My First Million - Five +$10M Ideas (from a guy who's done it 3 times)

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Get our Business Monetization Playbook: Episode 667: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Sheel Mohnot ( https://x.com/pitdesi ) about the biggest opportunities he sees right now.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) Intro (2:33) iPod mini hustle (10:40) Being a dot collector (20:30) The $100M story of Thistle (24:30) IDEA: Affinity-based retirement home (34:30) IDEA: Yelp for professional services (38:48) IDEA: Pearly whites (42:10) IDEA: Outsourced pizza (44:40) The story of Grey Goose (48:00) IDEA: School for AI Tools (52:00) Sheel's credit card stack (59:00) Sheel's position on crypto (1:03:00) Learning to sell — Links: • Thistle - https://www.thistle.co/  • Sam’s List - https://samslist.co/  • Pizzeria DeLuna - https://pizzeriadeluna.com/ • U.S. Bank Smartly Visa - https://www.usbank.com/credit-cards/bank-smartly-visa-signature-credit-card.html  — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com  • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, we have Sheel today here, who is, by my call, the most interesting man in tech. And that is a big claim. And I'm aware of the power of my words, but I did not stutter. 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 a road, let's travel. I think I've told you this before, but I think of all people, I feel like you live in this

beautiful blend of you do things that make you successful. but then you do a lot of things that just seem like a lot of fun and they're random and you're letting, you know, life kind of bounce you in whatever direction it's going to take you. And it's kind of inspiring. And Sam, I know it's inspiring for you because Sam is a perfect square and he just likes to be a perfect square and he doesn't know what to do with this crazy blob shape like you. Sam, is that right? Yeah, I mean, he's inspiring to me. Like he just does the silliest stuff. But let's just say, so, Shil, here's like, I'll brag on your behalf. So basically you have what, a three. $320 million VC fund. You've built the business called Thistle to $100 million in revenue. And you've built another business that sold domains. I think you've sold half a billion dollars in domains. You've done all this amazing stuff.

But then you do like the silliest things. Like you did like an online version of The Bachelor. You're in a Justin Bieber music video. Like you do ridiculous stuff. He got married sponsored by Taco Bell in the Metaverse. He had a wedding in the Metaverse with Taco Bell somehow. I don't even know what that is. I didn't know about that.

That's awesome. What was that? Oh, it's a long story. But yeah, Taco Bell sponsored my wedding. We had a series, I figured, like, if you're going to have a wedding, it's a great excuse to bring your friends together. And so I was like, and it's an excuse for all your friends to come together. As many times you do it, they're all going to come. So we had six weddings and nine wedding-related events over the course of a year, one of which was sponsored by Taco Bell because we entered a contest.

And my amazing wife let me do this. Yeah. Makes sense. I don't even know what to make them all this. Makes sense. I went back and I listened because you've been on the podcast way back when I first started it because you were a friend of mine in San Francisco and I wanted to have interesting people on the podcast.

So back in 2019, you're probably in the first 20 episodes. And I actually went back and listened to it this morning because I forgot all of it. I don't remember any of this. So I'm going to repeat a couple of the stories. I actually want to start. You brought some ideas, opportunities you see, things like that. I want to get to those. But I want to start with.

maybe the relatable side hustle. Can you talk about one of the way, one of the early ways you made money, which was this story about the iPod mini. I don't even know if you remember the full story here, but can you tell this iPod mini hustle story? Yeah, I was like a new graduate, college graduate. I was working a job. They gave me an iPod mini, which is the iPod had come out. It was white. Then the mini came out. It was smaller. And it was available in four colors. blue, yellow, pink, and green. And right after I got it, my headphones got stuck in a bike I was riding and broke. And Apple was not selling those headphones.

Like those iconic headphones that I wanted, Apple wasn't selling them. So I had this idea of like, let me make these headphones and I'll make them in the colors matching the iPod mini. And so I went to China for the first time my life just to like figure this out. And I like, you went for this reason. I went for this reason. Yeah. I was working a full-time job. I took a two-week vacation.

And I was like, let me spend those two weeks in China. And I- Where in China? China's a big place. You were just like, I'm just going to go. I'll find a guy. What was the plan? Okay.

So I went to Hong Kong, actually, originally. Like, I looked up trade shows. There was this big consumer electronics trade show. So I was like, I'm just going to go to this trade show. And then I'll figure it out. And I hadn't booked anything else. So, like, I went to this trade show. there were thousands of boots.

And so, like, I just went around having no idea about anything. Just, like, went to these boots, found ones that made headphones. Their English was very poor. I have my Chinese as negligible. So it was a lot of, like, they pull out a calculator, and I'm like, this is what I want. And then, like, I had some sketch drawing that I had made of what I was looking for. And then they are, like, entering a number into a calculator. They're like, that's, you know, $5.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. That's like 83 cents. And then I actually went and visited their factories in like Southern China, Guantio and Chen Zhen. And it was awesome. Like it was a really cool way for me to get into business. How much time passed between your headphone breaking and you're like, oh, I should sell headphones and I'm in China?

I think it was like a couple months. So you have a job, you decide to go, you're like, I'm just going to kind of fund this off my savings. Did you place the initial? Was a big initial order? How did you do it? The initial order, it was cheap. It was 10,000 headphones. And I think, yeah, I mean, for me, at the time, it was a lot of money.

Like, it was my first job. But I think it was like a total outlay of $20,000. Gotcha. And so you make these headphones, which, by the way, seems like an insane oversight by Apple to not sell the headphones. It made sense. Just like you're saying they were iconic at the time. And you have to market these. How are you going to sell like a thousand or 10,000 pairs of headphones?

So there was like now there's a very, a playbook, quantitative marketing, all this stuff. At that time on the internet, there wasn't a playbook to follow. So I started out like going after blogs. There were a lot of blogs when I was like, I'll give you a giveaway for your. for your readers. That was one technique. And then one that was pretty awesome is Facebook had just come out. And at this time, Facebook was limited to college campuses.

And the way that they monetized Facebook at that time was you could set up a flyer. So, like, I went to Carnegie Mellon. I could pay $10 a day to have the sidebar at Carnegie Mellon. And it was basically for like a flyer. Like if I was throwing a party, I could advertise on Facebook. And so what I did was I went back to my high school. school friends who went to the biggest colleges. So like University of Michigan, Ohio State, like those, Penn State, those kind of colleges where they had like 30 or 40,000 students.

And I said, give me your Facebook ID. And they gave me their Facebook login. I paid them something. And I was able to market to those audiences for still $10 a day. Like, you want the biggest audience you can for that $10 a day. And so we did in Michigan, we did like the colors of Michigan, like blue and yellow, stuff like that. And it was a cool. It was a cool little business. Dude, that's amazing that Facebook used to let you do that. Just to, like, market to your whole campus for $10 a day is insane. How much you'd end up making?

Yeah, so how much we're ready to make? I want to say net was probably, like, $80,000. Do you plan anything? So, like, one of the parts of this episode is that, like, you're pretty spontaneous. And, but, but you have, you know, a $300 million fund. You have $100 million your company. who knows what that's worth, but at least probably a $100 million. So like pretty like epic success.

But you also do the really random things spur of the moment type of decision making. Yeah, I just like, I think I've always chosen like the more adventurous path, I would say. And then I think something I got for my grandfather, my mom's dad was like, he was just always bored and always coming up with new ideas. He would at the time was different. and he would like read about something in the newspaper and be like, I should start something. So like in India, when TVs were coming out, like growing up, like there's only like one TV station

and then expanded from there. And he was like, oh, TVs are going to be big. And he started a TV manufacturing company knowing nothing about anything. Like he just was like, I'll just learn how to make TVs. And then he set up a manufacturing company. It was hard to get a phone in India. So he created this like pay phone company

that allowed people to just use pay phone. phones. And like, he would just read about something in the newspaper. And like, me as a kid, he would actually like mail me like clips in the newspaper. And he'd be like, should we start this company together? I'm like 15 years old. And he's like giving me an idea. And he had some good ones. One of the ones I remember, like I just to piss up recently. He passed away many years ago. But he had this idea for like, he looked up ancestry.com. Great business. And he was like, in India, People love their ancestry. Why don't we start one for India?

And that was an idea he had for me. Good idea. Wow. Did anybody do that, by the way? Is there now an ancestry? I actually don't know. Is that still up for grabs? Still probably a good idea for my grandfather who now passed away many years ago.

Yeah, that's wild. Sam, on the first episode he did, he talked about the domain business. It's kind of a longer story, so we probably won't do it again. But the short version of it is you were selling, you were not selling. You were the auctioneer for people who wanted to buy. new domain, like, top level domains. So like dot photo, dot app, dot blog, whatever. And so

Amazon and Google and rich guys would come and they would try to bid and you guys were the auction to do that and you'd take 4% of the auction. You sold like, I don't know, $500 million worth of top level domains. But one of the things he talks about is like, yeah, so my co-founder was this expert in auction theory and I met him on a train in India. He had this. He just had these little things he threw out. Like, yeah, I just happened to be on a train in India

met this guy ended up starting a company with him. Was he an American in India or an Indian? He's German. That's ridiculous. What year was that? I met him in 2006. When Darmesh came on the podcast,

Darmesh, the founder of HubSpot, we talked about the Steve Jobs speech that he gave at Stanford. That's pretty famous. A lot of people know that now. He talks about, like, you can't connect the dots. You know, looking forward,

you can only connect the dots of their life looking backwards. And the famous example as he talks about, like, how he used to love studying calligraphy and fonts and he got really into that. He took courses on it. And then only later when he started Apple computers,

he made sure that the first set of Apple computers had these beautiful fonts and no other computer company cared about that. But he did. He connected those two dots, his passion for X and his passion for Y. And they both came together. And Darmesh pointed out, he's like, you know, I think a lot of people look at that. And they just sort of shrug like, well, I guess I just can't connect the dots. Like, you know, so don't even try.

He's like, no, what that means is your job is to be a dot collector. and you yeah the dots will connect later but like you got to be a dot collector and so when I say that like I guess like what are some examples for you of dot collecting in your life where at the time you didn't really fully realize it but you chose more adventurous path or you followed your curiosity and then good things later ended up happening I think there's a lot of that and I love that idea of being a dot collector I think there's a lot of like just saying yes to stuff so one I'll just say I'll say yes to a lot of crazy ideas that people throw out me. Investing, of course, you have to be discerning when I'm investing other people's capital, and so for the fund, I think we're very discerning, but for ideas for myself or like people invite me to speak at a conference in some random country. I've been to like Latvias, everywhere, like all these countries that people don't go to just because somebody invited me. And I think that I've learned a lot by doing those things. One of the crazier things I did is I lived in India on a dollar.

day. It's like a Mr. Beast video. Yeah. It's funny. And I did it for a year. So like I moved to India. I was 24 years old. And I lived for one year on around a dollar a day. What is that you in India? Is that like a like a McDonald's value meal? Like I don't know the like the or yeah, maybe like a McDonald's value meal per day. And so I think like what I learned from that.

I think it was like supremely influential in my life. And I learned one, like, I don't need a lot of money to be happy. Like, I was so happy in that time. And like, I went from, I was a management consultant in the United States, like, making a six-figure salary. And I moved to India on a dollar a day. And I had a convertible here. In India, I had, like, a bicycle. And even the bicycle was, like, a big deal for me to buy.

And I just had so much fun. And there's this concept in India called Jagad, which is a Hindi word. It means like there's no perfect word for it, but kind of means like creative problem solving. And I think like I really learned a lot of creative problem solving during that year. Like just reusing things. I learned like the importance of community resourcefulness. Wait, so you spent $365 in one year. That was it.

Yeah. Does that include rent? And what type of program is this? The program no longer exists. It was called IndyCore, and it was like a volunteer program. And part of it was like they want, I wanted, so I was working for Kiva, a nonprofit microfinance institution. And I wanted to live like my borrowers.

And so the people that we were lending money to were living on a dollar a day. So I was like, I'm going to do it too. So did you just have a midlife crisis when you were 25? Like, why did you do this in the first place? What was the why? Yeah. The Y is kind of silly in hindsight, but actually I watched a movie, a Hindi movie called Rang de Basanti, where they're like, India isn't just going to change. You have to change it. And I was thinking, like, I grew up in America, but I have a lot of affinnius to India. I want to change India. So I had this, like, lofty ambition. And then I don't think I did anything for India. Like, I did a lot for myself. But I don't think I accomplished anything for India. That's amazing. Dude, I was trying to convince Sean.

like three weeks ago, I think we're, it was like live, like don't spend any money for a week or something like way less significant than what you did. And I got like a hard no, a hard no. I didn't watch that movie, dude. I wasn't inspired. In hindsight it was stupid. Like I got, I got super sick. I got typhoid and I. Well, besides that. Yeah, besides that. No, overall, it was an amazing experience. And actually, like, I have so many, so many of my close friends today or from that time. There's another good dot collector story, I think, for you. You correct me if I'm wrong.

But I think you were one of the first investors in Flexport. Is that right? Yeah. And but you didn't just like, it wasn't just like a traditional VC move where somebody cold pitches you and then you write this check because you're like, yeah, I totally see the future of freight forwarding. No, it wasn't that. There was some, you did something.

You just said yes to something before that. I don't know the full story, but I know that it wasn't just a, a, cold pitch that walked into your office. And by the way, just so we have context, what's what's Flexport value-ish now? And what was it when you invested? Like, how big of a deal is this? Yeah. So I actually don't know the most recent, but it's in the several billions of dollars.

And when I invested, it was a $10 million valuation. Something like $10 million to $3 billion. Let's call it. Yeah. And I sold some of my shares. And the ones that I sold. it was more than 100x return. Wow. Okay. All right. Go ahead. Sorry.

And, okay, so Flexport, it's a digital freight forwarding company is one way to think about it. If you have a bunch of stuff in China, I need to get it here. There's a bunch of steps required in between, and they'll help you do those steps. Like when you wanted your iPhone, your iPod mini, headphones to get here, they got to get onto a container, get onto a boat, get from the boat to the port, port to the truck, truck to your warehouse. How does all that happen? Customs, all those other stuff. Exactly. Exactly. And so it just made sense to me that this needed to be digital. It's a real pain in the ass if you don't use flex port or something like it. And so I met Ryan at a party and we bonded over some really funny things, which were he, I think he's a really hacky guy. Like, he just figured stuff out. He started the company by himself, a non-technical, like outsourced team originally. And then eventually he built up a lot of stuff internally. But, but. But we were buying Uber credits in our name. I did that.

You did that too? Was it, what's your guide in India? No, no, no. We were like, I was advertising Google AdWords for my referral code. And at times, at that time- I would buy free rides from this guy in India. Oh, who is probably doing what we're doing. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I would buy like $1,000 of Uber credit for like $100 or something. like that. Okay, so we were effectively doing the same thing, like just advertising for our name. And we kind of bought it over that and became friends. And then what he, he had done some previous businesses in the import export space. And so I was like, dude, whatever you would, whatever you start, I'm going to be investing in it. And, and it obviously turned out great. That's amazing. What, isn't it crazy, by the way, how like, so, you know, I don't know what Ryan's worth, but like, you know, if you have a multi-billion dollar company, you're in the vicinity of hundreds of millions

or even billions of dollars of net worth. So you're like, it's like, you're a big shot. And just eight years prior, you're selling Uber credit. Like, like, and that's a pretty common story, I think. For sure. For sure, Silicon Valley. It's like so many people that you meet. I guess like I've lived in San Francisco for 12 years now.

And this is like a common story. There's a bunch of people I met early on who were just like hustling and then eventually started something that became big. That's so funny. Sean. And I think that's actually, like, you talked about the surface area, like, all the dot collecting. I think part of it is being in San Francisco. Like, I moved here in 2012, and there were just a lot of interesting things happening.

Like, if you were out meeting people, you met people doing interesting things. The way you're saying you live is different than what you probably advise the companies who you invest in to live. Just like saying yes to a variety of things, which, like, if I wanted to, like, paint this in a bad way, I'd be like, well, you're ADD and you can't focus. and you're missing out on like year 8, 9, 10, and year 20 where a lot of the compounding growth comes from. How do you balance those two things of being focused, which is like what every VC will ever tell a founder versus saying yes to speaking in Lapia

or going to China to start a new household company? It's such a good question. And I think the way I think about it is I'm probably more of year zero to one guy. than I am, you're like one to 100. And so like I've started a lot of things and then mostly found other people to actually run them over time. And like some of the things I started got to exit and, and, and were successful. But if you want to have like huge success, multi-billion dollar companies, which is like what we're hopefully investing in, you need to be

really focused. And so I would not invest in most of the companies that I would start. Like if I, if I were running a VC fund, these companies aren't B. fund VC type opportunities. What's the story of thistle? Because I remember we went out to dinner once many years ago and you're like, you started this like, you helped start. I don't know what your role was, but you helped start some local food delivery business.

And at the time, there was just a bunch of them going out of business. Sprigg was going out of business. And it was like, it looked like a blood bath. And you were like, no, we're kind of approaching it like not the venture funded way. I started ordering from it. I started eating it all the time. I love this. And Sam just said it's now 100 million a year business.

What is, can you tell, what is the origin of this business? Yeah. So the origin is myself and my roommate and simple at the time, we were, we felt like we were just like making unhealthy choices and like eating the fastest thing possible to get back to work or whatever. And the idea was like, what if there was healthy food in your fridge already? You would just, that would be the most healthy thing you could eat and most convenient thing you could eat. And at the time, as you said, there were these companies, Sprigg, Munchery, Spoon,

Rocket were the most popular ones in the Bay Area, where you could order, and for like 10 or 15 bucks in 20 minutes, or even 10 minutes, food would show up at your door. And we were like, should we invest in these companies? Should we start one of these companies? I ended up driving for Sprig. I was like, let me sign up to be a driver. There he goes again. That is so funny. Yeah, and for those two people who don't know, Sprig is talking about all of our friend Gagin, and it was one of the innovators before DoorDath, or I think before DoorDash. And you're driving there as like due diligence?

Yeah, I like signed up to be a driver and to like, yeah, diligence. And I was like, okay, so there are a bunch of problems with this model. I don't know if this is going to be a massive business. And the problems are, one, they're wasting a ton of food. Like you cannot predict how much food you need on any given day. And they were like, yeah, we have this AI model. Like we're going to predict if there's a giant. It's game. It's this. It's actually like kind of impossible to predict. So wasting like a third of their food.

Drivers all are driving at the same time. It's like lunchtime or dinner time. That's when it's all happening. And then routes aren't optimized. So like you're kind of driving one place. Then you go and you have to go somewhere else across the city. So we were like, can we solve this? And so we set out to solve it. And the idea was a subscription service. And the idea was you have to order by, buy, Friday, your meal for the week, and there are people, like, it doesn't work for me. Like, I'm, I might be, I don't know what I'm doing tonight for dinner, but like somebody might invite me to something that I'll go. But a lot of people are more structured in life, and the idea was, for those people, we can give them a meal plan. And it's kind of like a private chef might be. And do it in an affordable price point. And it's been great. Like, the business is awesome. Thisole.com. If you're on the East Coast or West Coast, you can check it out.

Is it bootstrapped, or do you guys respond? We did ultimately raise funding, and we've raised a few rounds of funding, but not that much money over time. But it's going to be, it's a good outcome for you personally. Yeah, it should be. You know, look, I think food businesses are tough, low, multiple businesses. And so I don't know what it's going to be. I haven't like, you know, I haven't like assigned any value to that equity, but hopefully

it's going to turn to something awesome. Is it still just in San Francisco? I remember at one point you had said it was like doing $20 million a year in just San Francisco. Is it, did it branch out to like 100 other? cities now or what? So yeah, so it's all along the West Coast and the Northeast as well. Yeah, I see it out where I live. I live out right outside of New York and I see, do I see billboards? You might see billboards. You see a lot of bags. One kind of like fun thing is a lot of celebrities use them. And you'll see like videos of celebrities on the internet like carrying the thistle bag, which is kind of

cool, like this mega famous person is carrying something that I helped create? You know, you sent us a list of like four or five, six ideas. And interestingly, Sean, a few of them are in your wheelhouse involving schools. A few of them are in a thing or two that I know about. And I think it'd be interesting, since you see so many ideas with the fund and you've been well connected in Silicon Valley for, I don't know, 20 years now, if you could list out some of the interesting opportunities that you're kind of seeing. I have some of the, that are like maybe venture scale ideas. And then most of my ideas are not venture scale.

But I can talk about a few of them. One is I just got back from Florida. My parents moved to Florida. They moved to a Indian retirement community. And it's called Shantina Gaitan. And it's not that well executed. But the idea is Indians, they like, this guy created a huge plot where he put up like 100 homes.

And then there's a community center where they have Indian food. They have like movie nights, stuff like that. It's really fun for Indian people, for Indian retirees. Do you have to be Indian to go? Or is it just like... Everyone who lives there is Indian, yeah. But like, can I go and join? Oh, yeah, you can go check it out anytime, yeah.

Eat the food. And so the idea, it's a good idea, but it's not that well executed. And I've just been thinking, like, there are a lot of retirement communities out there, and most of them are aligned to a single affinity, which is golf. And so, like, most retirement communities are built around golf. which is great for people who love golf, but there's so many other affinities out there that should have their own retirement community.

And, you know, people are living longer than they did. So, like, people are still retiring at 65, but they have, like, not only are they living longer, they're living longer, healthier lives. So, like, my parents are still, like, relatively healthy. I expect them to live another 20, 30 years, and you can build these communities where people, like, do whatever their affinity is.

And so I think there's an opportunity here in building and like building a roadmap for an affinity and then like stamping it for other affinities over time. Sean, don't you know someone in the in this? Yeah, yeah. So I've looked at this because I found it fascinating for the same reasons that she was saying. Well, first they're good businesses, right?

Because you're basically taking raw land. And then you're like, you just do the math. You're like, okay, cool, we're going to sell, let's call it 50 plots or 75 plots or 100 plots. And the numbers get pretty. big, pretty fast when you're buying these at a raw state and you're able to sell them. But they also, one of the things that some of them are doing is they blend together the like different health spans. So, for example, you can start there when you're just retired.

But then you need some assistance. And then there's like, assisted area. And then there's like, you need a lot of assistance. And then you're at the kind of like the full, full service model. But you don't have to move, you don't have to like move very far. Right. You're just like. And your community is still there.

Yeah. You're still in the same. community, you don't have to like, you know, do this like big cross-country move. It's not the scary thing. You just sort of, as your body, you know, goes down that gradient, you just sort of move down a different level of service in the community. And so that's super profitable when you do that. And the LTV of the customers, I mean, imagine, right, you're 20, 30 years in one of these communities. It's really high. And I know it because my parents kind of had the same reaction that Shields parents had, which is, yeah, I mean, that'd be great. I don't play golf. But if there was a place that had the food,

we like, with people that we get along with that speak the language that we have, have the same cultural values. And I was like, well, that's going to exist for every race, but also not just race. Like, what are other things that people bond over or is like the central pillar of their life? And how do you build communities around that? That seems very lucrative to me. Totally. For the one my parents did, there was a waiting list. So my parents prepaid. They put 100% of the money down and didn't get the home for five years. And on these things that you get, when I think of an old home, I think of like a hospital looking center where, but these are like a plot of land where you buy a house. Yeah, they bought a townhouse.

Got it. And you pay like a monthly fee. Yeah, you pay monthly fee. You get food, which is, you know, for Indian people especially, I think a really big deal. And then they have like, they have a bunch of community events. Like they play like cards. They have community center. They play.

They have movies, Indian movies going on. They have concerts. Actually, I talked about our weddings. My parents, one of the events that they had was a showcase of all of our wedding videos. And then like I called in, like we called in and did cute. That's hilarious. Yeah, because I feel like, you know, this is like the country club model, but it's just for what else is there besides a bougie country club? Like what are the other ways that people could get together in a clubhouse and have, you know, that that would add a lot to their lives because it's pretty lonely.

If you're older, you're living somewhere, you don't know other people, and the effort it would take to go make new friends or drive to places just for certain events versus having it almost like resort style for you. It just makes a lot of sense. And we have a friend who came on the pod, Craig Fuller, who did this with airline or flying enthusiasts. So basically he bought a plot of land. He developed homes on it. He pre-sold a bunch of them. And basically the center of the property is instead of a golf course, it's an airplane hanger. So if you own like a Cessna or something like that, you could keep it there and you could live there.

So, you know, it's like, I want to go fly this morning. There's like a runway in the middle of the neighborhood, basically. That's so cool. Yeah, so I think you can do this for a bunch of different affinities. Like I've talked to my Chinese friends and like their parents pay a lot of mahjong. And like there's stuff like that that I think you could just build this around every affinity over time. So I think there's something there. And I like these businesses that are high dollar value, meaning you're not going to become a billionaire,

but you can make tens of millions of dollars doing this. Definitely. And very high likelihood of success. Like you don't need, like, she'll told you the idea. You don't need a stroke of genius now. And, like, 50 people could go do this, and they would all, you know,

it's just a matter of execution at this point. Like, if you just do the basic things. Like, with all these retire, like the, what do they call it, the silver tsunami? Like, is there a shortage of space? I think so. I think, like, the reason my parents pre-bought it was,

They, like, the other Indian communities, they couldn't get in. Like, the prices had increased so much or they're just, there weren't availability. So, like, they pre-bought into a new one. So I think there has to be a doctor. It's actually a status symbol. You can't get into the community or you're just barred if your kid's not a doctor. Dude, how much is a nursing home, by the way? Should I be budgeting? Like, I was a like, I was, like. Same starts worrying about it. I'm worried about it for my parents. I was, dude, listen to this. So are you going to put your parents in a nursing home? I don't know. Shame on you. Indians can never do... Sometimes I think they like that, don't they? Like, they want... I don't know.

I thought it was enjoyable. I don't fucking know. But I was being with a financial advisor like three years ago and it was like 20 years in the future. I was like, what's that $250,000 a year spend? And he was like, oh, you're going to have kids, right? I was like, yeah, but I'm not going to have triplets. He was like, well, you're going to have one kid

and I assume that they're going to go to like a school that's in like the 85 percentile of cost. And so in 20 years, if you have kids in two years, it's going to be $250,000 a year. And I was like, dude, don't make up this bullshit. He goes, I didn't make it up. I just took the trailing like 20 years of growth for like Harvard or whatever 90 percentile cost school is. And I just applied that for the next 20 years.

And that's just how I came up with it. And I was like baffled that it's going to be, I think it was maybe 150,000 a years. It was six figures. And now that I'm realizing with old people homes or nursing homes, I'm pretty sure that some of them are $10,000 and $20,000 a month today. Yeah, that's right. That's how much it costs? Which is insane, I guess.

So, like, what am I going to have to pay if my parents eventually want to do this? You know, are we talking, like, half a million dollars a year? It's not that high. But, you know, you can, like, there's a range. So you can do a $3,000 a month bed. You could do $8,000 a month bed. You could do $15,000, $20,000, depending if you want to go basically the risk Carlton. It's 20,000 to fanciest? I don't know. There's no upper end to anything in life, right? You can spend an infinite amount of money if you decide to. But I would say like you, like nice places can be at $10,000, $15,000 a month. But also some of these are covered by insurance. Some of these are not. Some of this out of pocket, right? There's a whole bunch of different factors. I know that in also different cultures. Like I said, shame on you. Just kind of joking. But in Indian culture, it kind of is like that. Like there's an expectation culturally that either the parents move in with you or they're going to have their

own house and you're going to have in-home care for them. So there's all these different ways that you can do care for elders. It could be that they're in a, you know, a nursing home or a senior facility or could be that you're paying for somebody to come to their house every day and help them manage day-to-day life at their house, which is obviously going to be a different cost. You know, my grandparents, for example, they have their own house and they have basically round the clock somebody like like a kind of a nurse that basically lives in their house that just helps them with everyday things to just function in their own home because that's what was comfortable for them. That's cool. I think for all those, any of those different types of things, like being in

the same place with the community makes sense because like your grandparents may not need that one person full time. They might, but like other people might want a fractional one. And it's so much easier if that person like lives in the community or comes to the community and can serve many people at once. And a bunch of people have tried this for like young, 20-somethings. after college. It's like an after college community, blah, blah, blah, but this is way better because people are going to be in these for like 30 plus years. Exactly. And they have money actually versus that 20-something. Yeah, they might spend one or two years after college doing this in a big city, but then they're going to

graduate out of it. So you're going to have this crazy churn all the time. I like your model better. All right. What's another opportunity? What's another idea you got? Go to this Yelp one. Okay. So the idea is Yelp for professional services. So, and then I I originally had this idea, I think, before Sam put out Sam's list. But the idea is, why is it so hard to know, like, which insurance brokers are good, which lawyers, which financial planners, which accountants? Like, how do I know who's good and is going to serve my needs? And, like, there should be a site for that, and it's easily monetizable.

So I can give you guys an update. So, Sean, 10 or 8 months ago, I created this thing called Samslist, samslist.com. and it was like Yelp for accountants. And I just did it because I needed an accountant. And I found an accountant, by the way, on the website. So it worked. It hasn't like taken off. This year it did $99,000 in revenue and a little bit of profit.

And we have someone who's working on it. But what we're changing over is making it, we're adding like a financial advisor category. But I completely agree with you of like having these review sites for professionals services is necessary. Everyone is begging us, by the way. If anyone wants to go do us, go for it. Everyone's begging us for Sam's List, but for agencies. I don't know anything about agencies, so I don't know anything about that space. But that is one thing that people have been begging us for is to have an agency category. But I think that's just because I have a lot

agency owners who follow me on Twitter. No, but I think if you look on Twitter, like people are constantly posting like, hey, I need help with this. Can anyone recommend an agency? I feel like we have a website designer that I really like. And I feel like once every couple weeks, I'm recommending him to somebody. And like, there should be a place where you could just search and

find, like, I'm looking for an agency, I'm willing to spend X to Y, and you know, it should be a site that does everything. And maybe Sam's listen to set. It's fucking hard to pull these off, by the way. It's hard. None of these things are easy.

Here's why they're hard. Like, what we found was like, we had a lot of like mom and pop accountants on the website. And like you're basically imagine like so what Sean did with Milk Road and what I did what I did with the hustle was we'd have advertisers but the ideal situation is you have advertisers who are spending tens

or hundreds of thousands or once the hustle got to a certain size sometimes they're spending millions of dollars a year. But when you're working with a mom of pop accountant, I'm basically selling packages for like $500 and you're like the mob like knocking on the door like totally money. You don't know what I mean?

And it's like like you know like the client hasn't paid yet so I don't have the money yet, but I promise I'll get it to you next week. It becomes a little bit of a game like that. And so if you're going to do it, the ideal situation is that you're doing it. Accountants are basically, a lot of them are like mom and pop organizations. It's a pretty bad group to sell to. But whatever organization or industry you want to do this for, it has to be where they're already spending a lot of money and it's bigger companies who can write bigger checks. Otherwise, you're just going to end up like Yelp. Have you guys ever known? The joke in San Francisco when we lived there was Yelp is where you go to learn how to do sales because it's such a hard

sales job. And they would hire anyone with a pulse and they would be like, all right, here's $40 grand a year. And then you get commission. But if you hit your on target earnings, you're going to make $200 grand a year. You'd be so rich. And they find out that they're having to go like get an ice cream shop to give them like $900. And wasn't it more like threats than sales even? It was like, oh, this review's really hurting you. Wouldn't you, well, don't you just wish that would go away? Yeah. I might be able to make that go away. I never found any evidence of that actually happening, though. Like, people have been like, provide me evidence.

And I don't think, I don't think there's actual evidence of that happening. There is with the Better Business Bureau, by the way, but not with Yelp, from what I can tell. Where did that come from? I came from business owners complaining about it. Who else would put that story out there? Well, so people have said, like, okay, if there's any proof of Yelp saying, pay me money and you'll get a better review or that review will get Not off.

Send it to me and then nobody has ever sent it. Fair enough, fair enough. All right. What's this pearly whites one?

You got my attention? Okay, so this is my wife's idea. There's something called the dry bar where you can just go, get a blow dry of your hair. It's kind of like an in-and-out thing, 20 minutes and you get your blow-dry. My wife feels like

she would like to get her teeth cleaned more than the twice a year that you're able to with a dentist on insurance. And so the idea is you go to a place and all they do is clean your teeth. They don't do any, they don't do X-rays. They don't do anything else. You're in and out 20 minutes, 100 bucks, 120 bucks, something like that.

And she would do that like every couple months. And that's the idea. So she likes getting her teeth cleaned. She likes getting teeth cleaned with, I think is weird. Like I don't. But she does. And I could see people doing it like, oh, I'm going to an event. Like, I'm going to get my hair done. I'm going to get my teeth cleaned.

Well, I like the unbundling of, like, the dental checkup, right? It's like, what's the one part that people kind of would want the most or need the most often? That if you separate it out of your normal dental kind of cycles, there might be just like a market for people who just want this. I kind of buy that, but I thought it would be teeth whitening, not cleaning. That's part of it also. And actually, like, you probably make more money in the whitening side. But what you could do is actually, like, you standardize and, like, have a really nice, looking space and dentists would franchise this and they'd be like, oh, I'm a dentist.

I can open one of these. You need to have dental hygienists. And in some states, you need to have a dentist there. But it doesn't have to be, like, they don't have to be doing the work. They should have to be there. Right. Dude, I went to my dentist and he had this sign. But like, it stood out because everything in the dentist office looked like a dentist

office. It just looked like mom and poppy. And then there was one sign that looked really nice. And this one sign was basically advertising, kind of what you're describing. It was like a 20-minute teeth whitening for like $85 or whatever it was, some dollar amount. And I was like, what is this? Is this yours? And he's like, oh, actually, yeah, there's like this company that made this service that then we can then sell to our customers.

And they provide like the marketing and the name of this. And they're trying to popularize this. But we just get incremental revenue because we're able to upsell this essentially. And I was like, oh, that's smart. It's basically like the Hunt Brothers pizza model. What they did for gas stations. They're like, hey, here's a pizza shop inside your gas station. Somebody's doing this for dental offices where they're putting in this like teeth whitening upsell program.

And I was like, it's kind of work. I get it. It works because otherwise, you know, the dentist offers like, you know, 1,500 services. If you really wanted to, you could go and ask them about them. What's it called? I don't remember the name of this one. But I don't think. it was, I don't know how popular this is, but I remember just thinking, oh, this makes sense.

I could see why it's a win for the dentist. It's a win for this company. And I can see why consumers would be, when you're just sitting there trapped in the chair, literally like strapped into the chair. It's the first thing you see in front of you. You stare at that thing for 15 minutes and you're looking at this before and after photo and you're like, yeah, cool, add that on. I'll take that. I'll take the whites. Speaking of Hunt Brothers, another idea, and this is one of one of my best friends is doing this, and I invested, but it's called Pizza Rita Luna. And the idea is When people go to hotels, they most often order pizza, like mid-range hotels, people order pizza. Constantly dominos coming in. So the idea was, what if we gave you the ability to sell

a high-quality pizza? And originally it was like, we'll give you the oven and the pizza that's like hand-tossed, made in Italy, actually, shipped over from Italy, tastes amazing. And And so a lot of hotels use Pizzerated Elena. And then we have the table tents and all that other stuff. Dude, this is a great idea. It's just Hunt Brothers, but for hotels and Italian. Is it working? It's working, yeah.

It's been pretty successful. It's still fairly early, but it's doing really well. And what's the hard part about this? Because, like, you know, the Hunt Brothers thing, I think they started out doing wholesale ingredients. So they already had like a ton of infrastructure in place where they were already selling, you know, doze and all that stuff to, you know, pizza shops all around the place. And that's why they were able to, like, just take the next logical step and create their own

brand and then provide those same ingredients to the, to the gas station owners. Is this really hard to spin up? Or was this actually, like, you know, pretty doable? I mean, it's complicated. Like, my friend is on a plane to Italy all the time. Like, he wanted to make sure it was, like, super high quality, something the hotels felt really proud to offer. Wait, but why? I don't think I could tell. hell if this pizza's from Italy. That's, like, like, would my taste buds know the difference between Kentucky and an Italian? Once he says it, you're like, yeah, this is not cheap pizza.

It's not cheap pizza. Like, Italy, like, is that, you know how, like, you know how, like, Florida has, like, Hollywood Florida? Like, it's a small town. Yeah. Can we call it, like, you know, is there like an Italy, Kentucky? Italy, Wisconsin. Yeah.

No, it turns out, like, the ingredients, like, it just does taste better. Like, they know how to do it there. It's actually, so what you're probably thinking is, like, you're probably thinking is, like, is an expensive to bring it over here. It's actually not. It's kind of worth it. And they have the experience and know how. It's actually made like near Naples,

which is where pizza comes from. Dude, my dad, I remember when we were a kid, he saw this pizza place and the sign just had hand-tossed pizza and there was like a guy in the window tossing. And my dad wouldn't shut up about the hand-toss pizza for like, you know, a year. And these things just work. I don't know why. There's something to it.

If it says world's greatest cup of coffee, I buy it every single time. Oh, totally. That shit always works on me. Do you guys know the gray goose story? Yeah, the taller bottles. The taller bottles, but also, so the guy who started Gray Goose started it, by the way, when he was in his like 70s. He was like, he was like 70 years old and decided to start a startup. Was he successful?

So he, before that, he had created Yeager Meister. Not created, but he had brought Yeager Meister to the U.S. and made a popular. So like the Yeagermeister story was he's out one night. He was like part of the family alcohol business. his wife's, his wife's parents' business. And then they get in a fight, they kick him out. And he's like, all right, fuck this. I got to do something.

And he's out one night. He sees people, he sees a German, like, group of friends sipping this, like, weird cough syrup looking thing. And it was Yeagermeister. And it was like an after dinner type of thing. And he's like, what is that? He inquires about it. He figures it out.

And he decides, I'm going to become the U.S. importer of this thing called Yeagermeister. But to make it popular, what he did was he, he created the Yeager bomb and got like Yeagerets, the girls who would go around bars pouring the stuff down college kids' throats. And he made it the party drink. So Yeager becomes this like big drink. He's successful. Now he's in his 70s and he's like, all right,

I'm going to start a new one. I want to start a vodka company. And he basically says, I'm going to do two things differently. First he goes, we need to source the vodka. And they go, great. We're on our next flight out to Moscow. And he goes, no, no, no, we're not doing Russian vodka. They go, what do you mean?

We're all like, that's where vodka comes from. He goes, go to France and find me vodka. They go, there's no vodka in France. He goes, go to France and find me vodka because if I told you this is French vodka, it just makes that dirty Russian vodka look like crap. And so they're like, but what if it's not better? He goes, I said it's French vodka. That means it's better.

And so he sends one group there. And he tells the other group, he goes, go to the bar right now and buy the most expensive vodka that there is. Bring all the bottles here. And they bring all the bottles. And he's basically like, lines them all up. and he goes, cool. Whatever the, what's the most expensive vodka?

It was like absolute at the time. He's like, cool, we're going to be 30% more expensive than whatever the most expensive one is. And that's their bottle. Okay, it's this fat bottle. We're going to be a tall bottle. And then he commissioned somebody to make it and they did the frosted glass. And he's like, that's it. That looks expensive as hell.

And he created Grey Goose off of this very simple concept. It was like either Italian or French vodka put in this expensive, tall, frosted glass bottle. It's so tall. It wouldn't even fit on the shelves. So you had to put it on the top shelf because if you put it on the middle shelf, it wouldn't fit. It was too tall. So it had to become top shelf like vodka by default because it was so tall. Isn't that amazing? That's hilarious. That's so funny. It's interesting because it's basically like a commodity. It's all pretty much the same. It's hard for people to distinguish. I have a friend who started a vodka brand

and the bottle cost more than the vodka. And it was like a premium brand. Dude, it seems like a horrible business to be in. It seems like really challenging. Alcohol in particular is tough

because the regulatory environment. It's different state by state, what you can sell and you have to get licensed and all this stuff. It is challenging. Oh, you want to do another one? Yeah, what else you're excited about, Shield, that you think somebody could go do?

I think something I want in my life is like a school for AI tools. So like maybe you could franchise it. But for me, like right now, I would pay a few hundred bucks to go to a class like half a day just to become a better photographer, iPhone photographer, and like show me how to edit things and like make funny things on the internet. Memes or whatever. Same thing for video. And I think the same is true for many other products that you can use. use like AI or software for. So it's like a software school, um, in person. Come on, but just for you like just other two other tools that are useful in your life.

Exactly. Yeah. It's for adults or for kids. It could be for adults. I think start for start with adults and then also kids. Sean, he was telling me before this, he was like, you know, I'm trying to hire this person to teach me how to do like video editing and use AI. And I was like two things. One, Sean actually hired an AI like tutor, which is actually pretty amazing. And, you know, And then also you went on this big rant a month ago. It's probably the greatest, in terms of like Eiki Guy of like what the world wants, what Sean's good at,

what he's passionate about and like what the world's willing to pay for, like him creating like, you know, another full sale university. It's quite aligned. Oh, yeah. I had this idea. Well, first I did an AI tutor,

mostly just because I've realized that coaches are just an absolute life hack. Once you get some money, it's like a lug. that doesn't actually cost that much, but adds a lot of value to your life. And so now anytime I want to do something, my first stop is who's a coach I can hire that will speed up my learning curve, be a forcing function because they're going to show up and it's going to like force me to actually stick to this hobby. And yeah, get better faster. How do you find him? With this, I just tweeted it out. And I was like, hey, who could? I'm willing to pay $500 an hour for somebody who's

going to, you learn all the new stuff that's going on in AI, and then I want to sit with you for 90 minutes every Wednesday, and I want you to tell me what's going on, but also, like, like, teach, like, I'm hands on keyboard, struggling, trying to do the thing, because that way I'll, like, actually learn how to do it. And it's been kind of amazing, to be honest. You're still doing it? We're still doing it. It kind of shifted a little bit. Like, other friends wanted to join. So I invited a couple other friends, and so it's kind of a group thing now. and yeah, it's pretty amazing. So that's been great on the AI side.

But just in general, I'm a big, like, it's iconic now how my first answer to everything is to get a coach. But whatever, I'm going to keep doing it until it doesn't work. And it's worked at everything. Dude, we hired an organizational coach to come and teach us how to, like, organize a closet. Like, I'm so on board with it. Oh, my God. We pay so much to our organization. We don't have a coach. We just have an organizer who comes in. And she is doing so well.

Last year she was here, which was like two weeks ago, because she's here all the time organizing something. She was like, oh, my client from San Francisco is flying me. I'm going to go organize their new place in Switzerland. So she's like, come this thing going. We're like, it's an incredible business. I mean, it's not like a huge business, but she's got people under her and stuff now. Is it just like magic? Like, is your house just like incredible now? I think it's fine. My wife loves it. Wow. I have a friend that just bought a home. They moved in. It's huge house, like 8,000 square feet. They paid this service $25,000 to be there before, like to map out where everything, like it was like, you know, like starting from scratch to like be there to map it all out, to buy the storage supplies and then to put the labels and to come up with the strategy. It was 25 grand. That's a lot. It's a lot. I think we paid, I don't remember, I don't know how much we paid total. because I don't see it, because if I saw it, it would drive me crazy. But I do remember the kitchen was a couple thousand dollars.

Do you have the Indian frugality gene? Oh, big time. Okay, you're not a good spender. I'm not a good spender. And it's like my lifestyle hasn't changed. That my net worth has increased quite dramatically over the past decade. And my lifestyle hasn't changed. I'm always looking for a deal.

Like anything I buy, I'm going to slick deals first. I've, like, got the credit card points the thing down, like, all this stuff that shouldn't, I shouldn't be doing is, like, stupid optimization. But for me, it's kind of a game and I love it. What are the, give us a quick credit card tip? What do you, what's your credit card stack? Because I don't want to do the research, but I might just piggyback off you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so I use the U.S. Bank Smartly card. It's 4% on everything. And if you just want a single card, that's the card to go off of. U.S. Bank Smartly? That's what it is? Yeah, yeah. It's 4% at every. By the way, I use it on my taxes. So, wait, what?

I pay 1.82% to the government to use my credit card, and then I get 4% back from US Bank. It's just like, I'm getting 2% back on my taxes. I could use that for like Facebook ad spend? I could use it for anything? You can use a Facebook ad spend, yeah, exactly.

Is there like a limit or is it unlimited? Just your credit limit. Wow. And now it's called US Bank Smartly, and you have to have, you have to have $100,000 with the U.S. Bank, but what I did is, I just have a brokerage account

with a single stock, and that's my $100,000 at U.S. Bank. It's a great deal. Like, they're losing money on me for sure. Dude, on one hand, I'm like, this is sick. I got to do this. On the other hand, I'm like, I don't know.

Setting it out. Dude, 4% is pretty legit. I went through a lot of hoops to get 2.6 from Bank of America. Bank of America, yeah. And so now you're just shitting on that. This is way better. way better.

This is way better. You also tweet all types of stuff. Like the other day, you're like, does Robin Hood give like 4% interest? Yeah, so Robin Hood has a card that gives 3% cash back on everything. And then right now they have a promo

where it's like 4% or 5%. It was 5% if you put $25,000 into a Robin Hood brokerage. Dude, it's kind of actually interesting because if you are a really big company, or you're spending a lot, couldn't the difference between 0% and 4% have a meaningful impact on your margin? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you're buying Facebook ads, like, it could be really massive for you.

But for me, even just my taxes, getting 2% back on my taxes is, you know, many thousands of dollars. It's pretty sweet. That's crazy. It's like free money. I know a guy who, well, I could say it actually. His name's David Hauser. He did a podcast, so is public. But he sold his company Grasshopper for, I think, $125 million. And he's like, you know, famously, he's a friend of mine. He's like, famously frugal and like, you know, whatever. And he was like convinced American Express to let him pay his tax bill, which on a $100 million sale, I don't know what that would be, $36, $40 million or something. And he was like, I now have unlimited, basically like unlimited flying. Like for the next, he's like for the next 30 years, I ball out on flying and I don't have to pay for a thing. And he paid with his, you know, $40 million tax bill on Amex. The one thing, so, um, Speaking of miles, so like, one thing I don't want to do is accumulate a lot of miles.

I already have more miles that I need. And like, people are like, oh, well, you're getting 4%. But I'm actually getting 5% because I get miles and miles are worth 2.3 cents to me because, but then I look into it and they're like, how is it worth that much to you? And you're like flying on some random time of the day on a business class flight. But that's not the flight I want to take. Just give me cash back and I'll buy my own shit. Right.

Also, don't miles inflate at some like insane inflation rate? plus you don't actually use all your miles. So even in theory, every point is worth X. You're never going to use 100% of your points. So you have to discount back off that. Exactly. So for me, cashback is king. Dude, I know a guy in Hampton, by the way,

who is a two-person company and he spends $10 million a year on Facebook ads or something. And he's like, I get all these miles. And so I was like, hey, book a flight for me and I'll just send you the money. And I got, you know, I bought four first class tickets to Europe and I got probably a 30% discount because of it. It was like significant savings for me.

Do you have any other good financial wins or hacks? So you've got the 4% cashback card. Is there anything else that, like, is a needle mover? Actually, I've started using Robin Hood for a lot of stuff. So Robin Hood had this thing where, and they continue to have it where... That's dangerous. I don't think it's dangerous. Robin's a big company.

They're making lots of money. I'm a Robin Hood bull. And they had this thing where you could move your assets. over and they would match 1%. So it's pretty amazing if you have, let's say, $10 million of assets in stocks somewhere, you move it over, you get $100,000, free money. How long does it have to stay there? I think it's two years. But I've been very happy with the service. And I just did the transfer, ACAS transfer from Schwab. Schwab called me like red alert. And they were like, we'll give you $15,000 right now in your account. You don't.

have to do anything. We're just going to give me $15,000. You just don't move your money. And I was like, yeah, but I'm getting a lot of work from Robin Hood. So I moved it. And I've been very happy. And then I have a lot of other, I now use other products on them. And they have a great margin rate. It's like 5%. It's great. Do you, are you like a stock picker? What do you do with your personal portfolio? Are you just like boring index funds? Do you do anything interesting? I want to not be a stock picker. I want to be boring index funds. But inevitably, like I get excited about an idea and I invest in it. And it's been very good for me. I've, I've, like,

been fortunate to outperform the market pretty significantly. What was your best pick? I bought, like, my biggest position was Nvidia in 2017. No shit. And what was that based on? What was the idea there? It was, um, I, I did a lot of research, got excited and I thought there two theses. Like, I actually, it was more based on crypto than it was AI. And I was wrong. Like, we moved away from GPUs and moved into A6 for crypto. But it ended up being right anyway. And that's awesome. So that was, in 2017, the stock was range. It's about 30, 30 something X from that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it looks like it's a 30x. 150 today back then. It was five bucks. 30x is wild. Did you use to keep it in the whole time? And it was, yeah, I've kept it the whole time.

haven't actually bought anymore or sold any. So yeah, I have, and it was, it was like my biggest position in 2017. And you're, you're basically like a fintech expert, right? Your fund is fintech. You've invested in a bunch of fintech things. What's your position on crypto? Are you like, are you a big Bitcoin bowl? Do you believe in all the alt coins?

Like, what's your, where do you stand? Because I haven't heard you talk about it much. Yeah, I don't talk about that much. Bitcoin is so actually, looking at my assets, it's probably, Bitcoin number one, Nvidia number two, and then like the house that I live in number three. No way, really?

Yeah. And so, say more. Well, what got you into Bitcoin or crypto at the beginning? And is it just Bitcoin, or do you also believe in Eth and Solana and other things? I only have Bitcoin and Eith.

I have some of the others, but like not a meaningful amount. I actually have a tweet where I was like, anti-Bitcoin. And Bitcoin was like, 60 cents or something. I was like, this is never going to work. Here's why. Government's never going to allow it, blah, blah, blah. And then I finally bought in around $300. And the idea was, I still, like, what people believe then, what people told me was like, it's going to be a fast and

efficient way to move money. And that isn't what happened at all. Right. And so in some ways, I was right. It doesn't matter that I was right. I lost a lot of money by not doing it earlier. And I think as a store of value, like, the more successful it gets, the more successful it's going to get. Right. And so that's it. And more and more people are putting money in. So I, I've put money in. Now, for me personally, for me personally, that makes sense. For my fund, I want to invest in things that like actual people are going to be able to use and like have real impact on the world. And I haven't found that many use cases. We have made a couple of investments in stable coins. I think there's something there. I was going to ask you. A nerdy question. There's a,

a lot of people are paying attention to stable coins right now. Is that what fart coin is? That's an unstable coin for sure. So, butthole. People who don't know a stable coin is basically, it's a digital token. So it has the benefits of being like able to be transferred online easily and programmable, things like that. But it's just pegged to the dollar. So you put a dollar in a bank account and then one digital dollar is created.

And that's the idea is that in order for the digital dollar to be created, an actual U.S. dollar has to be put in a bank account somewhere. And so there's companies like Circle and others, Tether, who are supposedly doing this. And I guess it's kind of like a lot of people believe it's like stable coins is taking off now. There's some charts. I think of the Allend podcast has been talking about this recently. A stable coin. Didn't the stable coin business get bought or a tech business that was about?

Yeah. Yeah, a billion dollars by Stripe. A billion dollars by Stripe. So is there anything actually going on here or is this just all a lot of hot air? I think there's something real here. I think like they're transferring money internationally is challenging. And there's something called Swift, which is how banks do it. It's basically like a messaging protocol.

I think stable coins can make things easier. I think still at the end of the day, I think people are over hiding stable coins because at the end of the day, on ramp and an off ramp to get money. And they aren't that. Like I had this issue. I had a wedding in India. And I needed to pay a lot of vendors in cash. And it was a lot of cash. And I was like, hey, I tweeted it. Can somebody help me get a lot of cash in Mexico? And the reality is there's a reason why it was so difficult. And the reason is like money laundering. And actually also even what I was doing was illegal because what my vendors were doing, they wanted cash because they don't want to pay taxes. And so the reason it's hard is because the government doesn't want you to do you want to skirt taxes? And I had this convoluted thing. Actually, you guys might appreciate. I convinced my bank.

to let me, normally you can withdraw a certain amount of money per day. I convinced my bank Schwab to let me do $4,000 per account per day. And I opened six bank accounts at Schwab and I was able to go to an ATM and withdraw $4,000 of cash per account per day.

And I was there for the week prior that basically paid from a lot of my wedding. Dude, do you know the takeaway from this, by the way, is that's the second time that you've said something where you went to like a major institution and negotiated? Yeah, like when I hear about like you went to Schwab.

I'm like, is Schwab a person that you can go to? Like, I don't understand. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like getting like Google AdWords help. It's like, if I had a Gmail issue,

it's like just, hey, Google, yeah, yeah, I need you to fix this. Like, I didn't even realize that you could call Schwab or call Bank of America. And like, yeah, I know you guys don't offer this, but, but, you know, you got to. Yeah, I think if you explain your situation to them, some, actually, one thing I do is, like, I know pretty quickly if I've got a good Asian or a bad. agent. And then if I have a bad agent, I hang up and call a guy. Like, you know somebody who's like going, like, I just told them my story, like told them what I needed. And, and then like somebody walked

me through the process and I got it done. And so I think you could do that all the time. And then speaking of negotiation or like talking through something, I think something a lot of people should do is realize, like, you can negotiate at Macy's. Like I, I did this with my wife. My wife, she bought a wedding dress, a post-wedding dress at Macy's. Like, it was for one of our weddings. And we were at Macy's, and I was like, I want a tissue to negotiate. I want you to get a better deal on this dress. It was like, I don't know, $400 dress or something.

And I was like, can you get a better deal? And she did. She got like 20% off just by asking at Macy's for like a person at Macy's. And she saved like $100 or something. Sam, do you ever do that? Yeah, I mean, I'll do. things like like I'll be like hey um like I don't I won't know if they had a sale recently but I'll be like like I think you had a sale recently like can you like you like you had like a you know like for example

like I went and got something at Brooks Brothers year and I know that one time a year they do like a 40% off sale and I went like three months after that sale but I was just like hey can you can you match that and if you I always find I always prefer to go to women like the workers that who are women. I have way more success because they're just like easier to like get along with. And like, you know, you like do like a little fake flirt. But that works like way better for me is, is for with retail. Just like talking to a woman and being like, hey, how are you doing today? You know, look, I know this is a little obnoxious, but can I get that sale discount or what? Yeah. And always they have like, they have a bunch of QR codes or like bar codes and they just

scan a QR code or barcode. And it's like, oh, he was 20% off. And like, all you do is ask. my buddy Dan his mom was like the master at this if like when we were in college we would go try to like you know buy stuff for our dorm rooms or our apartment and she would just while we're checking out she'd be like and give the boys a discount give these a college boys give these boys a discount and then they would be like what uh for what and then she would just be like come on give the boys a discount these they need it and then she would just tell them like give the boys a discount and sure enough 20 30 40% off would just happen like that and I would never even think to do it but she would never even think to do it but she'd be you know She would just say it like, it's a done deal. Like, oh, it's happening. Not like, do you think it'd be possible? Is there any way? We would really appreciate it. She was just like, oh, and then throw that in.

Put the discount on top of it. Whatever you got? Like, give the boys discount. Like, alpha is like every clerk. Yeah, exactly. I think it's a good. I think it's something like I want my kids to learn. Like, if I have kids in the future, hopefully I will.

Like, I want them to learn these sort of things. And it's like, it's also like somebody posted like, what job do you wish you had? I wish I had a sales job growing up. And like the people that are selling you like Dead Sea Cosmetics or something, like they're just coming up to you or like cell phone accessories. They're like, hey, what phone do you have? And then they try to sell you something. I feel like those are really useful things that I wish I wish I knew. Dude, the Dead Sea guy at the mall?

Oh my God. An unbelievable skill set. Just an incredible skill set. Is that a scent or a lotion? I think it's like a body scrub. Yeah. Got it. And it's got to be like a 98% profit margin sort of best.

Yeah. Didn't your dad sell like door to door or something? Yeah. My dad sold him to Cyclopedia's door or door when he just moved here from India. It's actually a great story. He like, he was very poor in India. He, to come to the United States, like he studied IT in India, great university, and then like to come to America, he needed to raise money.

So he like raised money from the community to pay for his flight over. And you had to have $300 to stay in America. Like on your passport, they stamped that he had $300. He came with exactly $300 in his pocket. And so he raised a bunch of money and he had to pay them back. And he had a stipend as a master's student and a PhD student. And he decided to work as encyclopedia salesman. Indian guy, thick Indian accent at that time.

He was in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, door-to-door selling encyclopedias. And he became the best encyclopedia salesman in the country. Did he really? Yeah, he really did And he actually Have you asked him about it? Like what was the secret? What was the pitch?

I think it was just like working day and night, I think was the pitch. And crazy enough so he made enough money to buy an apartment in like a condo in India like a one bedroom condo

in India. And that's still the condo that like my uncle lived in and still like we still go and stay in that condo that my dad bought with his earnings from working

is in the encyclopedia salesman. Dude, do you actually have a bunch of good tweets about your dad? Like, I feel like I kind of know about him. Like, apparently... Did that video? Did you see the video recently? Well, first of all, he quoted Robert Mugabe, who was like a dictator in Africa. Like, the dad, like, at Shield's wedding, he, like, gave a speech. And he quoted Robert Mugabe, who I think was, like, the dictator of Zimbabwe.

Like, he must have been like... It was about treating everyone well. It was a good quote. It was a good quote. Like, he was clearly on, like, brainy quotes. and he typed in, like, quote on love. It was by, like, a killer dictator. And my dad was like, Robert Mugabe, very famous for his quips.

And I'm like, I think Robert Mugabe was famous for something else, but okay. And then he's got this other video of his dad on a cruise. Like, he's like, we lost my dad, but we found him dancing or something like that. He's like dancing with this other couple. And then, and then, so we went on a cruise, family cruise a couple weeks ago. It was awesome. I was very skeptical of going on a cruise. we went with eight, eight family members.

It was super awesome. But anyway, we go to this tasting menu restaurant, and my dad shows up with a pizza to the tasting menu restaurant. And then I filmed him, like, the people were, like, pretty mad at him. Yeah, I saw that. I loved it. He, like, oh, yeah, no problem, no problem. And they're like, no, sir, we can see it.

It's still there. Like a baby. You're like, put something in front of their eyes, and it just doesn't appear anymore. Exactly. Dude, thank you for doing this. Well, this was fun hanging with you as it always is. And I recommend if you want to hear Shul's story,

go back and listen to the episode. I think it's episode 18. I think it's called like the, you know, the guy who, you know, made millions on selling wacky domains. Because you told your story kind of like in order there. And it's a great, it's a great episode. I went, you know, for me to go back and re-listen to my voice, like anybody knows.

If you're listening to your own voice on a recording, that's painful. And so for the fact that I went through an hour episode this morning, that means the episode's pretty good.

And they have to give you a follow. It was so big. Yeah, you were there. You were the cause. And you got to give Shiel a follow on Twitter. You are a great follow.

Like, you just do the, like, it's just the small things in life. Like, you just tweeted out apparently, do you have a couch that's like a square?

Yeah. It's a nine foot by nine foot couch. I love this thing. My wife hates it, by the way. But, I love it.

You just tweeted out a photo of your couch and I just like, who on earth would buy this? And then I'm somehow convinced that it's the right decision. Dude, I've always been curiously, go to the furniture stores and they have the pit. It looks like a pizza because it's like a nine square thing. You have to like hop on like a small child and just like crawl around the couch because your feet aren't going to touch the ground. And you did. You bought it.

I love it. It's so fun when you have people over it. But it's also modular so you can turn it in other things. Thanks for doing this, man. You're the best. We appreciate you. All right, that's a pod. 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 a road, let's travel, never looking back.