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- [00:00]
Sam Parr
And so it's like, damn, you have written off the most obvious growth channel with this internal narrative of we tried that. It didn't work. It didn't work is a sentence I'm very skeptical of. Now I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
- [00:16]
Shaun Puri
I put my all in it. Like days off on a road, less travel, never.
- [00:20]
Sam Parr
Here's what I got for you today. This podcast, I have a story about two kind of like blue collar founders who just got their business off the ground. And I met up with them and they asked me these questions and it was like, it was a set of mistakes that I think everybody makes. And so I think it's worth talking about. So I want to talk about what the three things these guys said. And then I want to tell you about this business that's really fascinating because that's a small business. Then there's a huge business that's fascinating me right now. It's so new and interesting that, like, I just kind of want to talk about it with you. In the last days, I have like a, a marketing principle, a little framework that I saw, a great example that I saw, and I want to share that as well. So I got three things for you.
- [01:05]
Shaun Puri
All right. I have a couple things for you as well. Maybe we'll go back and forth. You want to start with your favorite one?
- [01:10]
Sam Parr
Yeah. All right. So I went to Utah last week to do a podcast with this guy, Ryan Smith. He owns the Utah Jazz. And he's like, he started Qualtrics. And so anyways, that's going to come out. It's a good episode. He's a crazy dude. While I was there. And one of the reasons that happened was Ryan plays pickup basketball at six in the morning. And there's a guy who's in his regular run. He's been doing that for like 16 years with the same group of guys in Utah. Very like, honestly, aspirational thing. I was like, oh man, I kind of want that. That sounds kind of great to have. One of the guys in the run had DM me like two years ago, and he was like, hey, I play pick a pickup basketball with this guy, Ryan Smith. I told him the podcast is great and he should come on. And he was like, if you guys come to Morning basketball, I'll do the podcast. And we're like, done. We'll be there. We play basketball, we do the podcast, all this good stuff. He tours us around the stadium and all this crazy stuff. We're just hanging out we're just getting a meal before we head to the airport. And so I invite those guys, the guy who put in the good word. I was like, hey, we should come hang out. You kind of made this whole thing happen in a way. He probably wouldn't have done it had you not, you know, told him, hey, this is. This is something worth doing. Come hang out. And so he comes and he starts telling me about his business. He's got this business called mobile emissions. So the idea is like, you know how you have to get, like, your smog check? You have to get, like, an emissions check for your car every year.
- [02:32]
Shaun Puri
They do it at your house.
- [02:34]
Sam Parr
They'll come to you. That's the idea. Okay, great. So normally you go to some, like, dump of a mechanic place and you wait in line or whatever, you book appointment, you go, they. These guys will come to you for like, 50 or 60 bucks. Okay, cool. And so I'm like, how's the business going? He tells me how it's going, it's going great, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then he. He basically says three things that, like, I just thought were such. Such typical traps that every founder falls into, myself included. That's, you know, if you spot it, you got it. That's how I even noticed. Oh, that's that trap. I've been in there before. My. I got some scars on my ankles from stepping into that one. So the first one is, you know, he's asking about growth. And naturally, Sam, when somebody asks you, like, you know, what do you think we should do to grow this thing? What's your first question? I'm just curious if you have the same first question I do.
- [03:20]
Shaun Puri
What have you tried? What's worked? What's like, the one thing that's actually going well? And what's like, the 10 other things that you've tried that aren't going well and stop doing them and start doing the one thing.
- [03:29]
Sam Parr
Exactly. So it was basically, it's like, where are the customers coming from today? Let's start with that. Okay, so how do you get customers today? And then they said, oh, you know, Google search results. And I was like, oh, so Google Ads? And he goes, no, no, no. Like, just Google search results. I go, oh, like, why aren't you doing Google Ads for when somebody searches, like, smog check near me or whatever. Right. Emissions testing near me? And he's like, oh, we tried that. It didn't work. So we're really thinking about, you know, we're thinking about this and this and this, like, fancy New cool things.
- [03:57]
Shaun Puri
And you're like, well, tell me about the try.
- [04:00]
Sam Parr
Exactly. So I'm like, tell me like. And I was like, that's interesting. It didn't work. What, what, what part didn't work? Tell me more. What was the data? And then suddenly cats got the tongue. Don't know that. Don't know the data. Don't know what happened. Oh, it turns out actually what the, what actually it happened was Google gives you like a couple hundred bucks of free Google Ad credits. Yeah, yeah, they had spent it. They didn't have tracking set up. And then like, anecdotally, they were like, oh, I think we got like, lower quality leads. Like, some people were like, the price is too expensive. So, you know, it didn't really work. What was the roas on it? I don't really know. We didn't have it set up properly. And so it's like, damn, you have written off what's probably the most obvious growth channel with this internal narrative of we tried that, it didn't work, and then it didn't work is like a sentence I'm very skeptical of now because I think so few people truly try things to the point where they got a definitive answer and the answer was clear and they actually had iterated on it and tried it enough times to really know that that was like, let's say, trap number one. Looking for the new fancy whatever thing when the obvious thing hasn't been done properly yet.
- [05:09]
Shaun Puri
I make that mistake all the time. I, I, I've made it previously. Like, with the Hustle, we grew via Facebook ads, and I got really lucky the very first. So. So the Hustle was my daily newsletter. In year one, it was zero to a hundred thousand. Year two was a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand. Year three was like five. And at the end of year one, we hit a little bit of a plateau. And I said, let's try Facebook ads. We know how much we make per subscriber. Let's just spend a little bit of money. And the first ad that I made on Facebook, we ended up spending collectively something like 8 or 10 million dollars over the lifetime of the company. And that trained my brain that I still struggle to break it, which is if it doesn't work in the first couple tries, it just, it won't work. And the reality is, and I've since I have examples of where this is true, you really need to do like potentially 50 to 100 reps. If you're talking about an ad. It could literally be your hundredth ad that like, changes everything, because this one ad that we ran, it converted, I think we acquired a customer for a $50. Everything else was $3. It was literally two times better, which is a big deal. It changes the business. So I understand exactly what you're saying.
- [06:21]
Sam Parr
And by the way, there's a fix for this trap of thinking, which is you also can't just stubbornly do things forever either, right? So that's not the answer. Write everything down. So when you write down what actually happened, you will realize how flimsy of a grasp you have or how flimsy the attempt was. And the way I do it is almost like the Socratic method. Like, I, by the way, I literally do. This is not a. It's not like a metaphor. I open up a Google Doc and then it's basically me. And then there's like smarter, wiser, older me, right? And smarter, wiser, older me. Basically ask a question, I put that in bold. And then my answer, I unbold and I just type right underneath. And I just advise myself, because I have the full context. I'm sitting right here. I have infinite time to do this for myself. So let me go ahead and ask myself a question. So I'll be like, what's already working? Cool. Can you do more of that? What would it mean if you did more of that? Is there a way to double doing just the same? Like, you know, without finding a new thing? Could you. Do you think you could double with just that? Or, okay, what's the next most likely thing to work? And then you answer, oh, maybe it's Google Ads. Cool. Did you try them? Like, yeah, we did. Was it a real try? What happened? And then you sort of have to write it down and you have to go look up the data and you have to do. And you basically, writing is sort of like an. It's like an exposing function.
- [07:38]
Shaun Puri
Writing forces clear thinking.
- [07:40]
Sam Parr
It forces clear thinking, and it just highlights sloppy thinking because you can't fill in the gaps. You can't just say, like, it didn't really work. If you just sit there, you're like, well, if I read this, I'd be like, what does that mean? You know, like, just provide the actual answer instead of this, like, hand, wavy way of saying it. And so anyways, that's the force of. All right, that's trap number one, trap number two. So I was like, okay, so what's next for you guys? Which, by the way, was a trick question because already, we had already figured out, like, like, what's next for them Is to do Google Ads properly.
- [08:09]
Shaun Puri
All right, so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, the Hustle, we grew it to something like 17 or 18 million dollars in revenue. I started it with, like, $300. My current company, Hampton, does over 10 million in revenue. Started it with actually no money. Maybe $29 or something like that. Nothing. And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, the Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now, today, with under a thousand dollars. These are models that, if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now. You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now back to the show.
- [09:03]
Sam Parr
Second trap was not dogfooding your own product. So one of the great, like, simple tests with everybody. When you. If you meet a founder, you could spend like, 45 minutes talking about the business, but the better way to do is take out your phone or your laptop right then and just mystery shop the product. And so I just. I was like, yeah. Like, I was like, yeah, you guys should do Google Ads. So I was just checking, does anyone run Google Ads for that same search? Nobody was running it. And then I was like, guys, you said all your traffic comes from organic. You're not even on the first, like, you're not even in the top section of Google. Like, you're like, you know, in the middle. And I was like, but this top section, it's not SEO. It's like, you know, like the Google, like, business results. Like, where it's like a. Gives you, like, a map and a phone number to call of, like, business that thinks you're trying to find.
