of our team. And, uh, I post this thread, and you know when you, you know, you push send, it's like that MailChimp GIF where the finger's shaking right above the button-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... and you're like, you know, you're putting yourself out there a little bit. And his first thing is like, "Dude, this is way too long. N- like nobody's gonna read this."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
"This is too much." And he said it in a way that wasn't even like a hater. He was just like concerned. Like, uh, "What are you thinking, man? Like this is ridiculous." And I was l- I was straight up about to just delete the whole thing, and I just decided, let me just let it ride for like a couple more minutes. And then it started to just like immediately get a bunch of other positive replies. But I was very close to just deleting the thing right there, and that was a thread that went so viral that all of a sudden Malcolm Gladwell's following me, and there's all these like crazy things going on in the next, you know, three days of my life, 'cause up- 10, 20 million people read that. And so i- it's just a reminder of don't count yourself out too early if it doesn't have the, the init- the initial success. That's the first thing. Second thing, you found my fetish. I am a sucker for amateur singing talent. [laughs] I have entire folders on YouTube and TikTok. I don't wanna see like famous people on stage polished. I like, you know, when it's like this seventh-grade boy, and he just starts singing, and like the rest of the class is like, "What, Jacob? What, you can sing?" And like there's all these clips on TikTok that are like that, and I'm a sucker for that stuff.
- SPSam Parr
All right, guys, really quick. So back when I was running The Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called Trends. The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts, and we created this sorta playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses. Well, HubSpot did something kinda cool. So they took this playbook that we developed and we gave to our analysts, and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download. And it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends, for spotting different companies that are gonna explode and grow really quickly. It's pretty awesome that they took this internal document that we had for teaching our analysts how to do this into a tool, and are giving it away for free that anyone can download. So if you wanna stay ahead of the game and you wanna find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea they exist, this is the ultimate guide. So if you wanna check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now, back to the show.
- 10:22 – 15:00
The actual Ed Sheeran
- SPSam Parr
[applause]
- SPShaan Puri
Oh. Oh. And it is awful. I mean, it sounds like if I pick up a guitar right now and I genuinely tried to sing. [laughs] It sounded that bad. He's like, "Yeah, I just..." [laughs] He's like, "That's how I started." He's like, "It was really bad." And he's like, "I kept practicing." So what, what ended up happening with Ed Sheeran is he knows he wants to make it, and he has like a little bit of, of, of a small following 'cause he's from the UK. So he comes to LA, and he's like, "I'm gonna f- I'm gonna just come to the mecca and just try to figure out how to make it in, in this scene here." And he does, he gets a couple of fortunate breaks. So he's, he goes to like an open mic night type of thing, and he performs on stage. And you never know who's in the crowd. In the crowd is Jamie Foxx's, like business manager. And he sees him, and he's like, "Oh, this white boy's good." He's like, uh, i- 'cause he, he's like intrigued by him. So he tells Jamie the next day, he goes, "Jamie, on your..." Jamie was doing a radio show in the morning and he's hosting it. He goes, "I have a guest for you. I want you to have this guy come on, five minutes." So Ed Sheeran comes on Jamie Foxx's radio show. He plays his like, you know, five-minute bit, and Jamie Foxx is like, "All right. I, I'm interested." So he's like, "What's your deal, man? Who, who are you? Uh, you signed? What, what's, what's your situation?" He's like, "No, uh, no, I mean, I not only am I not signed, I'm homeless. I, I just came out here to LA. I don't have money. I don't have anything." So Jamie's like, "Come sleep on my couch."
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And Jamie Foxx had, has actually done this with m- many artists, um, that have, have s- gone on to make it. But he would just... He's like, "If you have talent, you got something," he would just be like, "Just come stay at my house. I got tons of extra rooms. Just come stay here." And Jamie Foxx is notorious for throwing epic parties. He's got, like he's like one of the most connected guys in, in Hollywood 'cause he's a movie star, he's a musician. He's just... He's, he's a comedian. He's very funny. And so he would throw these almost like salons where he'd get people from movies, from music, from comedy all come hang out at his, at his house.
- SPSam Parr
Neville, uh, Madora, and Noah Kagan went to one of them, and they told me all about it.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] What did they say?
- SPSam Parr
They said he has a piano there. ... in the, in the other room, and, like, people just slowly work their way towards the piano, and it's almost like an open mic night.
- SPShaan Puri
He'll just start performing, right?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, and, like, he'll s- Jamie starts and someone, like, raises their hand, and someone else pops in, and, like, it's oddly... A salon's a great way to describe it. It's like a d- a place to discover one another.
- SPShaan Puri
Exactly. And so he, Ed Sheeran's there, and he's, he, he, I think he does that. He, like, plays at one of the parties at night, and people are like, "Oh, this is kinda cool." So the next night, Jamie's like, "All right, I'm gonna test this guy." So he takes him to some club that's basically like a all-Black club, and every artist on stage is, like, either slam poetry, rap, R&B, hip-hop. And then here you have this, like, redhead, freckled teenage boy holding a ukulele, and they're like, "And next, Ed Sheeran."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And Ed Sheeran comes up on the stage, and he's literally with a ukulele, and, and literally Jamie Foxx is like... I was in the crowd. He's like, and the, my guy was like, "Man, Jamie, come on. Why you gotta fuck up the vibe? Like, who is this guy? Why you gotta put this guy on the stage?" And so he improvises, and he starts off doing his own song, and then he's like, "All right, read the room a little bit." So he transitions into a freestyle version of 50 Cent's In the Club, a- while he's on his ukulele, basically. And he plays, like, a Ed Sheeran version of, of a 50 Cent rap. And so, and the crowd just gets lit, and there's a video of this online if you wanna see it, the first performance. It's, like, kinda poor quality audio and video, and literally, during his performance, people get so hyped that the c- the MC, who was, like, pretty, you know, skeptical, just gets on stage with him, starts performing. This girl gets up on stage, starts performing with him, and it just turns into this kinda thing. And Jamie goes, "That's when I knew. If he can win over this crowd, he's gonna win."
