My First Million - #111 - Sam Parr Returns: The Scheme King is Back

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) is back with Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) on the pod today after a leave of absence from the show. In today’s episode you’ll hear: Shaan and Sam talk about Sam’s medical condition and catch up generally (0:18), Sam asks Shaan for a recap on some of the episodes from while Sam was out and Shaan tells him about Kat Cole and her rise to corporate prominence (21:45), Shaan tells Sam about the show with the Jonathon Barkl from Air Garage (25:10), Shaan and Sam talk about cultural and ethnic food delivery options like SayWeee! (29:30), Sam asks Shaan how his rolling venture fund is going (40:00), Shaan explains what a rolling venture fund is (48:45). Our sponsor today is lemon.io! They are offering a 15% discount for the first 6 weeks of work for all MFM fans. Go to Lemon.io/mfm to claim the offer! Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Oh, yeah. Sam, you're back.

Are you okay? What's up? You got to tell us. How, look, can you see me? I can see you. Here's my face. Ready, here's a smile. Handsome as ever.

Look at that. So I saw in the video you, you posted on Facebook. Well, we should tell people who don't know, who don't follow you on Facebook. We should tell what's going on. So Sam was out last week. I've been out for about two weeks now. It sounded innocent at first.

You were just like, I'm not feeling. I don't know. You said it kind of like got worse, worse. I got more and more scared. It was like, I'm not feeling great to like, I think I have like a kidney stone to like, I got to go to the hospital to like, I have kidney failure. And I was like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah.

Dude, it's crazy. So let me tell you this story. So I have a history of kidney stones. So at the hospital, they looked at my. my kidneys. I have about 30 kidney stones, which is a lot. And so the other day, about- Like at all times? Or you've been you've had them and passed them? I've passed about eight. I have 30 in me as of right now. Oh my God. That's not normal, right? It's not normal. It's not good. It's not bad. It just means you are going to be in pain like 30 times. Oh my God. And so the other day,

like two weeks ago, I started getting a stone. I could feel them. I could feel them coming whenever whenever they're about to come. And I go to the hospital and I pass it and they give me morphine. And I'm like, I still feel sick. Like I was like, I feel ill. Right. I don't feel well. And they're like, um, you're probably fine.

Just like shake it off. Or basically is what they said. And then like three days later, I woke up and I had this massive rash all over my chest. And I had still been feeling sick. And to the point of like, I couldn't my, my legs were hurting me. I couldn't like move. I couldn't like walk one day. I was like, I'm dying.

I was like, I go to the hospital. And he's like, I think I'm having kidney failure. And they looked at it. They're like, yeah, you might have an infection or something's going on with your kidneys. So they do all these tests. And they're like, yeah, we see on the cascan, you pass the stone. But like, this shouldn't cause you pain. And then eventually they're like, oh, wait, we think you have Lyme disease.

And so I do these. How do they know that? They just know. So Lyme, Lyme disease is like they don't have like. they don't have like many tests um like they so you kind of do it on symptoms okay and so i had this like my my um my teeth were hurting me so badly my i thought i had a toothache and then my arms were hurting me and my legs like i had all these nerve pain and uh that is like a lime disease thing and um i felt like had a fever just like sick and you get Lyme disease from a tick right a tick bite is that

right from a little ass tick a tick can be the size of a period at the end of a sentence, just tiny. And so I call Jack Smith. I go, Jack, man, something's wrong with me. Doctors can't figure it out. I go, this is not feel right. And he goes, I know the person you need to talk to. So I'm not going to say this person's name, but maybe I will one day. But basically, he puts me in touch with this person. And she, her story is that she's a billionaire who, her and she had a hedge fund and a multi-billion dollar 10 billion dollar hedge fund and they shut it down because they got sick and it was from Lyme and jack knew her from some event and he puts me in touch with this woman and she doesn't even ask my name for three days she talks to me for like two hours a day

helping me diagnose what's wrong eventually she goes hey you have an appointment with this doctor tomorrow i go okay that's cool uh she told me all about the doctor she goes but it's really expensive and I didn't feel like you complaining about it or like even worrying about it. So I just paid for it. I was like, you know, you don't need to do that. And she goes, no, I already like I already paid so you don't have a choice. So this woman paid $25,000. Oh, my God.

For a private doctor for me. And so I get this doctor who's like, oh, yeah, dude, you got Lyme. Here's everything that's wrong. And then just coincidentally, I wake up the next day in my face is complete, like one side is completely paralyzed. And that's scary. Like when you woke up like that, what was that like? I woke up and I messaged either you or Abraeu.

I was like, I feel ill. I don't know what's wrong with me. I was like, I'm just so tired because my eye, I couldn't open my eye. I was like, maybe I'm just tired. And it wasn't until 3 p.m. that my wife saw my face. And she looked at me and she goes, why are you, why are you smiling like that? I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, look at yourself.

What are you doing? I go, oh my God. And I felt it. I go, I can't move my face. I can't move it. I was like, I wasn't tired. I can't open my eye. Oh, my God.

I can't believe it took you that long in the day to figure that out. I just thought that like I was groggy. I thought I was grog. You know how you like have sleep in your eyes and like your face feels heavy? I thought like I was groggy. I was like, what is wrong with me? And she's like, your fucking face. It's frozen.

Like it's not moving. So anyway, long story short, I've got. So wait, what did this doctor, this like crazy doctor do or say? Like, that was different or better? He, he, he, I'm on, and I have an IV in me 24 hours a day for 30 days. Okay. What's that connected to? Like, at the end of the night, I got to go and plug this tube.