- [09:49]
Shaun Puri
I see them there. I see them there.
- [09:50]
Sam Parr
And I was like. But they were like, you know, even there, they were, like, lower, and they didn't have as many, like, reviews. I was like, also, like, it seems like your value prop is that, like, you save people a bunch of time. You don't really write that there. And I was like, then I go to your website, and then I see this. And I was like, you gotta walk through your product from the eyes of a user and face the pain. And we used to use usertesting.com for this, but there's A bunch of different ways to usertesting.com I love usertesting.com. you basically pay. I don't know what it is now, but let's say it was like 10 to 20 bucks a test. And basically it just sends a user to a user, goes to your site, and it screen records what they're doing. And they're talking. They have to talk out loud while they're using it.
- [10:30]
Shaun Puri
Didn't your mom do that for a long time and they gave her stock in the company when it went public?
- [10:34]
Sam Parr
Yeah, my mom made like 100 grand off this company because she, she started as a tester, then became a, like a monitor of the testers, like a quality control. And like, she got like a stock grant and the company ended up going public. That's awesome. It was like, kind of amazing. That was like, you know, I got my parents, I got my mom on that, I got my dad to Airbnb his house, and like, that's become their, like, last 15 years of retirement is doing this.
- [10:57]
Shaun Puri
That's awesome. You know, I love that story.
- [11:00]
Sam Parr
So anyways, face the pain. I think most entrepreneurs don't actually face the pain. They think the problem is elsewhere. Like, the problem is most likely right there on your site in your core flow that users are going through, where you're just not clear enough or you're not compelling enough or you're not visible enough. And it's like one of those three problems. If you just say, how do I become more visible? How do I make my proposition more compelling, like, more juicy? And then how do I make it more clear? And so I just thought, like, that was like thing two and thing three was they were like, should we expand? We're only in two counties right now. Should we expand to like a third, a fourth, we can get into this one. Or should we, like, focus on, like, fixing the funnel, like the core first? Right. And I think this is like the constant debate that people have. And my, you know, obviously my advice was like, fix, like, make the system work and then replicate it is like, always going to work better than spread yourself out, make your system more complex and not really. While it's not really working very efficiently. I think it's like, typically it. But I would say there are so many of these fork in the road decisions of, like, do we go left or right in entrepreneurship? And I think there's a simple heuristic, which is, which one seems easier to you? Like, meaning, like, which one is a lower perceived pain or difficulty? Because if you think there's two equal options, but one one feels like it's less pain, it's actually a worse option. It's just being boosted by the fact that you're trying to avoid pain a little bit. And. And so therefore it's like it's become a 50 50, but it's not truly a 50 50.
- [12:34]
Shaun Puri
One of my favorite quotes that I heard when, when Charlie Munger died, I went and researched a bunch of his stuff and he had a quote about almost all the time, which is a smart man does first what a dumb man does last. And I've made that decision incorrectly so many times, which is I'll do it this easy time, this one time, and then eventually I'll do this or like, I can't start this way because you need scale, you need this, you need that. So like an example would be like, had I known what I know now about Hampton, I only would have done New York in real life and then very slowly scaled from city to city to city. But that's not fun. That's not fun because I can't scale quickly. That's very slow. And there's just been so many examples of where I've taken, I mean, everyone does it where I've taken the easy route first when I should have taken the hard route first. One of my favorite books, when I was in high school, I ran cross country track and field and I ran in college and I was pretty decent. And there was a book that changed my life. It was called Train Hard, Win Easy. That's the same phrase where I think about that all the time. Train hard, win easy.
- [13:43]
Sam Parr
Yes. Yeah, exactly. I think most people will realize that your judgment, ultimately your personal judgment, the judge in your head with the gavel who's deciding go left or go right, go up or go down, start or continue, start or stop, all those micro decisions are obviously become your destiny. And the question is, how do you make that decision making function better? And I don't think most people will invest in making their decision making function better. They'll invest in a lot of other things, but they don't invest a lot in that. And I think there's a few kind of short list of tools that you should be doing regularly, exercises you should be doing regularly to work out that decision making muscle. And one of them is basically the thing we talked about earlier, writing another one is understanding your biases. So I bias towards things that sound easy or sound fun or sound cool to others. And so therefore those are getting like overweighted in my decision making versus These other things. And so there's just a few ways you can make better decisions. Another one, by the way, if you can't tell I'm a little bit under the weather or have been sick for about a week now. And dude, making decisions when you're sick. Just my entire thought process when I'm sick is probably, I don't know, five times worse than my thought process when I'm healthy and I'm feeling active and energized and like anything is possible. And I'm the same guy. I didn't read any new books. I didn't like, nothing changed except for my actual energy levels, my fatigue levels, and I'm a totally different person. So I literally abstained from making like any decisions.
- [15:26]
Shaun Puri
Yeah, like when you can't, you can't text your ex when you're drunk.
- [15:30]
Sam Parr
Exactly, exactly.
- [15:31]
Shaun Puri
It's like I can't make any decisions while I'm sick. I do that all the time.
- [15:35]
Sam Parr
Makes cowards of us all. Is like, you know what they say in like, you know, in fighting, I think there's that. I think. And that's another one where I had the realization I was like, man, okay, today I'm on the extreme end of the spectrum. It's very obvious, right? Like if I'm this sick, I already. My mindset, my, my mood, my mindset is in such a shitty state that like, this is not a good time to be making good decisions. It's not a time where I'm going to make good decisions. It's not a time when I'm going to have be like super creative or productive or any of those things. Okay, that's extreme. But on a day to day basis, I don't really do as good of a job as I should of first getting into a great state of mind before then going and trying to perform whatever that performance is, whether it's being a good dad or being a good CEO or being good at anything. And I was like, and I'm in Probably the top 0.1% of people who think about this. Most people don't even have the word state in their vocabulary. And I have practiced this for years with the Tony Robbins stuff. Like that's a thing for me. And I still am like, I don't know, pretty average at it.
- [16:33]
Shaun Puri
No, I don't think you're average at it. I definitely don't think you're average. I actually think you're great at it. There's a book called the Triple Package and the author claims to have analyzed incredibly successful Groups of people, ultra successful people. And she narrows it down to three reasons as to what are three things they all have in common. The first is a superiority complex. So they feel that they are born to be better. You know, there's a lot of people listening to this podcast and you look around at your job that you hate and you think, I was destined to do something greater than this. I, I, I, I have it inside of me. I'm special, I can do it. That's trait one. The second trait is conversely or very interestingly, an infurity complex in the sense of, I am not good enough. I'm not where I need to be, I am shit, I need to improve. And that creates urgency and that creates like a fear, which is actually quite good of like, I have to work to be better in order to get to where I think I'm destined to go. And the third one, impulse control. Can you control your urges and your impulse? And an example of this is like when you wake up at 6am and you said you're gonna go to the gym. It's like your. I think the story you have to tell yourself is like, my emotions don't dictate whether I go or not. The alarm, the alarm clock dictates whether I go or not. And it's the same thing with making business. I've made so many decisions impulsively. It sounds like you're trying to prevent yourself from making a decision while being emotion emotional. And that ability to put the gas pedal on and off and control your impulses a bit is incredibly valuable.
- [18:02]
Sam Parr
I would agree with all three of those. And I would just say, like, even I don't know. The bigger picture takeaway for me is, man, this seems like a underinvested area for myself, but generally at large is one of the most important things that it doesn't seem like is talked or taught anywhere.
- [18:21]
Shaun Puri
Yeah, just a reflection, I think. Chris. What's Chris Spalling.
- [18:25]
Sam Parr
Sparling. Yeah.
- [18:25]
Shaun Puri
Sparling said something to you, which you told me, which was amazing, which is someone was telling him a story and he's like, well, but at least I, I learned X, Y and Z about my company going out of business. And Chris looks at him very sternly and goes, are you sure that's the right lesson that you should take away from this situation? Did you learn the right thing? And so constantly. What did I learn? What's the right thing that I learned here is actually a really good thing.
- [18:48]
Sam Parr
I learned so much. Okay, what'd you learn? Well, it's like, oh, that didn't seem like you've actually had any clarity of thought around that. And then a lot of times the things they learned is like, I learned, you know, you really can't trust people. It's like, whoa, that's the takeaway you had of this whole thing?
- [19:05]
Shaun Puri
Like, yeah, that's the wrong takeaway.
- [19:06]
Sam Parr
You know, like, how many times do people actually have the right takeaway? Becoming very skeptical of this thing that we all nod and agree with, like, yeah, well, you learned. You know, it's like, no, you probably didn't learn, actually. Actually, in my experience, most people who think that they learned at the end of the thing didn't really learn. Or if they learned, they learned some, you know, the wrong. The wrong lesson that's probably not even going to help them. Did not actually have the right takeaway from the situation. Once you realize that, it's sort of like, you know, like a. A red pill moment.
- [19:33]
Shaun Puri
Can I tell you a couple businesses that are fascinating to me right now? And I think. I think you're going to get a kick out of the first one.
- [19:40]
Sam Parr
All right, let's go.
- [19:41]
Shaun Puri
So I'm interested. So you actually posted something you said, I don't like running.
- [19:46]
Sam Parr
I don't care about running, don't follow running. But there's a story right here in this picture that I want to talk about.
- [19:51]
Shaun Puri
And what was it? It was Cameron Haynes, his son Tru Truit, is a beast right now. He basically is running marathons at a wicked fast pace, like 2 hours and 30 minutes, which, for anyone who runs a marathon, that's. He's. That's A, that's fast. B, he's like 220 pounds. He's, like, huge. And C, he's doing it in blue jeans. Is that right?
- [20:09]
Sam Parr
That's exactly right. There's a guy who's running long races, marathons, ultramarathons. He's running them fast, and he's running them wearing, like, jeans, not shorts. Not. Not jean shorts, like full jeans.
- [20:22]
Shaun Puri
And so the. And you're like, that right there is a Purple Cow. And Purple Cow is a book by Seth Godin. And it's one of many books that basically say the same thing, which is like, in order to stand out, you have to have. It's better to be different than. It is better. And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I've been thinking about that a lot, lady, lately, because we had a guest on and he said something like, if you split test everything, you're just going to have porn. And it was basically. I think it was George Mack. And it was like this idea that.
- [20:48]
Sam Parr
I don't even know if he said that, but that's great.
- [20:50]
Shaun Puri
I think I. He either tweeted it or he said it to us.
- [20:53]
Sam Parr
The. If. If you just start AB testing your website and you just run an infinite number of AB tests, you end up with pornhub. That. That. That's got to be it, actually. That's so true. Yeah.
- [21:03]
Shaun Puri
If you split test everything, it just adds up. Porn. But. And at one. At some point, you need to take a stand and you want to be different and you have to stand out. And it doesn't make sense why you're doing that, but it's just cool. And the market tends to adjust and, like, recognize that that is badass. You know, there's a billion examples that we could go on what that means. But let me give you two that interest me right now. The first. So you're familiar with the Onion, right? The. The comedy news website?
- [21:28]
Sam Parr
Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.
- [21:29]
Shaun Puri
Okay. So the Onion was founded in 1988, and it's kind of funny. It's gone through so many different owners. I think it was started at University of Wisconsin as just like a newsletter. So it was originally founded as a funny newsletter that made fun of, like, campus life. And over the years, it's become, like a popular magazine and then now a digital magazine where they make fun of shit. And it's hilarious and very, like. It's kind of interesting that it's been owned by, like, a variety of people. I think in like, 2003, some rich fund hedge fund guy bought it, and then they were sold and bought again in 2013. I think, if you remember, like, GEO Media, it was called. They own, like, Gawker, like a bullcrap media company bought it and it wasn't working out. And then eventually in 2024, Jeff Lawson, the founder of Twilio, bought it. So it's kind of been like one of these things where, like, wealthy people feel like they need to be, like, the patron and, like, steward. Like, you know, like. And be the steward of, like, making fun of stuff that deserves to be made fun of. And that's pretty cool. But last year, they did something very interesting, very purple Kali. They brought back the. The print magazine, and they went really hard on the print magazine. And within a year, they already have 53,000 paying subscribers. I think it cost $10 a month, and they're expecting from that something like $6 million in revenue this year. Last year they did less than $2 million in revenue. So a print magazine, 3X their revenue. And I think that is so cool. I think I've talked about magazines on this podcast a couple times, but I think magazines are incredibly interesting. Have. Do you subscribe to any?
- [23:08]
Sam Parr
You know, I've been playing with this, so there's a couple people that are doing this. So I currently have an arena subscription. Colossus. So awesome. Patrick o'. Shaughnessy.
- [23:18]
Shaun Puri
Awesome.
- [23:19]
Sam Parr
Who has a podcast. Basically sort of like expanding his media empire, whatever. Whatever you want to call it, with long form journalism, like old school print magazine, you know, your story on this person. And it's like beautiful photography, really long form stuff and it's good. I like the quality of the product on that side. But I don't subscribe to the physical thing. I think they have one.
- [23:46]
Shaun Puri
Yes, they do. It's new. I think it's only on edition number three. But it's. But it's new. So you just subscribe to two. Is that right? Anymore.
- [23:51]
Sam Parr
I mean, that's a lot. To two is way over the. The Vegas over line of what they thought I had. For a magazine subscription.
- [23:58]
Shaun Puri
I subscribed to two, actually Popeye magazine, which is a Japanese magazine actually. And it's called. It's like. I think the, the tagline does it. It's kind of a gay translation. It's city boy life. But it's like, it's sort of like GQ for Japan where they talk about like clothing and coffee and like urban culture.
- [24:18]
Sam Parr
Gotcha.
- [24:18]
Shaun Puri
Which I love. And interestingly, I don't know if all Japanese magazines are like this, but it, you. It. It reads backwards. So it doesn't like, you don't fold it like this. It's like upside down, so you like go to the left and that's. And that's kind of interesting. And then the second one is Thrasher magazine, which is like a skateboard thing that I had when I was a kid that I love. But I just think that magazines are so interesting. And so can I tell you what I would do? I thought about doing this. I read the biography of JFK Jr. That was John Kennedy's son, and he actually had a magazine in the 80s. And I went and bought the first edition. This is what Sidney Crawford. It was a very. It's a very famous magazine cover. It's what Sidney Crawford dresses George Washington. And it was cool and everything. But what I would do, I would call it a newsletter, not in a magazine. And I would literally do it on white paper. That is Stapled together with like 10 or 20 sheets and put into an envelope. And I think that I can do something. I've thought about doing this. I think someone could create some type of wealth or like for high net worth people or for tech companies and sell it for around $1,000 a year and only do four to eight additions per year. And if I did it on wealthy people, it would all be getting like tips and tactics and strategies and stories on what high net worth people are doing. Or if I did it on tech companies, I would sell it to the tech company and I would list as many names of the tech companies and explaining what they're doing in a particular industry as like a roundup. Sort of like a high school newspaper.
- [25:44]
Sam Parr
Yeah, that's interesting. So you're just saying physical sort of takes you into a new category, physical.
- [25:50]
Shaun Puri
So yeah, so I guess I didn't like round that out. But like the purple cow here is no, no, digital only physical. I think nostalgia is like a thing. I think you and I have talked about our own habits, about how we're getting sick of digital. I think everyone is experiencing that and I think that someone can actually build a great business. I think what a lot of people do though is they tend to go flashy, shiny, premium. And I would argue you should go the opposite. You should go like homemade mom and pop. Almost like a punk rock, a zine. What it used to be exactly what you're pulling out right there if you put it in a folder like that.
- [26:25]
Sam Parr
So this, I think I've showed you this before, but my guy Diego basically delivers me these. I don't know if you can see, there's like tabs on the side, right. So he basically prints out this thing and it's a collection of like the best things to read. So it might be like, oh yeah, Howard Marks put out a new memo this week. It's like we should read that. We should really digest. We should slow down and read that. Don't make it just Chrome tab number, you know, 93. Oh, that's open alongside Twitter and a bunch of other dopamine, you know, fast food dispensing, you know, like Chrome is basically like, you know, that Coca Cola freestyle machine. That's what basically like my Internet browser is. That's what my phone is.
- [27:05]
Shaun Puri
Unlimited options.
- [27:06]
Sam Parr
It's unlimited options of syrup and water. You know, like syrup, water and bubbles. And that's not really what I want to be having. And this is like when somebody gets a coconut and they just chop off the top and they give. Put a straw on it, and they're like, here you go, and you're drinking out of a coconut. And so he delivers these to me basically, like once a month. So, like, you know, for example, in the last one, it was. Brent be sure had wrote an annual letter about his private equity fund, and it was basically like the performance of the fund. So he knew I'd find that interesting. Like, oh, what have they invested in? How. How's that fund actually doing? Is, you know, are they doing really well? Okay, what's. What's going on? And then he also has, like, his, like, you know, he gets his, like, Warren Buffett on and that where he, like, very philosophical about life or the markets or whatever, you know, in there. He knows I enjoy reading that.
- [27:51]
Shaun Puri
I think you can charge a lot for that.
- [27:54]
Sam Parr
He'll put in like a. A science thing. So it'll be like, oh, yeah, these guys are working on. There's a lot of people out there trying to study the. The genes for. For short sleep. So there's some people like Trump and I think Clinton before this, like, people who genetically only need five to six hours of sleep. And what an advantage basically, to. To, you know, have three extra hours a day but still be at full energy. And that there's people actually trying to figure out, like, the way we did Ozempic and we were able to limit your need for food, like, make you not need more food. Could we make you not need as much sleep if we studied this? Like, oh, that's fascinating. So I'm reading. You know, there's like a science thing in there, a briefing. It's a brief. And so, like, if I just productize that thing that he's already giving me, it's basically what you're talking about, right? It's all in the curation, right? It's like, you have to. It would have to be somebody who is like, I trust or knows my taste or, you know, like, is. Is genuinely. Because if the first thing I open, if it's like, meh, I'm out. I'm out on this altogether, you know.
- [28:54]
Shaun Puri
But you can tell a story as to why something should be important. So, for example, like, the. The. The sleep thing, that's not like, inherently important, but you think it's important because of X, Y and Z. And you tell that story about why it's important. And what I would do is it. In the first page, I would put directions on how to read, which is if you have children, it's after your kids go to bed at 8pm What? Don't turn the TV on and sit there and read this in your living room if you don't have kids. Like, this is. Don't go out and on a Thursday, read this for one hour and your life will be better. Like, you give like these like really intimate instructions to make someone feel good. And I think that this could be a hit. I sent you a link to my friend. I think I've talked about this before, but nevbox. So my friend Neville Medora, he did this thing years ago where he sent people three boxes and he called them three important copyright copywriting lessons that you need to know. And it was literally just a UPS box with three envelopes in there that had paper, like printed paper. And it was awesome.
- [29:52]
Sam Parr
So should we just do this as mfm? Like, basically, me and you curate, like, you know, two to three things each that we think is whatever with our little editorial note on top of why, you know, the sticky note of, like, why I think this is worth paying attention to.
- [30:07]
Shaun Puri
It could be awesome.
- [30:08]
Sam Parr
So, you know a thousand fans who are willing to pay a thousand dollars a year to have like, proper info diet, right? You know, like, I pay a lot of money to have a proper diet of what food goes in my body. And I know people that go to an extreme. They'll go straight farm to table. They have their favorite ranches that they source meat from, and they'll get vegetables from certain areas at certain seasons. And like, people have realized, like, it matters. What you put in changes, whatever, you know what's going to happen inside your body. But our minds were just like, no, no, go ahead, pour like social media sludge. Right on, right on top. Yeah, go ahead. Just top top me off. It's okay. If it overflows, I'll just let it.
- [30:42]
Shaun Puri
There's all these good analogies for how to sell it. Like, there's a lot of, like, ammo here to, like, sell this.
- [30:48]
Sam Parr
I don't. I don't know. This would actually be kind of fun to do. You know, I think this would be.
- [30:51]
Shaun Puri
It would be fun.
- [30:52]
Sam Parr
You know, I. This is something I like. I get these binders every month like this. One of the best things in my life is getting that. And so I guess, like, why would I not just share a version of that with other people? It doesn't hurt me to share that with other people. In fact, it would help me, I think, because I think these are cool ideas, cool things worth sharing.
- [31:11]
Shaun Puri
So let me tell you the second one. You're the son of Immigrants. So I don't know if this is gonna hit, if this experience is gonna hit the same. But in the Midwest, in Missouri, where I was raised, one of the greatest things like that I got to experience as a kid was getting milk delivered to my home once a week in a glass bottle. Did you ever experience this as a kid?
- [31:32]
Sam Parr
Never, Never.
- [31:33]
Shaun Puri
Okay, so there's this company called Oberweis. It was called Oberweis Dairy. So Oberweis was started as a dairy farm in 1915, I think in Missouri or Indiana, but it was very Midwestern. And they eventually started, they sold their own milk to like their little small town. And it expanded and expanded and expanded and, and it's mostly regional in Missouri and Illinois. So I think they have them in Chicago and St. Louis. But as a kid this is where we would get our milk. We would also get our lemonade from there and our ice cream. That was like their, their thing. And it felt amazing. Well, this company kept growing and growing and growing. Started in 1915, it was now on its fourth generation of family ownership and peak revenue, I think in 2020 or 21 was 120 million in revenue. So it was good top line revenue. But it's a hard business, it's low margin. And because of a bunch of silly decisions that the management had made in 2024, it went bankrupt. And a guy who we talked about in the podcast, his name was Hoffman and in fact one of the early podcasts, pre Pandemic back in, when we were in the office, he ended up buying the company. And I think he bought the company for $21 million plus. I think he said he was going to invest another $15 million into it.
- [32:51]
Sam Parr
Who's Hoffman? Who's this guy? David Hoffman, maybe?
- [32:54]
Shaun Puri
Is it David? Yeah, I think it's David. He started a recruitment agency that after 20 years was making so much money that he started buying businesses. He bought like a boat cruise business which is basically like what are those like things in San Francisco that are like swan like or what are they called where they like boat cruise. It's not like a real cruise, it's like a, like a tour in the bay type of like, like. And then he bought like blue collar businesses like that, I believe. And he eventually Oberweiss, which David Hoffman, he's based in St. Louis. So for all St. Louis folks, this is like an interesting brand. But I saw that they went bankrupt and I saw that he bought it and I thought it was very fascinating. And the reason I think it's Fascinating is I think overw milk delivery, I think that could be a thing I think that you could do. You could absolutely make this a wonderful business that people our age, so in our 30s and 40s, people who have children grew up with something like this and it's not part of the experience that you and I have at all anymore. You know, we probably just go to Costco or get something like instacarted or something like that. But I actually think that oat milk, almond milk, I think those non dairy milks, I actually think those are like trending downward right now and dairy is up, which it like took a hit over the last decade and, and glass and nostalgia. And I would have an entire campaign around something like making it now. Like it used to be made way back when when it was made better. Like I would lean super hard into that and I then I would upsell with better eggs, better for you, all types of products, eggs, whatever, hopefully higher margin things. But I think, I think the milk delivery business and when I was thinking of like nostalgic things, I think that could be really fascinating. Where's that land with you?
- [34:42]
Sam Parr
Less good? Partially because I'm like, because when I'm looking at their thing, they have like, they have the dairy delivery, but then they're like breakfast and snacks and dinner and desserts and juices.
- [34:54]
Shaun Puri
Like that's not what you do.
- [34:55]
Sam Parr
That's not how you expand it into everything. But I can see why you would need to, right? Like what. How much money could you really make just delivering only milk, right? Our only like core dairy, milk and eggs. Like, it just doesn't seem, it doesn't seem like it's big enough. Doesn't seem like there's enough, you know, average order value basically to make the whole like logistics worth it. I do think that just building a premier dairy brand so not like the home delivery part, but being like, yo, okay, all of you guys went anti dairy. Got it. Cool. But if you like rich good dairy, we got you. And so like, you know, when I go to the grocery store, there's these brands, I don't even know if they do anything differently, right? Like Alexander, like, oh, we have like 6% milk. I'm like, I don't know what 6% is, but like, give me that. What is that?
- [35:44]
Shaun Puri
Three times better than 2%.
- [35:45]
Sam Parr
And then they put it in a different shaped bottle and then there's like, what's the other ones? Like Strauss Farms or whatever. Like there's these. It's just, you know, like, like every category Packaging, but like, I think just tripling down on like rich dairy and like actual high quality dairy. I just feel like the grocery store is like there's still shelves that need that sort of. That need that sort of stuff. And. But the, the trick is if you actually are operating a farm, it's very different than the kind of like D2C DTC repackagers of stuff. You know what I mean? And so if you actually have a story about your, you know, your farm and where you're at and why it's better and like all that stuff, whether it's for, for beef, whether it's for chicken. I think somebody came on the podcast, they pitched us for chicken. They're like, you should just make the world needs like a better chicken brand. And like what is the, what's the like Snake River Farms for chicken type of thing? I think there's, there's that for dairy and for chicken, for beef, for all these staples, you know.
- [36:46]
Shaun Puri
Did you see what Cracker Barrel did?
- [36:47]
Sam Parr
So they changed their logo, right? Is that the.
- [36:49]
Shaun Puri
More than that? More than that. They made the inside look like a Chipotle. So overnight or.
