I Sold A Company For $800M At 29... What I’m Doing Now | Jack Smith Interview (#470)

1. 0:00 – 2:50

   Intro

   1. JSJack Smith0:00

      You wake up at something like 3:00 AM or 5:00 AM, and the first two to three days, the only instruction they give you is, "Hey, uh, feel how the breath feels on your lips when you're breathing in and out. Okay, see you in three days." And you sit there. So it's really extreme.

   2. SPShaan Puri0:15

      [laughs]

   3. JSJack Smith0:15

      What? [laughs]

   4. SPShaan Puri0:17

      This is my management style, too. [laughs]

   5. JSJack Smith0:18

      [laughs]

   6. SPSam Parr0:19

      [upbeat music] All right, we're live here. We have a guest, Jack Smith, one of my best friends, in my wedding, an amazing person. I don't even know how to describe you, Jack. What you... I guess, like, the top line is you started a company that you sold for, like, $800 million when you were 29. That's like the, that's like the, the headline impressive stuff. But we have you here because you have done... You're just, like, one of the more interesting people I know.

   7. JSJack Smith0:53

      Okay. Well, thanks for having me. I also thought-

   8. SPSam Parr0:55

      [laughs]

   9. JSJack Smith0:55

      ... kind of an interesting contrast coming after Rob, um, because, like, he was describing himself as, like, the pinnacle of human optimization, right?

   10. SPSam Parr1:03

       [laughs]

   11. JSJack Smith1:04

       Like, he plans how long it takes him to go to the toilet each day.

   12. SPSam Parr1:07

       [laughs]

   13. JSJack Smith1:08

       And then I was thinking, I'm maybe an interesting contrast because I'm, like, human procrastination-

   14. SPSam Parr1:13

       [laughs]

   15. JSJack Smith1:13

       ... like, the exact opposite of that, so.

   16. SPSam Parr1:16

       Y- yeah, but you do optimize stuff. Like, Shaan, I don't know if you know this, but, like, Jack, one time we went to his birthday party, and his wife made him a cake, and it was in the shape of an Amazon box because he had this, like... It was like a walk-in closet, but it was basically a room in his home, and it was full of Amazon boxes. And you're like, "Jack, what is that?" And he has this list, this ex- Excel spreadsheet that he keeps, and anything that he buys, ranging from a book bag to baby, uh, apparel or baby accessories, or one time he was obsessed with chocolate, he would literally buy 50 versions and test all of them and then rank them on this, like, attribute system-

   17. JSJack Smith1:55

       [laughs]

   18. SPSam Parr1:55

       ... and then have a... And so he has these huge lists of everything that he's tested, and he's done this so much that we're... Haven't you been banned from Amazon, like, multiple times?

   19. JSJack Smith2:05

       Yeah.

   20. SPSam Parr2:05

       [laughs]

   21. JSJack Smith2:05

       And then also, Bonobos had this policy for... I, I don't know if they still have. I think for many years, they had a policy where you could return any item, even if it was used, up to 365 days after. And so I had a spreadsheet tracking when I bought everything. Basically, I got a new wardrobe every year because I just sent all my clothes back-

   22. SPSam Parr2:25

       [laughs]

   23. JSJack Smith2:25

       ... on 340 days, and then just got it all as, like, uh, credit and just bought an entire new wardrobe every year. Um, so yeah, I got banned from Amazon a few times, and Bonobos should have banned me.

   24. SPShaan Puri2:37

       Yeah, so you and Rob have more in common than you, than you think. [laughs] He's planning his poops, and you're planning your returns-

   25. JSJack Smith2:42

       [laughs] Cool

   26. SPShaan Puri2:42

       ... [laughs] in a giant spreadsheet.

   27. SPSam Parr2:44

       Which by the way, we should, like, give a background. So basically, your company was called Vungle.

2. 2:50 – 7:26

   Jack's first company

   1. SPSam Parr2:50

      You s- how, how old were you, 22?

   2. JSJack Smith2:51

      Um, 21, 20, um.

   3. SPSam Parr2:55

      So basically, like, the story that you always tell is you had, like... You got into an accelerator, an incubator. I think you had one idea, but it wasn't working out. [sniffs] And then you just, like, mocked up, like, a PowerPoint. You went... And it was, like, on a mobile ad network, so basically you would see an ad in between levels of games. You brought it to developers, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, this is way better. If you could actually build this, we're in." And you did that a bunch of times, where you got maybe one or, I think, a million dollars of a commitments of, like, "Yeah, I guess if you build this, we would spend, like, this much money." And then you took that, and you actually hired a, uh, d- a developer, Bryant, who's now the co-founder of Webflow.

   4. JSJack Smith3:33

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SPSam Parr3:34

      And you built that business, and then it, like, spiraled into this thing where I think you'd only raised 10 or 15 million, maybe 17 million, and within seven years, I think, wherever it was when you sold, you guys were doing a million a day in revenue. Was, is, uh, is, is that, like, the summary?

   6. JSJack Smith3:49

      So it could be in that region. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, about hundreds of millions in revenue.

   7. SPSam Parr3:54

      It, it... and it was absolutely crazy. And then you sold it for, I forget, what, 800?

   8. JSJack Smith3:58

      Yeah, yeah, kind of in that region. And I mean, what's interesting as well is obviously Shaan talks about having worked with Furquan, um, at AppLovin. AppLovin launched about 6 to 12 months after us. So I think as another example, you don't have to be the first to market. Like, everyone's jumping on the AI trend, right, to be first to market. But actually, you don't have to be the first to market to be the bi- biggest. AppLovin was one of the slower movers. And to give context, they, at their peak, have been multiple times bigger than Vungle. They went public, and probably at their peak in the region of 10 billion market cap. Now they're a bit lower because the market crashed, but-

   9. SPShaan Puri4:37

      No, no, they're-

   10. JSJack Smith4:37

       ... maybe more, 20

   11. SPShaan Puri4:38

       ... so they're 9 bil- they're 9 billion now. They were 20 billion-

   12. JSJack Smith4:41

       Okay. Wow

   13. SPShaan Puri4:41

       ... at its peak.

   14. JSJack Smith4:42

       Mm.

   15. SPShaan Puri4:42

       Uh, something like 20, 25 billion at its peak. What do you think they did? Why did they have kind of a, let's call it, 10 to 20x bigger outcome if they started a year later? What... When you look back, what, what did you learn from that?

   16. JSJack Smith4:54

       And it was also interesting because, uh, one of our investors-

   17. SPShaan Puri4:56

       Besides Furquan being a beast.

   18. JSJack Smith4:58

       [laughs] One of our investors came to us and said, like, "Oh, yeah, we're backing... We, we're looking, we're investing in this company. They do, like, um, video advertisements inside of, uh, mobile apps, et cetera, called AppLovin." And we were like, "Uh, you're describing our company. What are you talking about you're investing in? [laughs] That's what we do, dude."

   19. SPShaan Puri5:17

       [laughs]

   20. JSJack Smith5:17

       And actually, uh, so they're call- uh, they're called Web, um, uh, WIN, Web Investment Network. They invested in... I think they're the only investor. They invested in Vungle and AppLovin.

   21. SPShaan Puri5:29

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JSJack Smith5:29

       Um, they're great guys, but at the time, we were like, "What the fuck?"

   23. SPShaan Puri5:33

       [laughs]

   24. JSJack Smith5:34

       Um, so they've had massive wins there. Uh, one bit we observed is actually AppLovin, Vungle, we thought that, like, at the time before Vungle, mobile ads were monetized through, like, banner ads, like, kind of on the internet, you know. When internet first launched, you had these crappy banner ads. And we were like, "Well, they obviously suck, so we're gonna do video ads, which is 10x better." But a difference that AppLovin did is they didn't only do video ads. They did everything. They did. They, they were like, "We don't care what you wanna spend money on. We'll just take your money." So they're like-

   25. SPShaan Puri6:06

       [laughs]

   26. JSJack Smith6:07

       ... one platform, you can do banner ads, video ads, everything. And so I think that, um, enabled them to capture a bit more market share, and perhaps, um, the, uh, founding team being more technical. Like I'm say that I'm a crappy engineer. Uh, like, I could not build Vungle from scratch, and Shaan, listening to your story on, uh, one of the more recent episodes, you described Furquan making that dashboard for Adam, that he could just look at the apps and poach them.

   27. SPShaan Puri6:39

       Right.

   28. JSJack Smith6:39

       We did similar bits, um, but theirs perhaps more technical. One of our hacks we did is we actually had a team of people in, uh, about 10 people in Pakistan, and Pakistan is so cheap, so we had an entire office, and they had one job to... And this is why it was really easy to recruit there. We'd said, "Just play mobile games all day." We, we just got them all on iPhone, and we're just like, "Play games all day, and whenever you see an ad, write down what the ad was advertising and what ad network was using it." And so they basically built us our lead gen database-

   29. SPShaan Puri7:17

       [laughs]

   30. JSJack Smith7:17

       ... by playing all the games. [laughs]
3. 7:26 – 16:31

   Early Retirement

   1. SPShaan Puri7:26

      amazing.

