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5 Genius Business Tactics Turning Broke Authors Into Millionaires

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Sam ParrhostShaan Purihost

Mar 4, 202449mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

55 min read · 11,318 words

0:00 – 3:00
Intro
1. SPSam Parr
  All right, we're live. Shaan, I've got a little bit, a few actually stories, but it starts with a person I hung out with, uh, the other day. You know Ryan Holiday, right? The author Ryan Holiday?
2. SPShaan Puri
  Of course. He came on the pod. He's awesome.
3. SPSam Parr
  I was hanging out with him the other day, and he said something actually to me in person, but he had previously said this on the podcast that we had... I think he's been on twice. He said something about how... He actually made a funny comment. He's like, "Most, most authors say they make more money through speaking than they do actually selling their books. Those people, they just didn't sell a lot of books."
4. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
5. SPSam Parr
  However, [laughs] uh, Ryan has sold a ton of books, we know that for sure, but he also mentioned to me that his other things, like The Daily Stoic, which is his daily newsletter... So Ryan Holiday wrote a book on stoicism. He's written six or seven now at this point. But he has this other property, it's a daily newsletter called The Daily Stoic, where they sell coins and merch and advertisements. He has told me that that has made more money for him than selling books, j- like, which is crazy, 'cause that's what he's known as, as an author. And so what I wanted to talk to you about today was I went down this huge rabbit hole where I found ways that authors are making money other than just, like, writing a book.
6. SPShaan Puri
  Well, y- you got, you gotta tell the coin thing. 'Cause the coin thing is the perfect simple example of this. I don't know what he confirmed exactly, but explain the coin thing, 'cause I think it's the perfect simple example of an author making money not off their book, but a, a lot of money in some other way.
7. SPSam Parr
  Ryan Holiday's whole shtick is stoicism. It's a philosophy that is fairly useful, and it's just, like, how to deal with hardship in your daily life. And for some reason he decided to come up with a coin, and it's a coin that in Latin it says, like, "You're gonna die," or, like, "Today's one of your last days alive," or something like that. Like, some, like, inspirational thing, but it's in Latin, so I'm not exactly sure what it says. And a coin's a great product to sell because it costs 25 bucks to sell, it costs, like, a dollar to make, it ships for, whatever, a stamp, two stamps, so however much that is, 80 cents. There's no returns, there's no sizes. It's just like the easiest thing ever to sell. And on the podcast, I don't remember if he said the exact number, but I believe he said tens of thousands of coins, which is millions and millions of dollars. Is that what he said?
8. SPShaan Puri
  He did, he did say that, and he also said that he works with some mint, some mint in the United States, and I guess it's, it's one of the old famous coin mints, and he, I think he was, like, their biggest customer [laughs] also. Like, he's like, they're minting more of his Memento Mori coin than they are anything else.
9. SPSam Parr
  So what I wanna do... And that was surprising to me. I had an inkling, and then he kinda revealed that that is true, where he made more money not from selling books. But I had, uh, I went down this rabbit hole, and what I wanna do is I wanna show you three people who are making significantly more money than you would think, and they are doing it in ways other than just writing one book, making, whatever, 10% of the revenue that they, of which they sell. All right, so we're gonna start with the first one.
3:00 – 12:30
James Patterson's hit-making formula
1. SPSam Parr
  Shaan, do you know who James Patterson is?
2. SPShaan Puri
  I do not know who James Patterson is. Who is James Patterson? [laughs]
3. SPSam Parr
  I did not think you would know who he was.
4. SPShaan Puri
  Sounds like a guy that makes sandwiches. Maybe a former baseball player. [laughs] Who are we talking about here?
5. SPSam Parr
  You, you are very smart. You're a very high-IQ smart person.
6. SPShaan Puri
  Oh, God, here it comes.
7. SPSam Parr
  The fact that you don't know some of the most basic things, like, of pop culture, like, it's, it's beyond pop culture at this point. This is, these are things that you see all over bookstores, whatever. It shocks me that you don't know this, so-
8. SPShaan Puri
  Is he the vampire in Twilight? [laughs]
9. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, I mean-
10. SPShaan Puri
  Is this Taylor Swift's boyfriend? Who is this? [laughs]
11. SPSam Parr
  No. Okay, your second guess was a lot further away from the first guess. So listen to this. So have you ever heard of the Stratemeyer Syndicate? You probably haven't, right? Of course. If you haven't heard of James Patterson, you also probably haven't heard of Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys. Have you heard of those things?