- [36:55]
Sam Parr
They've been doing that for a long time and people just started paying attention.
- [36:57]
Shaun Puri
You know, I haven't been to a Cracker Barrel in a very long time, but honestly, I didn't even.
- [37:03]
Sam Parr
Is a Cracker Barrel or a restaurant. I thought it might be like home goods. Like is no hybrid Cracker Barrel.
- [37:09]
Shaun Puri
It's like my. When we take. It's our road trip, it's like when we take road trips, it's where we stop. But it's basically a. So it's a huge chain. It's publicly traded billions of dollars and it's a, it's a restaurant that has like chicken and dumplings is like their famous thing, but it's definitely like disgusting.
- [37:26]
Sam Parr
Chicken and dumplings. Like Asian dumplings or. What do you mean chicken name?
- [37:29]
Shaun Puri
Dumplings, brother. No, it's like, like it's basically like Bisquick. You know, Remember Bisquick? Like, it's like, okay, basically biscuits and gravy. Sort of. It's sort of like biscuits and gravy and they. But then they have like a huge store where you can buy like crap you don't need and just junk. So you could buy like suckers.
- [37:47]
Sam Parr
Part store, part restaurant.
- [37:48]
Shaun Puri
Yeah, it's like half. More like gift shop. It's like, it's like borderline gift shop on the edge of store. But. But like and restaurant. Yeah, that's what it's like the idea is like they always have a wait because they're crowded and you just go in there and you buy like tchotchkes, basically. Like the optics of it, I'm not saying what the reality is. The optics are that this young, like 40 something, 30 year old woman who's now the CEO, she appears as though she's like a yuppie New Yorker, which is the exact opposite of who the clientele is of Cracker Barrel. It looks like she just kind of came in and like behaved in such a way where she's out of touch with the average Cracker Barrel. The average crap. She's out of touch with the average cracker who goes across. Yeah.
- [38:37]
Sam Parr
A lot of Barrel, no cracker.
- [38:39]
Shaun Puri
Yeah. She does not own like one pair of overalls. So, like, I'm not. Again, I don't know the reality. I'm just saying that's what it looks like. And there, the stock just like crashed after she made this announcement. And. But there is something about that where it's like, dude, don't, don't fix this stuff. It's supposed to look disgusting. That's a feature, that's not a bug. It's supposed to look like a filthy restaurant.
- [39:02]
Sam Parr
Right, Right. Worse is better here.
- [39:05]
Shaun Puri
All right, what do you got?
- [39:07]
Sam Parr
All right, so before this podcast, I spent probably the last hour reading a profile on Alpha School and what's his name? Joe Lamont.
- [39:16]
Shaun Puri
Dude, we were on that early, but we didn't have a lot of information on him.
- [39:19]
Sam Parr
And.
- [39:19]
Shaun Puri
And they explained why Joe Lamont hadn't done an interview in 25 years.
- [39:24]
Sam Parr
So there's more info out now about Alpha. So basically this isn't like, this is. We're now treading in the waters of the unknown a little bit because it's a little bit mysterious. Plus there's just, it's new. Plus you haven't been there in person. Plus, who knows?
- [39:39]
Shaun Puri
Well, say who Joe is.
- [39:41]
Sam Parr
All right, so Joe Lamont is basically like a software entrepreneur who's super, super successful, like $10 billion net worth type of type of situation. He dropped out of college his senior year at Stanford, I believe he starts Trilogy Software. Trilogy Software was basically like an enterprise sales system of some kind.
- [39:59]
Shaun Puri
I still don't entirely know what they did after all my research on.
- [40:02]
Sam Parr
Yeah, it's like before my time. It's like, all right, cool.
- [40:04]
Shaun Puri
Like, like the analogy that I think I heard is like, if you're an airplane company and you need to buy lots of parts to build your airplane, it would help you Rich components to purchase. That, that's, that's the best I, I could tell. But it became huge and he, it was basically like him and Microsoft were like recruiting the best talent. Him, Microsoft and Dell, they were, he was the type of guy he was. When he was like 28, he was on the Forbes list of richest Americans.
- [40:28]
Sam Parr
Exactly. So he was the youngest guy on the forbes list. Forbes 400. He's worth like $500 million at that stage. He then also creates a private equity firm called I think ESW Capital or something like that, and basically starts buying small software companies that are cash flowy type companies. And then similar to Constellation Software, basically bought like hundreds of these companies. And then, you know, that's now a big deal.
- [40:56]
Shaun Puri
Which I think, I think, I think he's, he has a lot of mystery because allegedly one of the tactics is that he would buy dying software companies, fire everyone, outsource it to India and just acknowledge that it was dying and not invest in it and hire the cheapest people, which is not inherently wrong, but it's not maybe the thing that you want to brag about all the time when software hospice.
- [41:16]
Sam Parr
Yeah, okay, so, so, so whatever. He's obviously mega, mega successful. Again, we're sort of like tens of billions. One of the richest guys in the world. He recently, his thing that he got obsessed with is called Alpha School. So the story here is that from what I can understand, there's a woman who used to work for Trilogy Software. She and her husband, I think her name's Mackenzie Price, they create a school first for their own kids and they kind of are like, they're kind of motivated because of the following problem, which I agree with the problem statement entirely. So if you look at the world's greatest, you know, the greatest people that, that, that have accomplished things in the world. So whether it's like, you know, Mozart or Beethoven, they're composing symphonies at age 5, right? Or it's Alexander the Great, he like conquered most of the world by the time he was 22, started at 16. There's many, many, many examples of people who at a very young age were capable of doing a lot. And so, you know, there was a central question of like, why don't we have more Alexanders? Not like conquerors per se, but people who at a young age are able to do a lot. And if you look at Einstein and you look at Alexander, you look at like Marcus Aurelius. One of the things about a lot of these sort of great achievers is that the way they learned was not in a traditional school, but was through direct one on one tutoring from a sort of wise mentor. So like Socrates, Plato, you know, that sort of that, that lineage of one on one tutoring, like a, like a.
- [42:53]
Shaun Puri
Like apprenticeship, a little bit like apprenticeship.
- [42:55]
Sam Parr
But they're not working for the person, they're just daily study, daily tutoring, one on one with a master. And there's all these studies that have happened over the years of what is the best way to teach. You know, like I think we would all agree we would love education to be more effective, we'd all love to improve education. It's like super high leverage. If you can educate people better, you know, the world prospers. So how do you do it? And for a long time there's been this thing called the two sigma problem. Have you seen this? Bloom's two sigma problem.
- [43:24]
Shaun Puri
According to Wikipedia, it's the two sigma problem. This one on one mentorship. About 90% of tutored, tutored students attained a level of achievement reached by only the highest 20%. So basically you are almost guaranteed to be in the top 20% if you use this one on one tutoring methodology.
- [43:44]
Sam Parr
Correct. And so for a long time it's been the case. All right, now what's changed? AI has changed. So now with AI, the idea is any kid with a tablet, an iPad, you know, whatever, can have a tutor that is fully designing custom lessons plans on the fly for each student perfectly tailored to their current levels of expertise. So there's other, there's other parts of learning science. You know, for example, you want to not pass people until they have mastery of a concept because otherwise they don't have a, they have a shaky foundation. So the problem with traditional school is you pass if you get a C. A C is about, you know, 70% or better. Well, what they've shown is that you, if you get a person to 70% or 72%, basically their rate of learning as they progress will always like decrease. Because 70% was actually a bit of a shaky foundation. They didn't actually understand it. So when they tried to learn the next thing and the next thing it was too wobbly of a foundation and it collapses. Whereas if you get them to 90% mastery of subject, they'll do really well. So one thing is like classrooms today it's taught to get everybody to at least 70 to move forward. But the problem is you actually want people at 90 to move forward in terms of percentage. The second part is like, you know, you want people to be tested at a level that Is, you know, not so easy that it's boring. It's not challenging enough. But not so challenging that it's too hard. I don't even understand I'm drowning. Right. And so finding that, like, you know, that peak, middle zone where I'm being tested enough but not pushed so far that I'm gonna, you know, go over the cliff, that would be great. But you can't do that in a classroom. Cause every kid's at a different spot. So, you know, you just sort of, you. You sort of keep everybody comfortable. Now, that means that the smartest kids are not challenged. And it means that the kids that are the furthest back are just utterly confused. So you're kind of going for this, like, average. You teach sort of the average of the lowest common denominator. I'm just like oversimplifying everything. But this is the, this is the complaint of normal school. Okay, so what is Alpha School doing? Basically, it's a school in Austin where K through 8, you go and you do two hours on an iPad. And the idea is that you're two hours on an iPad with your AI tutorial will teach you not only everything you needed to know, as that for whatever grade level you're in, but you'll learn double that. So you basically are doing. You learn double, but in only two hours. Okay, so that's the, that's the promise. And then what do you do the rest of the day? They basically just have like random life skill workshops. So go rock climbing. Hey, build a piece of IKEA furniture.
- [46:20]
Shaun Puri
So they say life skill means public speaking, entrepreneurship, outdoor education. These experiences build grit, creativity, and adaptability.
- [46:29]
Sam Parr
Yeah, and so, like, for example, they, they did this thing where. And they, they called the teachers guides. So the guides were like, they had a group of second graders and they go, all right, let's come up with five impossible things impossible for a second grader to do. So the first one was to run a 5k in under 35 minutes, I think it was. So it's like run a 5k in under 35 minutes. So it's like, can your second grader even run a 5k? Like, most second graders could not even run a 5k. That's a pretty long run for a second grader. Second grader is seven year old. And so they asked all the students, do you think you could do it? Nobody raised their hand. They asked all the parents, do you think your kid could do it? Nobody raised their hand. And so that became one of the missions, one of the workshops, one of the impossible missions.
- [47:17]
Shaun Puri
We're going to train like a 7, a 7 year old how to run a 5K. That was it.
- [47:22]
Sam Parr
So what they did was the first day they just walked the 5K. They said, all right, you've, you've completed it. You at least know that you can go the distance. The distance is a manageable distance. And so they did that for like a couple of days. Then, then they just said, all right, cool, we're going to, we're going to try to run the first quarter mile for the first quarter of it and then we're going to walk the rest. Great. They did that for a couple days, then they did half of it running, walk the rest, set 3/4 of it running, then walk the rest until they could run the whole thing. By the end of the couple months, not only did one second grader do it, every single second grader did it. And some of them did it in under 30 minutes. And basically they were like, here's. So they had these five impossible challenges. They made them want to do it. And the reason they're able to do this is because they're doing all their learning in just a two hour window. So they can spend the rest of their time doing things that are, you know, interesting life, life type stuff for themselves.
- [48:16]
Shaun Puri
Well, and they're teaching them how to like break down a problem 35 minutes. So we'll start small and builds up confidence. Yeah, I mean, I see, I, that's amazing. I totally see the value.
- [48:25]
Sam Parr
Seems kind of amazing right now. Here's some more. Just things that are just fascinating about this. So Joe Lamont pulled out a billion dollars, I saw that from his companies to invest in Alpha School. He then said, this is the best product I've ever built by far. Better than anything I ever did at Trilogy, better than anything I've ever done since. This is so much. And it's this app that he's building called Time Back. And so it's basically like a custom AI tool that basically you are on your iPad, you're learning or your little tablet laptop, you're learning. And it is doing two things. One, there's a little waste meter in the corner. So just because the camera's watching you and recording the screen at all times, so it sees if the kid just leaves, just like gets up and.
- [49:11]
Shaun Puri
Which is what he used at his companies.
- [49:13]
Sam Parr
It's what he used at Trilogy. Right. Like at his, or when he would like buy these companies. He was known for having like pretty extreme like Keylance monitoring, productivity monitoring, stuff like controversially extreme, right?
- [49:24]
Shaun Puri
That's awesome. This is so cool. I didn't real. I saw the article and I started reading about his. I wanted to know about the business stuff. And the article was like, joe's not gonna talk to you about business stuff. He doesn't wanna talk about trilogy ews. He doesn't wanna talk about any of that, but he will talk about Alpha school. And I was like, well, shit, that's like, what I wanna know. And so when it started getting into school stuff, I was like, I don't know if I wanna read that, but this sounds so much cooler than I thought. I didn't realize how big this was going to be. And I'm on their website and my kid isn't school age yet, but I'm thinking I would absolutely want them to go to this. Would you send them yours?
- [50:01]
Sam Parr
Dude, I wish this was around us because. So I'll just give you, like, my little side side stories here, all right? Just, like personal, personal life experiences. So my kids were home this summer, and it was our first summer break. Like, my daughter is. She just did what they call tk, like, pre K. So she just finished that. She's going to be a kindergartener this year. And my son was about to be a pre K student. And then we have a baby who's small. But I had this mission. I was like, okay, three things I'm gonna do this summer. We're gonna take two epic trips with their cousins. Because I was like, that was always like, core memory for me. Yeah, I'm gonna teach them to swim because they love to do it. It's summer anyways. Plus, it's like a good life skill to have. And I haven't taken the time to actually teach them to swim, but I can do that. And then I'm gonna teach them to read because I noticed I was like, all of the schools, we send them to. School is a very generous word for what's actually happening. Right? It's by and large, babysitting, daycare. And I think this is true for generally for most schools, even through high school, college. That's a big aspect of what school is. But when they're little, it's very much that I would ask them what they learned. It's like, well, they mostly just played. And then they'll learn one thing, but they can't do math or they can't read. And I'm like, are they teaching you that? They're like, no, no, they're just doing letters. I'm like, but, you know, the Letters. You know, all the letters you could write already and they're like, yeah, but, you know, they're just teaching at that pace. If I want you to learn anything, I'm gonna have to do it outside of this. So I discovered this app called Mentava.
- [51:34]
Shaun Puri
Mentava.
- [51:35]
Sam Parr
Go to mentava. Com. Now, this is a learning app that was so expensive, I was just actually offended by the price when I saw it. I don't know if you've ever, like, downloaded apps for iPad for kids stuff, but it's usually like, I don't know, $5 to unlock the thing. Maybe it's like a $7 a month, you know, if it's like really good.
- [51:53]
Shaun Puri
Like, you know, oh my gosh, I just saw.
- [51:55]
Sam Parr
This is a $500 a month per kid size something. $1,000 a month for this app. And what this. But this app has a very simple promise, which is we could teach any 3 to 5 year old to read if they just spend, I don't know, 15 minutes a day doing this thing.
- [52:13]
Shaun Puri
For a couple of months to talk about value pricing. Your old boss, Emmett Shear, he's an investor. Emmett is. You got to ask for that discount code.
- [52:21]
Sam Parr
So I was like, wow, this is incredibly expensive. But I'm incredibly intrigued. So I get my kids on it. They've been doing it all summer, and sure enough, it actually is pretty effective. And I would say the app itself is incredibly janky. It's like the polish is janky, the animations are janky, everything's janky. It's not the best app, but the core idea, which is it's a simple value prop. I can teach your kids how to read if they do this thing for like 10 to 15 minutes a day. And, like, they just broke down reading. Because if you think about what is reading, I think there's like 45 different, like, sounds you need to be able to make. So it's like 45 sound combinations, which is like, you know, you have to learn that, like, you know, A is ah and B is B. And then you have to learn that like, CK is K together you have to learn like, those sound. So first they teach them all the building blocks and then they show them how they work when they're put together in words. And like, sure enough, both my kids are starting to read. And I'm just like, you can't. You don't get cartoons or anything else till you do your reading today, right? Really very simple trade. And they like doing it. It's kind of a game. And they Enjoy doing it.
- [53:23]
Shaun Puri
And by the way, the investors, if you go to their investor page, it's like, like literally everyone who's been on this pod, like every investor has been on our podcast.
- [53:31]
Sam Parr
Yeah, I know it's $500 because he's comparing. I don't know they wanted it to be. Is the real answer. It doesn't need to be $500, but they're comparing it to, like, tutoring, human tutoring. So they're like, oh, it's five times cheaper than a human tutor. It's like, okay, cool. But it's also 500 times more than, you know, a normal learning app on the iPad, which is my frame of reference coming into this. But I've now seen the value of this type of like, personalized learning. Because let's say they're, they're playing this game. If they don't understand that, you know, sh is sound. If they fail, like, if they get the get it wrong three times, they lose that little game level. It knows that. Okay, you just don't understand sh. So you don't just replay that level. You hop back three levels and I'll reteach you that building block to make sure that you understand it. And I'm going to get you to repeat it, you know, in these four, I'm going to use five different games as space repetition to teach you these same, you know, same few, few concepts.
- [54:26]
Shaun Puri
But it makes me nervous to have my kid on an iPad.
- [54:30]
Sam Parr
Not sure, maybe it's a personal, personal thing, but dude, my kids are on devices all the time. I've lost, I've. That, that I've let go of that rope. That, that rope is like, you know, what is it that, like that horse is out of the barn already. So now it's just a question of like, how bad is it? You know, what are you doing with your time there?
- [54:49]
Shaun Puri
And so what. Okay, bring it back to Alpha School. What are you saying?
- [54:52]
Sam Parr
I believe that they're going to be able to do this. I believe that they're going to be able to. If somebody actually with like, the guy took a billion dollars out and he has, I think a 300 person, like, AI lab that he's building his own little OpenAI that he's building to basically like custom train these models, build applications on top of them. And I think this is an insane thing that's going to happen and I think it's going to take over. Is my, my, like my unhedged, my unhedged true belief is that something like this is going to exist. And this is the best bet I've seen so far.
- [55:26]
Shaun Puri
I don't think it's going to take over. I think it's going to be a massive success. I see like so many reasons why someone would protest this, which, like, there's what we've talked about going the opposite of AI and technology. There's a massive contingency of people that will go to that category. One of our good friends sends their, their kids to a new thing that I've never heard of called nature school. Have you heard of nature school?
- [55:48]
Sam Parr
My sister runs a nature school and.
- [55:51]
Shaun Puri
I don't entirely know what it means other than you're outside and it involves nature. I guess that's it. But there's, but there's like an entire contingency of people that want to go that route. But I do think that Alpha School will be a massive hit and I am interested in like when I was reading it just while we were talking, I'm like, I am open to this. This sounds very intriguing. Does it help you get into college or are they like anti college or. They didn't get to that point yet.
- [56:14]
Sam Parr
No, it does their high school, they have a high. They go all the way up through high school and they're like, yep, our high school students like crush the SAT and act compared to. They like, basically they use these like pretty standardized metrics called map about like, basically how much you learn. So let's say it's like you do a test and it's. Let's say the average third grader is at like a 100 score in math. Well, by the end of a normal semester of school, they would have gone up 7 points. But with Alpha School, they go up 15 points. Well then if, well, but of course that compounds because they did that in, you know, a shorter amount of time. Plus then when they enter the next level, they'll grow again. So they're growing like by a bigger amount and at a faster rate. And so, you know, obviously that compounds the longer you would do it.
- [56:58]
Shaun Puri
Dude, you know how, like, you know, I don't know if this is true, but the story is like Magic Johnson became a billionaire not through basketball, but through like franchising McDonald's. You said you wanted to open up a school, like you could be the biggest franchise.
- [57:09]
Sam Parr
Well, I don't even know if you have to franchise. I think you just literally license the technology.
- [57:14]
Shaun Puri
Similar.
- [57:15]
Sam Parr
Yeah, it's just do I want to do it for young kids versus, like college? You know, like, I'm more interested in College, but because young kids have their.
- [57:21]
Shaun Puri
Own set of problems, you know, it's really complicated. Well, yeah, but I mean, like, that's super rewarding. Running my company, Hampton, it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses, and I'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets, emails, and clunky tools that do not talk to each other. It's like watching someone build a house with duct tape. So here's my take. Custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient. It's a competitive advantage to transform the way you do business. And that's why you need to know about a no code platform called Bubble. With Bubble, you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements on a screen. No coding required. By the way, I use Bubble on a ton of different apps, including Hampton. And if you want help building something complex on Bubble, you have to bring in zero Code. They're the top bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugin creator for the platform. They can build anything, custom portals, SaaS, products, and they do it about 10 times faster and cheaper than traditional development. Zero Code is also all about AI business automation, transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones. So stop cobbling together different tools and solutions and head to 0Code.com. That's zero code, as in the word zero. And then code Q, O, D, e. Again, code is with a Q. And tell them that Sam sent you. I feel like you and I, so we're both in our mid-30s. It sort of feels like one of the last eras in which high school was the same way that it was for, like, the trailing 50 years. And that now the current heist, it's radically different. So I remember when, I remember, I think I was a sophomore in high school when the iPhone came out. And if you. The teachers didn't even know to ban it because no one, no one even had one. And I think Facebook came out when I was, I think, in high school or maybe like in eighth grade. And so none of these problems were particularly like problems like online bowling wasn't a thing. And it. When I see what high schoolers are like now, I do not envy them. The, The. The way that children are going to be raised from like 5 to 18 years old, it's significantly different than how the trailing, let's say probably 60 or 70 years were raised. And I think that we don't give them enough credit because I think that the systems that they have to go through now is significantly more difficult and I'm very eager to see how, like some rat, like, if you told me about the school 12 years ago, we would said, you're insane. What are you talking about? Like, you know what I mean? And so I'm very eager to see how parents are going to deal with not being able to empathize with what their children are going through. Do you know what I mean? Like, we all had the same thing going to high school. Our parent, when we had, well, being an immigrant, maybe it was slightly different, but it was like your parents could kind of guide you on what to how to act. But now it's way different.
- [60:18]
Sam Parr
I think for me, it already was different. You know, my parents had an arranged marriage, right? So like, imagine like their relatability to like the dating scene and high school prom. Did they understand any of that stuff? Like, not really. Right. Did they understand, like, you know, they grew up in India, so it's like everything was different from how we were growing up. So I guess, like, that is just sort of the immigrant experience. I don't know. You just sort of do your best to hang on. Check out these two pictures I just texted you. I want to tell you about one more example of this, like, alternative schooling.
- [60:46]
Shaun Puri
Okay, so you just sent me a photo of. It looks like a warehouse. Someone's building something. And then it's a bunch of kids just hanging out in a field, right?
- [60:56]
Sam Parr
Yeah. So the first picture of the warehouse. So this is basically my brother in law, Sanjeev, who was on the podcast recently. When I went to visit him in Vegas this summer, I'm like, okay, great. And he's been in just commercial real estate for a long time. He's a builder and he's been doing that. He's tremendously successful. And he's like, yeah, you know, I did something that's kind of crazy. And I go, what? He goes, so I just bought this building in downtown Las Vegas, like a $10 million building. And I'm gonna. He goes, basically he had this experience with his oldest son where he was like, you know, my son, he's really smart, but he's bored at school. Cause again, like, he already knows the stuff they're teaching. And so he just. He just disengages. Cause it's like, not that interesting. And he really loves baseball. He's on like the national. He got picked for like the national team of his age. And he's like. But because he's at school for like eight hours a day by the time he gets off school, and it's Time for baseball practice. He's like kind of tired. He just does it for an hour or two. And then he like comes home and he wants to just chill, eat, play video games and go to sleep. And so he's like, we are going to homeschool him this year. But he's like, instead of homeschooling, where he's just sitting at our house, you know, he just rolls out of bed and it's like, hey, I'm at school now, whatever. And like, we're busy parents. What are we going to teach? How do we do this? He basically created like a. We work for kids to homeschool. So check this out. So what he's doing is called the Grind Academy or something in Las Vegas. Basically a sports prep school where you homeschool your. So the kids are, the kids are homeschooling. So they go to this, they go to the. The idea would be that they would go to the school, they'd spend, I don't know, two to four hours a day on like the education using like Alpha school type of software. Right? So there's, they're all doing, they're all doing their, their curriculum, you know, on their computer or their iPad. There's a teacher sitting there who's there to help. In case you don't understand something. There's like a tutor available that will help you unplug, get unstuck. And then when you're done with your work or like, you know, but when you start your day, you go there, you do like a morning condition, like a morning workout. So you get like a, a morning workout in. Then you do your school stuff, you grab your smoothie, your protein shake, you go upstairs, you do your school stuff, and then you have your afternoon skill specific sports specific training. You're getting like two a day stuff. You got like pro coaches and like top level, like strength and conditioning coaches to come in and be like, that's crazy doing this for kids.
- [63:15]
Shaun Puri
It's like img. Is that what it's called?
- [63:17]
Sam Parr
Yeah. So he's basically building img, but just as a private school for like, you know, middle schoolers, like youth sport, you know, youth athletes. And I was like, this is a crazy move. And he's like, I would, he goes, I. I would never do this because he had actually been in the gym business. He had built a 82 store chain, so he's already been in the gym business for. And he's like done well in that, but also knows all the pains of scaling a gym. He's like you know, I didn't just want to, like, create a gym for kids or create a gym at all. He's like, but, you know, for my kids, he's like, I just got tired of, like, the stuff they're learning in school was too slow, too boring, and too not relevant to, like, what's going on in the world today. He's like, you know, I would rather them come in here, they would learn their math or reading they're writing, and then take, like, a workshop on starting a YouTube channel or a podcast or, you know, learn, like, you know, what's going on with AI. Like, what. What's going on with drone tech? How do you do. What is that stuff? How do you. How do you learn about that? Like, where the future is going. Like, marketing classes, business classes, like, open up a lemonade stand. He's like, I don't know. There's other ways you can learn outside of just this traditional sort of school model. And so he's like, dude, I think that model's dead. And so he's created his own private school. And the two photos I sent you, that's in 30 days. So I went there and I was like, oh, wow, this is like a kind of a raw building. And he's like, yeah, I'm opening up in 30 days. And I was like, what?