   2. SPSam Parr7:26

      You're like... La- last night, someone was asking me, I was at this dinner, they're like, "Have you ever met anyone who, um, created a business and sold it and was wealthy enough and they just retired?" And I was like, "Not really." Basically, everyone I know who's started a company and had some type of success, usually after some amount of time, six months or three years, they usually get into something. Sometimes it's more intense, sometimes less intense, but they usually do something. You're actually the only person I think I know who was incredibly successful at a very young age, so 30 years old or whenever you sold it, and you actually have not ever started another business before. You do a lot of odd stuff. Like, for example, I'll be like, "Jack, what are you doing now? You got any projects?" You're like, "Yeah, I, I have, like, a ton of pen pals in prison, and I, like, set up this thing where it's this website where people, inmates can order any book they want to, and I, like, ask them to create, like, a book report on it." And I'm like, "That's so interesting." Do you think, A, you'll ever get back into business? And is the reason, do you just spend all your days just, like, seeking out all these interesting topics? Is that what you're doing now?

   3. JSJack Smith8:30

      So I would not say that I'm retired at the moment because when I think of being retired, I think about having no stress and just, like, sitting around reading books all day or something like that, you know? Actually, I am working on a bunch of stuff, um, but they're not just... It's not taking approach of trying to build another billion-dollar company. When I think back, a trait I notice in many entrepreneurs, and I observed in myself, is that I think, um, I was successful early on because I had a chip on my shoulder. I had something to prove. And doing my first, um, startup, in London, it was really hard to do a startup, and I also felt like people kind of didn't respect me. Um, I f- uh, they, like, people, um, just kind of thought I was a joke or whatever, and I kind of felt inside, I thought, I was like, "I think that I can build something successful." I didn't want-- I didn't aspire to be super rich or anything. I just wanted to build a big company, but I had that chip on my shoulder, something to prove. Now, when Vungle sold, when I kind of reflected, I was like, "I don't think that I have that chip on my shoulder anymore." And I think if you're gonna try and build a billion-dollar company, you... or, or really venture-backed company or something, you have to make a lot of sacrifices, right? And, um, have a drive about why you're doing it. And when I sat, I'm like, "I don't need more money now, and I don't have this thing to prove anymore." So when I sat with it, I felt, "What is gonna motivate me more now is where can I have an impact and kind of impact the world?" Not necessarily trying to impact a million people in the world, but even if I just deeply impact a few people in the world, I think that will be a driver to a reason why to work on this. Because making more money is not enough of a driver for me. And all of us three, we're in this, um, chat group, right? About co- founders that have sold their first company, and it seems that the majority of people have this crisis. "I've sold my company, but I don't know what to do with myself, and I'm good at building companies. I don't really need more money, but shall I just do it because that's what I'm good at and I can't think of anything else to do, and also, I don't wanna just sit around?" So it seems a challenge many others are facing. For me, the conclusion I came to was: where can I add impact? And that looks like setting up some charities and a project that I'm working on at the moment, you guys have talked briefly about it before, is move to Portugal to set up a kind of digital detox type place for people to switch off from technology and be in nature. So these are the kind of things that I'm doing. I mean, that one, it will hopefully make money, but money is not the core metric if it's been a success or not. Even if it doesn't, even if it breaks even or loses a bit of money, if just it can heal people. People say like, "Yo, that changed my life. It was super healing to me," and people talk about it, that is success for me with that project.

   4. SPSam Parr11:37

      Dude, you are the first person I've ever met who does a lot of things that are now more popular. So I remember one time, Shaan, Jack and I were hanging out, and we were playing Frisbee golf. It was just us. It was, like, 10:00 AM in the morning. We were playing Frisbee golf in San Francisco, and I was like, "Jack, you're being a little quiet. What's wrong?" And this was, like, after an hour of playing. He's like, "Oh, I, um, I was doing ayahuasca from f- for the last three days." And I was like, "What? What's ayahuasca?" He's like, "Well, you go to this house, and you, like, drink this thing, and then you throw up, and you're supposed to, like- ... you know, find yourself or whatever, and you have like a shaman guiding you. And I was like, "W- when did that end?" And he was like, "Oh, I came straight from there. I was there like an, uh, I was there like an hour and a half ago." And so you would do that stuff like way before this type of psychedelic stuff was popular. Another thing that you would do, Jack would come and speak at Hustle Con, and then he's like, "Hey, I gotta go," like literally the next day. I was like, "Where are you going?" He goes, "Oh, I'm going to Bali, uh, for three weeks for a silent retreat." And he would- I would see him leave. He would bring like basically no clothes and a massive bag, like a whole carry-on or a whole checked bag of books from the library, and I was like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "Ah, I was just overwhelmed with all the people. I gotta go to Bali now for..." And he would go to the silent retreat for thr- literally three weeks and not say a word. And now I'm talking to like my, quote, "normal," more normal friends, my friends who are doctors and lawyers, whatever, and now they're doing it. You do so many things that are so odd, and now every- now everyone's talking about psychedelics. Now, like these silent retreats are significantly more popular. You've been doing that since 2012. I remember you telling me about all this stuff, and I was like, "This is the craziest thing I've ever heard of," and you've been doing all that now and it's way more popular.

   5. JSJack Smith13:17

      Vipassana is a, is a type of silent meditation. So if someone says they've done a silent retreat, often they're talking about this thing called Vipassana. And yes, I think it has got more mainstream nowadays, but it has actually been pretty popular concept for a long time. But I've never done it, and that is actually really extreme approach. Like, um, many people I speak to who have done them say it's kind of like if you can't swim and you jump off an Olympic diving board. It's really extreme approach to switching off and feeling burned out. And some people, I think they're doing it because... Well, I know. People have told me they did it because it sounded like a challenge. But it's not necessarily a good thing. So to give an example, you go for 10 days, right? My friend did it. His pillow was made... It's, it's run by monks. It's a nonprofit. They have about 300 locations around the world run by monks, and it doesn't cost any money. You maybe pay small fee. His pillow was made out of concrete. You're not allowed to make eye contact with any other person there. Your meals are like rice. You wake up at something like 3:00 AM or 5:00 AM, and the first two to three days, the only instruction they give you is, "Hey, uh, feel how the breath feels on your lips when you're breathing in and out. Okay, see you in three days," and you sit there. So it's really extreme. What?

   6. SPShaan Puri14:37

      [laughs] This is my management style, too. [laughs]

   7. JSJack Smith14:41

      But this is really popular. But what I did, and I was inspired by Bill Gates. He had this thing called, uh, Think Week, where he just goes to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and he just reads for a week. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. And I found this place in Indonesia, and it's just totally different to, uh, Vipassana because they don't have any rules. Like you can make eye... The only rule is don't talk to each other. But you can make eye contact. You can do whatever you want. You don't have to do any meditation at all. But, and then so for me, I just took loads of books, and I came out of that each time getting all the benefits these people doing Vipassana retreats talk about. Like I feel super re-energized. My mood feels off the charts super happy, but I'm having an amazing time. I'm reading all these books I've wanted to read all year, and the food is amazing. It's grown on their own jungle/farm. So I'm like, this is an amazing experience and I feel awesome and have all these benefits. Versus the other guys are like, oh... I spoke to one guy this morning, he's like, "Uh, totally glad I did it. Would never want to go through that again. It was one of the hardest experiences of my life." And I'm like, well, you can actually get a bunch of the same benefits, but you don't have to torture yourself. But I've never found a place like this place in Indonesia. And so for many years, I kind of felt that I just have to do this, which is expand their concept to other continents around the world. So I'm starting Portugal. If that goes well, hopefully then expand to America, et cetera.

   8. SPShaan Puri16:11

      That's awesome. You put a couple things on the sheet that I want to do. Um, you said-

   9. JSJack Smith16:16

      Okay

   10. SPShaan Puri16:16

       ... business opportunities. So you're not, it sounds like you're not doing... You- you've, you've been able to resist the temptation to start another business even though-

   11. JSJack Smith16:23

       Yeah

   12. SPShaan Puri16:23

       ... you're good at business and you see lots of opportunities. So, uh, share with us a couple of these like random ideas that you have on this list.

4. 16:31 – 24:30

   Business Ideas: Nomad Capitalist

   1. JSJack Smith16:32

      Yeah, because, um, I know you guys, like I think the audience likes different business ideas and things that are also actionable with my first Million Right. So I was kind of thinking to myself, and one business, I don't know if you guys have come across this, but it was kind of interesting to me. Um, it's a company, not VC-backed or anything, but it's called Nomad Capitalist. And, um, it's this guy, and he's kind of made a name for himself as the leader for rich people that just want to go around the world. He organizes a conference for like family offices, and he has a book, and he has this brand called Nomad Capitalist. And if you look on Reddit, loads of people talk about it. I actually did a pre-screen call with them, and I also read the reviews about it, et cetera. They're basically just a reseller for tax lawyers, because tax lawyers just suck at marketing, you know?