- SPSam Parr
That's awesome.
- SPShaan Puri
And then he made introductions and ended up getting him signed.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, I love those stories.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Doesn't that make you feel good?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
That makes me feel so good. I love those stories. You have a- another inspirational story about my favorite thing on Earth, the Olympics.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah, so the Olympics is going on right now. The opening ceremony just happened, and I saw this story that I hadn't heard before. You, you might know it 'cause you're an Olympics guy. Have you ever heard of Eric the Eel?
- SPSam Parr
No, I haven't heard this one.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
No.
- SPShaan Puri
So there's this guy, Eric, and Eric is from the Equatorial Guinea, [laughs] which is, I guess, a country. And at the 2000 Olympics, it's happening in Sydney, there's this footage. So I, let me just warn you, I don't know who this guy is. I just see this footage. The footage is this. It's the Olympic swimming, like, trial, and you see a guy, a Black dude. He's got goggles on, trunks, and he's just feeling nervous, and there's two people next to him. And it's about, they're at the starting blocks, and they're about to say go, and the two other guys false start. They just jump in too early. This guy doesn't move. And so now this is the qualifying heat, and his two competitors are disqualified. And so you're
- 15:00 – 20:00
Eric the Eel
- SPShaan Puri
like, "Oh, wow, this guy gets a free run." But what you don't know is that this guy, Eric, who's about to s- about to have a free pass into the thing, it's not a free pass 'cause this guy basically doesn't know how to swim. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Yeah, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And so-
- SPSam Parr
And, like, some background, basically, f- in most cases to qualify for the Olympics for, uh, the, the running or anything that's timed, there's a qualifier, so you have to hit a certain time. But for some countries, I don't know how they decide who, they just get to have, like, just you-
- SPShaan Puri
Well, it, it, there's a wildcard, uh, draw, so it's like a lottery raffle.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, and they, and they go to the country. They go, "Just send us your best." [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] So, and so he wins this thing, and he has eight months now to prepare for the Olympic Games. Can you just imagine that? Like, [laughs] you randomly win this draw, and in eight months you're gonna be swimming in front of the whole world. This is a guy who's never left his home country. He's never swam before. And so he gets a- he's given access to a hotel, and in the hotel there's a pool that he could swim in for an hour a day, 5:00 AM to 6:00 AM. The pool is 13 meters long. He's swimming in the 100-meter freestyle, [laughs] so he's training in a 13-meter pool. He's gonna have to swim 10 times this distance in the thing, in the real Olympics, and he has one hour a day to train for eight months. Now, pretty quickly Eric realizes, like, all right, one hour a day, not gonna be enough. So he starts just going to, like, rivers, oceans. He's just trying [laughs] to learn to swim. He doesn't actually know how. He doesn't have a coach. And so when he's swimming in these rivers, there's literally fishermen who are watching him. They're like, "Son, you gotta, you gotta use your legs. What are you doing?" And they're tr- trying to teach him how to coordinate his body, how to float.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And this is what's happening. So fast-forward eight months. It's go time. He shows up at the Sydney Olympics. Takes him three days to travel there. He's never flown before. He gets to the Olympic facilities, jaw drops. He, he sees the, the pool size. He's like, "Oh my God, I've never swam in a pool this large." And so he's preparing for the event, and basically the other coaches and swimmers are like, "There's, there's so- why is this guy so nervous during the practice runs? He's not even going in the water. He doesn't know what to do." And so the South African coach starts helping him. These other guys start helping him, and they're like, "Do you need goggles?" And they're, he's like, "Yes," and they, they give him goggles. And they're trying to show, trying to teach him, like, in the day before the event. He's cramming for the exam.
- SPSam Parr
Cramming for the exam for a language that you just learned two weeks ago.
- SPShaan Puri
And everyone in the world is watching you take the exam, and if you fail the exam, you drown. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And you're dead. And so that's the problem, because when the other two guys false start, he's gonna get a free pass. All he has to do is finish, but he's never swam 100 meters consecutively.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
He's, he's trained in a 13-meter pool. And so he jumps in, and he starts okay, and he's going, and he's going, and he starts getting really tired before he even hits the turn, the 50-meter turn. And he finally gets to the turn, and at the turn, he stays under for so long, there's literally, like, gasps in the crowd. They think he's drowned, like he's just caught in, like, a riptide, basically, it looks like. Finally, he comes up, and he's going so slow. [laughs] He looks like he can't make it. He is so exhausted, and the crowd just starts going nuts. They're like, "Go, go, go." They don't know why this guy's going so slow. Why is this Olympic... Th- they don't know at this point, but they know something's wrong, and they just want to, like, get on his side.
- SPSam Parr
It's like a Jamaican bobsled moment.
- SPShaan Puri
Exactly. He finishes in a minute and 52 seconds, [laughs] which is, like, you know, like, an extra, like, you know, minute past what it should have been, which is a very long time for something like this, you know? These races are decided by tenths of a second. [laughs] And so he qualifies, and so he gets into the actual [laughs] Olympic trial. He, he obviously then, uh, you know, loses, but this guy- Embodies that Olympic spirit that anyone anywhere in the world can, you know, do something amazing. Crowd goes nuts. He ends up becoming the national coach for his country, you know, decades later and, and that's the story of Eric the Eel.
- SPSam Parr
Did they, did they ever produce any legit, uh, swimmers?
- SPShaan Puri
Well, let's keep the story inspirational. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
So I'm gonna no comment that one. I don- I don't know if there's ever been a, a medalist from, uh, Equatorial Guinea.
- SPSam Parr
That's awesome. No, I remember watching this years ago, um, and it, and it, and it is inspirational. Do you wanna do your sleep app thing, or do you want me to tell you about a car thing?