- [64:31]
Shaun Puri
Does he have anyone who's enrolled?
- [64:33]
Sam Parr
Yeah. So 40 kids are enrolled right now.
- [64:36]
Shaun Puri
How much does it cost?
- [64:38]
Sam Parr
It's. I don't know how much it costs exactly. I think the first cohort is like a, you know, whatever. Like more like five to seven grand a year. But it'll get up to, like, you know, when. When he. Once he has the full school built out, rolling, and he's, like, kind of proven his model, it'll be closer to, like a $20,000 a year, you know, basically prep program.
- [64:57]
Shaun Puri
This is crazy. This is crazy. Isn't that.
- [64:59]
Sam Parr
Is that insane?
- [65:01]
Shaun Puri
My kids aren't there yet. This is overwhelming. Like, this whole idea of, like, guides. I've heard this so many times. Ramon sent his kid to a school where they had a guide, right? And I found it very. I'm not open to things very easily. But there could be a better way because, like, the current way isn't great. It's very. This is. This is a very scary thing because it's. It's your. It's your children, and it's a very overwhelming to, like, learn about all this. And I don't know what the right way is, but there has to be a better way. To nurse.
- [65:30]
Sam Parr
Visibly stressed out right now.
- [65:32]
Shaun Puri
Yeah, I'm stressed out about. Does this stress you out? Because obviously you care about this more, but, like, your AEB tested. You should send one kid one way and one kid to the other way. Just. It. Just test it.
- [65:43]
Sam Parr
But. But it. Yes, it's an. It's like a super important thing. But first of all, like, none of these things are permanent, right? Like, our friend who sent their kid to, like, one of these alternatives, he just took him out, like, after a semester if he didn't, like, he didn't feel like it was working for him. Right? It's. It's. Yeah, it's not the end of the world, dude.
- [65:59]
Shaun Puri
I. 1. We have a kid, we have a buddy who went to one of these schools, and I asked him, I go, hey, are you. He was in eighth grade. Are you gonna ask any girls out? And he's like, they're all nine, non binary, so they're not. And I was like, oh, my God, man. I'm so happy I don't have to deal with this. This is a very stressful, a very special situation. I found it very stressful. I was like, oh, well, I don't have any advice. I'm sorry. Like, I don't know what to sell you.
- [66:25]
Sam Parr
Dude, the bar is so low. Once you realize. Once you just go sit in the current status quo, you're like, okay, what's my real risk here? My real risk is so low because this current experience, it's not like I'm trading something that's really good for something that might be better. It's something that is pretty dissatisfying. And it's like, well, do you want to try something that could be better, that logically makes more sense?
- [66:53]
Shaun Puri
Dude, I went to do. Have you. You. Have you ever been around Catholic stuff? Have you, like, hung out with a nun? No, dude, I went. I went to Catholic school.
- [67:02]
Sam Parr
People do if they're not, like, Catholic.
- [67:04]
Shaun Puri
I went to. Well, you, like, see, you don't even see them anymore. They're, like, rare. I went to Catholic school. I had nuns teaching me. And, like, they wore the convent, and, like, it was Sister Mary Whoopi Goldberg. Yeah, they're all like, Sister Mary, Sister Teresa, Sister Catherine, and they would hit me if I misbehaved.
- [67:21]
Sam Parr
And, yeah, that's a pretty. That's a much more radical experiment.
- [67:25]
Shaun Puri
It's like, that's not radical. That's just how it's been done. It's. It's. It's not radical in the sense that it's not new.
- [67:31]
Sam Parr
Yeah, it's not that it's new. I guess what I'm saying is like.
- [67:34]
Shaun Puri
Dude, I loved it. I wouldn't even.
- [67:35]
Sam Parr
All boys acceptable then I think this should be acceptable.
- [67:38]
Shaun Puri
You know, I went. Oh, I agree. I went to an all boys college prep school, like a high school, Catholic school. It sounds fancier than it is. It was. It was like very blue collar.
- [67:46]
Sam Parr
Was it called or something like that?
- [67:48]
Shaun Puri
No, no, no, no. It was called Saint Louis University High School. It was an all boys school school. And it was fantastic. I loved it. I can't say enough good things. I enjoyed my experience so much and I would have. I was a jerk. I was a jerk in high school and I would have a teacher kind of get in my face and yell at me if I did something wrong. And it was exactly what I needed. I loved that strict disciplinary experience and it. And it had a big impact on me. So I. My. The reason I don't have too much empathy for wanting to change is because I enjoyed my experience. Had I gone to a public school, I think it would have been a lot different. I can't imagine a public school with five or six thousand kids that I feel like I would. I'm so intimidated of that, of the idea of that.
- [68:28]
Sam Parr
Right. I mean, I went for. I went to a high school in Houston, Texas, that was like that. 4,000 kids. I remember, like, if you just walked into the bathroom, there was like an ear piercing parlor. Basically, they would just give piercings in the bathroom. It was insane.
- [68:43]
Shaun Puri
Dude, it sounds like prison.
- [68:44]
Sam Parr
There was like, yeah, there was scheduled fights of like, which, like, there's just scheduled fights. It's like, oh, these guys are going to fight these guys today. And it's like, that was just like a pretty weak. It's like UFC 200, 202. It's like, all right, it's happening this week, dude.
- [68:56]
Shaun Puri
My experience was so harmonious.
- [68:58]
Sam Parr
Halfway through high school, my parents shipped me off to China. We all moved to Beijing, and I finished high school in the International School of Beijing. And now I'm in a 150 person, expat, only international school. So I could have had like two totally different experiences, you know?
- [69:15]
Shaun Puri
Was the second one good?
- [69:16]
Sam Parr
Oh, it was amazing. Best thing that happened to me was to have that. Yeah.
- [69:19]
Shaun Puri
Why?
- [69:21]
Sam Parr
Well, first I needed a fresh start.
- [69:23]
Shaun Puri
It was Chinese kids or Americans?
- [69:25]
Sam Parr
No, it was mostly like, it was a mix because like, you, You. You had to have a foreign passport to attend.
- [69:30]
Shaun Puri
Got it.
- [69:31]
Sam Parr
Couldn't be a Chinese local and attend. No matter how much money you had, you had to have enough money where you had dual. You had a passport of Singapore or somewhere else to come. So a lot of the kids were Asian because maybe it was like Korea, Japan, whatever. A lot of, you know, Australians, you know, Europeans, Americans, whatever. And it was. I mean, it was great for me only because, like, a change of environment, even if the environment is not better, is great just because it gives you a blank, like a clean slate, you know, to just be like, oh, okay, cool. Like, socially. I was like this before, but now I could be different, you know, like sports wise. Here's what I was doing before, here's what I'm doing now, you know, whatever. You could. You could do it all there. Plus, I don't know, like, it was just a better school overall. Like, there was just no, like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. It was just like a higher quality everything. The food was higher quality, the teachers were higher quality, the classes were higher quality.
- [70:24]
Shaun Puri
Oh, yeah, you were a bunch of. It was a rich kid school.
- [70:27]
Sam Parr
It was a rich kid school. Like, what do you want? It's going to be. It's going to be that, you know, and all the companies pay for it. So the parents don't usually pay for it. Like, when the company moves you, they're like, all right, we're taking your kids out of like, you know, American public school or whatever. We'll have to give you an equivalent of an English schooling experience over there. So the companies pay for it.
- [70:46]
Shaun Puri
That's pretty sick. I would. I've dreamed of, like, moving away for a year or two with my. With my children. I think that would be awesome. That's pretty badass.
- [70:54]
Sam Parr
I would highly, highly, highly recommend it. I think it's one of the best things anybody could do is going, china's.
- [70:59]
Shaun Puri
Not on the list. China's on the. China's down. That's not on the list. But, you know, like, Paris is pretty dope or something like that. What did Scott Galloway said? America's the best place to make money. Europe's the best place to spend it. So that. That sounds pretty good. All right. That's it.
- [71:14]
Sam Parr
That's it.
- [71:15]
Shaun Puri
All right. That was a great pod. Someone in the comments said, Sam and Sean, we're so. We like these guests and all that stuff, but we just want brainstorming. We just want old school ideas, old school episodes. That's what this episode was. Hope you enjoyed it. All right, that's the pod.
- [71:30]
Sam Parr
I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all.
- [71:35]
Shaun Puri
In it like no days off on a road let's travel Never looking back my friends if you like mfm, then you're gonna like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves and of course it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion Dollar Moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with Billion Dollar Moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage and all that great stuff. So again, if you like my first million, check out Billion Dollar Moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again, Billion Dollar Moves.