   2. SPShaan Puri17:23

      [laughs]

   3. JSJack Smith17:24

      And he's got a podcast, he's got a book. He's just, uh, really great at marketing, and he's got this like, he's like, "Oh, the best tax strategy is to like have three passports. I help you get multiple passports and set up a bank account in another country, et cetera." Did a call with them, and they basically wanted $25,000 retainer, and then what they'll do is they'll just make you a report, and they're like, "All right, the $25,000 you can later put it towards whatever things we propose for you." But, um, I was like, okay, but then as I did more research, I kind of just myself found out like, wait, I can just cut out you and just find an awesome tax attorney myself and pay $3,000. I don't need to give you 25,000. But he, he, uh, he's, he's doing really well, and he also has this level like- If you pay him $75,000, you can like go and ha- h- hang out with him on an island in person and he'll, he'll ha- he'll be your concierge. Ri- so some of these people, I think it's just like rich people having too much money and they don't wanna do the research [laughs] or reference checks to find good tax people. They're like, "Oh, well, this dude, his website looks really great. He m- must be thought leader. He's got this book. He's on all the podcasts. I'll just hire him," because also I found tax attorneys, they don't give you a simple answer to the fricking question, you know?

   4. SPShaan Puri18:42

      [laughs]

   5. JSJack Smith18:42

      I'm just like, "I, I, I wanna do this," whatever. And then they're like, "Oh, it's really complica-" And they, they use all this jargon. They just suck at speaking plain English. He, um, does a... He's, so he's built a really good business. And I was thinking, I think a business opportunity is building a reseller layer on top of these industries that just suck at marketing or communicating what they do, you know? Um, so he's doing it for tax, international tax for really rich people, and I was thinking there's probably other industries where just make an amazing brand, website, write a book, go on all the podcasts, and make a brand about yourself. Hit really great name, right? Like Nomad Capitalist. Um, to do that for other industries, um, I thought was one idea.

   6. SPShaan Puri19:32

      So what do you get? What do you get for the 25 grand?

   7. JSJack Smith19:35

      He's like, "I'll make you a report." They'll, they'll make you a report, an eight-page report telling you, "We think that you should set up a trust in Bermuda, and th- that is going to cost you, um, 30K. The 25K that you paid us, you can put that towards the trust in Bermuda." Um, but basically he's just taking a cut. He's just taking a re- he's just taking a referral fee from the lawyer, you know? It, it only costs 5K to do the trust. So basically... And then if he gives you the report and you don't like it, um, he keeps the 25K.

   8. SPShaan Puri20:10

      So this is-

   9. JSJack Smith20:11

      Oh my God

   10. SPShaan Puri20:12

       ... thi- this is the business model that, um, the Think and Grow Rich guy does and Dave Ramsey-

   11. JSJack Smith20:18

       Mm

   12. SPShaan Puri20:18

       ... I've come to realize. So what they did is I, uh, I, I know somebody who reached out to, uh... He, he got into Think and Grow Rich, Robert Kiyosaki's like, you know, book plus blog. No, um, Po- Oh, did I say the same one? You're, you're, you're getting confused. Uh, Poor Dad, Rich Dad is the Robert Kawasaki guy, or whatever his name. Robert something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Think and Grow Rich is Napoleon Hill. Yeah, yeah, sorry. That's what I meant. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Mm. Oh, did I say, did I say the other one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, he reaches out to the Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy, uh, who I think is that Kiyosaki guy, and he's, uh, uh, basically that, like, he- he's got a, a philosophy. He's like, "Look, this is the way to get rich," and it makes sense, and you're like, "Cool. I wanna do it." And he's like, "Awesome. Reach out to one of our, uh, you know, reach out to our headquarters and we'll do a call and we'll get to know you and we'll tell you what we think you should do." And it's just a layer reselling tax strategy. And so what he did was he paid 20K to these guys to get a connection to a tax strategy lawyer, a tax strategist and, and lawyer, who then did, uh, you know, saved him a bunch of money. He actually saved him like 80K or something like that, so he's like, "Oh, yeah. This is a great deal. I put in 20, got 80." Then he introduced me to the tax guy and the tax guy's like, "Cool, yeah. For all this it'll be 6K." And I was like, "Oh, but like..." I told my brother, I was like, "You know, you, you, you paid 20, I paid 6. What, what do you mean?" And he was like, "Well, yeah, like that..." I was like, "Where did the other, you know, wh- wh- where would all the other money go?"

   13. JSJack Smith21:37

       [laughs]

   14. SPShaan Puri21:37

       It's like, oh, that goes to like their central agency like that filters the deal. So they don't just take a cut. It's not like we get a 10% referral fee.

   15. JSJack Smith21:45

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SPShaan Puri21:45

       They mark up the whole service by 3X and keep 66%-

   17. JSJack Smith21:50

       Yeah

   18. SPShaan Puri21:50

       ... of the 3X markup in order to do this. And then Dave Ramsey does the same thing. So I was like, you see Dave Ramsey, right? Like, you know, America's, you know, m- favorite uncle or whatever, and he's doing this call-in show. He does all this stuff and I was like, how much... A- and, and we had done this feature on him on the pod that blew my mind. Sam, you knew a little bit about this, but he has like a huge campus of like his office. It's like, uh, it's in Tennessee. He's got like, you know, multiple buildings, hundreds of people on staff. And I was like, "Dude, how big is this guy's podcast that he can pay for that? That sounds a little outrageous. Like, what's going on here?" And it's basically the podcast, the books, all of that is just lead gen for people to come to him. And if you go to his website it'll say, "What do you, what do you need? You want insurance? You want a mortgage? You wanna learn how to save money? You want tax help? Talk to people with the Ramsey Shield." And basically what he does is he goes-

   19. JSJack Smith22:44

       Mm

   20. SPShaan Puri22:44

       ... and finds local people in your market. He fi- he, uh, they have to pay to apply, so they pay some num- some amount of money and, uh, like, you know, a couple thousand dollars to get certified. And when they're certified, so he makes money off them, but then he... And for them it's a no-brainer 'cause they're gonna get leads from his giant top of funnel. Like, his website, if you go to like, uh, whatever the traffic, you know, analysis, um, on Similarweb, it says he gets 10 million visits a month on his website. So he's getting a huge amount of traffic that he just funnels down to these providers and he basically gets his cut and they, a- and these advisors all have the shield. It's like, what does the shield mean? It's like, our team has vetted them. And it's like, vetted what? You don't know if these guys are... You know-

   21. JSJack Smith23:26

       [laughs]

   22. SPShaan Puri23:26

       ... what are you actually doing out here? And I'm pretty sure this entire business is making like 300 million a year. Um, and this is o- of-

   23. JSJack Smith23:33

       Or more

   24. SPShaan Puri23:34

       ... a combination of basically his like the, the Ramsey trusted advisors and it's basically like they follow the Ramsey rules. Um, and it's like what are the Ramsey rules? It's like, oh, you know, you know, there's parts of his philosophy that they follow and, um, and so they can e- they can either pay for the leads or they pay for the certification and just off this lead gen he's just generating just like tons and tons of cash. And then on top of that he's got his like his university and then he's got his media ad stuff, so the combination of all those is sort of like a, a 300 million plus a year empire, which is-

   25. JSJack Smith24:08

       Mm

   26. SPShaan Puri24:08

       ... pretty insane and is doing exactly what you described, Jack. It's a, it's a layer- That I call it a router business. It's gonna route you to-

   27. JSJack Smith24:16

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

   28. SPShaan Puri24:16

       ... the service you want.

   29. JSJack Smith24:17

       Yeah.

   30. SPShaan Puri24:18

       And, you know, I'm the router because I'm the trusted source, and if I do actually do a good job of curating or hand selecting and people get a good outcome from it, then this can be a sustainable business. And so, yeah, I think you're absolutely right on that.
5. 24:30 – 32:21

   RTFM

   1. SPShaan Puri24:30

      Yeah. What's this RTFM? What does that mean?

   2. JSJack Smith24:32

      Oh, um, RTFM I just meant, like, read the fucking manual. So basically I was talking to someone, um, have someone helping me with, like, Midjourney and all this stuff just came out, right? And then I was just trying to figure out, like, I kind of just delegated to him. Like, all right, we... let's just see if Midjourney can help us. So, I said I'm building this, like, physical place, and I'm like, "Just see if it can make us some mock-ups. So take this image of a cabin and this image of the piece of land and just see if Midjourney can blend them together." And we even hired people of Upwork to, uh, for favor, like, M- uh, Midjourney experts to help us, and the results sucked. And then they was not doing what I asked, and then he had said he'd been playing around with it for a while, and then I was, at some point I was just like, "All right, fuck it. I should... This is gonna be a valuable skill. I should learn how it works at least." The first step I did is I read the Midjourney, um, guidebook that they have, and it explains how to do it, and then within 15 minutes I saw, like, hey, guys, um, we can do what I'm asking. You just have to use this certain command. Do you even, do you even read the fucking manual about how this works? I think most people don't read the manual. Like, manuals are boring, right? They don't read the manual. They're just trying to figure it out themself or look at YouTube. And then I was just like, "Just read the manual. It's pretty simple." And so I think if you just do the basics that most people don't, read the fucking manual about how Midjourney works or ChatGPT or something. There's so many people that, that AI is this emerging trend, but they're fucking lazy. Gonna read the 20-page manual, and you can kind of just tell them, like, "Oh, you wanna do that? Um, I'll just do it for you." It maybe only takes you five seconds, but you can just charge them a premium, you know? Actually, um, my wife, she has a startup, and she said there's this guy, um, he's going around, he's doing conference in a different country, like, every few days about AI, and he's teaching business leaders, like, "Oh, Midjourney, ChatGPT, this is how you use it. This is it. This that." I asked my wife, I'm like, "What's that guy's actual credentials?" [laughs] You know?

   3. SPShaan Puri26:37

      Mm.