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, let's do your car thing.
- SPSam Parr
All right. So I'm buying a... I wanna buy a new car, and I wanna tell you about two interesting things that I've discovered. We'll start with CarEdge. So it's a pretty genius business idea, and these guys have been quietly building up a pretty epic business. So the story of this business is that it was started by a father and son duo. The father's name is Ray, the son is Zach. The father, he basically managed car dealerships for years, and he was like, "Oh, there's like... I know the ins and outs" And his son I think was 24 or 25 at the time, and his son always wanted to start an internet business, and he also liked YouTube. And he was like, "Hey, Dad, what if I just asked you some questions on YouTube about, like, you know, how to properly negotiate at the car dealership, or how much profit car dealerships make so we know better what to ask for?" You know, things like that.
- SPShaan Puri
Love it. Gonna work.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. And within, I think, something like eight weeks they got 13,000 followers on this YouTube page. And they were like, "You
- 20:00 – 29:21
How CarEdge is quietly crushing it
- SPSam Parr
know, we were gonna buy all these fancy cameras, but then we just got, like, our iPhone and made it kinda janky" And it just, it, people kinda liked it, and it was during the pandemic, so people were watching a lot of that stuff. And so they parlay that into starting a business called CarEdge. And so if you go to caredge.com, what's it say? Do you see the headline?
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, yeah. It says, "Your personal car shopper is here. No hassle, always fair prices." So basically they will help you buy a car.
- SPSam Parr
So the way it works is there's this thing called an auto broker or a car broker. I think you got your car now from a friend of ours who's a car broker. The industry is typically, like, mom and pop, and a lot of times if you Google, like, car broker, New York City, you're gonna go to, like, kind of a mom-and-pop website. And you get on the phone or send an email to this person. You tell them what type of car you want, and they have relationships with tons of dealers, so they know, they know the ins and outs of the car business. You pay them a fee, $500 to $2,000, and they typically will go and buy the car for you. But the savings that you get on the price of the car is typically better than the fee that you pay them, and so it's no big deal, and they do all the negotiating for you, so it's not uncomfortable for you. Whatever. Cool. What these guys did is they took, like, kind of a startup-y internet vibe, and they created a nice website for it where you go to their website and they... You could, you could search different cars. Uh, they, well, rather, they have a variety of products. So, like, one, they have got this thing, it's, I think it's, like, 80 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month, and they will just, like, give you tons of information, like a database on what the profit margin is on different cars so you can go negotiate yourself. Or you can spend $1,000 and tell them the car that you want, and they go and buy it for you, and they'll even organize it so it gets shipped to you, and they do all the organization and all that work. And if you don't save at least $1,000, you just get your money back. And they built this massive business because if you go to their YouTube page, I think they now have 600,000 subscribers on their page, and it's this really cute dynamic between a father and son.
- SPShaan Puri
All, all the pictures on the site, by the way, are, like, the dad giving the son a noogie. It's, like, just a, just wholesome. Just so wholesome.
- SPSam Parr
And that fa- father-and-son, like, dynamic for the brand, it makes you like them a lot. And they're like, "You know, there are a bunch of car podcasts, but we..." Basically what they described what they wanted to do is, they probably have no idea who we are, but it's what you and I do of just kinda like riffing, a little bit less professional.
- SPShaan Puri
You, you're the father, I would assume. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Am I? You're older than me. You could be the dad.
- SPShaan Puri
By the way, you know how there was this big viral thing where it was like, um, you know, PewDiePie versus T-Series, like who can have the most subscribers on YouTube?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
So these guys currently have 533,000 subscribers. Your boys have 529,000. We are 4,000 subscribers behind CarEdge. I'm just gonna leave that there for our loyal army who doesn't wanna see us lose to this father-son car buying duo. Go to YouTube and subscribe.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
All right. Back to the sleep bit.
- SPSam Parr
Uh, they, uh, this business is now doing... So he, he has a, a video where he breaks down the revenue. So he pulls up their QuickBooks and you can see it, but he blurs out the numbers. And I messaged him and I was like, "Hey, uh,"
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
"... I have this thing, this podcast, like" And he goes, "Yeah, you know, I've heard of it." Uh, I go, "Just, can you tell me the numbers and I can talk about it?" And he, and, and so he did. And so this business is now doing roughly $10 million a year in revenue. I think it's only two years old or so, and it seems like a great business. These things could be really cool, I think.
- SPShaan Puri
Honestly, I thought it'd be almost bigger because looking at the traffic, they get almost, like, two million visitors a month to their site. And so that is a huge amount of traffic to your website for this thing. So I am im- I'm extremely impressed. This is only two years old?
- SPSam Parr
Ish. Yeah, it could, it could be three.
- SPShaan Puri
Wow.
- SPSam Parr
But yeah, something like that.
- SPShaan Puri
Is this something you'd normally do when you buy cars, you use car brokers?
- SPSam Parr
I haven't, but I've heard of them. We actually talked about it years ago of, of, of people who, uh, you know, I... We brought this up in one of the early episodes. I've never actually used it, but I remember w- last time I bought my car, I was in the dealership for like four hours, like, signing paperwork-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SPSam Parr
... wi- wiring the money. It took forever, and I was like, "I'm never doing this again." And so I just started googling car brokers. I was like, "I wanna try one" And that's how I found these guys.
- SPShaan Puri
And were they YouTube first, so it was an audience first play?
- SPSam Parr
YouTube first. Yeah, YouTube first.
- SPShaan Puri
Did they even plan to launch this as a service, or did it start as just let's make a YouTube channel?