12. SPShaan Puri
  I know who those... They, they write murder mystery... They write mystery novels, right? For kids or something. [laughs]
13. SPSam Parr
  Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they are the main characters in murder mystery novels. So the way it starts is in the 1930s there was this thing called the Stratemeyer Syndicate. It was this one guy, he came up with this company in the '30s where he was like, "Hey, not a lot of people are writing children's books. I'm gonna go ahead and start publishing children b- children's books." And then he was like, "You know what? I need to write more books, but I don't feel like dealing with the hassle of working with these artist authors who, like, are just a pain in the butt to deal with. All I care about is making, like, kind of cookie cutter novels that children like." So what he did was he goes, "I'm gonna actually just come up with these characters," so Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and he had a variety of other series, "and I'm gonna have these authors write these books, but I'm just gonna say it's written by the same author every single time. I'm not gonna give a, a, a person l- like, their little bit of fame. I'm gonna pay them a fair rate, but it's... And, and, and they're gonna follow my rules, and maybe eventually they'll become a famous author, but for now they're just gonna follow my rules." And that's what he did. And there was at one point where, like, every kid in America could name Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, things like that.
14. SPShaan Puri
  Stratemeyer Syndicate. What a name. Uh, so wait. Sorry. The syndicate is... I, I think I missed something here. The syndicate is the set of novels.
15. SPSam Parr
  The syndicate was the name of his company.
16. SPShaan Puri
  Oh, okay.
17. SPSam Parr
  He called it a syndicate, which sounds like a drug, like a drug syndicate.
18. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
19. SPSam Parr
  It sounds like something illegal, 'cause usually syndi-... That was just the name of his company, and it was a legitimate company. This wasn't, like, anything shady, although he did a bad job of naming... It'd be like naming, like, your kid's children's book, like, Warm Candy and Vans or something like that.
20. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
21. SPSam Parr
  Like, he did a very bad job of, like, naming his publishing company, called The Syndicate.
22. SPShaan Puri
  Okay.
23. SPSam Parr
  Kinda weird.
24. SPShaan Puri
  Gotcha.
25. SPSam Parr
  But, but basically he came up with these rules where he was like, "All books need to be part of a series. Uh, every chapter needs to end with a preview of what the next chapter's going to be. The beginning of each book needs to give a summary of only one page what happened in the previous books." And he just had this, like, outline of how to, like, make hits. Well, fast-forward, uh, 70 years. There's this guy named James Patterson. At this point now he's 75 years old. He started, uh, in advertising in New York for the J. Thompson advertising firm, just some huge firm. But on the side in his late 20s and early 30s he starts writing novels. And they do okay. Like, they're not, like, that big of hits. Um, but he keeps at it, and he's a workaholic, and he keeps going. And eventually, at the age of 47, he retires from advertising and goes all in on publishing these novels. So he's been doing it now at this point for about 20 years, and he's finally starting to see success. And the whole point of his novels is they're thrillers. Some people might say they're kind of like trash, formulaic thrillers, but the thing is, is people love them. And at this point, he's sold something like 500 million copies of his books. And at one point, he, uh, accounted for 16%... or sorry, 6% of all hardcover novels sold in America. So the guy's a hit maker. He sol- he sells a ton of them. But here's the craziest part. Since he started writing, uh, about 48 years ago, he's published, on average, seven books a year. And at this point, even though he's 75 or 74, he's doing something like 30 books a year. Now, how on earth does a guy do that? That's, like, ridiculous, right, at this point, uh, to be doing that. It's ridiculous to be doing that at a young age. It's more ridiculous to be doing it in your 70s. Well-
26. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, that's more than a book every two weeks.
27. SPSam Parr
  It's ridiculous. Well, here's how he does it. He has co-authors. And a little secret with James Patterson, even, you know, he's well-loved in America, he actually has only written about 20%, like solely written 20% of the books that his name is, is credited as, as writing. The way that he does it, he has a team of s- uh, of co-authors. And so what he does is he pays these guys out of his own pocket. He kind of comes up with a framework. They flesh it out. He reviews it, almost like a movie script, and he's like writes n- uh, notes in the, in the, in the margins, and he gives it back to them. And they kind of flesh it out. And at this point, he's done it so much that you'll see that there's James Patterson with Dolly Parton. I think there's a James Patterson and then the co-author is Bill Clinton, and then the other co-author, who's like the person doing the actual work, is listed below it. But this has been so success- successful that at this point he's made something like $800 million.
28. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] What?
29. SPSam Parr
  Yes, that's how rich this guy is. He owns like three or four homes. Each of them are worth 40 million bucks. He's donated something like 50 million, according to his website, to small bookstores. But this has been a smashing success. I'm shocked you've not heard of James Patterson.
30. SPShaan Puri
  I think I have seen the name. Uh, what's like his most famous book?
12:30 – 18:00
Jack Carr's shameless product placement
1. SPSam Parr
  colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy. They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. And I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn. Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, "Oh, well, that worked, that didn't work. Do more of that, do less of that." And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it. But you can check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. All right, now back to MFM. Let me give you two more that I think are even more interesting. Have you seen these books lately written by this guy named Jack Carr? It's kind of all the rage right now.
2. SPShaan Puri
  I've, I've heard the name, but I, I haven't read anything, no.