   4. JSJack Smith26:37

      And he's not, he's not... He's just a nobody, but he's saying that he's an AI expert because everybody is. It only just came out recently, and he's just running workshops and charging business leaders loads of money about how to implement this in your business. And so I think if you just, you know, if you just don't sleep and just l- learn Midjourney, ChatGPT, learn all of these things that only came out recently, you can be a thought leader and w- write a book. Launch it o- launch on Amazon a book, How to Use ChatGPT in Your Business, and, and launch, launch it for each vertical. Using ChatGPT for lawyers and accounting and whatever. Um, I, I f- I, you guys are in the group. I don't know if you saw, um, Shaan is more active. Sam, not. But people were talking about this business Casetext just got acquired by LexisNexis for $750 million. And actually, in the investor report, it's kind of embarrassing, but in the investor report, the, um, LexisNexis said, "The reason we paid $700 million for this business is because they came up with eight prompts for, for OpenAI about how to make it give good responses, um, to law questions."

   5. SPShaan Puri27:50

      [laughs]

   6. JSJack Smith27:51

      So they're kind of openly saying, "This business is just a layer on top of OpenAI. They just came up with eight prompt texts, and so we're buying them for 700 million."

   7. SPShaan Puri28:00

      Tell me more about this company.

   8. JSJack Smith28:01

      I mean, I'm not an expert, but someone in here in the group who is in the industry said LexisNexis's competitor has just come out with some AI thing. And so LexisNexis, which is, like, multibillion-dollar company, was like, "Oh, shit. Like, we need to get up to speed."

   9. SPShaan Puri28:13

      Right.

   10. JSJack Smith28:14

       "And we need to get up to speed fast." And so they just paid this ludicrous, or what people are saying is ludicrous sum, um, because they need to get up to speed. But literally in the investor report, they said, "The reason we are buying this business is because they have eight proprietary prompts." And then anyone who's used ChatGPT or anything knows that's, like, not very much intellectual property-

   11. SPShaan Puri28:38

       Yeah

   12. JSJack Smith28:38

       ... or whatever you're buying, you know?

   13. SPShaan Puri28:39

       But they... I think Casetext has been around for, like, 10 years though, so whatever they were doing before, uh, you know, they were, they were around, uh, so they, they, like, I think they have, like, on their website right, there right now it says 10,000 law firms use them. So, you know, it's not literally just, uh, eight prompts, but, uh, but I get y- I get your point, and definitely they got the, uh, the AI premium [laughs] on the exit here because-

   14. JSJack Smith28:58

       [laughs] Yeah

   15. SPShaan Puri29:00

       ... uh, it, you know, became strate- immediately strategic and urgent for, for LexisNexis. And I'm totally with you about the, the, you know, j- you could become an expert in Midjourney and ChatGPT in, like, nine days. Nine days of, like, trying to do shit and then basically figuring out how that applies to certain vertical or job is, uh, is definitely, like, a, a, a thing that, that can exist and should exist. I had the same thing. I was trying to use it in my business, my e-com business, and I was like, "How do I do this?" And I just reached out to the guy at Runway, and I was like, "Hey, I'm trying to take an image and make a very similar image." And I was like, "It's not im- and I don't, uh, like, I can't do text to image 'cause I can't describe this image. I have an image. I want another one like it, and I want actually 50 variations of it. Can you do that?" He's like, "Oh, yeah, we have image to image. Just go over here." And I was like, "Oh, thank you." Like, this would've... I didn't know even which tool to use. I wouldn't have known what it's called.

   16. JSJack Smith29:51

       Yeah.

   17. SPShaan Puri29:51

       I wouldn't have known how to do it. And then, oh, I did it, but there's this one problem. He's like, "Oh, just change this setting," uh, blah, blah, blah, and then it just fixed it. And I was like, "Wow, that's, uh, that's amazing. It saved me so much time." And you, you really do have to play with these things, and most people don't have the time or the patience to go play with these things to figure out how they actually work.

   18. JSJack Smith30:09

       Uh, as a business leader, you pay your lawyer 1,000, $1,500 an hour to give you tax advice, right? Why would someone not pay that for a Midjourney person if they can answer their question in an hour, um, for a, a world lead- a thought leader?

   19. SPSam Parr30:24

       Mark Cuban has this great blog. I don't think he updates anymore, but he was writing it for maybe a couple decades now. It's really old. And I used to go back and read his old posts, and a lot of people don't know this, but he actually got his first like two or three million dollars of wealth when he was 31 because he started this thing called Micro Solutions. It was basically... I forget how he described it, but it was basically like a, like a IT agency. So like, if a biggish or even a small company was like implementing Oracle or something like that, he would help install it on everyone's computer and then teach people how to use it. And he, uh, he goes, "The reason my company was successful wasn't because I necessarily was an expert on this stuff," but he goes, "I was the only one..." And he used their same acronym. He goes, "I was the only one who read the fucking manual." He goes, "I would stay up late at night, and I would read the fucking manual, and I would just learn how does this HP computer work. And the next day, I could go and, like, talk to a business owner and explain how it works and say, 'Yeah, we can install that thing or this thing or that thing.' And then I would go and read the manual on those other things, and that's all I did. And it was hard work, and I stayed up all night reading these things, but that's how I became a, uh, an expert in this stuff, is I just read the manual, which no one does." And it's pretty funny 'cause he used the exact-- I think he has a blog post actually that has the exact same acronym that you have.

   20. SPShaan Puri31:39

       It... Here's, here's what he said exactly. It's a blog post called "How to Win at the Sport of Business." He goes, "Every night, I would take home a different software manual, and I would read it. Of course, the reading was captivating. I'm reading Peachtree Accounting, WordStar, Harvard Graphics, you know, Lotus, Apex. At the-- Every night I would read some after getting home, no matter how late it was. It turns out not a lot of people ever bother to RTFM, read the fricking manual. And so it turned out-- So, so people really started thinking that I knew my stuff, [chuckles] and that's all I was doing."

   21. SPSam Parr32:08

       Yeah, it's hilarious. And he like talks, and he talks about that in a ton of different blog posts where he talks about read the, read the freaking manual. It's, uh, it's quite good. Uh, and he, and he attributes that to, like, a lot of his early success.

   22. SPShaan Puri32:19

       You have a few others that I gotta ask you about.

6. 32:21 – 38:25

   Why You Should Hack the Apple Vision Pro

   1. SPShaan Puri32:21

      Okay, so you wrote on this little cheat sheet, you wrote, uh, hack-- uh, you know, "Non-obvious barriers to entry for business," and then you said, "Hacking the iPhone to record screen." Uh, what are you talking about here?

   2. SPSam Parr32:30

      Sure.

   3. SPShaan Puri32:30

      Non-obvious barriers, barriers to entry for business.

   4. JSJack Smith32:35

      Sure. And I mean, as I said, you don't have to be the first mover to market, but, um, to be successful in business. But when an entirely new product comes out, there are opportunities to hack the product. That's why I was able to hack LinkedIn ads, the a- the hack we've talked about before, because LinkedIn just launched it, so it was not properly bug checked and all that stuff, you know? Now, the idea I was saying, or it's not necessarily a business idea, but where you could discover opportunities for me, and to give an example, is that, um, you might have a wedge or like a business. You might have a, you might have a hack that's n- it's not a business, but maybe it can go somewhere from that initial kind of hack, you know? So to give an example with Vungle, um, back in like two thousand and ten, um, the business I had before, we were making educational videos, like how to use Adobe Photoshop and stuff like this. So like videos about desktop, like computer applications. And, um, fairly around that time, I think a year before, the iPhone app store had launched, and I was reading this Gartner report like, "All right, iPhone apps are gonna blow up." And then I was kinda feeling like, "Wait, so we're doing this for desktop and, um, apps on your computer. Why could we not do the same on your iPhone?" Now, that nowadays is very easy to record your screen on the iPhone, right? Like, you just pull down and tap Record Screen. At the time, you could not record the iPhone screen. Now, I read a little bit online, and I kinda felt like, "Hey, I think I've looked up these different pieces of hardware." It's like, um, a camcorder mixed with like this cable you plug in with the iPhone, but you have to jailbreak the iPhone, et cetera, et cetera. I was like, "I reckon or I just have a hunch that if we put these together, I might be able to figure out how to record the iPhone screen." Now, my co-founder, he was like, "Dude, this is a fucking waste of time. Like, you've got forty-eight hours to try this out, otherwise we need to move on, all right?" Now, not that many people know this, but actually the Apple Store lets you buy a product, and you can return it within fourteen days, even if you used it. A MacBook, an iPhone, an iPad, you can return it used. So we had an intern, it was his first day there, and I basically said, "Our company, we have about a thousand dollars in the bank account." And I told him like, "Take this credit-- bank credit card," and I told him to spend our entire budget at the Apple store. "I want you to buy the latest iPhone and latest iPad, and your first task as the intern is jailbreak this, and we have forty-eight hours to figure out if we can record the screen from this." Because my co-founder thinks it's a waste of time. I think it's not. And, uh, and we, and then we're gonna return it off within fourteen days, so we have a time, time buffer because we don't have a thousand dollars to just throw around. So we're gonna play around with this iPhone max fourteen days, then we're gonna send it back. We managed to record s- we managed to record the screen. It was a free... It was taking like a camcorder cable. You had to jailbreak the iPhone, et cetera, et cetera. But we managed to get this unique thing where we could record the screen of the iPhone. At that time, we didn't have anything useful to do with it. It's like, "Okay, great. We can record the screen in the iPhone. What can we do th- this?" But later on, when we built the video ad network, um, when we came up with the idea about the video ad network that Vungle is today, um, obviously, if you're gonna run a video ad, an app needs to have an advertisement to run, right? And we were the only, um, because we had just started with this, we actually just had an in-house, um, production studio Uh, we- that's how we, we initially made money, by charging $500 to make a video for your app. But $500, that kind of sucks. But what we did is we parlayed that idea, and at some point we made the best videos of anyone. Like AppLovin or whoever, they couldn't make a video. So what they'd have to do is you'd have to spend thousands of dollars hiring a creative ad agency who probably used a camera to record the iPhone screen, or you had to do loads of work as the app developer and send them all your image assets. We could literally record the screen of the iPhone that others could not. And so what we said is like, "Hey, guys, we're no longer... You can't buy a video from us anymore." Now, people loved our videos. They're the best quality videos. But we're like, "Even if you offer us $2,000, we don't make videos anymore. But if you spend more than $25,000 on our advertising network, we'll make you the video for free. And our videos are the best, so they're gonna convert amazingly as well. But you can, you can use the video on your website and stuff, but you cannot use this video on AppLovin or any other network. It's proprietary to us." So that was a hack that worked for Vungle. And what I would say, obviously, you have to have a credit card that had this limit and check that Apple actually allows this. But what I would do is if I am 20 years old, and I have a credit card, because America gives different credit cards, I would go to the Apple Store the first day the Apple Vision Pro comes out, and I would try and hack it and jailbreak it and play around with it, look up online how to jailbreak it, and I would try and find hacks, like how to record the screen of the Apple Vision Pro. That's not gonna be a feature at day one. No one needs to do that. If you can hack it and do that, you have something proprietary. You could launch a business off the back of that. And I would return it within 14 days and maybe go to another Apple Store and buy it-

