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

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Sam, you're back.

Are you okay?

What's up?

You got a ton of stuff.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

I'm back.

You got to tell us.

How, look, can you see me?

I can see you.

Here's my face.

Ready?

Here's a smile.

Handsome as ever.

Look at that.

So I saw in the video you posted on Facebook, well, we should tell people who don't know,

who don't follow your Facebook.

We should tell what's going on.

So Sam was out last week.

Yeah.

I've been out for about two weeks now.

It sounded innocent at first.

You were just like, I don't know.

I don't know.

You said like, it kind of like got worse and worse.

I got more and more scared.

It was like, I'm not feeling great to like, I think I have like a kidney stuff.

I've got a kidney stone to like, I got to go to the hospital to like, I have kidney

failure.

And I was like, what the fuck is going on?

Yeah.

Dude, it's crazy.

So let me tell you the story.

So I have a history of kidney stones.

So at the hospital, they looked at my kidneys.

I have about 30 kidney stones, which is a lot.

And so at all times or you've been, you've had them and passed them.

I've passed about eight.

I have 30 in me as of right now.

Oh my God.

That's not normal, right?

It's not normal.

It's not good.

It's not bad.

It means you are going to be in pain like 30 times.

Oh my God.

And so the other day, like two weeks ago, I started getting a stone.

I could feel them.

I could feel them coming when, whenever they're about to come.

And I go to the hospital and I pass it and they give me morphine and I'm like, I still

feel sick.

Like I was like, I feel ill.

Right.

I don't feel well.

And they're like, um, you're probably fine.

Just like shake it off or basically is what they said.

And then like three days later, I woke up and I had this massive rash all over my chest.

And I had still been feeling sick.

And to the point of like, I couldn't, my, my legs were hurting me.

I couldn't like move.

I couldn't like walk one day.

I was like, I'm dying.

I was like, I think my, so I go to the hospital and I was like, I think I'm having kidney

failure.

And they looked at it.

They're like, yeah, you might have an infection or something's going on with your kidneys.

So they do all these tests and like done strong through your kidneys.

They're like, yeah, you, we see on the cascading, you pass the stone, but like you're, this

shouldn't cause you pain.

And then eventually they're like, Oh, wait, we think you have Lyme disease.

And so I do these, how do they know that?

Um, they just know, so Lyme, Lyme disease is like, they don't have like many tests.

Um, like they, so you kind of do it on symptoms.

And so I had this like my, my, um, my teeth were hurting me so badly.

Like I thought I had a toothache and then my arms were hurting me and my legs.

Like I had all these nerve pain and a lot, that is like a Lyme disease thing.

And um, I felt like I had a fever, just like sick and Lyme disease from a tick, right?

A tick bite.

Is that right?

From a little ass tick, a tick can be the size of a period at the end of a sentence,

just tiny.

And so I call Jack Smith.

I go, Jack, man, I'm something's wrong with me.

Doctors can't figure it out.

I go, this is not feel right.

And he goes, I know the person you need to talk to.

So I'm not going to say this person's name, but, um, maybe I will one day, but basically

he puts me in touch with this person and she, um, her story is that she's a billionaire

who her and, um, she had a hedge fund and a multi-billion dollar, $10 billion hedge fund

and they shut it down because they got sick and it was from Lyme and Jack knew her from

a, some event and he puts me in touch with this woman and she doesn't even ask my name

for three days.

She talks to me for like two hours a day, helping me diagnose what's wrong.

Eventually she goes, Hey, you have an appointment with this doctor tomorrow.

I go, okay, that's cool.

She told me all about the doctor.

She goes, but it's really expensive and I didn't feel like you complaining about it

or like even worrying about it.

So I just paid for it.

I was like, you know, you don't need to do that.

And she goes, no, I already, like I already paid so you don't have a choice.

So this woman paid 25 grand, oh my God, for a private doctor for me.

And so I get this doctor who's like, Oh yeah, dude, you got Lyme.

Here's everything.

It's wrong.

And then just coincidentally, I wake up the next day and my, my face is complete.

Like one side is completely paralyzed.

And that's like, when you woke up like that, what was that like?

I woke up and I messaged either you or Ubreyu.

I was like, I feel ill.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

I was like, I'm just so tired because my eye, I couldn't open my eye.

I was like, maybe I'm just tired.

It wasn't until three PM that my wife saw my face and she looked at me and she goes,

why are you, uh, why are you smiling like that?

I was like, what are you talking about?

She's like, look at yourself.

What are you doing?

I go, Oh my God.

And I felt it.

I go, I can't move my face.

I can't move it.

That's, I was like, I wasn't tired.

I can't open my eye and, uh, I can't believe it took you that long in the day to figure

that out.