3. SPSam Parr
  All right. So Jack Carr is a former Navy SEAL. He served in the Navy SEALs from 1996, I think, to 2016. And he started writing these books called, uh, the first one was called The Terminal List. It came out in 2018. And if, if you go to The Terminal List on Amazon, you'll see it's, it's one of the highest reviewed books I've ever seen given the quantity of reviews. It has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of reviews, and it's like a 4.5. I read one of them two weeks ago. I think I even suggested that you read it. But it's really great. It's basically, like, the equivalent of a romance novel for a woman. It's like-
4. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
5. SPSam Parr
  ... James Bond for the man. It's like, uh, basically the story of a guy who goes through all these hardships where he's a, he's an ex-Navy SEAL. His family gets hurt. He's gotta save them. He's gotta get revenge, whatever. All that, like, epic man shit. However, I started reading his book and I noticed something really interesting. He names products and brands like crazy in his books.
6. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
7. SPSam Parr
  And I'll give you an example. So this is a, a, a few excerpts, or one excerpt from, from one of the books where he talks about, "He reached inside and removed the 9mm Smith and Weston M39 from his chest, better known in the SEAL teams as the MK 22 Hush Puppy." And then he, uh, goes on in saying, "He grabbed a box of his 9mm Super Vel subsonic ammunition that was sitting next to his Yeti cooler."
8. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
9. SPSam Parr
  He [laughs] I swear to God, he'll talk about things. Like, for example, he'll talk about, like-
10. SPShaan Puri
  He's like, "He sipped his Athletic Greens." [laughs]
11. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] He names brands like crazy. Like, there was one point where he was talking about, like, they're like, he needed the best, most durable equipment, so he started using a Hill People fanny pack or something like that.
12. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
13. SPSam Parr
  And I'm like, "What?" I, and like-
14. SPShaan Puri
  Dude, can we pay to get-
15. SPSam Parr
  ... the characters' names
16. SPShaan Puri
  ... like my... He's like, he d- [laughs] he put on his headphones and turned on My First Million, his go-to on Tuesdays and Thursdays-
17. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
18. SPShaan Puri
  ... for all types of entrepreneurial inspiration. And then-
19. SPSam Parr
  Dude, he na-
20. SPShaan Puri
  ... he went to war. [laughs]
21. SPSam Parr
  He names stuff like crazy. And the c- the main character, his name's James Reece. He's like a James Bond type of guy where he does a lot of bad stuff, but, like, you really like him and you kinda wanna be like him. And he just names all of the products that he uses, and it's crazy. And so I was interested. I'm like, "Why is this guy naming all these products?" So I go to his website. I Google Jack Carr brands. I just Google that. He's got this whole website. I think it's just jackcarr.com. But if you Google, uh, Jack Carr brands, uh, what you'll see is he has jackcarr.com, and he creates... Do, do you know, like, that website, um, Uncrate or, uh, uh, Gear Patrol? He basically has created his own version of that where he has all these gift guides, or he'll be like, "Here's all the gear that J- uh, James Reece used in this book." And he has these beautiful guides on his website. And lo and behold, if you highlight over a lot of them, they're all affiliate links.
22. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
23. SPSam Parr
  And in fact, [laughs] and in fact, oftentimes on jackcarr.com, he sells his own stuff. And so one of the main parts in this first book that I read is he's got this fancy tomahawk, which is basically like an ax, and he uses this tomahawk to kill people, and it's like a really high-quality tomahawk. Well-
24. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
25. SPSam Parr
  ... jackcarr.com sells that exact same tomahawk. And I thought that this was brilliant because when reading these stories, he's talked about the cars that he's in. Like, the, the type of car that he's in is, like, a main part. I'm like, "I want all this stuff," because this character James Reece is so cool. All I have to do is go to jackcarr.com-
26. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
27. SPSam Parr
  ... and I can buy all of this stuff. And it's amazing. I love this strategy.
28. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, this is brilliant. I've never, I never would've thought that product placement in books would work like product placement in movies does, but that makes perfect sense. This is his, uh, this is his Feastables. This is his Prime Tomahawk. [laughs]
29. SPSam Parr
  Dude, it's awesome. And by the way, I was just giving him a little shit. Not all of them are affiliate links, but a lot of them are. And if you go to, like, his Amazon page, he even has this cool feature on his Amazon page where it lists all of the products in the books-
30. SPShaan Puri
  Now, do you think-
18:00 – 23:30
Steve Rinella's $100M content to commerce play
1. SPSam Parr
  many things, including, like, the cool types of gear they have, and you, like, see what they're wearing, and you're like, "That's neat. I would love to have that thing." Or, you know, you... It's like cosplaying to be a tough guy.
2. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
3. SPSam Parr
  There's a th- here's... [laughs] Right? I mean, like-
4. SPShaan Puri
  He says in his cardigan
5. SPSam Parr
  ... I don't even... [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, as he walked around his home wearing Birkenstocks.
6. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
7. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Does JCPenney, like, sell, like, really good boxers or something I could talk about? Um, the third one Steve Rinella. Have you heard of Steve Rinel- Rinella?
8. SPShaan Puri
  I'm three for three, no. [laughs] Who is Steve Rinella?
9. SPSam Parr
  Okay. This one is... I would, I would not think you would know who this guy is. So he originally starts as a magazine article guy for Outdoor Magazine. So he basically, he's from Michigan, went to school in Montana. He loves the outdoors, he also loves writing, and so he starts as a freelance journalist. He works for Outdoor Magazine, he works for, like, Men's Health, these things where he, he's able to like talk about the outdoors, and they pay him a small amount of money, whatever. His first book that he writes is about foraging, so [laughs] which is basically just-
10. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
11. SPSam Parr
  ... he wanted to create... The, the, the book sounds silly, but they're actually awesome. He wanted to write about how he went and hunted and foraged his own Thanksgiving dinner. But like in doing that, you find like the meaning of life, and you see like the history of food, whatever, and outdoors. It's awesome. The second book that he did is called American Buffalo, and it's this amazing book about him hunting buffalo and how the buffalo are really important to American history, whatever. If you're not into that, you're not into it, which I don't think you are.
12. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
13. SPSam Parr
  But for the people who are...
14. SPShaan Puri
  What gave it away? [laughs]
15. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs]
16. SPShaan Puri
  This is like-
17. SPSam Parr
  Yeah
18. SPShaan Puri
  ... you know, my body language right now is the body language of a girl who's about to get grinded on by a guy at the club unwantedly.
19. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
20. SPShaan Puri
  No, no, no, thanks. Foraging for my food. No, thanks. I'm out of here. [laughs]
21. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
22. SPShaan Puri
  Would you like a free copy of my book? It's signed. Nope. [laughs]
23. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] Yeah. You're, you're not into this guy, but you're gonna be into what, what I'm about to explain. So he writes this book, American Buffalo. It gets pretty popular. So then he creates this website called Meateater.com. Have you ever heard of Meateater?
24. SPShaan Puri
  I have heard of Meateater, yes.
25. SPSam Parr
  So Meateater starts as a series of podcasts. They have a show on this thing called the, the Outdoor or the Sports Channel, something like that, and it starts working out. Well, eventually Chernin-
26. SPShaan Puri
  Oh, yeah
27. SPSam Parr
  ... I think you know Chernin, they invest into it, and at this point in 2023, Meateater is a website where Steve Rinella, uh, blogs about outdoors. He publishes books, his books under the Meateater name. He has recipe books. He has, uh, more podcasts, whatever, newsletters. However, they went and bought a bunch of brands. They bought a duck call business. They went and bought, um, [smacks lips] a clothing line. Now, in 2023, they announced that they did 100 million in revenue from selling all of the products on Meateater.com, of which his kinda claim to fame, or at least where he gets a lot of the traffic from, is his books and then his podcasts and things like that. And so this is an example of a guy who I think has made significantly more, or will make significantly more in terms of enterprise value, from selling the product that he talks about in the books or selling the lifestyle. This guy's super fascinating.
28. SPShaan Puri
  Dude, going from American Buffalo, a b- book about buffalos in America or whatever, to having $100 million in revenue on your business is like... That, that's not the American dream, but it's, it's something. [laughs] It's someone's dream somewhere.
29. SPSam Parr
  It's, it's an American dream.
30. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] It's, yes. That is... I can't believe that that happened. That's insane. Chernin is so smart, by the way. They took this one thesis of content to commerce. So they were like, "Hey, anybody who's world-class at content is not valued properly in the market because media is such a shit business, that they're valued as a media business. But if you can flip their business model from content to commerce, then this thing is gonna, this thing is gonna take off." And it's gonna take off in the same way that our YouTube subs are gonna take off, when you go to YouTube [laughs] and you say to yourself, "Goddamn, I'm learning a lot from Sam today about meat eaters, and about authors, and about all these people." And they're gonna go to YouTube, you're gonna go to My First Million, and you're gonna click subscribe because you love us so much. Thank you very much. That's the plug.
23:30 – 27:00
Other $20M - $50M authors
1. SPShaan Puri
  He's like, "I knew enough to get the hell out of there." [laughs]
2. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs] And now he lives in Brooklyn, which is what I thought was kind of weird. Um, but anyway, those are my three examples of strange ways or shocking ways that a bunch of these authors are making money. I know that you are thinking about becoming an author. Does this change... But I think you've paused it. I'm not sure if you've paused it or if you-
3. SPShaan Puri
  Well, I think becoming an author, uh, to make money is just, uh, that's like saying, "You know, I was hungry, so I went to church." It's like, yeah, just 'cause they have some food there doesn't mean that's why you go. [laughs] And so like, I don't think making money is the reason to, to write a book. If you're gonna want... If you wanna make money, and you're smart about marketing and all that, there's 100 times easier ways to make money.