- SPSam Parr
The kid, Zach, has a blog where he's been blogging since he was 22, and he previously, he ran some small information business that was doing, like, 150,000 in revenue. And it's cool, you could see him blogging as he goes, and he's like, "I've, I've always wanted to learn how to make money on the internet and start an internet company." And so you could see, like, he had, like, two or three businesses that- ... weren't huge or anything, but it was very promising for a 21-year-old. And I have a feeling, I kinda like clicked their LinkedIns and looked around, I think the mother passed away from cancer.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
And so I think there was like a, a, a feeling of like Zach, the kid, was like, "You know, I wanna be with my father more. Let's see if we can do something together." And-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, he's got, he's got some cool blog posts. So you know, Getting Your First Customers is Really Hard. [laughs] And he talks about the getting their fir- early customers for this. And then another one is From 10 to 14,000 Subscribers in Three Weeks: Here's What We Learned. Here's what happened and here's what I learned. And then, uh, I haven't read these yet, but I'm just looking at the titles. These are cool. I'm gonna check these out.
- 29:21 – 33:07
How a car dealership is pulling millions of views on TikTok
- SPSam Parr
but it is like in a, like an Emmy Award-winning, like, series.
- SPShaan Puri
Wow, dude. This is su- such a good find. This is so cool.
- SPSam Parr
So people, so I think they've got millions and millions of views, and the young woman who did it is, like I said, 23, and Chevy and Geico and all these huge brands are commenting and making jokes on the TikToks. And so many people are like, "For real, this should be on Netflix." Like, "I wanna watch this."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And sh- some, uh, Twitter, uh, person, I guess, I'll, uh, I think a Substacker, her name's Rachel Kartan. We'll, I wanna give her a shout-out. She discovered this and interviewed Grace on Substack, on her Substack, and she did a really cool interview where she talks about the process, and she's like, "Well, me and Ben, my partner, we just come up with interesting ideas. We don't write scripts. I just go into the corner of this," like as if she's Pam. She's like, "I sit there like Pam and I just kinda babble, and we, like, find, like, a few minutes of, like, gold, and we build a story off that."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
"And then we go and m- or make episodes every week." And she is wonderful.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
This is the greatest thing I've seen, where people are like, "Hey, what's gonna happen next episode?" And the characters are just other people in the dealerships, like the mechanics or whatever. The episodes will be like, "Today my boss, Jim, the owner of the dealership, has want me, wants me to make a video about electric Chevys because no one wants to buy them because they're afraid of them." I don't know what I'm gonna do. And it's like the, the, the episode-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, I can watch this
- SPSam Parr
... is like her trying to figure that out. It is so good.
- SPShaan Puri
That's amazing. Uh, yeah, wanna check this out. And also, Grace, you said her name is?
- SPSam Parr
Is that her name? Grace K- Kerber, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
I haven't even seen a single video yet. I just heard about this literally a minute and a half ago. Grace, I'd like to make you a job offer. [laughs] Whatever you're making currently at the dealership, we're tripling it. Come work for us. [laughs] Uh, you gotta do this at, at a different scale than the local car dealership, but that is, uh, that is so impressive. I'm, I'm... This is amazing.
- SPSam Parr
She's a really good actress. Like, she, like, leans into it.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
And-
- SPShaan Puri
I can just see from the thumbnail here, it's, like, so good
- SPSam Parr
... and the most impressive part is imagine a 23-year-old coming into a, a truck dealership, which is probably all dudes, particularly, like, frat bros.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
And she's like, "Yeah, we're gonna do it this way."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
"Uh, like, let's just do it." And so like-
- SPShaan Puri
Well, it's beautiful 'cause they're probably like, "We're not even doing TikTok. We have nothing to lose," right? Like y- you know, when you have nothing to lose, you could try something new here. You could never do this at, you know, the corporate account for, you know, for Cadillac or whatever.
- SPSam Parr
Someone on Twitter was, like, looking at the search traffic for Mohawk Chevrolet, and as expected, it's through the roof. Uh, so I guess it's working. So those are my two car stories.
- SPShaan Puri
That was great. Great segment. Uh, good finds. Okay, I have a cool find for you. I wanna tell you about a wellness and health app that's doing over 100 million a year. You might think, is this a healthcare? Is it AI? Is it biotech? No, no. I'm talking about Pokemon Sleep.
- SPSam Parr
What?
- SPShaan Puri
Have you ever heard of Pokemon Sleep?
- SPSam Parr
No.
- SPShaan Puri
So let's check this out. Pokemon, the Pokemon company, has created a sleep tracking app where you just take your phone, you put it on your pillow right next to you while you sleep, and depending on how well you sleep and how long you sleep, you catch Pokemon in your sleep [laughs] and you wake up in the morning-
- 33:07 – 35:55
$100M+ Pokemon sleep tracking app
- SPShaan Puri
phone playing games, but this does help me just put away my phone, put it on the pillow, and even though it's not super accurate, it is helping me." Another one is like, "You know, I did move my bedtime from 2:00 AM to 10:00 PM daily 'cause I was getting frustrated at having to w- wake up with so little sleep. I tried so many things. They all failed. Pokemon Sleep managed to make a lifestyle change that $2,000 in therapy has not. I'm even wil- willing to spend money on occasionally buying bundles in the app because it's actually cheaper than what I was paying to, to try to improve my sleep before this."