I just thought that like I was groggy.

I thought I was, you like, you know how you like have sleep in your eyes and like your

face feels heavy.

I thought like I was groggy.

I was like, what is wrong with me?

And she's like, your fucking face.

It's frozen.

Like it's not moving.

So anyway, long story short, I've got, um, so wait, what did this doctor, this like crazy

doctor do or say?

Like that was, yeah, so he, he, I'm on and I have an IV in me 24 hours a day for 30 days.

Okay.

Um, what's that connected to it?

Like, um, at the end of the night, I got to go and plug this to a refill it or something.

Okay.

So I went into like an IV and it's called a pick line and I, um, basically I'm taking

him like 30 pills a day and hopefully it goes away.

I mean, there's no like cure for Lyme disease, right?

Antibiotics, but it's not necessarily a cure, but I've learned all these things about Lyme.

Like I don't even know if it's true or I don't know what I believe, but they say that like

a lot like Lyme is from, you know how like people say that a lab in Wuhan created Corona

and like escaped.

That's what they like.

Like conspiracy theories.

That's what they think about Lyme.

They're like, yeah.

So we, we used to drop ticks above Soviet Union or in Cuba and we would infect them

with this disease and somehow that made its way to us in America.

So that's like the conspiracy.

I don't know what's true or what's not, but I, I tweeted out that I had it.

I've gotten literally thousands of messages from people saying like, I have this, no one

believed me.

Um, I like, I, I was in a wheelchair, dude, it's fucked up.

It's crazy.

Like one day I woke up just like take these drugs and hopefully in 60 days you'll be better.

I mean, that's pretty much it.

One day I woke up and I legitimately couldn't walk.

Like I couldn't like my feet, um, like I couldn't hold my body weight, but now you can.

Yeah.

But I can't exercise.

I can, I can walk for sure.

Um, but like the same way my face is all messed up.

That's how my legs felt a little bit.

That is so insane.

Oh my God.

And so like no one can see me right now, but like once, one side of my face just looks

kind of like dead.

I just look like a normal emotion when you're doing, when you're not doing anything, but

when you smile, it's more like one side of the other side doesn't.

It's just like creepy looking.

Um, so it sucks.

It just sucks.

And do you, are you like optimistic or what do you think is going to happen here?

I think it's going to go away and I think I'll be back to normal, but it doesn't feel,

it doesn't feel like it's gotten better so far.

And I like have, have had massive amounts of anxiety.

Like you know how, you know how like when you go and get your wisdom teeth pulled or

get dental work done and you feel swollen and you feel numb in your gums.

Right.

You don't feel right.

That's just how I feel like that.

It's like your body's not a part of you.

Yeah.

And you're like, this is never going to, it's like when you're like high on weed, you're

like, is this ever, like what did this used to feel like?

I feel like you're like, what, like has this been like this forever?

Like what is normal?

I don't even remember normal.

Yeah.

It's only been like a week, but that's not, I'm like, oh, I just want this shit to work.

So should we even do this podcast or should we be like, I don't know, like going in researching

Lyme disease cures?

What should we be doing right now?

We definitely should do this podcast.

I mean, I needed to get back to work, but I would say that it's like from a opportunity.

I mean, I'm always scheming like that.

First of all, it's so expensive.

I've had to spend a lot of money.

Also like rich people first, like this is an obvious thing, but I've seen it firsthand.

Rich people like a hundred million, 200, 300 million dollar people, they totally have an

advantage in this, in like, in life when it comes to medical stuff.

I mean, this is like an obvious thing.

But now that this woman hooked it up, it's awesome having a private doctor.

This is what rich people do.

Right.

Yeah.

So what do they call it?

Concierge.

Concierge.

Have you ever heard of this?

I've heard of this.

I've obviously never done it, never really known anybody who did it, but I had heard about

this.

Is it like, I think it's basically just like a doctor on retainer.

It's a doctor on call for you that will come make house visits when you need it, like your

treatment is done.

It's like an alternative whole like healthcare system that costs like, I don't know, a couple

hundred grand a year.

Yeah.

Or in this case, 25 grand, but yes, like everything is done on your, and you like, I could tag

them.

And then what I've learned is that like, like even guys like Peter Tia, you know, that guy,

I think he's, I think technically he's a doctor.

I don't know if he's a doctor or just a smart person, but like, he gets paid a hundred grand

per client just to do this and he has like 10 clients.

It's crazy.

And 25 grand is a lot of money.

But if you make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, it's like, I started thinking

about this.

I'm like, maybe I should just like pay for this because it is kind of like pretty amazing

to like have a doctor handle you all the time.

So like you only need it one time for me to make a world difference.