4. SPSam Parr
  Did you just make up that analogy? That was a really good, uh, that was a really good analogy.
5. SPShaan Puri
  I did my morning routine today, so you know, the brain is on. Um, the brain is awake. The thing that I've looked into is how much these authors make. So there's like tiers to this. So, uh, if it was 10 tiers, the first 5 tiers, you know, of tier 10 through 5- Is just all of them made no money. [laughs] Actually maybe tiers, you know, like, uh, 10 all the way to number three all made no money. But a couple of interesting data points, uh, that are in our world. So I think the top tier is like the JK Rowlings of the world. Uh, JK Rowling, James Patterson, which is like you actually are mainstream canon, right? You are, you're a part of the meta. Like y- y- you became the equivalent... You know, you're gonna get a Netflix show type of thing. So that's like tier one.
6. SPSam Parr
  Dude, have you ever thought about, by the way, have you thought about JK Rowling and how she invented an entire universe and made up rules to like a game or a language that people refer to now? Like the word Muggle.
7. SPShaan Puri
  I think about that-
8. SPSam Parr
  Like she just thought of that word
9. SPShaan Puri
  ... at least twice a week. You know, people do the Roman Empire thing. I don't give a shit about the Roman Empire.
10. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
11. SPShaan Puri
  But dude, I do think of like Diagon Alley. I think about Hogwarts. I think about all these places, right?
12. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
13. SPShaan Puri
  Like [laughs] I think about that twice a week, uh, how cool that is there's just a whole new world.
14. SPSam Parr
  Someone just made it up.
15. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah. [laughs]
16. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] It's weird to me. That- that... When I think about that I'm just like that's- that's so odd.
17. SPShaan Puri
  All right. No bullshit. What percent of you is like, "Might be real?" [laughs] Is there any part of you that's like-
18. SPSam Parr
  Well [laughs]
19. SPShaan Puri
  ... "Well, I- I mean, I am just a muggle. How would I know?" [laughs]
20. SPSam Parr
  The way that I think about it is it, she is so good at inventing this thing that she couldn't possibly have invented it and she's just telling a true story.
21. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
22. SPSam Parr
  Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just impossible to think that one brain, like our brains are each six pounds, but that came out of hers. I don't understand-
23. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
24. SPSam Parr
  ... how that happened.
25. SPShaan Puri
  Dude, I've been at an airport where it's like you have the smart cart thing, and I'm walking between, you know, nine and 10. And I don't run at it, but like, you know, I'll take my finger and sort of drag it against the wall just in case there's-
26. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
27. SPShaan Puri
  ... a little, little give in that, in that wall, you know? I'll, I'll play, I'll see. Um, so there's that, that tier, right? That's like God tier. Then there's the James Clear, you know, Atomic Habits, David Goggins, Mark Manson. I think these guys have cleared like 30 to $50 million off of a single book.
28. SPSam Parr
  That's a lot. I would say more like 20.
29. SPShaan Puri
  So James Clear I think, uh, I don't know how many he's sold now. It's his thing is escalating by the way, which is really interesting. He tweeted this out recently and it was, it was something like... I'll try to find it, but it was basically like he... First year was like, you know, maybe like 100,000. And then the next year was like 200,000. Then the third year was a million. And then the fourth year was like four million. And the fifth year was like 15 million, and he's just gone up and up and up. I think now he's sold, uh, o- over basically, I don't know, 20 million copies or
27:00 – 30:00
The genius of the Navalmanack
1. SPShaan Puri
  something like that worldwide. And so, you know-
2. SPSam Parr
  No way. Really?
3. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah.
4. SPSam Parr
  That many? 20 million?
5. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, yeah.
6. SPSam Parr
  Oh my God.
7. SPShaan Puri
  His book is like a, it's like a runaway train basically. Um, so I, I think, I'm pretty sure his, his book has grossed like $150 to $200 million. Probably 150, probably $150 million worldwide.
8. SPSam Parr
  That's insane.
9. SPShaan Puri
  It's my guess. And you know, I might be off by 30 million in either direction but, but I'm not off by, by half, you know? Um-
10. SPSam Parr
  And he's just a guy in Ohio. I think, like [laughs] he's just a, he's just a guy.
11. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
12. SPSam Parr
  Like I, I knew him before the... Right? I talked to him before the book and he was just like a blogger in Ohio. Like, it didn't seem particularly fancy and-
13. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, he doesn't talk to us anymore
14. SPSam Parr
  ... not a million years would I... [laughs] Yeah.
15. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] I knew him before he stopped talking to me. [laughs]
16. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] Yeah.
17. SPShaan Puri
  So, so I think tho- that's like the next tier. David Goggins' book I think has done like 35, $40 million in sales, and he did it through Scribe so he kind of like owns more of that I think.