- SPSam Parr
Oh my God, this is insane. Is this owned by N- like, Nintendo or the, whoever the Pokemon company-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, it's owned by Pokemon. Like, if you go to the sites, Pokemon Company International, it's like corporate.pokemon.com [laughs] is like the, uh, the thing behind it. But it's got 10 million users. Only 17% are in the US. So I think there's an opportunity to basically, what they're obviously gonna try to grow in the US, but I think there's an opportunity to just replicate the same idea, which is I've, I've had this thought, which is health tracking right now is all quantitative and nobody really just does a remix of it that's fun. Step tracking is a super common thing. Everybody likes step tracking, but step tracking has just been the same. So everybody just looks at, oh, did I get my 10,000 steps today? And it's just me versus me, really. Um, and it's step tracking. And even the ones that try to make it social, where you, you might be able to add friends or whatever, it's not really a social thing to do. And I had this idea years ago of like, why don't they just make it look like Mario Kart, where it's me and my eight friends at the starting line each day, and then as we're taking steps, like, we each have our little car that's ahead or behind the other person, and it'll tell you if you get passed by somebody during the day. Like, oh, Sam just passed you. Um, and then you look at the a- map and you're like, oh shit, Sam's like, you know, 1,000 steps ahead. I'm gonna actually go get some more steps in. And you would have your car that would, you, you know, you could buy your skins or whatever, make it, make it look however. It's like take the same idea but just make it more... Do the fun variants. Do the social and fun variant versus the, uh, the hardcore data tracking version.
- SPSam Parr
Me and, uh, four friends, uh, a few years ago, we did it, uh, a couple years in a row where I think it was every January we would wear, was it a WHOOP band? And we would s- the person who burned the most energy for the entire month won. And so it becomes like this crazy competition where it's like, shit, I can't, I can't go to sleep right now, uh, 'cause John is beat-
- SPShaan Puri
I gotta burn some cals. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
I gotta go burn some calories, like, John's winning.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And it's just who can exert the most energy in January, and it's exhausting.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
It is so exhausting.
- SPShaan Puri
I think Joe Rogan does that with his friends, right?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, we, we definitely stole that idea from him. What, what's, what does he call it? Sober October?
- SPShaan Puri
It's like Sober, Sober October, yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Yes. Uh, but when he started it, there weren't... The bands didn't really exist, and so once they came out, we took the bands and we did the same thing. Those competitions 100% work. There's a guy I follow on Twitter who walks 30,000 steps a day and it is like... And then everyone else will post their steps, like, their step counts that, that, uh, night
- 35:55 – 39:37
Nick Gray's new thing
- SPSam Parr
just to, like, compare. It 100% makes you wanna walk more.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. [laughs] So actually I had an interesting conversation, um, at this event I was at with, with, uh, Nick Gray. So Nick Gray, who side note, might be my favorite person.
- SPSam Parr
He's a treasure.
- SPShaan Puri
He was talking about... He's like, "Dude," he's like, "My first, the My First Muscle challenge you guys did was so wholesome." He's like, "It was so fun. I did it with my friends." He's like, "My buddy who I did it with, who didn't even listen to the pod before that, started listening." He's like, "He also now, if he's just, like, traveling and needs a quick workout, like, what can I do in, you know, 15, 20 minutes?" He's like, "He just does that again, and he texts me every time he does it." And so h- I think Nick created a version of that called Done-
- SPSam Parr
Let's see
- SPShaan Puri
... which I love. He's like, he's like, "You should steal this." He's like, "You, you guys should do this." He's like, "Keep the momentum of the My First Muscle challenge." So he has a thing called Done. It's like a group of people that all agree we're gonna do X every day, and I forgot what X is. It might be walk a certain amount of steps, might be cold plunge, might be whatever it was. Let's assume you set the bar. And what he did was he made a WhatsApp group, and in the WhatsApp group, you only can send one word, "done," and that's it. Every, every day people just say done whenever they've did the thing. And, and you can't say anything else, but you get the momentum from other people saying done. You're like, "Shit, I gotta get mine in." And then he has his assistants, he's got his, like, assistants in the Philippines who will go in, and if, if you haven't said done for, like, three or four days, they'll, like, DM you or they'll nudge you, and they'll be like, "Come on, man. Like, you can do this. Uh, you know, stay at it." And, um, I just thought that was great, and he's like, "You should, you should definitely, like, keep that alive in some way." He's like, "Do the done group. It's amazing." And so I think we should, uh, we should come up with a new, a new challenge like that and just do it the way Nick did with one word, keep it super simple, done.
- SPSam Parr
I think what we need to do is do the My First Muscle challenge again, except we'll tell people when it's happening. I think people will... I, I mean, I know I would, I would train to get... 'Cause I hadn't... If you don't work that energy system, it's quite hard.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Uh, like, I would train for it. Did you, um... You were with Nick this weekend. Did you meet any other people at this event?
- SPShaan Puri
I met a ton of people. Um, what would you like to know? So h- uh, here, here's a fun way where you can maybe do this. So I came home, and I brain dumped all of my notes into this doc, but I did it almost like a Twitter thread where I, um, it... They're not... It's not like a long blog post with one coherent message. I just bullet pointed, like, you know, 30 bullet points. So I want you to just pick a number. Let's do three of them. I won't do too many of them. Pick three of them. Just pick random numbers, and, uh, w- between 1 and 30, and I'm just gonna read you whatever that bullet was. And these are notes to myself, so I'll have to add some context. But, uh, but go for it.
- SPSam Parr
Well, I can't see them. That's all right?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, you can't see them. Just say the number.
- SPSam Parr
Well, one.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Okay, one. Um, the best advice is free by definition. Okay, so what does this mean? At this event, there's lots of talk, speakers on stage, that sort of thing. Um-
- SPSam Parr
Are you gonna say what the event is? We didn't actually say.
- SPShaan Puri
Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry. So Andrew Wilkinson, our buddy Andrew, hosts a event called Interesting People, and this is the second year he's done it. So he invites a bunch of people out to where he lives in Victoria, Canada, and it's supposed to just be a mixing of interesting people that either he knows really well, like some people he, like, grew up with, some people he knows from the internet, and some people he doesn't know but they sounded interesting when they applied. It's probably 80, 90 people. Super well, well-run event. Um, I had a b- had a blast. So while I was there, I was thinking about, um, conferences in general, and I realized the best advice is free by definition. And what I mean by this is this: advice that is truly great is actually incredibly simple advice. If it w- if it would apply to you almost in a generic way, it's going to be simple and almost, like, h- hilariously uncomplicated. Like, if I said, "Sam, you know nothing about me, but you know that I wanna get in shape. Tell me what to do. You have, like, you know, 15 seconds. Go ahead. Tell me what to do."
- 39:37 – 43:29
“The best advice is free by definition”
- SPSam Parr
One gram of protein per pound. Lift weights three days a week. Walk 10,000 steps a day.
- SPShaan Puri
Great. Now, if I said if you wanted to create a course around that, maybe you could, but you'd have to make it complicated. [laughs] You'd have to add a whole bunch of other things. Like, the best advice in the world tends to be incredibly simple, so simple that you couldn't charge for it. So the best advice is free because either the great advice is so simple you couldn't possibly charge for it. It would be laughable to charge for something like that, to say, "Well, yeah, eat whole foods. You know, try to get enough protein. Walk and get good sleep," right? Or whatever, right? Exercise three times a week. Do weight lift. These are such simple things. You can't create a whole course or program around it in that simple way. And the other side is advice that is, um, non-obvious like that, the non-common sense advice, is, like, hard-won, like, wisdom. Usually comes from people who are so successful that they would be willing to give it away for free. So the advice from the real winners of life, they're not charging you for it because they've won, they're fully abundant, and they're happy to pass on what worked for them. And so I realize that the best advice comes at either end of that barbell. It either comes from people who are so successful that they wouldn't think to charge for it 'cause that'd be beneath them, or it's so simple that you couldn't possibly charge for it 'cause it takes a minute to tell you the answer, and it... after that, it's about you following it. And so I think that that is a, a, a general way that I now think of advice. Anything that falls in the middle is the midwit. It's basically advice that is overly complicated. You're paying for it, and, um, and ultimately, like, you haven't actually found the most useful version of the advice.
- SPSam Parr
Were there any people who you met who were shockingly amazing or intri- interesting?
- SPShaan Puri
Nick Gray. Greg Isenberg.
- SPSam Parr
Greg Isenberg.
- SPShaan Puri
So Greg, Greg... A lot of people know Greg 'cause he's on Twitter or whatever. Greg is 10 times more fun in person than he is online. You might even like his online content, but I'm just saying he's that much better in person. He's just got... He is an a- he is just like a walking vibe. [laughs] Whenever I'm around him, it's just fun. I'm laughing, and, um, it's very interesting what's going on. And I, I guess the way I approach these events is I'm just looking for two or three people that I think are, you know, like, amazing, and I'm just, um, I'm looking for people who just have a certain energy about them, a certain way of being that is good to interact with because I already have a day-to-day life, a routine. If I'm getting out of my routine to go to something, I don't want to just spend it with, uh... I don't, I don't wanna spend my, my, my, my time out of my routine doing the same things I would do in my routine. So I try to make an effort to hang out with people who are, uh, maybe people I don't hang out with all the time or, um, hang out in a way that is not just, like, you know, my normal, normal zone that I'm in.
- SPSam Parr
Was there anyone else that fell into that category or any insight that you got?
- SPShaan Puri
Okay, I'll give you one note here, not necessarily something that changed my mind, but something that I thought was pretty insightful. So Patrick Campbell did a, a breakout session, and Patrick's talk was basically, like, after he sold his company... And Patrick's been on the pod before, uh, talking about how he sold his company for, like, I don't know, 200, $250 million and what happened after that. And he said something that I, I, I really liked. The question I asked him, I go, "If your brother- ... sold his company now, you can give him some advice on, like, what to do in the kind of the year after you sell. What should I- I just sold, what should I, how should I think now? Knowing what you just went through, what would you advise him?" He said, "Well, first thing, probably, like, no m- don't make any major moves for like six to nine months. No major purchases." I think you did this too, right? No major purchases for, for six to nine months. He said it well, he goes, "Don't worry, you have the rest of your life to spend this money. [laughs] So you don't, you don't have to be in a rush. The money's there." Um, the next thing he said was he hired a guy, this coach, um, Jack Skeen, and he, he helped him do kind of like a life 360, kinda like a, uh... You know, people do these, like, 360 reviews where they
- 43:29 – 50:16
Take a 360 review of your life
- SPShaan Puri
interview, like, 10 people around you. Um, Andrew's done this, Patrick's done this with the same guy, and they're basically this guy who interrogates people. When, when this guy stood up to do his intro during the event, he goes, um, he said it, "My name's Jack, and I, um, when I was tw- when I was 30 years old, I found the thing that I could do better than anybody I'd ever met, and I realized that that's the thing I should be doing with my life." He's like, "You're not gonna ask me the thing?" [laughs] We're like, "Yeah, what's the, what's the thing?" And he goes, "I look into people's eyes, and I can see their soul." [laughs] He's like, "Basically, I can, um, I can meet people, I can talk to them, I can ask them questions, I can figure out who they really are, what they're really all about." So Patrick said, he's like, "You know, he asked me a bunch of questions," and he int- he's like, "He really interrogates you and the people around you to try to figure out, you know, who is this guy? What's he all about? What does he love? When, when he's at his best? When is he at his worst?" That sort of thing. And what he, what Patrick said was he took a very intentional approach to this introspection. He's, he's like, [laughs] he's like, "Me and my wife did an off-site." [laughs] He's like, "We did an off-site, and at the off-site, you know, we talked kinda, like, what do we want out of life? You know, the material part of our life, the emotional part of our life, the lifestyle." He's like, "And we made a list, and then we kinda talked about it together," and he's like, um, "We compared it, and we said three things." He goes, "I would share something that I wanted out of life, and either it would be, 'Cool. Go for it.' Like, you know, you do you. Or it would be, 'Cool, I wanna do it with you. Let's do that together.' Or, 'I'm not down with that.' Uh, like, 'I don't think that's in, uh, you know, congruent with what I want.'" And he also said that he made a scorecard for himself, and he said one thing on the scorecard that I really like. So on his scorecard, he was like, "You know, I check in every six months or so, whatever, and I think about, you know, accomplishments I'm proud of, my wins, um, things that I'm bad at that I've accepted that I'm bad at. So, like, things I'm bad at that I'm not working on improving, but I'm at peace with the way they are. Um, then it's things that I'm working on, and then the last one is, like, losses I will no longer live with." And he's like, "This is Ls that I'm no longer willing to take. So things that I are not okay in my life that I need to make a change, but I'm not already making that change." And I thought it was very useful to do this bucketing because when he said these, none of them sounded that surprising, but I had never really asked myself those questions. You know, what are the, you know, all four of those. What are the wins? What are the things I'm bad at that I'm accepting? What are the things that I'm bad at that I'm not accepting, I'm working on? And what are the, the areas of my life I'm no longer willing to tolerate, the losses I'm m- I'm no longer willing to tolerate? And what I liked about these is it normalizes having kind of these highs and lows in your life. And I know that most people try to bury things. Like, you know, here are some areas of my life I don't feel great about, but I don't really wanna address them 'cause when I do, I just feel, like, ashamed and kinda guilty, and I feel, like, bad about myself when I do. So because I feel bad about myself when I address these, I don't address them. I just stash them. And I thought it was a very useful way of, um, thinking because it brings it all to light and says, well, yeah, there of course there's these buckets. And of c- it would be silly of me to not have anything in one of these buckets. Like, of course I've gotta have some wins, I've gotta have some things I'm bad at, I've gotta have some things that I wanna change, I've gotta have some things that I feel like I'm making progress on. Like, and every bucket should have something in it, and that's nothing to be, feel bad about. I thought that was just a very useful, um, exercise that I think more people could, could benefit from.