   5. SPShaan Puri38:04

      [laughs]

   6. JSJack Smith38:04

      ... and do it, and get my friends to buy it or something. [laughs] But that, um, is one opportunity of like, you know, it's a hack. It's not a business. But that unique hack that no one else has can lead you to have a barrier to entry to be successful and build a billion-dollar business in a tangential industry from there.

   7. SPShaan Puri38:22

      I love that. I love that. You, you also have

7. 38:25 – 1:02:32

   Law of Attraction

   1. SPShaan Puri38:25

      a couple on here. You said, "Why I believe in the law of attraction and practical applications." This is interesting to me because-

   2. JSJack Smith38:30

      Mm-hmm

   3. SPShaan Puri38:30

      ... I think there's, like, people who believe in the law of attraction, and they also, you know, believe in horoscopes and crystals and other stuff too, probably. And then there's people who are, you know, hyper logical, rational, problem solver types that typically don't believe in something like the law of attraction. I would have pegged you as more of the practical, uh, logical, problem solver type, but you're saying you believe in this. So tell me why you believe in this, and what do you mean by practical applications?

   4. JSJack Smith38:58

      Yeah, people that are really rational, um, like my brother-in-law, it's a bit hard to talk about this topic because they're so rational. I'm pretty rational, but I'm also open-minded to stuff. Now, law of attraction, the interpretation many people with the crystals take, and I kind of... It was kind of funny because I went to somebody that did this alternative kind of, uh, kind of like massage therapy, but, like, alternative, and then she was doing it at her house. Um, but then on the bookshelf was, like, a book, like how to manifest wealth-

   5. SPShaan Puri39:27

      [laughs]

   6. JSJack Smith39:28

      ... to be like a billionaire or something. But then I'm like, "Um, well, you're in this, like, really crappy studio. So how's that going for you?" You know?

   7. SPShaan Puri39:35

      [laughs]

   8. JSJack Smith39:36

      Like, on the extreme alternative side that you're talking about, Shaan, like doing horoscopes or whatever. I'm somewhere in the middle, where I'm like law of attraction, so popularized by the book called The Secret, um, if you just do it at the basic level, it's just like, oh, just like think about what you want and it will manifest and appear to you. But actually, there's a book that I like called Practical Law of Attraction, and what it's kind of saying, to be honest, it basically, I didn't know about this stuff when I was launching my business, but it kind of actually reaffirmed the stuff that I was already doing in my life, to be honest, which is like clearly def- clearly feeling and defining what you want and then taking steps to get there. Now, why I think there's a practical application and why I do believe in it, I don't believe that you just think of it and then nothing happens. I think... Now, a- to give a, um... Let me give, let me just give an example story that reaffirms this. I was, I was living with my roommate, and at this time my business was going pretty good, but he was trying to launch a business off the ground. And he was 35, and he was trying to fundraise, raise a seed round, and he could not raise any money at all. And his mindset was just stuck about feeling sorry for himself. Like, he was just like, "Oh, I read on TechCrunch about 18-year-olds getting into Y Combinator, but nobody respects me." He's like, "I have way more experience than him, but investors, they must just, they don't value me. They, they," blah, blah, blah. He's feeling sorry for himself. He's having negative energy. I mean, a prime example of it was like one day, uh, he called me and like, uh, really like anxious and he's like, "Oh my God, Jack, like, um, a, a letter from the IRS arrived for you." And I'm like, "Uh, dude, I'm sure it's not that big of a deal." But he's like, "Dude, what, what the fuck?" Like he's freaking out, right? And, uh, lo and behold, it actually was a refund check. They were giving me a refund. [laughs] But he had this negative mindset, and I feel that obviously people study by, body language and all this stuff, but I feel that law of attraction works because there is so many micro signals and body language we're projecting to people all around us that we're not in control of and don't even know. And so I feel for me, I and my co-founder, we were convinced we're going to raise funding and we're the shit. And I think that investors and stuff can tell. You know, you can tell if someone's bluffing. So he's going into this meeting and he's got 100 rejections and he's feeling sorry for himself. He's already going in with the idea that these people, um, are not going to invest in me. And so they are just sensing that this guy's a loser, right? Um, versus me- I'm just like, "We're gonna raise funding." And so when I say something, like an investor one time asked us like, "How's your fundraising going?" We had no investors, but we told him like, "Oh, it's going amazing. We're just deci- we've got a bunch of top-tier people interested. We're just deciding who's gonna be the best fit for our business." And the guy kind of freaked out and actually gave us a term sheet because I think he could tell that we believed it. We were not lying because we actually believed it. Now, what was amazing with my friend is at, just at some point, I just noticed him adopt a mindset shift, just one day, basically. And at some point, he basically just said like, "All right, look, what I've been doing thus far, it, it hasn't worked." And, and he also was saying that he looked at me a bit as a bit inspiration because Jack just... he doesn't not worry about this stuff, you know? And he's like, "I realize that I haven't going, been going all in because I'm scared that if I don't raise funding, I'm gonna look like a failure to my network. And so if I try and do a business again, then they'll think like, 'Oh, well, he failed at the last one.' I'm not gonna do it again." But he's like, he's like, "From this day forward, I'm adopting a mindset that if I do not raise funding for this business, I'm never going to try and raise funding for a business ever again. This is my one shot, and I'm gonna go all in." And he looked up all his connections on LinkedIn, and he was not embarrassed about rejection or that he would look stupid to them in future. He's like, "I'm going to ask every single person in my network for investor intros." Literally within a month or so, he raised amazing seed round. Business now has raised over $25 million because he just went all in, and I think that people could tell that he had the conviction. You know? He's telling them now. He's not feeling sorry for himself like, "I can't raise funding." He's like, "I'm gonna raise funding, and this business is gonna be fucking huge." And just it was amazing to see him adopt that mindset shift. Um, and so that is an example for me of law of attraction is like, yes, you're manifesting it and whatever shit, but you're actually believing it and you're projecting it to others. Now think, he's adopted that new mindset, right? So if an investor rejects him, in his original view, that would have reaffirmed his original view, right? Like, "Oh, all the investors hate me, and I'm never gonna raise funding because I, I just got rejected." If with this new mindset, actually it doesn't necessarily have to change every single outcome in every interaction you have, but it also changes how you view them. If one investor rejects him, now you'll just be like, "Oh, well, I'm gonna raise funding, so I guess this guy was just not a fit. I'll just move on to the next one." You wouldn't see it as reaffirming that you suck, you would just be like, "Oh, this investor's an idiot." Like, "I'm still gonna raise funding." It doesn't distract you from the path. So that is what I was thinking about when it comes to law of attraction.

   9. SPSam Parr45:08

      And I've... We've been friends for a while, but I remember very distinctly, and you might need to fill in some of the details, right? And I'll try to be vague, and you can decide what you want to share. But I remember distinctly, I think we were e- I think we were at my apartment in SoMa, in SoMa when you came over, or we could've been at my house in, uh, Glen Park, but I remember, like distinctly hanging out with you, and you had just... You- Vungle hadn't sold yet, but you had sold some shares to live off of because you were basically ca- you, you didn't have a lot of money. You sold some shares and you, you got maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars, but you lived off that for like three years, and it was at the very end of that money. And you had-- You didn't even tell me. I, I asked like how things are going, um, "Do you have enough money to last until you think your co- the company's gonna sell?" And you're like, "Yeah, I think it's gonna sell for a whole lot of money, for hundreds of millions of dollars, um, and I'll be fine when that happens." And I was like, "But how are you now?" And for some reason, I remember I saw your Robinhood account, or I saw one of your accounts. And I don't know if you remember this, but I, I think there was single digit thousand dollars left-

   10. JSJack Smith46:15

       [chuckles]

   11. SPSam Parr46:15

       ... 'cause you had made like a really dumb trade. Do you remember that? And you were like totally calm, and I remember like being around you, and it was like you, you, you're, you're one of my, like three best friends, and I remember thinking like, "Oh," like, "You're my family now."