If you're coming out of med school or you're like, you know, a young doctor, why wouldn't

you go this route of being a private doctor to the rich and famous?

Like that sounds pretty sweet, probably way less competitive than whatever you're trying

to do.

Um, yeah, I don't know if it like, I know, I mean, it's definitely probably not as fulfilling

as helping.

So I mean, like I'm in need, but I could just go to the hospital probably.

But yeah, I mean, I'm in need, but yeah, I'm not like a, I don't know, it doesn't feel,

I imagine maybe they feel differently, but this concierge doctor business is crazy.

It's cool.

Yeah.

It's cool.

And then like home nurses are pretty cool too.

So I'm paying like four grand to have a nurse come to my house and like do all this shit

for me.

It's nuts, man.

Wow.

Okay.

Have you heard a good look?

Have you?

All right.

We could talk about business now.

Have you heard a good RX?

I've seen the commercials for it.

I don't know what's interesting about it.

Oh my God.

You don't even need insurance.

Good RX the greatest thing ever.

So they get you cheap drugs, right?

They get you cheap drugs and they're going public and it's like crazy profitable.

They make like 400 million in revenue and like a hundred million in profit as a privately

held company that's only less than 10 years old.

And what it does is apparently in that it's so complicated for me to understand, but apparently

in the healthcare system, there's all these middle men.

And so let's say that like some drug, drug X only costs $5 or something for a prescription

because it goes through all these people, then it eventually costs $100 and your insurance

pays for a little bit of it and you pay for 20, whatever.

What good RX does is I go to the pharmacy and they're like, all right, you have Doxy,

which is like the antibiotic that I have.

It's like $800 for some reason for this shit I got to take.

And because I'm in, dude, I'm on Kaiser, which means I'm in New York, so I got to pay out

a pocket.

And by the way, I just pull up my app and I just type in the word Doxy, this many milligrams,

this many times, like this size.

And it just says, all right, what pharmacy are you at?

I go ride aid and it goes, boom, $23, here's a discount.

It's only 23 bucks.

And I just show them my phone and they go, okay, cool.

Why are they able to offer these discounts?

I don't understand how this works.

It's so confusing.

But I imagine what they do is they make an affiliate fee from the, directly from the

drug provider.

Right.

Yeah, it's probably very simple.

I haven't looked into what this is, but yeah, they get you cheap drugs somehow.

I didn't know if it's because they're cutting out a middleman or if they're getting a kickback

for affiliate and then they give you a share of their kickback or it's something like that.

Because it's just like a layer on top of what exists.

It's amazing.

And I think there's one called Script Relief.

That's another business in the space that's doing this.

These are amazing companies because it truly provides value to the person using it.

My bill went from two grand at the pharmacy to like a hundred bucks.

And it's so profitable.

So it's an awesome company.

That's cool.

Okay.

So we're just going to do the podcast.

We're just going to do the business podcast.

It's so funny to me that we're going to do that.

I feel like I only want to talk about you, but I guess.

What is there?

There's nothing to say.

I don't know what to say.

I just haven't talked to you in a couple of weeks and your life turned upside down.

Well, yeah, it's fucking sucks.

I will tell you this, that like the first part of me, and I bet this is what you felt

but more when you had your daughter, which is like everything you thought that was important.

Most of it isn't right.

But then the second part of it was like, also money is so important.

Like being rich, you just are such it, I mean, I'm not going to place judgment on it.

Like I'm not going to say capitalism is bad or not even anything like that.

But I'm just saying that like having money in this system, it's way better.

Shit's so expensive to like be healthy if when you're in need.

Right.

You know, the, there's two quotes I always liked about this.

There's one that is, you know, a healthy man has a million desires.

A sick man only has one, which is basically to be healthy and it's so true.

And then the other one I really liked, I heard from Naval, he was, I think it's like, I don't

know, Buddha or Confucius or something like that, which is that every person has two lives

and the second one begins when they realize they only have one.

And I just thought that was like super, super deep impactful, like my buddy got diagnosed

with cancer and like he, I told him that quote, because there's always, you know, a silver

lining and any, you know, anything that happens, it just depends if you focus on that, if you

get that out of it.

And so he went and he got tattooed on his forearm the date, the date that he got diagnosed

and he goes, that's the date my second life began.

And he got excited about it.

And he was like, you know, I, this is, this is, this is my real birth date right here.

And I thought, well.

So what's he do now?

I mean, what's he feel like now?

I don't know.

I'm sure, you know, he's a real human and so it's not like, oh, now everything's great.

It's like, still he's like scared.

So he beat the cancer.

He's still scared that it'll come back, right?

Like every time he has to go get these scans every six months or whatever.

And when he goes back, like that's a shitty day and he's scared of shit, like that, okay,

the scans going to happen and they're going to tell me, what are they going to tell me?

And so he's like nervous about it, but then he's also trying to like, you know, live it

up and also not focus on, you know, random bullshit and not get caught in bullshit.

Because he remembers when like all bullshit was revealed to be bullshit when he, when

he felt that.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

He'd answer better than me, but that's what, that's the impression I've got from him.

Yeah.

It's messed up.

I mean, the worst thing.

Like, first of all, I'm not dying, but I'm just uncomfortable.

But like the world, the thing that's worse after that is like actually dying.

And then the thing that's even worse after that is your children dying, I imagine.

So like it definitely makes you realize that like I'm not even dying.

And thank God I don't have children that are dying, but like, and I'm like super regretful

over.

I'm like, oh fuck, none of this stuff matters.

And so I don't know.

It's been, I can't even hear a story about other people who have kids who are sick.

Like, I just can't even, I can't even like listen to that story.

It bothers me so much.

Just the idea that a kid can be sick and then I think about my daughter and I'm just like

happy she's okay.

And, but I'm, it's like so visceral to me now that I can't even hear another story.

And I'm not squeamish.

Like I wasn't squeamish like that at all.

So that's definitely like a way that, I don't know, kids changed me like very dramatically.

What's crazy is that another thing that's important whenever I go to the hospital, because

I used to have to go all the time to these kidney stones is a good nurse is the most

important part of the whole sickness.

For sure.

Most important part of a hospital is the nurse is the nurses and there's such a variability

between good and like that extra 10% where they're amazing and you just feel so good

finally during that.

Right.

And you like love when they come in on their shift and they erase the whiteboard and they

write their name and it's like, yes, eight hours of like Wanda Wanda's amazing.

I can't wait for this.

A good nurse, it's just, there's so much more because you don't ever see the doctor.

Fuck the doctor at the emergency room.

But like a good nurse is life changing.

And whenever I have a good nurse, I'm like, you provide value to the world.

All I do is like send this email.

Like it makes me feel bad.

I'm like, like, and I'm like, I probably make a lot more money than you.

You are the hero.

You are the person that you should be rich.

I always feel whenever I have a good nurse, I'm like, you just changed my life.

Yeah.

I also had this morning routine where I would take my dog for this walk and where I used

to live in San Francisco, I think, I don't know if you've been to my house, but it's

right next to that Zuckerberg hospital.

And so I could see it.

So I would go to the, like where I'd be playing with my dog and I could see it and every morning

basically I just like got this routine in my head that really helped me, which was,

I don't know why.

Like I've had experiences like you were like, if you spend any extended period of time in

a hospital, it's like a very, I don't know, distinct feeling.

And when you spend time in a hospital, like just the lighting, the smells, the like just

the humming of sounds, it's like so specific and I can just imagine it in my head.

And so whenever I'm there and I could see the hospital, I just reminded myself like,

as long as I'm not up there, today's a good day.

Like I said, and I would, if my mom would come visit, she'd come for the walk.

I'd be like, mom, why is it a good day?

Cause we're, and she's like, cause we're not up there.

And like she knew because I just kept saying that to myself every day.

So I made it where being happy was really cheap.

As long as I'm not up there, I'm happy.

And then on the other side, I tried to make it where getting upset, I make it really expensive.

Like I'm not going to get upset over anything small.

Like you got to pay me.

It's got to be a high ticket item to take my happiness away from me now.

And those two things in my month, my mentality really, I don't know, like change the quality

of my life.

I feel was just having that, that mindset every, every single day.

So that's very stoic of you.

That's called negative.

I'm trying to say, I can't say like the V words, negative visuals, my mouth done, my

lips aren't moving, but what's it say the word?

Visualization.

Was it?

Visualization.

Yeah.

So negative visualization.

And, and it's when, just go ahead and you assume that like your worst case scenario

is true.

So my kid's sick, my kid's dead, I'm about to die.

My wife's about to die, whatever you assume that all that is going to happen.

And then you like meditate on it.

You're like, this is true.

This is true.

This is true.

You close your eyes for 10 minutes.

You go, this is my life now.

Like I'm alone.

And then you wake up and you go, Oh my God, thank God, that's not true.

And yeah.

It's like waking up from a bad dream.

And you're relieved.

You're like, yes, I didn't miss the test and, you know, like I'm so thankful.

Yeah.

And that's actually a great trick that I read about in a book on stoicism.

It's called negative visualization.

And it's great for like making you have gratitude, which apparently I don't know if there's some

woo woo shit, but do you know that like if you have gratitude, like if you regularly

show, I mean, showing gratitude, I believe like it's actually like healthy for you.

Like it can be physically healthy.

Yeah.

Have you heard of this?

I don't know about the, I don't know if any of this stuff is measurable, but the phrase

I really liked was you can't be, you can't be grateful and stressed at the same time.

You can't be grateful and afraid at the same time.

And it's like impossible, it's sort of like you can't sneeze and keep your eyes open.

If you're truly feeling grateful, you're not going to be able to feel those other feelings,

which those other feelings create either a shitty quality of life or literally, you know,

your body reacts to stress in a negative way, puts you in a different, you know, different

hormones get released and whatnot.

So I don't know how measurable any of this shit is, but, you know, error on the side

of being grateful won't do you any problems.

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Okay.

Let's, let's talk about some random business stuff, otherwise people are gonna just get

pissed at us.

Wait, can I ask one thing really quick, which is you did four or five or six episodes without,

without me.

Is there one or two that stuck out?

I thought the cat coal one was good.

It was a little bit more like an interview, but her story was pretty phenomenal.

I didn't know it going in.

So I knew that she was like the president of focus brands, which I knew owned Cinnabon

and I'm just like a Cinnabon fan.

So I was like, okay, cool.

Say no more.

But it was like Auntie Andy's pretzels and Slotsky's and McAllister, some other brands

too.

So I was like, okay, you're president COO of that.

That's pretty cool.

But her story was pretty dope.

She basically started as a Hooters waitress while she was in college and then like was

you know, good as a waitress and like got into Hooters corporate as kind of like low

level corporate and then like worked her way up Hooters corporate and became eventually

like head of Hooters America, like GM of Hooters America.

And then like transitioned over as president of Cinnabon and then like went to the parent

company of the company that owns Cinnabon and now as the president of that.

And I was like, that's a pretty fucking baller path for somebody who came from kind of nothing

dropped out of college while she was a Hooters waitress.

Like I just thought that was like an incredible story.

And then she obviously had some good opinions on like ghost cloud kitchens, ghost kitchens.

Like is this a thing?

What did she say?

I wasn't able to listen to it.

She was basically like, she was like, it's a thing for sure in highly dense areas.

And she's like, for our business, like a huge amount of their business comes from like malls

and across America.

You know what I mean?

Like where you can't do ghost kitchens when you're not in a really, really dense place.

You can do it in New York, you can do it in, you know, in San Francisco or LA, cloud kitchens

are awesome.

They're kind of optimal in a way, right?

Small square foot, not prime real estate, delivering into a really dense area.

You can serve, you know, a huge number of customers and a small radius of delivery.

But that's not going to work in, let's say, I don't know, you know, Sarasota, wherever

the fuck Sarasota is, Florida, whatever that is, you know, base is not going to work in

the majority of places.

So you can't like pin your hopes on that as the, you know, as the model.

And so she was like down for it, but also not down for it at the same time.

Well, she just recognized that it's great, but not for everywhere.

Yeah, exactly.

And then she was talking to a little bit about, OK, well, what are the future of restaurants

look like?

Because they're like re-architecting some of their stores.

And also she's kind of imagining like, OK, in an ideal world, how would, how would our

whole footprint look after COVID?

And she had some ideas around like, you know, basically, how do you make it to that take

out and delivery is like kind of a core part of any restaurant, not like this add on thing.

If you're going to be coming physically to a restaurant, what does the environment need

to be for you to do that?

Because now if delivery is a default, then why would you go into a restaurant?

Well, it's got to be giving you more than just the food and a place to sit.

Like, which is good for Hooters.

Right.

Right.

It's got to have some kind of ambiance, as we would say.

I mean, they've, yeah, they've got that built in.

Exactly.

So that and like Dave and Buster shit like that.

Yeah, I feel you.

And then ironically, you know, she's president of pretzels and Cinnabon's, but she was very

much like food is pharmacy.

So she was like, we're going to look at food as like a health vector.

And it's going to be personalized to you.

So she had some ideas around that.

So I thought that was, I thought that was all pretty interesting from her episode.

That's good.

I enjoy hearing that.

Sorry.

The other one was from this guy who did, he's a CEO of Air Garage and he listens to the

podcast.

He's like, this is my, I go for a walk.

I listened to y'all's pod and he's CEO of a startup and he came on, he gave me, he

sent me a list of like 150 ideas and I was like, okay, cool, you're qualified to come

on the show.

And he had one, he had two ideas around USPS, which I thought were interesting.

He's like, look, USPS is kind of dying, but it's like kind of important to America.

So he had one, which was there's these services that will do like kind of like your change

of address because changing your address sucks in mail forwarding sucks.

So he's like, there's these services where like they store your, they become your permanent

address and then you just tell them if you ever want to switch and it changed, they change

everything still goes to them and they just reroute to you now.

So you kind of have one easy online place to change it in five minutes and then you

pay 10 bucks a month to be able to do that or five bucks a month.

Yeah.

I just signed up for one.

So he was like, the USPS, he's like, I want, he's like, somebody should build a business

that just does this for USPS.

They can make an additional like, he just did the math and like how many customers they

already have.

And if they just marketed it within their, within their own service, like if they could

get five million subscribers of this thing at $10, $10 a month or $8 a month or $7 a

month, like that would be actually pretty significant revenue for USPS.

And he's like, there's a no brainer.

Like you just build that and have one partner, which is USPS and just be the, be the brand

that does this for them.

Which is not a funny, like all or nothing idea.

And then another one, which was like put cameras on the top of USPS and create a competitor

to like Google street view because they're just driving around everywhere.

That's badass.

Surely, surely Google has been like, Hey, y'all want to do this?

Come on.

Right.

Yeah.

I wonder what the reasoning has been.

I mean, I don't know, but surely they've been like, come on.

I wonder, I wonder what they've said.

Yeah.

Did you, this isn't like an idea, so I don't really want to spend too much time on it,

but it is interesting.

Did you see how Oracle bought Tic Tac?

Yeah.

Well, I didn't know if it was done.

Is it done now?

I saw something yesterday that was like, ByteDance refuses to give the algorithm to whoever the

US buyer is.

And so it's like, well, then what are they going to get?

I just thought it was interesting.

And then why the fuck does Oracle want Tic Tac?

What is the?

I have no idea.

I don't understand these big businesses.

I don't.

Do you even know what Oracle does?

I don't even know what they do.

It's like database software, basically.

Yeah.

Everyone says that.

And they always say like IT procurement or I'm like, dude, I don't, I like, I don't,

or like human resource manager, they'll say like, what do they say?

I forget what the, what the official phrasing is for Oracle.

Whenever companies say that or people tell me, I'm like, I don't know what that means.

Right.

That's how I feel about SAP.

I'm like, SAP is what?

Yeah.

What is SAP?

It's like 40 billion dollar company.

And they call it, it's called like human capital management or something.

ERP.

Yeah.

What's that mean?

I think it's enterprise resource planning or something like that.

Yeah.

I just don't know what that means.

I might be totally wrong.

ERP might be like, you know, eggs, you know, Rover, no, that's what it means.

That's what it means.

Yeah.

That's it.

I just don't know what it means.

So that's interesting.

So do you haven't, have you been making any money in the stock market?

Yeah.

Except for, I mean, there was like a week where it was like pretty bloody, but yeah,

I've made a killing over the last few months.

Dude, I've been, I don't, I'm like, not in, I don't own any individual stocks other than

Facebook and I don't buy any.

I haven't bought a stock in like, you know, two years.

It's all automated.

Right.

I almost regret it.

Not buying more.

You mean?

Yeah.

I'm seeing all this, these numbers and I'm like, oh my God.

This is crazy.

I have hardcore FOMO.

Yeah.

I feel that way too.

And then I'm like, uh, this is gambling.

Okay.

Let me just move on to with my life, just something that is more meaningful to me or that I control

a little bit more.

But yeah, I have like Amazon, Zoom and Fastly and Facebook.

I think that's like my core individual stocks that I own.

I pretty much only own Facebook and SMB 500.

Right.

Um, and then like the $500 in referral stocks that I got from Robin Hood for like, so, which

is like serious radio or something.

Right.

Um, all right.

Well, what ideas you got?

Um, it sounds like you, you came prepared.

Well, not really actually, but I do have a couple of interesting things.

So have you heard of this business called Say Wee?

I don't know how that's how you pronounce it.

So it's S a, S a y W e.

E.

It's like, there's like three or four E's at the end of it.

It is a Asian grocery delivery company.

And so like, if you look in the Google Play Store, it's just we with exclamation point

and it says shop Asian groceries and get it delivered.

So I'd seen these guys a couple of times through like friends who are Asian who are like, Oh

yeah, like when, when COVID was happening and like you couldn't get an Instacart delivery

or whatever.

Uh, it's like, Oh yeah, thank goodness for Say Wee.

We still got like all of our goods.

So like, you know how, actually, I don't know if you know this, but like, like I'm Indian,

there's Indian grocery stores that exist, you probably actually have never seen an Indian

grocery store.

But basically within like, you know, these little random shopping centers, there'll be

a small little store that just is for, let's say, brown people to go and you can get like

the spices, the certain type of rice that brown people like, like, we like boss with

the rice.

We want spices to make Indian food and then we want like sweets that are desserts that

are Indian desserts or whatever.

And so like my mom or whatever will go shop at these places.

And so the same thing exists for, you know, um, more like East Asian Oriental, uh, cuisine

where you'll get like, you know, different types of food that is more, more like, you

know, more of the motherland than what you're going to get at Safeway or Kroger's or whatever.

And so these guys crush it.

They've raised $82 million.

So at first I was like, Oh, this is interesting.

Like this is a potential investment.

And I go, look, and it's already, you know, they have 200 people at the company.

Where'd you find it?

Um, I just had friends talking about it.

Um, I like, I'm in, uh, I think Kevin Lee was the first person who ever mentioned it.

And then, uh, this guy Josh Elman, who's, uh, I think he's married to his wife's Asian

and so I think they order it or whatever.

So I'd seen a couple of people mentioning it and I was like, what's the deal with this?

And, um, and so yeah, it's a pretty interesting company.

I thought, what an interesting niche of grocery delivery that is actually pretty massive.

Right.

If they've raised $82 million, you know, they have to be valued in the hundreds of millions

of dollars.

And they only have a few locations.

It's like Bay Area, Seattle, you know, LA, and, uh, just serving a few areas to build

such a big business.

And I think very differentiated from the normal like grocery wars that everybody's fighting

and bleeding, uh, in.

Yeah.

So, whoa, this can't be true, can it?

It said, so I, here's an article on them, uh, the, here's an article where the founder

said in 2019 or all right.

So 18 revenue, 2018 revenue was 16 million 2019.

They said they expected 40 million and then they seven extra revenue from, from the expected

40 to, uh, what's seven times 40.

Yeah.

Like two.

Holy shit.

Um, so they're growing like crazy, uh, pretty interesting.

Never would have thought that this would be a thing.

I'm just looking up the founder.

He used to work at a company called brocade.

I don't know what that is.

No.

Brocade, uh, you know, you worked at brocade.

Interesting.

I never, ever, ever would have thought that would work.

Yeah.

Same.

That's why I brought it up because I was like, this is a surprise to me.

Remember when your buddy told you about, um, Halal?

Yes.

What was it called?

Halal loans?

Is Halal like the.

Financing.

Yeah.

So, and I guess Halal is like the, is it, is Halal like the equivalent of saying kosher

but for Muslim?

Yeah.

It just means like sort of this is like blessed by the, you know, the religious community.

This is in line with the religious code.

So whether it's Halal meat or it's Halal financing, it's, this is in line with our, our morals

and values.

Whenever your buddy just talked about that, I was like, oh, I'm on board with just anything

that like non Muslims do or eat or drink or whatever, and then you just put halal in front

of it.

Right.

Uh, I saw this little business.

Our friend Ramon sent me this little business that was, uh, e-commerce business for sale.

And what it was, was small e-commerce business.

You could probably buy it for like 200 grand, I think it was doing like a hundred grand

in, uh, like 70 grand a day, but or something like that.

And all it was was baby mobile.

So you know, like above your crib, you have a little rotating, uh, mobile that like is

usually like stars and unicorns and whatever, like, and they just made the Muslim version

of that.

So it was all of the like kind of like symbols, um, and or like kind of, I don't know, like,

uh, whatever the religious figure hoods are and religious symbols are, and it would play

a, uh, religious music rather than like whatever twinkle, twinkle little star.

And it's like such a small niche, worst fucking website you can imagine.

It was like just an awful e-commerce look, awful brand sold one skew and was doing like

be a pretty good revenue.

It was like, I forgot it was, I think, I think it might have been 200 grand or D, but, uh,

or something like that, uh, at the end of the day, but I was like, this is like such

a healthy little business that is such a specific niche serving a large community that's underserved

and like you got a billion Muslim people in the world.

And um, I don't feel like there's enough of, you know, we talked about, you know, sort

of calm for religion and how I would start that with the, you know, the Islamic faith

app.

Um, I just feel like there's just so much more you could do for, for, you know, niche

populations and, and whether it's dating apps that are targeted towards certain religions

or certain ethnicities, in this case, grocery delivery for certain ethnic foods.

Uh, I just feel like you could take popular category and niche it down into a certain

ethnography and do well.

So I, I just, I can't get over the fact about how I never would have thought that this,

this, what, how do you say it?

Say we say we, I can't believe that, you know, it's, it was crazy.

I went to the, I went to the website and it's, they had to translate it for me.

Did they?

Oh, my mind's already translated.

Like cause your URL is say we.com slash slash yeah.

So like it's like, they're really going after the,

Look at this.

They're serving, they're serving four markets and then they just opened up three more.