18. SPSam Parr
  Owns a lot of it.
19. SPShaan Puri
  Um, Tim Ferriss surprisingly didn't sell that many copies of 4-Hour Workweek. I thought 4-Hour Workweek was like a... To me it was like that was a huge book. Uh, it obviously did super, super well, but I think it sold 2 million copies. You know, so 2 million versus 20 million, right? 10X more for, for Atomic Habits, which is pretty crazy. A fun one is Eric Jorgenson. So you know Eric Jorgenson, um, he, he was like a startup growth guy. He lived in some... I don't know where he lives. He lives in like Kansas City or something like that. And Eric Jorgenson wrote The Navalmanack, which is basically he's like, "Yo, Naval's tweets are the shit. What if I printed them out?" [laughs] Basically like, "What if I printed it out and stapled it together," right? Obviously he did more than that, but the core idea was he didn't write the book, he didn't do a, he didn't study Naval's life and write a biography. He didn't create a bunch of original wisdom. He just took Naval's existing wisdom that was super fragmented, packaged it up into a really easy-to-use book, and then, and he actually gives away like the e-book for free I think online. Um, I'm pretty sure Eric, he's never told me this, this is my, my guesswork based on some, some back of the envelope stuff. Pretty sure Eric has made like 3 to $5 million off of the Navalmanack himself.
20. SPSam Parr
  No way. I don't believe that. That is so much money.
21. SPShaan Puri
  I am-
22. SPSam Parr
  Real-
23. SPShaan Puri
  ... 82% confident that that's a, a real number.
24. SPSam Parr
  Dude, if you're even half right I would be, that would be huge.
25. SPShaan Puri
  He's definitely made more than a million dollars. I think it's like 3 to $5 million off the Navalmanack.
26. SPSam Parr
  Okay. Well, that's insane. Does Naval get anything?
27. SPShaan Puri
  Naval got distribution. [laughs] I, I don't think he gives Naval any money from it. I don't know, but-
28. SPSam Parr
  I'm gonna make you famous, baby.
29. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
30. SPSam Parr
  You're gonna be a superstar. That's what I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna create the Shaan- Shaanamanack. [laughs]
30:00 – 39:30
How Hugh Howey became self-publishing's unlikely hero
1. SPShaan Puri
  do is let other people re-share your ideas. They're, you know, stealing your ideas, but really they're propagating your ideas. It's one of the highest compliments and one of the best strategies you can have to get more distribution." And so, you know, I think he was happy that Eric... You know, and it took him like a year. He put a lot of effort into it.
2. SPSam Parr
  Not nearly as much effort as the guy who actually came up with the content. [laughs]
3. SPShaan Puri
  Well, Naval's made 500 million in his life, so I think he's done fine too, right? [laughs] That's, that's the whole idea.
4. SPSam Parr
  No. And Eric, by the way, I think Eric's now the CEO of Scribe, David, the, the company that did David Goggins' book, so.
5. SPShaan Puri
  Yes.
6. SPSam Parr
  And the company that I think you might u- be using.
7. SPShaan Puri
  Uh, yeah, not yet, but, um, okay. So another- Crazy story. So I've never heard of this book, and I doubt you have either, 'cause are you a sci-fi reader?
8. SPSam Parr
  Not exactly. Only, like, the most famous ones.
9. SPShaan Puri
  So have you ever heard of this book called Wool?
10. SPSam Parr
  No.
11. SPShaan Puri
  Uh-
12. SPSam Parr
  Talking to me about science fiction is like talking to you about bison
13. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] Yeah.
14. SPSam Parr
  You know what I mean? It just-
15. SPShaan Puri
  Ain't going very far. [laughs]
16. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs]
17. SPShaan Puri
  That conversation's got a lot of dead ends.
18. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs] That, that's a hard yes, Dan.
19. SPShaan Puri
  Well, basically, here's the, here's the idea. I was looking at the, uh, at the charts, and I saw all of the Game of Thrones books. So it's like, you know, A Song of Ice and Fire, and it's basically George R.R. Martin, George R.R. Martin, George R.R. Martin. There's five of his books, and there was one book on top of it called Wool. And I was like, "I have never heard of this book. What is this book?" So I went and researched it. So the author, this guy Hugh Howey, which sounds like a fake name. Might be. I don't know. Um, his, the, his origin story is he's living in North Carolina. He's broke. Uh, he was doing some odd jobs. He was like, "Oh, there's a roofing gig? Yeah, I'll go help you out," you know. "I'm a technician? Sure, I'll, I'll help you out." And basically at some point he's unemployed, and he's like, "You know what? I'm gonna write a book." His wife was kinda supporting the household. He's like, "I'm gonna write a book," and she's like, "Okay, honey. Great. Uh-
20. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
21. SPShaan Puri
  ... sure you don't wanna get out there with the old resume?" And he's like, "No, no, no, I'm gonna write a sci-fi book." [laughs] And like, it was like the idea was, like, something, he's like, "What if aliens had this flying car," or whatever. I don't know what it was. Some crazy idea. He-
22. SPSam Parr
  This conversation could go way different. It'd be like, "Hey, by the way, like, I know that you love having these action figures in the plastic still-
23. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
24. SPSam Parr
  ... but can we make a little bit of room for the baby?" [laughs]
25. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] "Oh, you're gonna write a book? I'm gonna go find another husband."
26. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] Yeah.
27. SPShaan Puri
  So, so, so he puts the book out. He sells less than $1,000 of the book. Okay, so first, first try at it failed. Most people would obviously quit.
28. SPSam Parr
  Strike one.
29. SPShaan Puri
  He's like, "Oh, I'm just getting warmed up." [laughs] He's like, "I, that was, that was good, but I can do better." And he still has no job. He needs to kind of start, you know, paying for the bills a little bit. So and I love this part about the story. He gets a job, but he's like, he's trying to find not the highest paying job. He's trying to f- find a job that will make a minimum amount of money that he needs to live with the maximum amount of free hours. So he ends up finding this job that he could do for about 25, 30 hours a week. It pays only 10 bucks an hour, but he's like, "I'll take it, 'cause there's a lot of downtime where I'm just sitting there not doing anything. I could be writing during that time, and it's only 30 hours a week, so I can spend all of my free time doing this. And I also don't even want a good job that'll make it hard to quit later, 'cause I wanna be an author, and I'm not gonna trap myself in a job that's, like, hard to leave." Then he changes his schedule. He's like, "I'm gonna wake up 2:00 AM every day, and I'm gonna write before my job, I'm gonna write during my lunch break, I'm gonna write after dinner." It became a compulsion for him. And in three weeks he writes this book Wool. Three weeks. So again, just like James Patterson wasn't precious about the whole idea of writing books, this guy was like, "Three weeks, not three years." And so he bangs, he bangs out this book, he puts it on Amazon for 99 cents, and he sells like 1,000 copies. He's like, "Boom, 1,000 bucks. All right, love it." And he's like, uh, and the... But, like, you know, his small reader base, it's kinda like YC. They say you want, like, a small number of people. You'd rather have 1,000 people that love you than 100,000 people that just kinda like you. So he had 1,000 people that really loved the book, and they were like, "Dude, you gotta write a sequel." So very next month before they get cold, he writes a sequel.
30. SPSam Parr
  By the way, Wool, Wool's 530 pages. He did that in three weeks?
39:30 – 44:00
James Clear's new habit app
1. SPSam Parr
  uh, he gives the weirdos hope. Uh, this story's amazing. Hugh Howey, um, that's a good story. Um, do you wanna do one or two more thing?
2. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah. Uh, my shill. Use Shepherd. It's great. You need to hire somebody? Go check it out. It's how I hire a bunch of people. If you wanna hire people like I do, use Shepherd. [laughs] How was that?
3. SPSam Parr
  All right. There, that's perfect.
4. SPShaan Puri
  There was no thrill in that shill, but I kept it short.
5. SPSam Parr
  Do you have one more thing?
6. SPShaan Puri
  Oh, well, I guess we didn't talk about this. Uh, this is kinda cool. James Clear just launched an app yesterday, which I think was the stimulus for this whole thing that we didn't, we didn't talk about.
7. SPSam Parr
  Andrew Wilkinson, he put out this tweet where he said, uh, "We partnered with James Clear. Tiny owns 40%, James owns 60%. We made this app." I actually didn't look at the app. It's a productivity app or a habit-
8. SPShaan Puri
  It's a habits app
9. SPSam Parr
  ... tracking app.
10. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah. [laughs] It's, what if it's just something completely different? It's just a social media app.
11. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
12. SPShaan Puri
  Just a network.
13. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs]
14. SPShaan Puri
  It's like a photo-sharing app-
15. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
16. SPShaan Puri
  ... by James Clear. [laughs]
17. SPSam Parr
  Just some, like, stupid game. It's like, you, like, they recreated, like, Snake from Nokia.
18. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] Yeah.
19. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
20. SPShaan Puri
  That's so funny.
21. SPSam Parr
  I don't know.
22. SPShaan Puri
  By the way, okay, so let's talk about a couple things here. Great idea to release a habits app. Uh, you want an app to be habit-forming. Literally, that's like w- only successful apps are ones that you use habitually. So creating a habits app is a good idea. There's lots of... There's habits apps, but they're not made by James Clear, so I think this is, like, no, no-brainer idea.
23. SPSam Parr
  He could've just created anything that was a habit, like, just, like, some supplement or drug. Like, "I'm gonna get you addicted."
24. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
25. SPSam Parr
  "We're gonna make this habit." [laughs]
26. SPShaan Puri
  Watch this.