   12. JSJack Smith46:28

       [chuckles]

   13. SPSam Parr46:28

       Like, "You have inspired me," because you actually were living what you're talking about now. Do you remember that? Do you remember when that happened?

   14. JSJack Smith46:33

       Yeah. And I mean, in line with that, basically, yeah, I got a bit of money, like as you said, a secondary, right? And I was living, and then the money was running out. It doesn't last forever. I think that I, um, I, I saw from the previous episode, people like talking about specific numbers, right?

   15. SPSam Parr46:50

       Okay.

   16. JSJack Smith46:50

       So I think that when I... I think... Yeah, I think that when I left Vungle, um, and then tried doing Ship and it didn't work out, et cetera, but I didn't have, uh, any, many savings. At Vungle, I think I got $120,000 salary we paid us after we raised funding. But prior to that, we'd never taken any money. And then just to help me out because I was like, "Hey dude, I don't actually have any money," [chuckles] um, my co-founder at Vungle helped give me an introduction to, um, some people that bought a secondary of, of, of some of my stock. Now, I think that... I, I can't remember exact- I think it was 500,000, and I hadn't held the stock for five years, so it was not qualified for this thing called QSBS yet. So I basically had to pay a bunch, uh, pro- you probably have to pay like half of that in tax being California, right? So I had like, let's say 250K left. That's not a load of mo- that's not a lot of money in San Francisco to pay your rent, food, if you have no other income. Now, I was advising companies and stuff, but they don't give you... They give you equity. They're not giving you money, and my money was running out, and Sam, like you said, I didn't have much money left, and people were saying to me like, "Hey dude, what are you gonna do if you, like run out of money?" Uh, and I was like, "Oh, I guess I'll have to get a job, but I'm not really contemplating that right now." I don't have a timeline for when business is gonna exit, but I kind of feel something is telling me that it's, I'm gonna be all right. I'm not

   17. SPShaan Puri48:17

       ... freaking out about it. Even worst case scenario, I'll move back in with my parents, whatever. But I was not making a plan B. [laughs] What was the dumb trade? I was day trading, like options trading and all this shit. [laughs] And it's kind of funny, um- [laughs] They're like, "250K is not a lot of money in San Francisco for food, rent, and my day trading business." [laughs] I, a- and with hindsight is, is, is very stupid, but, like, I was day trading and stuff to try and make some money. When I look back in hindsight, I, I actually was spending, like, a few hours a day because I just got interested in trading, so learned options trading and all this. Spending a few hours a day, I actually would've made more money if I had just put it in the Vanguard VTI, if it's S&P 500. Uh-huh. I wasted all this time, and yes, lost a load of money. Um- [laughs] ... yeah, so that was just a negative trade of experimenting, I guess. You, the way you described it, uh, I've heard described differently. So Tony Robbins did this, uh, this is a video on YouTube of him talking about this, where he says, like, you know, you've ever heard of the phrase, like, a vicious cycle? And a, uh, you know, a vicious cycle is kind of like what you described your friend was initially doing, which is he draws these three circles, and he says first one's belief, second one's action, third is results. And he goes, uh, like, what do you do when you... Like, let's say you're, you're supposed to do something but you don't really think it's gonna work. Um, it doesn't even matter what it is. Like, you know, you're, you're looking for the salt and, uh, you know, your girlfriend says it's in the cabinet, but you already looked there. You don't think it's there, so you kind of, you go, you don't really rummage around too much 'cause you don't believe it's there, right? So basically low belief typically creates weak, you know, low or weak action, and low or weak action almost always creates bad results, and then the, the message, the story we tell ourselves is, "See? I knew it. I knew it wouldn't work." And then it just reinforces the low belief, and that's the vicious cycle that happens for people. Uh, you know, it could be, [lips smack] uh, uh, "I don't really believe that I'm gonna stick to this diet, s- and so therefore I'm not really that hardcore about it." So I start to slip, and then my results say, "Nah, you, you never stick to what you say." And you re- reinforce a low belief, right? It could be on the, and it could be business, it could be personal, it could be whatever. And then there's the exact opposite, which is the v- the virtuous cycle. The virtuous cycle is massive belief, "This is gonna work." What happens when you believe something's really gonna work? You wake up before the alarm clock, you get out of bed, you start doing it immediately. You can't wait, and you take massive action. What happens when you take massive action for a while? You start to get good results or massive results. And when you get massive results it reinforces the belief, "See? I knew this shit was gonna work." And so that, and that's basically the, that's the difference between winners and losers, is which side of that cycle do you go down. And, like, the, the core thing is there's some people who just wait for a result to happen to, to inform their belief. And what's, what that basically means is I'm gonna sort of wait to hope to get lucky, and then I'll start to believe. And, uh, I think anybody who's in this kind of entrepreneurial bucket, the v- the pre-req for any result is the belief, and, uh, and you have to have that sort of massive conviction or massive belief in yourself and in what you're doing. And that part is the, that's the law of attraction part. That's the part where it's faith. It hasn't happened yet. You believe it will happen. And because you believe it will happen, you're right. It's not like law of, uh, not like the secret where they're just like, "Close your eyes," and you say, "I'm not, you know, there are no weeds in the backyard. There are no weeds in the backyard." You look. Oh, there's still weeds in the backyard. Well, you didn't take any action. You didn't go and get rid of the weeds is, is, you know, the action is a, is a, is a requirement to actually do this. Mm-hmm. You al- you also mentioned one other thing on that when you said you have to feel it versus just say it. Yeah. Is there a difference there? 'Cause I, when I talk to people who, who kind of really believe in this, uh, they overemphasize this feeling, feeling it part versus just saying it or, uh, or trying to believe it in your head. So my wife is totally not into this at all, and maybe it just doesn't- [laughs] ... work for her, but she's like, "Dude, I can't just feel that I'm gonna, can't just feel it's gonna work." It doesn't work for her. But for me, maybe I'm just delusional or I just have conviction in something, but I just sometimes just feel it's gonna work. And I guess, um, one bit that is related to this a bit is, like, perhaps adopting different mindset personas. So I saw this, uh, interview with Beyoncé, and they were asking her about, like, she has, um, her thing, like Sasha Fierce, right? Her nickname. Yep. And they were like, "When does, when do you become Sasha Fierce, and when are you just Beyoncé?" They're, they're saying it as a joke, but she's like, "I literally become Sasha Fierce before I'm going to go on the stage because when I'm Beyoncé I'm nervous. I think people are gonna hate me or whatever, and I just adopt this alternative persona that I am Sasha Fierce and I'm going to kill this performance. People are gonna love it. It's amazing." Because they're adopting, she's adopting some persona and she's really feeling it. I, I don't necessarily adopt this other persona, but that is the feeling that I think, uh, would be insane. Yeah, I do the same thing, and I also think that, um- Who do you become? Uh, I have this persona that I created. Angry Patel? [laughs] Like, what are you- His name's Russ ... who are you, who are you gonna become? And, uh- Yeah. [laughs] A- a- again, this is a, another one that came out of Tony Robbins. He, he, he goes, um, he goes, "We, we all ha- we all have a version of our personal..." Like, you know, "Raise your hand if you've ever been, um, super kind to others." Yeah. Yeah, everybody raise their hand. "Ra- raise your hand if you ever made selfish choices and been a selfish asshole." Everybody raises their hand. He's like, "We all have all these features of our personalities. Like, the question is who's driving the car right now?" And he's like, you know, "People think that they come to this, this weekend workshop and I'm gonna ch- oh, Tony Robbins, he changed your life. In fact, when you go home people sort of mock you. Like, 'Oh, so what happened? You're a whole new guy now?'" And he's like, "You know, obviously you don't, um, you know, you, you don't become a whole new person after 35 years in one weekend." Um, but he's like, "You know, one thing we will do," is he's like, "I'm gonna take the most badass version of you, and that's who gets to drive this weekend. And if you, if you, it's only for this weekend and you decide after this weekend I don't want that person to be the one who's making decisions from now on, all right, fine. Fair, fair play. But for these next two days, that's who's in charge." We all have a version of ourself that is- ... the more badass version of ourselves. The one that, that does believe it's gonna happen, the one, the one that is decisive versus indecisive, all these traits. He's like, "And what do you call..." He's like, "What do you call when you, um..." I forgot what he said. He's like, he's like, "We're gonna make that, that, uh..." He's like, "We're gonna make that personality our bitch." And he's like, "What do you, what do you do when you train a dog? You give it a name and you train it to come when you call it." And he's like, "So you're gonna give it a name, and you're gonna figure out how you're gonna be able to adopt that state when you want to be in that state." He's like, "That takes practice reps, and we're gonna get a bunch of reps at it this weekend." And you sort of y- y- you have to figure out, all right, what is the version of me that does have those traits, that does walk that way, that does make those decisions? And then can you call it on command, or are you only gonna do it when you feel good? Are you only gonna do it when the weather's nice? Like no, no, you wanna be able to have that on demand when you want it. He says the same thing. Like, I think his real name is not Tony Robbins either. It's like, his original name was like Anthony... He's got some other last name. He's like, "People see me now, and they see me on stage and all this stuff. They think, 'Oh, man, Tony, you're, you're am- you're amazing. You- you- you- you're just special.'" And he's like, "No, I was Anthony blah, blah, blah. I was broke, I was fat, I was all these things." He's like, "I created this Tony Robbins motherfucker. I created him." And I was just like, I like that part of the, the thing he was talking about 'cause it's, I think, more empowering. If you feel like, oh, you just are the way you are and that's it, you're a fixed quantity and it was, you know, it's, it's based on your genetics, it's based on your childhood, things you didn't have control of, versus this idea that, oh, I actually have multiple versions of my personality. There's some that I would want to be in charge more often than others. Um, and I can craft that. I can create that version of me that I want. That's a different mindset. Some people don't believe it. Some people are, like, really married to their kind of like, their upbringing and their past traumas and their, their DNA. That's not, uh, that's not how I look at the world, at least.

   18. SPSam Parr56:07

       Dude, this is getting me, this is getting me amped.

   19. SPShaan Puri56:09

       [laughs]

   20. SPSam Parr56:09

       I feel good. I feel like I need to go, I need to go create my version of Sasha Fierce. Um, Jack, I, um, you inspire me. I'm happy. I feel thankful y- we're friends. I feel thankful that you came here. You're a very inspiring person. I just feel, I feel you're, you're... You do have... It's like you're, you're almost not inspiring because you're not this, like, crazy intimidating person. Or I guess you're the right type of inspiring 'cause you're not this, like, crazy intimidating person, but you have a, and you have a ve- your very mild manner. I'll be with you and, um, other friends and I'll be like, "Uh, Jack, like, you, I already know you know all about this topic that they're talking about. You, but you're just sitting here asking questions. Why aren't you, like, pumping your chest more?" Or, like, "You are dressed like this bum right now at this thing. All these people think that you're just, like, one of my loser friends." But you're, like, you know, successful, not in terms of just financial, finances, but you've got, like, this awesome marriage.

   21. SPShaan Puri57:02

       You're my successful friend, dude. Can you, uh-

   22. SPSam Parr57:04

       Yeah

   23. SPShaan Puri57:04

       ... can you help me out here a little bit? [laughs]

   24. SPSam Parr57:06

       Well, I'll be like, "You're, like, successful in, like, all attributes." Like, I know you're, like, really insightful. I know that you're successful traditionally. You've got all these, like, amazing things, but you're, you don't even, like... You want me to brag about you? That's like, I feel like I've gotta, like, sometimes, like, put you on a pedestal and, and but be- but that's one of the things I love about you is, like, you're just very, very... Meek is a bad word 'cause that almost sounds insulting, but you're very humble, uh, and you're very mild-mannered, and that's one of the reasons why I love when you come on here and you, like, explain some of these stories because you never, ever brag about yourself, and I like hearing you do that every once in a while.

   25. SPShaan Puri57:39

       Jack, do-

   26. JSJack Smith57:39

       Yeah, well, thanks for having me on again. I mean, uh, picking up on that, I mean, what... It is very important for me just to, I, I guess just from my childhood and stuff, but-

   27. SPShaan Puri57:48

       Mm

   28. JSJack Smith57:48

       ... I've always tried to be humble, and I'm not judging any... It doesn't ma- I will have an in-depth conversation with... Like, to give you an example, I'm here in Portugal, right? And there's a guy, I pay a guy to come and pick up, up my recycling. I'll, uh, my cardboard. He's taking the cardboard to the trash, so trash man. I'll have an in-depth conversation with him about how his life is going and stuff like that. And I think it is good to remember that you can be successful and still be humble and not judge people about where they're at now. Um, Sam, like, your father-in-law lives with, like, a celebrity, and he said, like, the celebrity just fucking, uh, he lives in the same apartment complex and treats everyone like shit and ignores him. He's like, and he, and his... They're both rich. And the thing to remember, I think, is where people are in their life now is not where they're gonna be in 10 years. And people, if you treat them like shit, they're gonna remember. Like, I, when I was 19, 20, we pitched a VC in London, a venture capitalist, and we'd been speaking to the associates. We had a few meetings with them. And yes, we had nothing and our idea was terrible, but, um, the associate said like, "Hey, the partners agreed to have a meeting with you. Just, like, come by here at, like, 6:00 p.m. to come by the office." And we're like, "Okay, that's a bit of a weird time to come by, but sure, whatever." And we had no money, like, spent the money. W- my business partner especially was in a lot of debt. We spent the money, got an Underground ticket, went there, et cetera. In, within 10 to 15 minutes of the meeting getting started, because the guy was asking us questions, he's like, "You guys don't have a business. This is just, like, shit." And at, like, 6:15, he's just like, "Yo, I've gotta go to dinner, so this meeting's over." 10 years, 15, however many years, it's been more than 10 years later, us, we still remember that meeting, and that guy treated us like shit. He's still got a VC fund. If he asked me for deal flow, I'm not gonna give it. I'm not gonna pretend that never happened. I'm like, "Dude, I remember how you treated me when I was shit."

   29. SPSpeaker59:51

       [upbeat music] Our software is the worst.

   30. SPSam Parr59:57

       Have you heard of HubSpot?
8. 1:02:32 – 1:15:14

   Baby stuff

   1. SPSam Parr1:02:32

      So, um, like for example, you named your child, so Jack has a two-year-old now. Uh, you named your child Baby-

   2. JSJack Smith1:02:41

      Yeah

   3. SPSam Parr1:02:42

      ... for the... You told me, you were like, "I'm gonna, I'm just gonna name her Baby for the first 12 months 'cause I wanna get to know her." And I was like, "Dude, like, everything about your life is weird. Can you just, just do s- do something normal-

   4. JSJack Smith1:02:53

      [laughs]

   5. SPSam Parr1:02:53

      ... for the kid" And you're like, "No, I think, I think this actually makes more sense." And then I got to know her, and I like... And then you, you, you should talk about the naming ceremony, but you did this thing where you named her after a year and you're like, "This name, like, it fit her more, and I had to get to know her a little bit." And I was like, after a year, I was like, "That actually is, makes so much sense," but it's so not normal. But you're always doing these weird things that actually appear to be... Well, you've done a lot of stupid stuff. But, uh, you've done a lot of things that actually, like, are pretty amazing but are not normal at all. Y- and, and I... That's one of my favorite parts about you. You know what I mean?

   6. JSJack Smith1:03:30

      Cool, thanks. And I mean, also, uh, because I listen to the pod a lot, I noticed that, um, you guys hadn't talked about Sam had made a massive announcement on all his social-

   7. SPSam Parr1:03:38

      [laughs]

   8. JSJack Smith1:03:38

      ... that now he's gonna be having a baby. Um, and so noticed you guys hadn't talked about that. So I, I had some of the different wackier things I've done with my baby if you wanted to talk about them, a naming ceremony was one of them.

   9. SPShaan Puri1:03:52

      Yeah, y- you know, me and Sam just, we're just like guys. We're just like, "Yeah, um, nice job with the thing. All right, uh, let's move on." [laughs]

   10. JSJack Smith1:03:58

       [laughs]

   11. SPShaan Puri1:03:59

       You know, girls are like, "Oh my God, congratulations. I'm so excited for you. Wow. How... Oh my God, you look... You're glowing, Sam. You look amazing." [laughs]

   12. JSJack Smith1:04:07

       [laughs]

   13. SPShaan Puri1:04:08

       And I was just like, "Hey, dude, um, good shit about the, you know, you know. All right-

   14. SPSam Parr1:04:13

       Yeah

   15. SPShaan Puri1:04:13

       ... let's talk about business." [laughs]

   16. SPSam Parr1:04:15

       The, the, y- your stuff's working. Congratulations.

   17. SPShaan Puri1:04:17

       [laughs]

   18. SPSam Parr1:04:17

       We, um... Well, I wasn't sure, I wasn't sure, like, what I wanted to put on the internet.

   19. SPShaan Puri1:04:22

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SPSam Parr1:04:22

       And I haven't actually made my decision. What, uh, Shaan, you put your baby's face-

   21. SPShaan Puri1:04:25

       Oh, you made your decision. Sam posted a shirtless picture of himself to celebrate the baby. I was like-

   22. JSJack Smith1:04:29

       [laughs]

   23. SPShaan Puri1:04:29

       ... "Oh, wow, that is, that is unbelievable combination there."

   24. JSJack Smith1:04:33

       [laughs]

   25. SPShaan Puri1:04:33

       Like, that's a, what an upsell you created in this photo. [laughs] I was, that was the best-

   26. SPSam Parr1:04:37

       I was like, "Got him"

   27. SPShaan Puri1:04:37

       ... like, a bump announcement.