A refill it or something. Okay. Yeah. And it's like an IV. And it's called a pick line. And I, um, basically am taking like 30 pills a day and hopefully it goes away. And there's no like cure for Lyme disease, right? Antibiotics, but it's not necessarily a cure.

but I've learned all this things about lime. Like I don't even know if it's true or I don't know what I believe, but they say that like lime like lime is from, you know how like people say that a lab in Wuhan created Corona and like escaped? That's what they like. They believe about line. That's what they think about lime. They're like, yeah.

So we we used to drop ticks above Soviet Union or in Cuba and we would infect them with this disease. And somehow that made its way to us in America. Oh my God. So that's like the conspiracy. see it. I don't know what's true or what's not, but I tweeted out that I had it. I've gotten literally thousands of messages from people saying like, I have this. No one believed me. I was in a wheelchair. Dude, it's fucked up. So what is the prognosis?

Just like take these drugs and hopefully in 60 days you'll be better. I mean, that's pretty much it. One day I woke up and I legitimately couldn't walk. Like I couldn't like my feet. Like I couldn't hold my body weight. But now you can. yeah but I can't exercise I can I can walk for sure but like the same way my face is all messed up that's how my legs felt a little bit that is so insane oh my god and so like no one can see me right now what are you thinking once one side of my face just looks kind of like dead I just look like I got well it looks normal

when you're doing when you're not doing anything but when you smile it's more like one side behaves like the other side doesn't it's just like creepy looking So it sucks. It just sucks. And do you, are you like optimistic or what do you think? It's going to happen here. I think it's going to go away and I think I'll be back to normal. But it doesn't feel it doesn't feel like it's gotten better so far.

And I like have had massive amounts of anxiety. Like you know how you know how like when you go and get your wisdom teeth pulled or get dental work done and you feel swollen and you feel numb in your gums? Right. You don't feel right. That's just how I feel like. It's like your body's not a party. you. Yeah. And you're like, this is never going to, it's like when you're like high on weed, you're like, is this ever, like, what did this used to feel like? Well, I ever feel the. You're like,

what, like, has this been like this forever? Like, what is normal? I don't even remember normal. And it's only been like a week, but that's not, I'm like, oh, I just want this shit to work. So should we even do this podcast or should we be like, I don't know, like going and researching Lyme disease cures? What should we be doing right now? Uh, we definitely should do this podcast. I need to get back to work, but I would say that it's like from an opportunity, I mean, I'm always scheming like that. First of all, it's so expensive. I've had to spend a lot of money. Also, like rich people first, like this is an obvious thing, but I've seen it firsthand. Rich people like 100 million, 200 million dollar people, they totally have an advantage in this in like in life when it comes to medical stuff. I mean, this is like an obvious thing. But now that this woman hooked it up, it's awesome having a private doctor.

This is what rich people do. Right. Yeah. What do they call house doctor? What do they call it? Concierge doctor. Have you heard of this? Have you heard of this?

I've obviously never done it. Never really known anybody who did it, but I had heard about this. Is it like I think it's basically just like a doctor on retainer. It's a doctor on call for you that will come make house visits when you need it. Like your treatment is done. It's like an alternative whole like healthcare system that costs like. I don't know, a couple hundred grand a year. Yeah, or in this case, 25 grand, but yes, like, everything is done on your, and you, like,

I can text them. And then what I've learned is that like, like, like, even guys like Peter Atia, you know that guy? I think he's, I think technically he's a doctor. I don't know if he's a doctor or just a smart person, but like he gets paid 100 grand per client just to do this. And he has like 10 clients. Yeah. It's crazy. And 25 grand is a lot of money. But if you make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, it's like, I start thinking about this. I'm like, maybe I should just like pay for this because it is kind of like pretty amazing to like have a doctor handle you all the time. So like you only need it one time for me to make a world different. And if you're coming out of med school or you're like, you know, a young doctor, why wouldn't you go this route of being a private doctor to the rich and famous?

Like that sounds pretty sweet, probably way less competitive than whatever you're trying to do. Yeah, I don't know if it like I, I mean, it's definitely probably not as fulfilling as helping so. I mean, like, I'm in need, but I could just go to the hospital probably. But yeah, I mean, I'm in need. But yeah, I'm not like a, I don't know, it doesn't feel. I imagine maybe they feel differently. But this concierge doctor business is crazy. It's cool.

Yeah. It's cool. And then like home nurses are pretty cool too. So I'm paying like four grand to have a nurse come to my house and like do all this shit for me. It's nuts, man. Wow. Okay.

Have you heard a good, have you let, all right, we could talk about business. Now, have you heard of good RX? I've seen the commercials for it. Yeah. I don't know what's interesting about it. Oh my God. You don't even need insurance. Good RX is the greatest thing ever. They get you cheap drugs, right? They get you cheap drugs, and they're going public, and it's like crazy profitable. They make like $400 million in revenue and like $100 million in profit as a privately held company that's less than 10 years old. And what it does is apparently, it's so complicated for me to understand, but apparently in the healthcare system,

There's all these middlemen. And so let's say that like some drug, drug X, only costs $5 or something for a prescription. Because it goes through all these people, then it eventually costs $100 and your insurance pays for a little bit of it and you pay for 20, whatever. What good RX does is I go to the pharmacy and they're like, all right, you have doxy, which is like the antibiotic that I have. It's like $800 for some reason for this shit I got to take. And because I'm in, dude, I'm on Kaiser, which means I'm in New York, so I got to pay out of pocket. So anyway, I just pull up my app and I just type in the word doxy this many milligrams, this many times like this size. And it just says, all right, what pharmacy are you at?