27. SPSam Parr
  We're gonna call it Crack. [laughs]
28. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] So I think genius idea by him, maybe doubly genius idea by Andrew to pull this off. I think it's amazing what he's doing. He's done this now with Huberman. So he launched, uh, the yerba mate drink with Huberman, which I think is also a genius idea. I think what Andrew's doing now is the new playbook of what Churnin did. Remember I was saying, like, Churnin's playbook with the content to commerce, they did it with Barstool, they did it with Eater, they did it with, like, a bunch of these media pu- media publications. That was a really good m- model, and it, it's played out over the last 10 years. I think what Andrew's doing now is gonna play out over the next 10 years, which is he's partnering with these experts and authorities, and he's like, "Look, I already have Metalab that can do the design, the engineering. Uh, I have, I, I own a portfolio of businesses. I've, you know, made a billion dollars doing this whole thing. So let me find a CEO. We'll build the whole thing. You just have to promote it, and it's a perfect fit with what you do." I think it's just, like, such a good model. It's also really fun for him, right? 'Cause he's gonna get to hang out and rub shoulders with people who he likes and respects. He's got, like, a cool cocktail story of being like, "Oh, yeah, I, we built the James Clear app. We did the Huberman drink. We did the whatever," right? Um, they've done a bunch of these, these apps now. So I just think it's a awesome win all around. Like, I'm, I'm really happy for him.
29. SPSam Parr
  We should have Andrew on to talk about it, but my prediction is that this won't make nearly as much money as some of his other boring things that no one would ever talk about. But it's cooler than all of the other ones. D- [laughs]
30. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
44:00 – 49:41
The super networking tactics of Andrew Wilkinson
1. SPShaan Puri
  I think he's picking the right influencers to do these with. I, I would bet that he's gonna make hundreds of millions off of these plays. If you, if you add up the, you know, three to five that he's gonna do in this category, I would bet that that's a three to f- three, uh, like, a $300 million prize.
2. SPSam Parr
  I guess we'll have to have him on and, uh, ask him about it. I'm, he, he's like a spider, man. He's... or like an octopus.
3. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
4. SPSam Parr
  He's, he has his tentacles, like, all over the place. I see this. I'm like how the fuck did you weasel your way into that thing? Like, he just, like, he knows everything.
5. SPShaan Puri
  Dude-
6. SPSam Parr
  Like, not knows everything. He knows everyone. I don't know how he gets his fingers on all these things. I'll be like-
7. SPShaan Puri
  Check your email
8. SPSam Parr
  ... I'll be like, "Hey, uh-"
9. SPShaan Puri
  Where's our email? We're influencers, Andrew.
10. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
11. SPShaan Puri
  Where you at? [laughs]
12. SPSam Parr
  Well-
13. SPShaan Puri
  Where's our offer? [laughs]
14. SPSam Parr
  He also plays dumb with me all the time. I go, like, "You're..." I, I'm, I'd probably be like, "Hey, have you heard of this guy named Huberman? I've been loving his podcast." And Wilkinson will be like, "Yeah, I think it's a nice podcast. I also enjoy it."
15. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
16. SPSam Parr
  And then, like, weeks later, be like, "Yeah, we partnered with him and launched this company, and we did this for that."
17. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, been working on this deal for 18 months. [laughs]
18. SPSam Parr
  Y- yeah. [laughs] I'm like, okay. Like, he does that, he does that kind of on a regular basis with me, where I'll be like, "Have you heard of this thing? It's kinda neat." And he'll be like, "Yeah, I agree. That is neat."
19. SPShaan Puri
  He, he is a super networker. He is a absolutely po- like, incredible networker. I am, I, I, I am, uh, I admire his networking skills. Like, he's like, "Cool, I like Bill Ackman. Now I'm friends with Bill Ackman, and he's an investor in my company. Oh, Charlie Munger's my hero." Years later, "I'm having dinner with Charlie Munger, and he's offering me, you know, XYZ." It's like he is really able to, when he puts his mind to it with who he wants to meet, he is able to make that shit happen. And, um, and I think he does it in a way that's mutually beneficial. It's not like, uh, you know, most people when they're like, "Oh, I wanna meet this person," it's, like, just begging for a t- you know, time or attention in a way that's not additive to the other person. I think he does it in a good way that's additive to the other person.
20. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. He's, he's fascinating in the way that he's able... But he also, he also turns a weird networking opportunity into, like, real businesses. Like, usually, a lot, uh, more often than not, when I meet people-
21. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
22. SPSam Parr
  ... I'm like, "That was nice to meet you. I'll see you never again."
23. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] Yeah.
24. SPSam Parr
  Uh, and-
25. SPShaan Puri
  This was awesome, right?
26. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] Yeah.
27. SPShaan Puri
  High five.
28. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] Yeah.
29. SPShaan Puri
  And that's, like, where my brain stops. [laughs]
30. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs]