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- [00:00]
Sean
All right, we have SHIELD 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.
- [00:12]
Sam
I feel like I could rule the world.
- [00:14]
SHIELD
I know I could be what I.
- [00:16]
Sam
Want to put my all in it. Like, no days off on the road.
- [00:20]
SHIELD
Let's try.
- [00:21]
Sean
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?
- [00:51]
Sam
Yeah. I mean, he's inspiring to me. Like, he just does the silliest stuff.
- [00:55]
SHIELD
But.
- [00:55]
Sam
But let's just say. So SHIELD here's like, I'll brag on your behalf. So basically, you have what, a $320 million VC fund. You've built a business called Thistle to a hundred 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.
- [01:19]
Sean
You got married. Sponsored by Taco Bell. In the metaverse. At a wedding in the metaverse.
- [01:24]
SHIELD
Taco Bell.
- [01:24]
Sean
Somehow I don't. Don't even know what that is.
- [01:26]
Sam
I didn't know about that. That's awesome. What was that?
- [01:29]
SHIELD
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. 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.
- [01:58]
Sam
Yeah, makes sense.
- [01:59]
Sean
I don't even know what to make of all this, but 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, full story here, but can you tell this ipod mini hustle story?
- [02:47]
SHIELD
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. And 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, in the colors matching the ipod mini. And so I went to China for the first time in my life just to like figure this out. And I, I like.
- [03:31]
Sam
You went for this reason?
- [03:32]
SHIELD
I went for this reason. Yeah, I, I just, I was working a full time job, took a two week vacation and I was like, let me spend those two weeks in China.
- [03:40]
Sean
And I like, where in China? China's a big place. You were just like, I'm just going to go, I'll find a guy. What, what was the plan?
- [03:46]
SHIELD
Okay, so I, 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 booths 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 is 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, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And it was awesome. Like, it was a really cool way for me to get into business.
- [04:50]
Sam
How much time passed between your headphone breaking and you're like, oh, I should sell headphones, and I'm in China?
- [04:58]
SHIELD
I think it was like, a couple months.
- [05:01]
Sean
So you have a job, you decide to go. You're. You're like, I'm just gonna kind of fund this off my savings. Or did you place the initial? Was a big initial order. How did you do it?
- [05:13]
SHIELD
The initial?
- [05:13]
Sam
Or.
- [05:13]
SHIELD
It was cheap. It was, you know, 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.
- [05:28]
Sean
Gotcha. And so you make these headphones, which, by the way, seems like an insane oversight by Apple to not sell the headphones.
- [05:35]
SHIELD
It made no sense.
- [05:35]
Sean
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 ten thousand pairs of headphones?
- [05:43]
SHIELD
So there were, like, now there's a very 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. That was one tick mark, 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 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.
- [06:59]
Sean
Dude, that's. That's amazing. That Facebook used to let you do that just to, like, market to your whole campus for 10 bucks a day is insane.
- [07:07]
Sam
How much did it end up making?
- [07:09]
SHIELD
Yeah. So how much money to make? I want to say net was probably like $80,000.
- [07:16]
Sam
Do you plan anything? So, like, one of the parts of this episode is that, like, you're pretty spontaneous and. But, 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, like, pretty, like, epic success. But you also do the really random things, spur the moment type of decision making.
- [07:40]
SHIELD
Yeah, I just, like, I. I think I've always chosen, like, the more adventurous path, I would say. And then I think something I get from my grandfather, my. My mom's dad was like, he was just always bored and always coming up with new ideas. He would. At the time, it was different. He would, like, read about something in the newspaper and be like, I should start something. So, like, he. 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.
- [08:20]
Sam
A.
- [08:20]
SHIELD
A phone in India, so he created this, like, payphone company that allowed people to just use payphones. 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 took this 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.
- [09:02]
Sean
Wow. Did anybody do that? By the way, is There now an.
- [09:04]
SHIELD
Ancestry I actually don't know.
- [09:05]
Sean
Is that still up for grass?
- [09:06]
SHIELD
Still probably a good idea for my, my grandfather who now passed away many years ago.
- [09:10]
Sean
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 he probably won't do it again. But the short version of it is you were selling, you were not selling. You were the auctioneer. Auctioneer for people who wanted to buy new domain, like top level domains. So like dot, photo, 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, 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, he's like, yeah, so my co founder was this expert in auction theory and I met him on a train in India.
- [09:51]
SHIELD
Yeah.
- [09:51]
Sean
And he would just say he just had these little things he threw out. Like, yeah, I was just happened to be on a train in India, met this guy, ended up starting a company with.
- [09:58]
Sam
Was he an American in India or an Indian?
- [10:01]
SHIELD
He's German.
- [10:02]
Sam
That's ridiculous. What year was that?
- [10:05]
SHIELD
I met him in 2006 when Dharmesh.
- [10:07]
Sean
Came on the podcast. Dharmesh, the founder of HubSpot, he. Yeah, we talked about the Steve Jobs speech that he gave at Stanford. That's pretty famous. A lot of people know he talks about like, you can't, you can't connect the dots, you know, looking forward. You can only connect the dots of your life looking backwards. And the famous example is he's talked 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 like, 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 Dharmesh 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, 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.
- [11:11]
SHIELD
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 just saying yes to stuff. So one, I'll just say I'll say yes to a lot of crazy ideas that people throw at 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 idea people invite me to speak at a conference in some random country I've been to, like La Via sa, 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 a day.
- [11:54]
Sean
It's like a Mr. Beast video.
- [11:57]
SHIELD
Yeah, it's funny. And I, 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.
- [12:10]
Sam
And what does that get you in India? Is that like, like, is that like a McDonald's value meal? Like, I don't know the, like the.
- [12:16]
SHIELD
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, I re, I, 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, there's this concept in India called jugad, which, 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.
- [13:16]
Sam
Wait, so you spent $365 in one year? That was it?
- [13:20]
SHIELD
Yeah.
- [13:21]
Sam
Does that include rent? And what type of program is this?
- [13:24]
SHIELD
It would. The program no longer exist. It was called Indy Core and it was like a volunteer program. And part of it was like, they want, I wanted. So I was working for Kiva, a non profit microfinance institution, and I. 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 gonna do it too.
- [13:44]
Sean
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?
- [13:49]
SHIELD
Yeah, the why is kind of silly in hindsight, but actually I watched a movie, a Hindi movie called Rang the Basanti, where they're like, the 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 affinities 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.
- [14:17]
Sam
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.
- [14:32]
Sean
I didn't watch that movie, dude. I wasn't inspired.
- [14:36]
SHIELD
In hindsight, it was stupid. Like, I got. I got super sick. I got typhoid, and I.
- [14:41]
Sam
Well, besides that.
- [14:43]
SHIELD
Yeah, besides that. No, overall, it was an amazing experience. And actually, like, I have so many. So many of my close friends today are from that time.
- [14:51]
Sam
There's.
- [14:51]
Sean
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?
- [14:59]
SHIELD
Yeah.
- [15:00]
Sean
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. I know that it wasn't just a cold pitch that walked into your office.
- [15:21]
Sam
And by the way, just so we have context, what's. What's Flexport value ish.
- [15:26]
SHIELD
Now.
- [15:26]
Sam
And what was it when you invested? Like, how big of a. Of a deal is this?
- [15:29]
SHIELD
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.
- [15:39]
Sean
Something like 10 million to 3 billion, let's call it.
- [15:42]
SHIELD
Yeah. And I sold some of my shares and the ones that I sold it was more than a hundred x return.
- [15:52]
Sam
Wow. Okay. All right, go ahead. Sorry.
- [15:55]
SHIELD
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 and need to get it here, there's a bunch of steps required in between, and they'll help you do those steps.
- [16:07]
Sean
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?
- [16:18]
SHIELD
Go through customs, all this 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, if you don't use Flexport 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 figures stuff out. He started the company by himself, non technical, like outsourced team originally. And then eventually he built, he built up a lot of stuff internally. But we were buying Uber credits in our name, so I did that. You did that too?
- [16:58]
Sam
Was it what your guy did to you?
- [17:00]
SHIELD
No, no, no. We, we were like, I was advertising Google AdWords for my referral code and at times at that I would buy.
- [17:09]
Sam
Free rides from this guy in India.
- [17:11]
SHIELD
Who was probably doing what we're doing.
- [17:12]
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [17:14]
Sam
Like I would buy like a thousand dollars of Uber credit for like $100 or something like that.
- [17:19]
SHIELD
Okay. So we were effectively doing the same thing, like just advertising for our name and we kind of bonded over that and became friends. And then when he, what he had, 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.
- [17:39]
Sam
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 multibillion 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.
- [17:58]
SHIELD
Story, I think, for sure, for sure. Silicon Valley, it's like so many people that you meet. I, I guess, like I, I've lived in San Francisco for 12 years now and I, 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.
- [18:16]
Sam
That's so funny, Sean.
- [18:18]
SHIELD
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.
- [18:33]
Sam
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 like you, you're, you're missing out on like year 8, 9, 10 and year 20 where all like a lot of the compounding like growth comes from. How do you balance like those two things of being focused, which is like what every VC will ever tell a founder versus saying yes to speaking in Laia or going to China to start a new company.
- [19:10]
SHIELD
It's, it's such a good question. And I, I think, the way I think about it is I'm probably more of your zero to one guy than I am your like one to a hundred. 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 if I were running a VC fund. These companies aren't VC fund, VC type opportunities.
- [19:55]
Sean
All right, let's take a quick break because I gotta tell you about a friend of the POD who's got their own podcast. If you know Steph Smith, she is a legend. She's been on MFM many times and she's got her own podcast called the A16C podcast. And it's all about technology. If you think about it, technology has evolved like crazy. I mean I grew up in the 90s. I had CDs, phones had cords, you couldn't use the Internet if your mom was on the phone. And now there's like 3D printers and there's rockets that can go up into space. AI. There's so much crazy stuff going on and you gotta have a place that helps you stay ahead of the curve. And that's what the A6XE podcast is trying to do. It's a podcast from the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and it's trying to give you an inside look at the trends that are shaping our future. They've had guests like Mark Cuban and Neal Stephenson on, and they talk about topics like deep fakes or the science behind GLP1s or autonomous drones. No small boy stuff at all. Steph is the host. She's awesome. I think you'll enjoy the podcast. So check it out. It is the A16Z podcast and I like this tagline. They say it's like eavesdropping on the future. That's pretty cool. That's a good tagline. So check it out. The A16Z podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts. What's the story of Thistle? Because I remember we went out to dinner once many years ago, and you were 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. Sprig was going out of business and it was like, looked like a bloodbath. 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.
- [21:25]
Sam
I love Thistle.
- [21:26]
Sean
And Sam just said, it's now 100 million a year business. What is, can you tell what is the origin of this, this business?
- [21:33]
SHIELD
Yeah, so the origin is myself and my roommate in San Francisco. 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, Sprig, Muntry, 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.
- [22:18]
Sean
There he goes again.
- [22:19]
Sam
That is so funny. Yeah. And for those people who don't know, Sprig is started by all of our friend Goggin, and it was one of the innovators before Doordash, or I think.
- [22:28]
Sean
Before Door as, like, due diligence.
- [22:31]
SHIELD
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. We're going predict. If there's a Giants game, it's this. If 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 Friday your meals 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, 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 pro, like a private chef might be, and do it at an affordable price point. And it's been great. Like, the business is awesome. This whole co. If you're on the east coast or west coast, you can check it out.
- [23:52]
Sam
Is it bootstrapped or do you guys raise. Raise funding?
- [23:54]
SHIELD
We did ultimately raise funding, and we've raised a few rounds of funding, but not that much money over time.
- [23:59]
Sam
But it's going to be. It's a good outcome for you personally?
- [24:02]
SHIELD
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.
- [24:16]
Sean
It's 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, a hundred other cities now or what?
- [24:25]
SHIELD
So, yeah, so it's all along the west coast and the Northeast as well.
- [24:31]
Sam
Yeah, I see it out where I live. I live out right outside of New York, and I see. Do I see billboards?
- [24:37]
SHIELD
You might see billboards. You see a lot of bags. One. 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.
- [24:58]
Sam
You know, you sent us a list of like, four, 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.
- [25:22]
SHIELD
I have some that are like maybe venture scale ideas and then a lot. Most of my ideas are not venture scale, but I could 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 Shanti Niketan. 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 a hundred 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 all, for Indian people. For Indian retirees, do you have to.
- [25:58]
Sam
Be Indian to go? Or is it just like everyone who.
- [26:00]
SHIELD
Lives there is Indian?
- [26:01]
Sam
Yeah, but, like, can I go enjoy?
- [26:03]
SHIELD
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. 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, in like building a roadmap for an affinity and then like stamping it for other affinities over time.
- [27:01]
Sam
Sean, don't you know someone in the, in the, in this.
- [27:03]
SHIELD
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:04]
Sean
So I've looked at this because I found it fascinating for the same reasons that, 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 a hundred plots. And the numbers get pretty big, pretty fast when you're buying these at, you know, 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, the, 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.
- [27:49]
SHIELD
And your community's still there.
- [27:51]
Sean
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 shield's 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, you know, that we have, have the same cultural values. And I was like, well, that's gonna exist for every, 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 seem, just seems very lucrative to me totally.
- [28:42]
SHIELD
For this, 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.
- [28:51]
Sam
And on these things that you. When I think of an old home, I think of like, like a hospital looking center where. But these are like a plot of land where you buy a house.
- [29:01]
SHIELD
Yeah, they bought a townhouse.
- [29:03]
Sam
Got it. And you pay like a monthly fee.
- [29:07]
SHIELD
Yeah, you pay monthly fee. You, 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, they play like cards, they, there's a community center, they play. They have movies, Indian movies going on, they have concerts. Actually I, I talked about our weddings. My parents one, one of the events that they had was a, a showcase of all of our wedding videos. And then like I called in, like we called in and did Q and A.
- [29:36]
Sean
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 like almost like resort style for you. It just makes a lot of sense.
- [30:04]
Sam
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 hangar. So that's cool. 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. I'm just going to walk a Runway.
- [30:28]
Sean
In the middle of the neighborhood, basically.
- [30:30]
SHIELD
That's so cool. Yeah. So I think you could 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.
- [30:43]
Sean
And I like these businesses that are high dollar value, meaning you're not going to be able to become a billionaire, but you can make tens of millions of dollars doing this.
- [30:51]
SHIELD
Definitely.
- [30:52]
Sean
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 any. And like 50 people could go do this and they would, you know, it's just a matter of execution at this point. Like if you just do do the.
- [31:05]
Sam
Basic things like with all these retire, like the. What do they call it, the, the Silver Tsunami. Like is there. Is there a shortage of. Of space?
- [31:14]
SHIELD
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 there just were. There weren't availability. So like they pre bought into a new one.
- [31:29]
Sean
So I think it 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.
- [31:36]
Sam
Dude, how much is a nursing home, by the way? Should I be budgeting? Like, I was like, Sam starts worrying about. I'm worried about. No, I'm worried about it for my parents. I was, dude, listen to this. So are you gonna put your parents.
- [31:47]
Sean
In a nursing home?
- [31:49]
Sam
I don't know.
- [31:49]
Sean
Shame on you.
- [31:50]
SHIELD
Like Indians could never do.
- [31:53]
Sam
Sometimes I think they like that, don't they? Like they want. I don't know. I thought it was like enjoyable. I don't know. But. So I was, I was being with a like 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 gonna have kids, right? I was like, yeah, but I'm not gonna have triplets. He was like, whoa, well you're gonna have one kid. And I assume that they're gonna 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 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 ten and twenty thousand dollars a month today.
- [32:51]
SHIELD
Yeah, that's right.
- [32:52]
Sam
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, is that, are we talking like half a million dollars a year?
- [33:05]
Sean
It's not that high but you know, you can like there's a range. So you can do a $3000 a month bed, you could do a $8000 a month bed, you could do 15,000, 20,000 depending if know.
- [33:16]
Sam
Basically the Ritz Carlton is 20,000 the fanciest.
- [33:20]
Sean
I, I don't. There's no upper end to anything in life, right. You can spend an infinite amount of money if you, if you decide to. But I would say like you like nice places can be at 10, $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.
- [34:19]
Sam
That's cool.
- [34:21]
SHIELD
I think for all those, any diff. 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 or 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.
- [34:40]
Sean
And a bunch of people 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.
- [34:50]
SHIELD
Exactly.
- [34:50]
Sean
And they have money actually, versus that 20 something. Yeah. They might spend one or two years after, after college doing this in a big city, but then they're going to kind of 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?
- [35:04]
Sam
Go to this Yelp one.
- [35:06]
SHIELD
Okay, so the idea is Yelp for professional services. So and then I originally had this idea, I think, before Sam. 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.
- [35:35]
Sam
So I can give you guys an Update. So, Sean, 10 or 8 months ago, I created this thing called Sam's List. SAMSLIST CO. 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 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 professional services is necessary. Everyone is begging us, by the way, if anyone wants to go do this, 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 like, 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 of agency owners who follow me on Twitter.
- [36:32]
SHIELD
No, but I think if you look on Twitter, like people are constantly posting like, hey, I need help with this. Can you, can anyone recommend an agency? I feel like, 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 X to Y. And, you know, it should be a site that. That does everything. And maybe Sam's listed set.
- [37:03]
Sam
It's fucking hard to pull these off, by the way. It's hard.
- [37:06]
SHIELD
None of these things are easy.
- [37:08]
Sam
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 and pop accountant, I'm basically selling packages for, like, $500. And you're like the mob, like, knocking on the door, like, total money, you know what I mean? And it, 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. Like, 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, like, 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, like, 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 all.
- [38:18]
SHIELD
They.
- [38:18]
Sam
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 gonna make 200 grand a year. You're gonna be so rich. And they find out that they're having to go, like, get an ice cream shop to give them, like, $900.
- [38:30]
Sean
Wasn't it more like threats than sales even? It was like, oh, this review's really hurting you. Wouldn't you. Don't you just wish that would go away? Yeah, I might be able to make that go away.
- [38:42]
SHIELD
I. I never found any evidence of that actually happening, though. Like, people have Been like, provide me evidence. And I don't think I only there's actual evidence of that happening. There is with the Better Business Bureau, by the way, but. But not with Yelp, from what I can tell.
- [38:56]
Sean
Where did that come from? It came from business owners complaining about it. Who else would put that story out there?
- [39:04]
SHIELD
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. Okay, yeah, yeah, send it to me. And then nobody has ever sent it.
- [39:14]
Sean
Fair enough, Fair enough. All right, what, what are the other, what's this pearly whites one? You got my attention.
- [39:19]
SHIELD
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 like kind of like an in and out thing. 20 minutes and you get your blow dryer. 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, a hundred bucks, 120 bucks, something like that. And she would do that like every couple months. And that's the idea.
- [39:59]
Sean
So she likes getting her teeth cleaned.
- [40:01]
SHIELD
She likes getting teeth cleaned. What I think is weird, like, I don't, but she does. And I, I, I could see people doing it, like, oh, I'm going to an event. Like, I'm gonna get my hair done, I'm gonna get my teeth done. Teeth cleaned.
- [40:13]
Sean
Well, I like the unbundling of like the dental checkup.
- [40:17]
SHIELD
Right?
- [40:17]
Sean
It's like, what's the, what is 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, I thought it would be teeth whitening, not cleaning.
- [40:33]
SHIELD
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 a dentist in some states, you need to have a dentist there. But it doesn't have to be like, you don't have to be doing the work. They have to be there, right?
- [40:56]
Sean
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 bucks or whatever. It was some. 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, 1500 services. If you really wanted to, you could go and ask them about what's it called? I don't remember the name of this one, but I. 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 could 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.
- [42:33]
Sam
So I'm obsessed with being transparent about money, particularly with ultra high net worth people. The reason being is that there's not a lot of information on this demographic. And so because I own Hampton, which is a community for founders, I have access to thousands of young and incredibly high net worth people. We have people worth hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars inside of Hampton. And so every year we do this thing called the Hampton Wealth Report where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs and we ask them all types of information about their personal finances. We ask them about how they're investing their money, what their portfolio looks like, we asked them about their monthly spend habits, we ask them how they've set up their estate, how much money they're going to leave to charity, how much money they keep in cash, how much money they're paying themselves from their businesses. Basically every question that you want to ask a rich person, we went and we do it for you and we do it with hundreds and hundreds of people. So if you want to check out the report, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report. Just go to join Hampton.com, click our menu and you're going to see a section called Reports and you're going to see it all right there. It's very easy. So again, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report. Go To join Hampton.com, click the menu and then click the report button and let me know what you think.
- [43:43]
SHIELD
Speaking of Hunt Brothers, another idea, and this is one of my best friends is doing this and I, I invested. But it's called Pizzeria To Luna. And the idea is when people go to hotels, they most often order pizza. Like mid range hotels, people order pizza constantly. Domino's 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 Pizzeria Luna and then we have the table tents and all that other stuff.
- [44:24]
Sean
Dude, this is a great idea. It's just Hunt Brothers, but for hotels and Italian. Is it working?
- [44:32]
SHIELD
It's working. Yeah. It's been pretty successful. It's still fairly early, but it's, it's doing really well.
- [44:39]
Sean
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, doughs and all that stuff to, 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, the gas station owners. Is this really hard to spin up or was this actually like, you know, pretty doable?
- [45:07]
SHIELD
I mean, it, 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.
- [45:17]
Sam
Wait, but why? I don't think I could tell if this pizza's from Italy. That's it. Like, like, would my taste buds know the difference between a Kentucky and once.
- [45:25]
Sean
It says it, you're like, yeah, this is not cheap pizza.
- [45:27]
Sam
It's not cheap 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?
- [45:38]
Sean
Italy, Wisconsin?
- [45:39]
Sam
Yeah.
- [45:40]
SHIELD
No, it turns out, like the, 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, isn't 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.
- [45:58]
Sean
Dude. My dad, I remember when we were a kid, he saw this pizza place and the sign just said hand tossed pizza. And there was like a guy in the window tossing. And my dad wouldn't shut up about the hand tossed pizza for like, you know, a year. And these things just work.
- [46:11]
Sam
I don't know why.
- [46:11]
Sean
There's something to it.
- [46:12]
Sam
If it says world's greatest cup of coffee, I buy it every single time.
- [46:15]
SHIELD
Oh, totally. That shit always works on me.
- [46:17]
Sean
It always know that. The Grey Goose story.
- [46:20]
SHIELD
Yeah, the taller bottles.
- [46:22]
Sean
The taller bottles. But also. So the. So the guy who started Grey 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.
- [46:31]
Sam
Was he successful?
- [46:32]
Sean
So he, before that he had created Jaeger Meister. Not created, but he had brought Jagermeister to the US and made it popular. So like the Jagermeister story was he's out one night. All right? He was like part of the family alcohol business. His wife's. It was 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 gotta 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 Jagermeister and it was like a 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 gonna become the US importer of this thing called Jagermeister. But to make it popular. What he did was he created the Jaeger bomb and got like Jaegerettes, the girls who would go around bars pouring the stuff down college kids throats. And he made it the party drink. So Jaeger becomes this like big drink. He's successful now. He's in his 70s. And he's like, all right, I'm gonna start a new one. I wanna start a vodka company. And he basically says, I'm gonna 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? 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, 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 what. That's their bottle.
- [48:28]
SHIELD
Okay.
- [48:28]
Sean
It's this fat bottle. We're going to be a tall bottle. And then he got the. 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, 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. By. By default because it was so tall. Isn't that amazing?
- [48:59]
Sam
Hilarious. That's so funny.
- [49:02]
SHIELD
It's interesting because it's basically like a commodity. Like it's all. 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.
- [49:21]
Sam
Dude. It seems like a. It seems like, like a horrible business to be in. It seems like really challenging.
- [49:28]
SHIELD
Alcohol in particular is tough because of 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.
- [49:38]
Sam
Do you want to do another one?
- [49:39]
Sean
Yeah. What else? Yeah, what else are you excited about Shield that you think somebody could go do?
- [49:43]
SHIELD
I think something I want in my life is like a school for AI tools. So maybe you could franchise it. But for me, 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 show me how to edit things and 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, like AI or software for. So it's like a software school in person.
- [50:14]
Sean
Kuma. But it's just for you, like, just other two other tools that are useful in your life.
- [50:18]
SHIELD
Exactly. Yeah.
- [50:19]
Sean
It's for adults.
- [50:21]
SHIELD
It can be for adults. I think Start. Start with adults and then also kids.
- [50:26]
Sam
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 tutor, which is actually pretty amazing. And then also you went on this big rant a month ago. It's probably the greatest in terms of ikigai, of what the world wants, what Sean's good at, what he's passionate about, and what the world's willing to pay for him creating another full sail university. It's quite aligned.
- [50:58]
Sean
Yeah. I had this idea. Well, first I did. 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 luxury that doesn't actually cost that much, but adds a lot of value to your life. And so now anytime I want 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.
- [51:30]
SHIELD
How do you find them with this.
- [51:32]
Sean
I just tweeted it out and I was like, hey, who could. I'm willing to pay 500 an hour for somebody who's gonna. 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, like I'm hands on keyboard, struggling, trying to do the thing. Cause that way I'll like, actually learn how to do it. And it's been kind of amazing, to be honest.
- [51:58]
Sam
Are you still doing it?
- [52:00]
Sean
We're still doing 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, that's been great on the AI side, but just in general, I'm a big, like, it's like, it's like comical now how, how my first answer to everything is to get a coach and. But whatever, I'm going to keep doing it till it doesn't work. And it's, it's worked at everything.
- [52:26]
SHIELD
Dude.
- [52:27]
Sam
We hired a. We hired an organizational coach to come and teach us how to like, organize a closet. Like, I'm so on board with.
- [52:33]
SHIELD
Oh my God, we pay so much to our organizer. We don't have a coach. We just have an organizer comes in and she is doing so well. She, she. Last time she was here, which was like two weeks ago, which is because she's here all the time organizing something. She was like, oh, my client from San Francisco is flying me. I'm gonna go organize their new place in Switzerland. So she's like, got this thing going where like, it's an incredible business. I mean, it's not like a huge business, but she's. She's got people under her and stuff now.
- [53:04]
Sean
Is it just like magic? Like, is your house just like, incredible now?
- [53:07]
SHIELD
I think it's fine. My wife loves it.
- [53:10]
Sam
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.
- [53:30]
SHIELD
That's a lot.
- [53:31]
Sam
It's a lot.
- [53:32]
SHIELD
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.
- [53:43]
Sean
Do you, do you have the like Indian Frugality gene or I'm. Okay, you're not a good spender.
- [53:51]
SHIELD
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. My lifestyle hasn't changed. I'm always looking for a deal. Like, anything I buy, I'm going to select deals first. I've, like, got the credit card points 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.
- [54:17]
Sean
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.
- [54:24]
SHIELD
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 us.
- [54:32]
Sean
You need to think smartly. That's what it is.
- [54:34]
SHIELD
Yeah, yeah. It's 4% at everything. By the way. I use it on my taxes. So.
- [54:41]
Sam
Wait, What?
- [54:42]
SHIELD
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.
- [54:52]
Sean
I could use that for, like, Facebook ad spend. I could use it for anything.
- [54:54]
SHIELD
Use a Facebook ad spend. Yeah, exactly.
- [54:56]
Sean
Is there, like, a limit or is it unlimited?
- [54:58]
SHIELD
Just your credit limit.
- [55:00]
Sam
Wow.
- [55:01]
SHIELD
And now it's called US Bank Smartly, and you have to have. You have to have a hundred thousand dollars with U.S. bank. But what I did is I just have a brokerage account with a single stock, and that's my. A hundred thousand dollars at US Bank. It's a great deal. Like, they. They're losing money on me for sure, dude.
- [55:20]
Sam
On one hand, I'm like, this is sick. I got to do this. On the other hand, I'm like, I just, like, you know, I don't know, setting it up.
- [55:26]
Sean
Dude, 4% is pretty legit. I went through a lot of hoops to get 2.66 from bank of America.
- [55:31]
SHIELD
America. Yeah.
- [55:32]
Sean
And so now you're just on that. This is.
- [55:35]
SHIELD
This is way better. This is.
- [55:37]
Sam
But I also. You also tweet all types of stuff. Like the other day, you're like, does Robin hood give, like, 4% interest of Robin Hood?
- [55:43]
SHIELD
Robinhood has 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.
- [55:55]
Sam
Interesting because if you are a really big company or you're spending a lot, couldn't the difference between 0% and 4% like, have a meaningful impact on your margin?
- [56:06]
SHIELD
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you're buying Facebook ads for like, could be really massive for you.
- [56:11]
Sam
Yeah.
- [56:11]
SHIELD
But for me, even just my taxes, getting 2% back on my taxes is, you know, many thousands of dollars, pretty sweet.
- [56:18]
Sam
That's crazy.
- [56:18]
SHIELD
Like, free money.
- [56:20]
Sam
I know a guy who, well, I could say it, actually. His name's David Hauser. He did a podcast, so it's public, but he sold his company Grasshopper for I think $125 million. And he, 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 dollar sale, I, I don't know what that would be. 36 to 40 million dollars or something. And he was like, I now have unlimited, basically like unlimited flying, like for the, he's like, he's like, for the next like 30 years, I ball out on, 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.
- [57:04]
SHIELD
The one thing. So 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, 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, I'll, I'll buy my own shit.
- [57:32]
Sean
Right. Also, don't miles inflate at some like insane inflation rate? Plus, yeah, you don't actually use all your miles. So even.
- [57:39]
SHIELD
Exactly.
- [57:39]
Sean
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.
- [57:45]
SHIELD
Exactly. So for me, cash back is king, dude.
- [57:48]
Sam
I know a guy in Hampton, by the way, who, who is a two person company. And he spends 10 million a year on Facebook ads or something. And he's like, I got all these miles. And so I just, I was like, hey, book a flight for me and I'll just send you the money. And I got, you know, I, I bought four first class tickets to Europe and I got probably a 30% discount because of it. It was like, awesome. Significant savings for me.
- [58:08]
Sean
Do you have any other good financial wins or hacks? So you got the 4% cash back card. Is there anything else that, like, is a needle mover?
- [58:16]
SHIELD
Actually, I've started using Robinhood for a lot of stuff. So Robinhood had this thing where. And they, they continue to have it. Where.
- [58:23]
Sam
That's dangerous.
- [58:25]
SHIELD
I don't think it's dangerous. Robinhood's a big company. They're. They're making lots of money. I'm, I'm, I'm a Robinhood 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.
- [58:49]
Sam
How long does it have to stay there?
- [58:51]
SHIELD
I think it's two years. But I've been very happy with the service. And I just did the transfer. Acades 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. You just. We're just going to give you $15,000. You just don't move your money. And I was like, yeah, but I'm getting a lot more from, from Robinhood. So I, I moved it and I've been very happy. And then I, 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.
- [59:22]
Sean
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?
- [59:29]
SHIELD
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.
- [59:42]
Sam
What was your best pick?
- [59:44]
SHIELD
I bought, like, my biggest position was Nvidia in 2017.
- [59:48]
Sam
No shit.
- [59:49]
Sean
And what was that based on? What was the idea there?
- [59:52]
SHIELD
It was. I did a lot of research, got excited And I thought there were two theses. Like, I actually, it was more based on crypto than it was AI. And I was wrong. Like, we, we moved away from gpus and moved into AS6 for. For crypto. But it ended up being right anyway and awesome.
- [60:11]
Sam
So that was in 2017. The stock was ranging.
- [60:14]
SHIELD
It's about 30. 30 something X from that.
- [60:17]
Sam
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like it's a 30x150 today. Back then it was 5 bucks. 30x is wild. Did you keep it in the whole.
- [60:23]
SHIELD
Time and it was. Yeah, I've kept it the whole time. I haven't actually bought any more or sold any. So, yeah, I, I have. And it was, it was like my biggest position in 2017.
- [60:34]
Sean
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.
- [60:42]
SHIELD
Yes.
- [60:43]
Sean
Are you a big bitcoin bull? Do you believe in all the altcoins? Like, what's your. Where do you stand? Because I haven't heard you talk about it much.
- [60:49]
SHIELD
Yeah, I don't talk about that much. I, I. 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 is probably.
- [61:03]
Sam
No way. Really?
- [61:04]
SHIELD
Yeah.
- [61:05]
Sean
And so say more. Well, what got you into bitcoin or crypto at the beginning? And is it, is it just bitcoin or do you also believe in Eth and Solana and other things?
- [61:14]
SHIELD
I only have bitcoin and eth. 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. And I was like, this is never going to work. Here's why. Governments are never going to allow it, blah, blah, blah. And then I finally bought in around $300. And the idea was I still what people believed 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. 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.
- [61:54]
Sean
Right?
- [61:54]
SHIELD
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 my, 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 stablecoins. I think there's something there.
- [62:17]
Sean
Yeah, I was going to ask you nerdy question. There's a, A lot of people are paying attention to stablecoins right now.
- [62:23]
Sam
I believe what fart coin is, that's.
- [62:27]
Sean
An unstable coin for sure. So butthole people who don't know a stablecoin 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 US 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 stablecoins is taking off now. There's some charts. I think the all in podcast been talking about this recently. A stablecoin. Didn't the stablecoin business get bought or a tech business that was born got.
- [63:13]
SHIELD
Bought for over a billion by stripe.
- [63:15]
Sean
Billion dollars by stripe. So what's. Is there anything actually going on here or is this just all a lot of hot air?
- [63:21]
SHIELD
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 stablecoins can make things easier. I think still at the end of the day I think people, people, people are overhyping stable coins because at the end of the day in 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 or what 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 for a lot of my wedding.
- [64:40]
Sam
Dude, you know what the takeaway from this, by the way, is? It's like, 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. 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 or get. It's like, 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. You got to.
- [65:14]
SHIELD
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 agent 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. For one of our weddings.
- [65:54]
Sam
And we were.
- [65:55]
SHIELD
We were at Macy's, and I was like, I want to teach you 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, a hundred bucks or something.
- [66:14]
Sam
Dude.
- [66:15]
Sean
Sam, do you ever do that?
- [66:16]
Sam
Yeah, I mean, I'll do things like. Like, I'll be like, hey. Like, I don't. I won't know if they had a sale recently, but I'll be like, I think you had a sale recently. Like, can you.
- [66:26]
SHIELD
Yeah, like, you.
- [66:27]
Sam
You had like a. You know, like, for example, like, I went and got something at Brooks Brothers the other day, 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 successful 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?
- [67:03]
Sean
Yeah, my buddy Dan, they always.
- [67:05]
SHIELD
They have, like. They have a bunch of QR codes or, like, barcodes, and they just scan a QR code or barcode, and it's like, oh, here's 20% off. And like, all you do is ask.
- [67:13]
Sean
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 college boys. Give these boys a discount. And then they would be like, what? For what?
- [67:28]
Sam
And it's like, give them a discount.
- [67:31]
Sean
Yeah. She would just be like, come on, give the. 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 just say it like. 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. Give the voice.
- [67:56]
Sam
It's like, Alpha is like, every clerk.
- [67:57]
Sean
Yeah, exactly.
- [68:00]
SHIELD
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.
- [68:30]
Sean
The Dead Sea guy at the mall. This is. Oh, my God.
- [68:33]
SHIELD
Un.
- [68:33]
Sean
Unbelievable skill set. Just an incredible skill set.
- [68:37]
Sam
Is that a scent or a lotion?
- [68:40]
SHIELD
I think it's like a body scrub.
- [68:42]
Sam
Yeah, got it.
- [68:44]
SHIELD
And it's. It's got to be like a 98% profit margin sort of B. Yeah.
- [68:50]
Sean
Didn't your dad sell like, door too or something?
- [68:53]
SHIELD
Yeah, my dad sold encyclopedias door to door when he just moved here from India. It's actually a great story. He, like, he, he was very poor in India. He. To come to the United States. Like, he. He studied at IIT 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 the stipend as a master's student and a PhD student. And he decided to work as an 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.
- [69:41]
Sam
Did he really?
- [69:42]
SHIELD
And like, yeah, he really did. And he actually asked him about it.
- [69:45]
Sean
Like, what was the secret? What was the pitch?
- [69:46]
SHIELD
I think it was just like working day and night, I think was the pitch. And crazy enough so he. 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 as an encyclopedia salesman.
- [70:12]
Sam
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.
- [70:18]
Sean
Did you See the video recently, first.
- [70:19]
Sam
Of all, he quoted Robert Mugabe, who's, like a. A dictator in album Africa. Like, the dad, like, at shield's wedding, he, like, speech, and he corroded Robert Mugabi, who I think was like, the dictator of Zimbabwe. Like, he must have been, like.
- [70:34]
SHIELD
It was about treating everyone well.
- [70:35]
Sam
It was a good quote. Like, like, he was clearly on, like, brainy quotes. And he typed in, like, quote on love. And like, it was by, like, a killer dictator. And then.
- [70:48]
SHIELD
And my dad was like, Robert Mugabe, very, very famous for his quips. And I'm like, I think Robert Mugabe was famous for something else. But okay.
- [70:55]
Sam
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.
- [71:03]
SHIELD
And then. And then. So we went on a cruise, family cruise a couple weeks ago. It was awesome. I. I was very skeptical of going on a cruise. We went with eight. Eight family members.
- [71:12]
Sam
It was.
- [71:13]
SHIELD
It was super awesome. But anyway, we.
- [71:14]
Sam
We.
- [71:14]
SHIELD
We go to this tasting menu restaurant, and my dad shows up with a pizza to the tasting menu restaurant. And I filmed him. Like, the. The people, like, were, like, pretty mad at him.
- [71:27]
Sean
Yeah, I saw that. I loved. He, like, covered it with a napkin. He's like, oh, yeah, no problem, no problem. And they're like, no, sir, we can see it. It's still there.
- [71:36]
Sam
He's treat it like a. Like a baby. You, like, put something in front of.
- [71:39]
Sean
Their eyes, and it doesn't.
- [71:40]
Sam
It just doesn't appear anymore.
- [71:41]
SHIELD
Exactly.
- [71:43]
Sam
That's hilarious, dude. Thank you for doing this.
- [71:46]
Sean
Well, this was fun hanging with you, as it always is. And I recommend, if you want to hear shield'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. 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.
- [72:16]
Sam
And thank you for.
- [72:17]
SHIELD
You guys made it so big.
- [72:18]
Sean
Yeah, you were there. You were the cause.
- [72:21]
Sam
And you got to give SHIELD 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?
- [72:31]
SHIELD
Yeah, I have. It's a nine foot by nine foot couch. I love it. My wife hates it, by the way, but I love it.
- [72:39]
Sam
You just tweeted out a photo of your couch and I was just like, who on earth would buy this? And then I'm somehow convinced that it's the right decision.
- [72:45]
Sean
Dude, I've always been curious. They 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 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.
- [73:01]
SHIELD
I love it. It's so fun when you have people over. But it's also modular so you can turn it into other things.
- [73:06]
Sam
Thanks for doing this, man. You're the best. We appreciate you. All right. That's odd. I feel like I can rule the world.
- [73:13]
SHIELD
I know I could be what I want to.
- [73:16]
Sam
I put my all in it like.
- [73:17]
SHIELD
No days off on a road let's.
- [73:19]
Sam
Travel Never looking back.
- [73:26]
Sean
Foreign.
- [73:38]
Sam
A quick break. My favorite podcast guest on my first million is Dharmesh. Dharmesh founded HubSpot. He's a billionaire. He's one of my favorite entrepreneurs on Earth. And on one of our podcasts recently, he said, the most valuable skill that anyone could have when it comes to making money in business is, is copywriting. And when I say copywriting, what I mean is writing words that get people to take action. And I agree, by the way. I learned how to be a copywriter in my 20s. It completely changed my life. I ended up starting and selling a company for tens of millions of dollars. And copywriting was the skill that made all of that happen. And the way that I learned how to copyright is by using a technique called copy work, which is basically taking the best sales letters. And I would write it word for word and I would make notes as to why each phrase was impactful and effective. And a lot of people have been asking me about copywork. So I decided to make a whole program for it. It's called Copy that Copy that. Com. It's only like 120 bucks. And it's a simple, fast, easy way to improve your copywriting. And so if you're interested, you need to check it out. It's called Copy that. You can check it out at Copy that dot com.