I go Rite Aid and it goes, boom, $23. Here's a discount. It's only $23. And I just show them my phone and they go, okay, cool. Why are they able to offer these discounts? I don't understand how this works. It's so confusing. But I imagine what they do is they make an affiliate fee from the directly from the drug provider.

Right. Yeah, it's probably very simple. I haven't looked into what this is. But yeah, they get you cheap drugs somehow. I didn't know if it's because they're cutting out a middleman or if they're like they're getting a kickback for affiliate and then they give you a share of their kickback or it's something like that because it's just like a new. It's like a layer on top of what exists.

It's amazing. And I think there's one called script relief. That's another business in the space that's doing this. These are amazing companies because it truly provides value. to the person using it. You know, like, my bill went from two grand at the pharmacy to like $100. Right. And it's so profitable.

So it's an awesome company. That's cool. Okay. So we're just going to do the podcast. We're just going to do the business podcast. It's so funny to me that we're going to do that. I feel like I only want to talk about you. But what is there?

I mean, there's nothing else to say. I don't know what to say. I just haven't talked to you in a couple weeks. And your life turned up. upside down. Yeah, it's fucking sucks. I will tell you this, that like, the first part of me, and I bet this is what you felt, but more when you had your daughter, which is like everything you thought that was important, most of it isn't. Right. But then the second part of it was like, also money is so important. Like being rich, you just are such, I mean, I'm not going to place

judgment on it. Like, I'm not going to say capitalism is bad or not even anything like that. But I'm just saying that like having money in this system it's way better um shit's so expensive to like be healthy if when you're in need right you know the uh there's two quotes i always liked about this there's one that is you know a healthy man has a million desires a sick man only has one which is basically to be healthy and it's so true and then the the other one i really liked i heard from navarre he was i think it's like i don't know buddha or confucius or something like that which is that every person has two lives and the second one begins when they realize they only have one. And I just thought that was like super, super deep impactful. Like my buddy got diagnosed with

cancer and like he, I told him that quote. Because there's, there's always, you know, a silver lining and any, you know, anything that happens. It just depends if you focus on that. If you, if you get that out of it. And so he went and he got tattooed on his forearm the date, the date that he got diagnosed. And he goes, that's the date my second life began. And he got excited about it. And he was like, you know, I, this is, this is my real birth date right here. And I thought, So what's he do now? I mean, what's he feel like now? I don't know.

I'm sure, you know, he's a real human. And so it's not like, oh, now everything's great. It's like still he's like scared. So he beat the cancer. He's still scared that it'll come back, right? Like every time he has to go get these scans every six months or whatever. And when he goes back, like, that's a shitty day. And he's scared his shit like that, okay, the scan's going to happen and they're going to tell me.

What are they going to tell me? And so he's like nervous about it. But then he's also trying to like, you know, live it up and also not focus on, you know, random bullshit, not get caught in bullshit. because he remembers when like all bullshit was revealed to be bullshit when he when he felt that. So I don't know. I don't know. He'd answer better than me, but that's the impression I've got from him.

Yeah, it's messed up. I mean, the worst thing I like, first of all, I'm not dying, but I'm just uncomfortable. But like the thing that's worse after that is like actually dying. And then the thing that's even worse after that is your children dying, I imagine. So like it definitely makes you realize that like I'm not even dying. And thank God, I don't have children that are dying. dying, but like, and I'm like, super regretful over. I'm like, oh, fuck, none of this stuff matters.

Right. And so, um, I don't know. It's been, I can't even hear a story about other people who have kids who are sick. Like, I just can't even, I can't even like listen to that story. It bothers me so much. Just the idea that a kid can be sick and then I think about my daughter and I'm just like happy she's okay. And, but I, it's like so visceral to me now that I can't even hear another story.

And I'm not squeamish. Like, I wasn't squeamish like that at all. So that's definitely like a way that, I don't know, kids changed me, like very dramatically. What's crazy is that another thing that's important, whenever I go to the hospital, because I used to have to go all the times with Kenny Stone says, a good nurse is the most important part of the whole sickness. For sure. Most important part of a hospital is the nurse and the nurses.

And there's such a variability between good and like that extra 10% where they're amazing and you just feel so good finally during that. Right. And you like love when they come in on their show. shift and they erase the whiteboard and they write their name and it's like yes eight hours of like wanda wanda's amazing i can't wait for this a good nurse it's just there's so much more because you don't ever see the doctor fuck the doctor at the emergency room but like a good nurse is life changing and uh whenever i have a good nurse i'm like you provide value to the world all i do is like send this email like it makes

me feel bad i'm like like and i'm like i probably make a lot more money than you you are the hero right you are the person that you should be rich. I always feel, whenever I have a good nurse, I'm like, you just change my life. Yeah. So I also had this morning routine where I would take my dog for this walk and where I used to live in San Francisco. I think, I don't know if you've ever been to my house, but it's right next to that Zuckerberg hospital.

Yeah. And so I could see it. So I would go to the, like, where I'd be playing with my dog and I could see it. And every morning, basically, I just like got this routine in my head that really helped me, which was, I don't know why. Like, I've had experiences like you where. If you spend any extended period of time in a hospital, it's like a very, I don't know, distinct feeling.

And when you spend time in a hospital, like just the lighting, the smells, the like, just the humming of sounds, it's like so specific. And I can just imagine it in my head. And so whenever I'm there and I can see the hospital, I just reminded myself, like, as long as I'm not up there, today's a good day. Like I said, and I would, if my mom would come visit and she'd come for the walk, I'd be mom, why is it a good day? And she's like, because we're not up there.

And like, she knew because I just kept saying that to myself every day. So I made it where being happy was really cheap. As long as I'm not up there, I'm happy. And then on the other side, I tried to make it where getting upset, I make it really expensive. Like, I'm not going to get upset over anything small. Like, you've got to pay me. It's got to be a high ticket item to take my happiness away from me now. And those two things in my mentality really, I don't know, like change the quality of my life, I feel,

was just having that mindset every single day. So that's very stoic of you. That's called negative vis... I'm sure I can't say like the V words. Negative visualization. Fuck, my mouth, my lips aren't moving, but what's it say the word? Visualization. Was it?

Visualization. Yeah, so negative visualization. And it's when just go ahead and you assume that like your worst case scenario is true. So my kid's sick. My kid's dead. I'm about to die. My wife's about to die. Whatever.

you assume that all that is going to happen. And then you like meditate on it. You're like, this is true. This is true. You close your eyes for 10 minutes. You go, this is my life now. Like I'm alone. And then you wake up and you go, oh my God, thank God.

It's not true. Yeah, it's like waking up for a bad dream. And you're relieved. You're like, yes, I didn't miss the test. And, you know, I didn't get stabbed. I'm so thankful. Yeah. And that's actually a great trick that I read about a book on stoicism.

It's called Negative visualization and it's great for like making you have gratitude which apparently i don't know if there's some woo-woo shit but do you know that like if you have gratitude like if you regularly show i mean showing gratitude i believe like it's actually like healthy for you like it can be physically healthy yeah have you heard of this i don't know about the i don't know if any of this stuff's measurable but uh the phrase i really liked was um you can't be you can't be grateful and stressed at the same time. You can't be grateful and afraid at the same time. And it's like, it's sort of like you can't sneeze and keep your eyes open. If you're truly feeling grateful, you're not going to be able to

feel those other feelings, which those other feelings create either a shitty quality of life or literally, you know, your body reacts to stress in a negative way. It puts you in a different, you know, different hormones get released and whatnot. So I don't know how measurable any of this shit is, but, you know, err on the side of being grateful. I won't do you any problems. Okay. Let's take a minute and tell you a little. little bit about this week's sponsor lemon.io. Lemon is the perfect solution if you are a technical co-founder and maybe you just need to delegate some of the work because you got too much on your plate. Or you're doing a project that needs a specific technology and you don't have that skill

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dot i.m slash mfm as in my first million so lemon dot i o slash mfm to claim the offer 15% discount for six weeks that's not bad that's a big chunk of change they're much cheaper to use than hiring engineers with other outsourcing even even more than other outsourcing platforms like top towel and others so check them out lemon dot io back to this week's episode okay let's let's talk about some random business stuff otherwise people are going to just get pissed at us wait can i ask one thing really quick which is you did four or five or six episodes without without me. Is there one or two that stuck out? I thought the cat Cole one was good. It was a little bit more like an interview, but her story was pretty phenomenal. I didn't know it going in. So I knew that she was

like the president of focused brands, which I knew owned Cinebond. And I'm just like a Cinnabon fan. So I was like, okay, cool. You should say no more. But it was like, Auntie Andy's pretzels and Slotskies and McAllister, some other brands too. So I was like, okay, you're president's CEO of that. That's pretty cool. But her story was pretty dope. She basically started. it as a Hooters waitress while she was in college and then like was, you know, good as a waitress and like got into Hooters corporate as kind of like low level corporate and then like worked a way up Hooters corporate and became eventually like head of Hooters America like GM of Hooters America. And then like transitioned over as president of Sinabon and then like went

to the parent company of the company that owned Sinabon and now is the president of that. And I was like, that's a pretty fucking baller path for somebody who came from kind of nothing, dropped out of college while she was a Hooters waitress. I just thought that was like an incredible story. And then she obviously had some good opinions on like Ghost Citchens, like is this a thing? What did she say? I wasn't able to listen to it.

She was basically like, she was like, it's a thing for sure in highly dense areas. And she's like for our business, like a huge amount of their business comes from like malls and across America. You know what I mean? Like where you can't do ghost kitchens when you're not in a really, really dense place. You can do it in New York. You can do it in, you know, in San Francisco or L.A. Cloud kitchens are awesome.

They're kind of optimal in a way, right? Small square foot, not prime real estate, delivering into a really dense area. You can serve, you know, a huge number of customers in a small radius of delivery. But that's not going to work in, let's say, I don't know, you know, Sarasota, wherever the fuck Sarasota is, Florida, whatever that is. You know, it's not going to work in the majority of places. So you can't, like, pin your hopes on that as the, you know, as the model. And so she was like down for it, but also not down for it at the same time. Well, she just recognized that it's great, but not for everywhere.

Yeah, exactly. And then she was talking a little bit about, okay, well, what are the future of restaurants look like? Because they're like re-architecting some of their stores. And also she's kind of imagining like, okay, in an ideal world, how would our whole footprint look after COVID? And she had some ideas around like, you know, basically how do you make it to that takeout and delivery is like kind of a core part of any restaurant, not like this add-on thing? if you're going to be coming physically to a restaurant, what does the environment need to be for you to do that? Because now if delivery is a default,

then why would you go into a restaurant? Well, it's got to be giving you more than just the food and a place to sit. Which is good for Hooters. Right, right. It's got some kind of ambiance, as we would say. I mean, yeah, they've got that built in. Exactly. Dad and like Dave and Buster, shit like that.

Yeah, I feel you. And then ironically, you know, she's president of pretzels and sitabonds, but she was very much like food is pharmacy. So she was like, we're going to look at food as like a health vector. And it's going to be personalized to you. So she had some ideas around that. So I thought that was all pretty interesting from her episode. That's good.

I enjoy hearing that. Sorry, the other one was from this guy who did, he's a CEO of Air Garage. And he listens to the podcast. He's like, this is my, I go for a walk. I listen to y'all's pod. And he's CEO of a startup. And he came on, he gave me, he sent me a list. of like 150 ideas.

And I was like, okay, cool, you're qualified. Come on the show. And he had one, he had two ideas around USPS, which I thought were interesting. He's like, look, USPS is kind of dying, but it's like kind of important to America. So he had one, which was there's these services that will do like kind of like your change of address because changing your address sucks. So he's like, there's these services where like they store your, they become your permanent address.

And then you just tell them if you ever want to switch. And they change. Everything still goes to them. them and they just reroute to you now. So you kind of have one easy online place to change it in five minutes and then you pay 10 bucks a month to be able to do that or five bucks a month. Yeah, I just signed up for one. So he was like, USPS. He's like, I want, he's like, somebody should build a business that just does this for USBs. They can make an additional, like, he just did the math and like how many customers they already have. And if they just marketed it

within their, within their own service, like if they could get five million subscribers of this thing at $10 a month or $10 a month or $8 a month or $7 a month, like that would be actually pretty significant revenue for USPS. And he's like, there's a no-brainer. Like, you should just build that and have one partner, which is USBS, and just be the, be the brand that does this for them. Which is, I thought, a funny, like, all or nothing idea. And then another one, which was, like, put cameras on the top of USBS and create a

competitor to, like, Google Street View. Because they're just driving around everywhere. That's badass. Surely, surely Google has been like, hey, uh, you all want to do this? Come on. Right. Come on. I wonder what the reasoning has been.

I mean, I don't. I don't know, but surely they've been like, come on. I wonder, I wonder what they've said. Yeah. Did you, this isn't like an idea, so I don't really want to spend too much time on it, but it is interesting. Did you see how Oracle bought TikTok? Yeah, well, I didn't know if it was done.

Is it done now? I saw something yesterday that was like, bite dance refuses to give the algorithm to whoever the U.S. buyer is. It's like, well, then what are they going to get? I just thought it was interesting. And then, why the fuck does Oracle want TikTok? Like, what is the, oh. I have no idea. I don't understand these big businesses.

I don't, do you even know what Oracle dugs? I don't even know what they do. It's like database software basically. Yeah, everyone says that and they always say like IT procurement or I'm like, dude, I don't,

or like human resource manager or they'll say like, what do they say? I forget what the, what the official phrasing is for Oracle. Whenever companies say that or people tell me, I'm like, I don't know what that means. Right,

that's how I feel about SAP. I'm like, SAP is what? Yeah. What is SAP? It's a $40 billion company. And it's called like human capital management or something. ERP.

Yeah, what's that mean? I think it's enterprise resource planning or something like that. Yeah, I just don't know what that means. I might be totally wrong. ERP might be like, you know, eggs, you know, rover. No, that's what it means. That's what it means. Yeah, that's it.

I just don't know what it means. So that's interesting. And also, do you haven't, have you been making any money in the stock market? Yeah, except for, I mean, there was like a week where it was like pretty bloody but yeah made it made a killing over the last few months dude i've been um i don't i'm like not in i don't own any individual stocks other than facebook and i don't buy any like i haven't bought a stock in like you know two years uh it's all automated right um i almost regret it not buying more you mean yeah i i'm seeing all this these numbers

and i'm like oh my god this is crazy i have hardcore fomo yeah i feel that way too and then i'm like uh This is gambling. Okay, let me just move on with my life to something that is more meaningful to me or that I control a little bit more. But yeah, I have like Amazon. Yeah, I see these numbers. Zoom and Fastly and Facebook. I think that's like my core individual stocks that I own. I pretty much only own Facebook and S&B 500.

Right. And then like the $500 in referral stocks that I got from Robin Hood for like, so which is like serious radio or something. then. Right. All right. Well, what ideas you got? It sounds like you came prepared. Well, not really, actually, but I do have a couple of interesting things. So have you heard of this business called Say We? I don't know how that's how you pronounce it. So it's S-A-Y, W-E-E-E-E. It's like there's like three or four E's at the end of it. It is a Asian grocery delivery company. And so like if you look in the Google Play Store, it's just we with an exclamation point. And it's a shop. Asian groceries and get it delivered. So I'd seen these guys a couple times through like friends

who are Asian who are like, oh yeah, like when COVID was happening and like you couldn't get an Instacart delivery or whatever. It's like, oh yeah, thank goodness for say we. We still got like all of our good. So like you know how actually I don't know if you know this, but like I'm Indian, there's Indian grocery stores that exist. You probably actually have never seen an Indian grocery store. But basically within like, you know, these little random shopping centers, there'll be a small little store that just is for, let's say, brown people to go and you can get like the spices, the certain type of rice that brown people like. Like, we like boss-muthie rice.

We want spices to make Indian food. And then we want like sweets that are desserts that are Indian desserts or whatever. And so like my mom or whatever will go shopping these places. And so the same thing exists for, you know, more like East Asian or Oriental cuisine where you'll get like, you know, different types of food that is more like, you know, more. more of the motherland than what you're going to get at Safeway or Kroger's or whatever. And so these guys crush it. They've raised $82 million.

So at first I was like, oh, this is interesting. Like this is a potential investment. And I go, look, and it's already, you know, they have 200 people at the company. Where does you find it? I just had friends talking about it. Like, I'm in, I forgot who, I think Kevin Lee was the first person who ever mentioned it. And then this guy, Josh Elman, who's, I think he's married to as his wife's Asian. and so I think they order it or whatever.

So I'd seen a couple of people mentioning it. And I was like, what's the deal with this? And so, yeah, it's a pretty interesting company. I thought, what an interesting niche of grocery delivery that is actually pretty massive. Right? If they've raised $82 million, you know, they have to be valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

And they only have a few locations. It's like Bay Area, Seattle, you know, L.A., and just serving a few areas to build such a big business. And I think very differentiated from the normal like grocery wars that everybody's fighting and bleeding in. Yeah. So, whoa, this can't be true, can it? It said, so here's an article on them. Here's an article where the founder said in 2019, all right, so 18 revenue, 2018 revenue was 16 million.

2019, they said they expected 40 million. And then they seven extra revenue from from the expected 40 to, uh, what's seven times 40? Yeah, like 280. Holy shit. So they're growing like crazy. Pretty interesting. Never would have thought that this would be a thing.

I'm just looking up the founder. He used to work at a company called Brocade. Don't know what that is? No, what Brocade. You worked at Brocade. Interesting. I never, ever, ever would have thought that that would work. Yeah, same.

That's why I brought it up because I was like, this is a surprise to me. Remember when your buddy told you about halal? What was it called halal loans? Is halal like the Muslim? Yeah. So, and I guess halal is like the, is halal like the equivalent of saying kosher but for Muslim? Yeah.

It just means like sort of this is like blessed by the, you know, the religious community. This is in line with the religious code. So whether it's halal meat or it's halal financing, it's this is in line with our morals and values. Whenever your buddy talked about that, I was like, oh, I'm on board with just anything that like non-Muslims do or eat or drink or whatever and then just put halal in front of it. I saw this little business. Our friend Ramon sent me this little business that was e-commerce business for sale. And what it was was small e-commerce business, you could probably buy it for like 200 grand, I think. It was doing like $100,000 in like $70,000 at eBay or something like that.

And all it was was baby mobile. So, you know, like above your crib, you have a little rotating mobile that, like, is usually like stars and unicorns and whatever, like. And they just made the Muslim version of that. So it was all of the, like, kind of like symbols and or like kind of, I don't know, like, whatever the religious figurehoods are and religious symbols are. And it would play religious music rather than like whatever, twinkle, twinkle little star. And it's like such a small niche, worst fucking website you can imagine. It was like just an awful e-commerce look, awful brand, sold one skew, and was doing like pretty good revenue. It was like, I forgot it was.

I think it might have been 200 grand an EBITDA or something like that at the end of the day. But I was like, this is like such a healthy little business that is such a specific niche serving a large community that's underserved. And like you got a billion Muslim people in the world. And I don't feel like there's enough of. You know, we talked about sort of column for religion and how I would start that with the, you know, the Islamic faith app. I just feel like there's so much more you could do for, you know, niche populations and whether it's dating apps that are targeted towards certain religions or certain ethnicities. In this case, grocery delivery for certain ethnic foods. I just feel like you could take popular category and niche it down into a certain ethnography and do well.

So I just, I can't get over the fact about how I never would have thought that this, this, what, how do you say it? Say we. Say we. I can't believe that. It was crazy. I went to the, I went to the website and it's, they had to translate it for me. Did they?

Oh, my mind's already translated. Like, because your URL is say we dot. Com slash. Yeah. So like, it's like they're really going after the. Look at this. They're serving four markets and then they just opened up three more. So seven.

cities and they're doing, you know, according to that, like north of, north of $200 million in revenue. Now, I don't know if they're counting revenue as like every item sold and they have like 5% margin. But like, yeah, okay, let's say that. That is the case. They're doing, you know, 10% margin on that. Still not bad. So let me tell you about another grocer that's interesting. So I was, this sounds like I'm just being bougie, but I was staying at someone's house and I was walking around the Hamptons. And there's this billionaire guy that I've read about. His name's John Cat Meadonis.

Have you heard of him? Never. Okay. He's easy to recognize because like if this ever gets to him, I'll just tell him to his face, but he's super ugly. Like he's so ugly. Like Google him. He's like fat and ugly.

John, cat. How do you spell it? Cat. Last name is the word cat and then S.I. And it'll auto fill. Okay. Gotcha. Right.

You see him? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, is this his wife with him? Who is this? His daughter. That's his hot daughter. Oh, my God. Look at him.

Like, he's just like a big old like, like cootie. Like he's just an ugly dude. Yeah, whatever. Who cares? It doesn't matter. I mean, look at me. I don't even have my face doesn't even work. So he's just a big old bug.

And so what this guy did was when he was only 21, he started this grocery store in New York City called Rack. Apple. And then using money from red Apple, he like he like made it crazy profitable, like 30 million in sales with like five million in profit. And here it says, I built it up to 10 stores and was doing $25 million and I was personally earning a million dollars. Personally earning a million dollars a year. So 25 million in sales and he was paying himself a million dollars. And this is in 1978 or something. Then when the the company had like a hundred million in sales for a grocery store, he bought this other chain. Then, after he bought the other chain, he, um,

started an oil and gas company. Then he started an airline business that he sold to net jets or, uh, whatever the big guy is. So this, and now he, um, still owns the holding company is called Apple, Red Apple, Inc or whatever. And they own grocery stores. They own radio stations. They own this oil company. They own everything. And I'm almost positive through all my research that he owns 100% of it. And I saw interviews with him. It seems like a great guy. He is trying to run for mayor in New York worth three, four billion dollars. Just crazy fascinating guy. And so fascinating because he said something. He was like, man, man, man, I'd be the richest man in the world. But I chose a low margin business. But I still crushed it. Just super fascinating. I think he's an immigrant or at least

his mom. Yeah, he's an immigrant. Just that hardcore hustle. Just freaking awesome. Love learning about these people instead of the typical tech folks. Yeah, that's interesting. So you said you bumped into this guy or what happened? I knew what he looked like because he's so easy to remember. And I think out in New York, he's like a celebrity because he like said he was running for mayor. So like everyone knows who he is. But, you know, I've never heard of this red apple grocery store.

So I don't know what it is. I've seen him walking down the street and I just was like, I'm going to bring that up for our billy of the day. Yeah, I like that. I was like that I sort of glazed over after you called him so ugly I just couldn't stop laughing in my head and I only heard half the rest of the story

he also got in the news because he's got like a really beautiful daughter and he like apparently used he built some app to like spy on his daughter's boyfriend and do like background checks on them and people like call them out because that was creepy yeah but uh... Clearview AI that's what I was reading this article

just now because he's like I have infrared you know infrared sensors in my home in the Hamptons I sleep with with the same gun James Bond carried under his pillow and I use Clearview AI to stalk my daughter's boyfriend or date or whatever what a character yeah so that shit's weird but other than that this guy's so fascinating and interesting to me just uh I love these types I love they they just seem like the everyday man okay sounds good good. What other, I don't know, have you even thought about business ideas or have you been, you know, thinking about that at all? No, I basically did not think about that at all. That's okay. I'm back on it, but I have not thought about that at all. Is there anything that you

want to bring up? So I've been thinking about a lot because, so we successfully raised this fund to invest in startups. I've been doing a bunch of pitch meetings and each one is like super fascinating. What's the total amount? Two and a half million a year. And was that so I'm going through that process too though I might put it on hold for obvious reasons but was it is it going to be good or not good? Well it's going to be good. It's just a question of like it's work right so like all of a sudden you know I spend a lot more time looking at different companies and doing pitch meetings whereas before it was

kind of as I went if I'd meet a great entrepreneur I would chat with them and informally do it I wasn't but I basically I need to deploy. five times more capital than I was doing as my own personal investing. So then I need to up my volume of deals and sourcing as well. But it's fun because, you know, sitting with an entrepreneur and hearing their vision of, you know, what the future looks like and some problem that you didn't even know exist. Like today, I'll give you an example. Just before this call, talk to this guy.

This guy's been doing like clean tech companies in Africa for the last like X number of years. and so right now he's going after this thing. I'll check with him if I'm even okay to say all this, but I think so. He's basically created, I guess, let me put it differently. There's this big problem that I had no idea about, which is that if you go to Africa, if you go to Kenya, and we're not talking about like mud huts, like we're talking about in a condominium building and a high-rise building, you own an apartment, you live in that apartment, and you need to cook meals every day.

They don't have like gas stones. Like into the building, there's no gas pipe. So where we go and we turn on our house. electric stove and, you know, fire comes out, they don't have that. So what most people do all the way from mud huts into condos is they use charcoal or kerosene or some like really dirty kind of like dirty fuel source essentially, but it's, you know, relatively cheap. And it's really all they got. So they need to cook, you know, boil water. They need to cook rice and they need to make make meat and whatever else they're going to do. And so people have been cooking like that for, for, you know,

decades in these countries. And so what they're replacing it with is a, a clean stove that uses wood pellets rather than charcoal. And so like you can't, you could, you've always been able to cook with this. And it's sort of like, you know, if we go camping, you know, we could use, we use one of these little small, you know, stove tops. And so he's trying to replace it. And so what the net result is, you have something that is, you know, 98% cleaner for the environment and also like even your own clothes. Like, forget the, forget, if you don't care about global warming, most people don't want their, their home to just be full of like dark smoke that's just getting into your clothes and like, you know, you smell like smoke for the next three days, but that's just life there. And so it's 98%

cleaner. It costs half as much to be able to do, and it cooks in half the time. And so you get just like a better experience all around. And so, and they're doing the kind of Ness Cafe model where they give you the machine for free and then they sell you the fuel on every month because you're going to, you're always going to buy, you know, cooking fuel every single month because you need to cook. And so a pretty interesting business, pretty interesting problem that they're solving. And, you know, that's the type of fun I get to have now. So I would say the fund is good because I get to see this type of stuff. Do you think that it's going to be a, I mean, a $2 million fund, unless it's like one of the best funds out there, which it could definitely become.

It probably won't be a needle mover in terms of personal wealth creation. Is that correct? Or am I wrong? That's correct. But remember, it's $2.5 million per year. So when most people raise a fund, they raise, let's say, a $10 million fund. They deploy that. The fund takes 10 years to return, but they deploy it over, let's say, three years. And so that's actually a $3 million a year fund.

So this is the equivalent of call it a $7 to $10 million total fund. And so then you say $7 to $10 million total dollars. The math works out where, let's say, we do very well and we $4X the fund gross. So we turn, let's say, $7 million into $28 million of gross returns. And then of those $28 million, I get a 20% carry on that. So I get 20% of $28 million. So $4.5 million bucks. But it's over a seven to 10 year period.

So then you think that potentially this is going to be a needle moving? I hope that in seven to 10 years, $4 million is not a needle mover. That's my goal with all my other business. Do you think that you're just going to raise more and more money? I don't know. I'm going to try it. I'm going to see. Maybe I hate this.

And maybe after a year I tell everybody, okay, I'm not, you know, that money is deployed. Great. And for next year, I don't want any more money, right? Like, I don't want to do this anymore. But I think what's going to happen is there's, I sort of view this as for me, financially, it should be good, but it's not going to be like, oh, my fucking God, this is how I, you know, build my kingdom type of thing. but I just like sit in front row for like people doing cool shit.

And this is an excuse to, this is season tickets to sit front row, right? I'm going to get to see a bunch of entrepreneurs. So are my investors, right? I'm going to share all my updates with them and they're going to get to see what are the companies we invest in. Why? Why not?

And how those companies are growing, kind of in the private confidential side of things. And so I think it's going to be, I think on a fun level, it's going to be a game changer for fun. And on a wealth level, I hope that in seven to ten years, making four or five million bucks will not be a game-changing. Yeah, so we're in the, we've been in the process of doing this for a while like you were. And obviously, three weeks ago, I was like,

hey, let me talk to you in a little bit. And so I guess we'll go through with it. But, uh, you see, from an outside perspective, it definitely looks easy. But then you, like, get into it and you're like, this is going to be a lot of work. It's going to be a lot of work. Like being an event.

investor, just like all things, once you get past that, like, like, for example, my company, the hustle, like I work really hard, but I definitely worked harder to get it off the ground. And so it's like, once you get past that point, then it's like, yeah, this is a good life. But in the early stages, you're like, oh, this is, I'm just, you're just starting a business from scratch again. Yeah, yeah, totally. I think if you're doing it to make money, there's much better ways to make money as a fund, if you're the manager of the fund.

If you're an investor, cool. You're putting a small amount of money into like a higher risk. asset class and you're not going to do any of the work, so it's great. But if you're the fund manager, there's way better ways to make money than doing this. And so that's the position that you're in or I'm in. And so you got to, I think if you're going to do it, if you're a fund manager, you need the fund to be a $50 million or greater fund for it to be good for finance, financially, personally. And then if not, you're doing it for the sort of enjoyment because you are just sort of down with the startup ecosystem and this is what you would this is a hobby as well even if

even if you did it even if you did a 50 million dollar fund what a lot of people realize is like all right you have 50 million dollar fund great you better not be higher in anyone but maybe one person yeah exactly so like on a 50 million dollar fund you're going to be taking your 2% management fee so I took zero percent management fees so again because I'm not doing this as a way to for me to personally make money every year on fees but you know for 2% two percent two percent fees you'd be getting a million bucks a year for all your overhead, your legal cost, your fund administration, your employees, your whatever, marketing. And so if you have two partners, that's like, let's say, 500K each. That's no joke. That's not something to sort of sneeze at. But typically somebody

who's able to raise a $50 million fund is earning more than that already in their current job or business. Or has earned more than that. And so they, you know, they're not doing it for the 500k a year of fees, net of expenses. Yeah, it's definitely a fascinating exercise to look at all this stuff. I've definitely enjoyed it, though. We'll see if we do it. But I'm happy you were able to do that.

All the money pretty much came from your Twitter. Yes and no. Yeah, so half of it, basically like, let's say 60% of it, I think, came from Twitter. And then the other 40% came through kind of like hustle. like basically reaching out and doing different sort of marketing and sales techniques to try to get people through the door and get them to close.

Good. Well, congratulations. Rolling fund is just pay as you go. And before, you know, let's say I wanted to go raise a $10 million fund, there would be a specific time that I would open the funding window. I'd say, oh, okay, I'm going to go for six months. I'm going to go talk to a bunch of rich people. I'm going to try to raise this money.

And I would have to raise my full amount then. Sometimes you'd do like a first and second tranche. but like for the most part, you're going to go and you're going to raise a bunch of money up front and then you're going to spend the next few years investing it. A rolling fund is different. A rolling fund I could start today. Every quarter is basically like a new little fund. Every quarter I can take on new investors.

Investors who are in my current fund can go up if they want and they could double down. They can invest more. Or they could stop and they could say, I don't want to invest anymore after four quarters. So it's just more lightweight, more flexible for the investor side. on the investor side, you just pay quarterly. So like my minimum is $6,000 per quarter. So people can pay $6,000, $6,000. Over the course of the year, they invests $25K, but not in a giant check at once.

And then for me as the fund manager, I don't have to take six months, to 12 months to go raise my fund. I just start raising it and start deploying it and it can keep growing over time. Like next year, my fund could be twice the size. If I wanted to, if I wanted to keep taking more money in, I could double the size of my fund. you don't get that type of flexibility with a traditional fund. A fund is sort of set in how much you raise and who owns what.

So Angelist, basically, the fund runs on Angelist. They take an administration fee. And they built the software. So the way they're actually doing it is nothing in the law changed. What they changed was they just automated it so that every quarter they're actually spinning up a separate entity. That's going to be a 10-year fund for what's called a Q4, 2020, let's say. And then when the next quarter happens, they're actually automatically under the hood. They're creating another entity with that quarter's investor batch.

And so normally if you went to a law firm and you said, hey, every quarter I'd like to create a new fund. I want to manage that fund for 10 years. And it's going to have different investors in every quarter. They'd be like, what the fuck are you thinking? Like this is going to be really taxing legally and really complicated to keep track of. But Angelus did it with software and automated that process. What else? Do we want to go over with anything else or we want to end this at 53 minutes?

Let me scroll through our list. We're going to have to build this list out. I had two I wanted to do today. I forgot the other one. Cool. All right. I don't remember what my other one was. We have to go back and start filling this out again.

Now that you're back, we get back in rhythm. So we'll call it here. Yes. And thank you, everyone, for all the kind of wishes. I got like literally a thousand DMs. I appreciate it. I don't know if I'll reply to everyone, but thank you. And we will see you next in two days.

Yeah. All right. Sam, welcome back. Good to have you back. All right. I'll see you. See you. Thank you.