   28. JSJack Smith1:04:38

       [laughs]

   29. SPShaan Puri1:04:39

       Sam with his shirt off flexing, and Sarah like half cropped-

   30. SPSam Parr1:04:42

       Yeah, eight bumps in the middle of my stomach. [laughs]
9. 1:15:14 – 1:33:23

   Unschooling

   1. SPShaan Puri1:15:14

      you said, uh, "I don't think that universities will exist in 20 years and don't plan to send my daughter to school, let alone college." Okay. A bunch there. Say more.

   2. JSJack Smith1:15:22

      So what, I'd read this book, somebody on Twitter had, um, recommended it, and, um, it's called, like, Don't Tell Me I Can't, and it's written by this guy, a kid who was like 14, and he... It's, it's this trend at the moment. It's, it's trending now, but he, he's talking from his perspective that he was doing this since three years old or something, how he was brought up, that he was not homeschooled. Like, homeschooling has been around a long time, right? He was what they're calling unschooled, and this is actually a trend at the moment. And he described how it worked for him. Basically, how it worked for him is, like, his family was super poor, and also his dad was an Army veteran, like, injured in the Army, and so was in a wheelchair and stuff. And so he was always kind of having to help out his dad and be self-sufficient. And so, um, and the local school was, like, the worst in the country or something, and they didn't want to send him there. So initially, they were like, "All right. We'll just try homeschooling you." And so he was homeschooled for like six to 12 months, but it didn't go that, that well, and one day his dad, um... He said normally they were more encouraging, but for whatever reason, one day he just asked his dad like, "Hey, Dad, how do people, um, how do people get rich?" And his parents were, like, really poor, so maybe also touched on an insecurity. His dad is just like, "Oh, why don't you just figure it out yourself? You know, why don't you just watch some videos of Warren Buffett? 'Cause I don't know. We're not rich." And then he did that. He went and listened to loads of Warren Buffett stuff, and it actually spiraled from there. So unschooling is the concept that... Homeschooling is trying to rep- replicate the school curriculum, right? Like, all right, math, science, and you still have to do the tests and all that. Unschooling is there is no sc- there is no curriculum. The kid just learns whatever they want to learn and whatever is useful. So he was saying from around an age of like five to seven years old, he was repairing their car and doing things like this, and he'd grown up in a poor family, but he actually started his own business. And by the time he was 13, he, like, parlayed it. Like, so initially, he bought a tiny piece of land and got some animals on it and, like, sell the produce in his local town and stuff. Then he got, he built, he bought a super rundown, um, house that was falling apart. And the seller, they'd built the house themself, and so they didn't want to sell it just for money. But he's like, "Hey, look, I'll buy your shack that's falling down, and I'm a kid, and I'm gonna put all, dedicate all my time to repairing it. So it's, it's restoring your legacy." And so they really liked that, and they sold it to him for cheap. He repaired it and then flipped the house. By the time he was 13, he had something like hundreds of acres of land he was managing, and he said one time when he was about 12, he went out with some friends, and they were complaining about what they were learning at school. They're like, "Oh, we had to learn the names of the planets in alphabetical order. When the hell are we gonna learn that? Who would need to use that in life, you know?" And they ask him, they're like, "Hey, Cole, what, what are you learning at the moment?" And it's like, "Oh, yeah. Well, I've just been looking into recently, found it kind of interesting how rich people generally have like a pass-through LLC, and then a C corp, and then they can deduct this from their taxes on this."

   3. SPSam Parr1:18:47

      [laughs]

   4. JSJack Smith1:18:48

      And the other kids are like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" [laughs] You know?

   5. SPSam Parr1:18:50

      [laughs]

   6. JSJack Smith1:18:50

      Like he got so, not like crazy rich, but he got... He was owning a hundred acre estate. He actually was like loaning money to his parents. He's like, "They never asked me for money, and I never asked them for stuff, but like in tough times, like I loaned money to my parents. I bought our car from them just to help them out." You know, stuff like that. And then for me, I was thinking back in school, like I learned piano in school. I had some piano lessons, and then at some point had to do like grade... You, you had to do, you know, playing chords and I had an exam, and then it was just so shitty, you know? It was not fun. Like, I don't want to learn how to play these chords and music theory and stuff to pass an exam. And I'm like, "This sucks." And then I'm just looking now, especially nowadays, kids learning piano, they'll do it by just seeing what's their favorite song, and they'll just learn to play the song, and that's just really fun. And I think that exams and stuff just ruin the fun and curiosity of learning skills. And so for me, my daughter, I'm just like, "How can I ensure that she's just having fun for as long as possible?" And, um, and like this kid said that was unschooled, he said like he didn't learn traditional math, but just whenever it seemed that he had a need to learn a sco- a skill, obviously he would then learn it. Like he's doing his taxes, so he has to learn math to do his taxes. But it's not because they're like, "Oh, learn the Pythagoras theorem," and you have no idea when you're gonna use it. He identified himself, "I need to do my taxes, so I need to figure out how to do math." And I think that's just a philosophy that I subscribe to a lot. I mean, it's wacky obviously, but when you look, like Elon Musk, he created his own school for his kids. Jeff Bezos created his own school for his kids. I think he only has like seven kids. I think that, um, you don't have to be billionaire to take this approach. Like billionaires seem to be thinking the school system is kind of fucked up. You don't have to be a billionaire. You could-

   7. SPSam Parr1:20:52

      So, so what do you-

   8. JSJack Smith1:20:52

      ... maybe be poor

   9. SPSam Parr1:20:53

      ... what are you gonna do then? So, so fast-forward, she's six or eight years old. What are you gonna do?

   10. JSJack Smith1:20:59

       Well, at the moment, she goes to this thing, it's called... It's a- another trend. It's called forest school. It's actually nothing to do with school. Basically, they just go to a forest, a bunch of kids, and you're just playing all day. Like, you have a fake m-mud kitchen, and you are like, um, picking oranges and turning it to orange juice, and you sheer sheep and shit. Um, I'm planning to just create my own thing like that, but going to a bigger age. I'm just like, "Let's just ha- bring a bunch of kids. Anyone in the local school thing can come around." And also, I feel like instead of teaching them like how to write and studying whatever, I'm like, wouldn't it just be awesome, like whatever topic, they, they can pick the topic, or I can suggest some. Wouldn't it be awesome if I just ping my buddy and be like, "Hey, Sam. Could you just teach the class a, a lesson on copywriting?" Or I kind of feel if they just ping someone on Twitter, if someone ping, if someone, if so- if a 10-year-old kid pinged me like, "Hey, um, I unschool myself, and I've decided I want to learn business. Would you mind doing a lecture to my class? And, um, we'll, we'll have... My parents will bring us to you," I would totally do it. Um, yeah, so I'm kind of thinking stuff like that.

   11. SPShaan Puri1:22:15

       So I l- I love this. Um, my sister actually runs a school like this called Nature Kids, and basically they're just outside all day.

   12. JSJack Smith1:22:22

       Sweet.

   13. SPShaan Puri1:22:22

       Just walk around. They go on trails. If they find something, they like learn about it. And if they want to go climb trees, they climb trees, whatever. And it basically has two, two things. One, uh, so she has a traditional school, and she has this nature school.

   14. JSJack Smith1:22:34

       Yeah.

   15. SPShaan Puri1:22:34

       And the nature school-

   16. JSJack Smith1:22:36

       Mm

   17. SPShaan Puri1:22:36

       ... the kids are like, by the end of the day, the traditional school kids are like dead. They have like no energy. They're like ready to go home, and they kind of like want to just watch YouTube and whatever. And the Nature Kid kids, even though they've been out walking around all day outside, they have like way more energy, which is like kind of counterintuitive. That's the first thing I noticed. Um-

   18. JSJack Smith1:22:53

       Mm-hmm

   19. SPShaan Puri1:22:54

       ... the second thing is, uh, yeah, like they know a bunch of things that are interesting to them versus like in school, it's sort of like, you know, you're forced to learn something that's not that interesting to you, and you sort of begin to associate learning with boredom, learning with sort of like, uh, you know-

   20. JSJack Smith1:23:09

       Mm-hmm

   21. SPShaan Puri1:23:10

       ... being forced to do things versus on the other side, uh, you know, with self-driven. It's great.

   22. JSJack Smith1:23:14

       And exams, right?

   23. SPShaan Puri1:23:16

       Yeah, the pressure of that. Now, the, the... And I love the story you told about that guy, but my question would be, I think, I think unschooling or sort of self, self-driven learning is awesome when you're driven. So what happens if your kid is not trying to like-

   24. JSJack Smith1:23:29

       Mm-hmm

   25. SPShaan Puri1:23:30

       ... you know, flip a house and learn through, learn about pass-through LLCs? Like, I guess like-

   26. JSJack Smith1:23:34

       [laughs]

   27. SPShaan Puri1:23:35

       ... the fear I would have, and I think most people would have, is your kid doesn't really have any interest. They kind of just wanna, you know, sit around and do nothing or, uh, you know, th- they're... And so now you, you're unschooled, but you're not really having this kind of like awesome, you know, self-driven curiosity. Do you, like are you worried about that, or do you think like, "No, I can create that," or this situation will f- will, will d- mold a person to be more that way?

   28. SPSam Parr1:24:00

       And also on the other side, what if she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer where you need, uh, you need-

   29. SPShaan Puri1:24:06

       You need to learn how to write

   30. SPSam Parr1:24:06

       ... credentials.

Episode duration: 1:33:23