- SPSam Parr
I think, um, a, a takeaway that I've had of hanging out with people like Patrick and other people who, um, maybe people earlier in their career look up to, of which Patrick should be that type of person. You think that when you, quote, "make it," you don't have doubts and you don't spend money on foo-foo shit like a Life 360. You spend even more on that type of stuff because it's just-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... still incredibly necessary. Do you know what I mean?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Like, I'm-
- SPShaan Puri
More necessary than ever. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
I'm reading this Jack Skeen website, and this is something that previously I would look at back out on and be like, "Who needs that?" Like, if you're gonna kick ass, you're gonna kick ass. Now I'm reading it, and I'm like, "I want this. I need answers. I have no answers. This man has the answers." Um-
- SPShaan Puri
I mean, the headline says, "Discover your true life purpose and direction with the roadmap," right? Y- y- you know, if I, if I hit that, normally I'm bouncing. But when you hear about it in the context of a story and your friends have done it and you're at a certain time of your life, it makes total sense to, to invest in things like this.
- SPSam Parr
This is awesome. Um, well, that's good. It was a good trip.
- SPShaan Puri
It was a lot of fun. It's also, I mean, it was cool 'cause I would say 60, 70, 80% of the people there, like, listen to MFM, which is great.
- SPSam Parr
You're popular?
- SPShaan Puri
Well, yeah, but, like, more, more than that, I mean, a lot of people had cool stories of stuff that we've talked about that they could, they would come up and share. They'd be like, "Oh, dude," like, whether it was just like, "Oh, I hit my first million." And I'm like, "Yeah, cool." I'm like a genie. I appear when you hit your first million. That's it. You just say the words and it, and it, and it happens. Um, or there's people who are like, "Yeah, you guys talked about this, and I went and did all these things and here's what's happened since." And I... Normally, you don't get that feedback loop, right? When we get on here, people don't realize, like, I just treat this like I'm just hanging out with you, and I'm trying to tell you interesting things, and you're telling me interesting things, and I get excited, and then we get off, and, like, that's kind of it. Uh, only now we're starting to be involved even with, like, the thumbnails and the titles to be like, "Hey, guys," like, "can we just, like... You, I don't care if it gets less clicks, just make us look less stupid, please." Um, you know? [laughs] Like, that, that's kind of, like, our level of involvement post, post-episode. Um, but we definitely don't really get as much feedback as there is. So that was, I would say, the, the most fun part, was people coming up and having stories that were, that branched off of something that we talk about.
- SPSam Parr
One time you and I talked about this World War II book that I was reading about Uh, and we talked about Hitler 'cause he was part of the book. And like, the headline that we had used, or somebody picked for the video, was like, "Leadership Lessons [laughs] from-"
- SPShaan Puri
From the Third Reich [laughs] .
- SPSam Parr
"... like, uh, from the Third Reich." And I was like, "Oh my God, no. Do not do that. Delete, delete, delete. That is not what I meant."
- SPShaan Puri
Oh, dude, I also had a lesson learned. So I gave a ta- I gave two talks at this event. I had one good talk, and I had one dog shit talk. And that was a great lesson to learn of just eating shit and realizing five minutes into the talk, "Oh, I've made a huge mistake." So the first one was just a breakout session it w- and she was like, "Well, you can just do whatever you want." And I was like, "Cool. I'm not even gonna have a topic going in. I'm gonna talk to the people there and we're gonna, we're gonna, like, figure out what do people wanna talk about, and then we'll improvise. We'll riff." So I'll tell you about the good one and then the bad one. So the [laughs] actually, I'll tell you about the bad one first. So here's what, what went wrong with the bad one. These are lessons learned in public speaking. So I, um, I get up on the stage and I grab the microphone, and I can't help myself but try something that I've never done before, that I have not prepared for, but I just wanna see what happens [laughs] . So I go for that, which was actually... That part was okay. So they had Matthew Dicks, the storytelling guy, give, like, the opening talk at the event.
- 50:16 – 56:08
Shaan bombs a talk at a conference (lessons learned)
- SPShaan Puri
So he, he was like the 9:00 AM and I was like the 4:00 PM. So at the 9:00 AM thing, he gets on there and he tells a great story and he c- he's got... He's like a profe- he does these speeches everywhere, so, like, he's ready to tell us how in business, storytelling can be super valuable. So I'm writing a ton of notes and I'm inspired. I'm already a believer in storytelling, so you're preaching to the choir, right? It's like the Kool-Aid Man burst through the wall and I already had my cup ready. Pour it on in. And so he convinces us to how important storytelling is. But the next 10 s- you know, five speakers or whatever, they already knew what they were gonna say. So they get on stage and they don't really tell a story. And I'm like, "Dude, we all heard that, right? Storytelling's the shit." So I was like, "I'm gonna try to tell a Matthew Dicks story at the start of my talk." And so 15 minutes before I'm supposed to go on, there's, like, a little break and I decide to, like, try to write a story that I'm gonna tell, which is probably not enough time to do that, but whatever. I gave it a shot. I was like, "I'm here. I'm gonna get my reps in." So I got my rep in. I tried to give the talk. I would say, okay, at least I get credit for trying something new. And everybody understood why my story was, like, not so great was because w- I just obviously made it up, like, you know, uh, a few minutes before. Now, after that I decide, I'm like, you know what? Conferences are these... Usually it's like you get on stage and you're supposed to have the answer. Like, here's how you do it, right? Here's how you do X, and you're supposed to be the know-it-all genius who, like, you know, that's what the guy on stage is doing. So I decide, you know what? I'ma be different. And being different, the th- the thing that I'll tell you about being different is when it works, awesome. When it doesn't work, you're just fucking weird. And so I decide to go on stage and tell people about all the ways that I have failed and lost money. So specifically, the decisions I've made that have been the worst for me in terms of success and finance. Uh, how, how I've lost, you know, $100 million through these seven or eight really poor decisions. And I get on stage and I start giving the talk, and what I realize is this is a downer [laughs] . This is an absolute Debbie Downer. And even though my information might be good and the principles in this might be good, I am basically making everybody in this room state change downward [laughs] . I should be leaving them on a high note. It's the end of the event. We should be like, you know, light-hearted. Everyone's done a full day. They're tired. They're not looking for something heavy. And I came in like a weighted blanket on that crowd [laughs] . And so five minutes in I was like, "Oh, this is a bad idea. I shouldn't have done this." And I didn't have the skills to, um, you know, pull out of that nosedive and change my topic. And I'm sure to them it was fine, but I know in my head what a good talk feels like when I give it. It's, it can be electric. You know, like, people are laughing and they're, they're writing notes furiously and they're feeling good, and afterwards they're buzzing and they c- they, they wanna run through a wall afterwards. This was like the wall ran through them [laughs] . And so I, I feel like, uh, that was a, a big mistake on my part there.
- SPSam Parr
W- what was the winning one?
- SPShaan Puri
The winning one was basically the opposite of that. So I, as soon as the talk happened, or as soon as they were like, "All right, get in your breakout sessions," everybody j- and mine was in the main room, so they were like... People just, like, stayed in their seat. And it was like a five-minute break, so everyone just, like, stays in their seat. They're, like, kind of on their phone checking their email. But, and I was like, "Oh, no, no. I gotta sh- I gotta shift the energy first and foremost. Uh, it doesn't matter what I'm gonna say, I gotta shift the energy." So I had the, the insight at that point to do it. I just didn't have it at the other talk. And so I, um, I immediately was like, "All right, everybody, come over here to this side of the room. Bring a chair. Let's make a circle." Like, circles have a different energy in general than somebody on stage and everybody sitting in a crowd facing them, not seeing each other. And I had to move, bring their chair, come over here, quickly make a circle, and then I did a little bit of crowd work, almost like a comedian. There was a guy in the group who, um, who I had known and had a funny encounter with before this. I, he used to be in, like, a mastermind group of mine before this, and I'd kicked him out 'cause I was like, it was like four straight meetings where he would say the same thing and be stuck at the same plateau, and I'd kicked him out. I was like, "Dude, Alex, like, honestly, I think the best thing I could do for you is not even let you come here and say this same story again, 'cause you're just, like, getting into a rut. Don't come back here till you've doubled revenue." [laughs] And I just, like, kicked him out. And actually he's, like, 8X'd since then in the, like, three years since then, and so he's done in- incredibly well. And so I, I was like, "I haven't seen you in a while. Like, how are things going? Any, uh, attention here?"
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
He's like, "No, dude. It was great. I've 8X'd. It's all good." And so anyways, and I ha- I did this thing where people were like, "How do you do X?" Whatever. And I had us do, like, a, I, uh, like, a pushup thing to, like, change the energy, like, in that, in that moment. Like, let's get the blood flowing. 'Cause one of my principles is good decisions come from good energy. So if you are trying to figure something out or you're trying to make a decision or you're trying to rally your team, if you're doing it from a state where everybody's tired or stressed or afraid about what's going on or just literally, like, half paying attention, that is not where great ideas or great decisions, um, come from. And so the first thing you do is you shift your, your state, and then you make your decision. Then you try to ask yourself the question of how are we gonna make this happen? Um, and so I sh- I showed people, like, how quickly you can change your energy. Like, watch this. Like, 15 seconds, 20 seconds you'll be, you'll feel feeling different than you are right now. And so that was a, a much better thing where it didn't really matter what I said, but crowd work in order to make it more interactive keeps everybody on their toes 'cause they don't know when I'm gonna talk to them. Um, and then shifting the energy first and worrying about information later, uh, was the smart move there.
- SPSam Parr
So it was a good trip then. I mean, I, uh... It looked awesome. I saw the list of people going.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, it was cool. Tons of great people.
- SPSam Parr
All right. That's the pod. [upbeat music]
Episode duration: 56:08
In the uListen app, the transcript lights up word by word as you listen. Get uListen
Transcript of episode YtVzGlraSNs