So seven cities and they're doing, you know, according to that, like north of, north of

$200 million in revenue now, I don't know if they're counting revenue as like every

item sold and they have like 5% margin, but like, yeah, okay, let's say that, that is

the case.

And you know, 10% margin on, on that, uh, still not bad.

So let me tell you about, um, another grocer that's interesting.

So I was, this sounds like I'm just being bougie, but I was staying at someone's house

and I was walking around the Hamptons and there's this billionaire guy that I've read

about his name's John Katmeadonis.

Have you heard of him?

Never.

Okay.

He's easy to recognize because like if this ever gets to him, I'll just tell him to

his face, but he's super ugly.

Like, he's so ugly.

Like Google him.

He's like fat and ugly.

He's like that.

John Kat.

How do you spell it?

Kat?

Yeah.

Last name is the word Kat and then S I and no auto fill.

Okay, gotcha.

Kat.

Right.

You see him?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, is this his wife with him?

Who is this?

Oh my God.

I'm so embarrassed.

It doesn't matter.

I mean, look at me.

I don't even have my face done even work.

He's just a big old bug.

So what this guy did was when he was only 21, he started this grocery store in New York

City called Red Apple.

And then using money from Red Apple, he made it crazy profitable, like 30 million in sales

with like 5 million in profit.

And here it says, I built it up to 10 stores and was doing $25 million and I was personally

earning a million dollars, personally earning a million dollars a year.

So 25 million in sales and he was paying himself a million dollars and this is in 1978 or something.

Then when the company had like 100 million in sales for a grocery store, he bought this

other chain.

Then after he bought the other chain, he started an oil and gas company.

Then he started an airline business that he sold to NetJets or whatever the big guy is.

So this, and now he still owns the holding company is called Red Apple Inc. or whatever

and they own grocery stores, they own radio stations, they own this oil company, they

own everything and I'm almost positive through all my research that he owns 100% of it.

And I saw interviews with him, seems like a great guy.

He is trying to run for mayor in New York worth three, four billion dollars.

Just crazy fascinating guy and so fascinating because he said something, he was like, man,

if I worked in technology, I'd be the richest man in the world, but I chose a low margin

business, but I still trust it.

Just super fascinating.

I think he's an immigrant or at least his mom and yeah, he's an immigrant.

Just that hardcore hustle, just freaking awesome.

Love learning about these people instead of the typical tech folks.

Yeah, that's interesting.

So you said you bumped into this guy or what happened?

I knew what he looked like because he's so easy to remember and I think out in New York,

he's like a celebrity because he said he was running for mayor.

So like everyone knows who he is, but I've never heard of this Red Apple grocery store,

so I don't know what it is.

I seen him walking down the street and I just was like, I'm going to bring that up for

their our Billy of the day.

Yeah, I like that.

I just like that, I sort of glazed over after you called him so ugly.

I just couldn't stop laughing in my head and I only heard half the rest of the story.

He also got gotten the news because he's got like a really beautiful daughter and he like

apparently used, he built some app to like spy on his daughter's boyfriend and do like

background checks on them and people like call them out because that was creepy.

Yeah, but a review AI, that's what I was reading this article just now because he's like I

I have infrared, you know, infrared sensors in my home in the Hamptons.

I sleep with with the same gun James Bond carried under his pillow and I use clear view AI to

stock my daughter's boyfriend or date or whatever.

What a character.

Yeah, so that shit's weird.

But other than that, this guy is so fascinating and interesting to me.

Just I love these types.

I love they just seem like the everyday man.

Okay, sounds good.

What other, I don't know, have you even thought about business ideas or have you been, you

know, thinking about that at all?

No, I basically did not think about that at all.

That's okay.

I'm back on it, but I have not thought about that at all.

Is there anything that you want to bring up?

So I've been thinking about a lot because so so we successfully raised this fund to invest

in startups have been doing a bunch of pitch meetings and each one is like super fast.

What's the total amount?

Two and a half million a year.

And was that so I'm going to that process too, though I might put it on hold for obvious

reasons.

But was it is it going to be good or not good?

Well, it's gonna be good.

It's just a question of like it's work, right?

So like all of a sudden, you know, I spent a lot more time looking at different companies

and doing pitch meetings.

Whereas before it was kind of as I went, if I'd made a great entrepreneur, I would chat

with them and informally do it.

But basically, I need to deploy five times more capital than I was doing as my own personal

investing.

So then I need to up my volume of deals and sourcing as well.

But it's fun because, you know, sitting with an entrepreneur and hearing their vision of

you know, what the future looks like and some problem that you didn't even know exists

like today, I'll give you an example.

Just before this call, talk to this guy.

This guy's been doing like climate like clean tech companies in Africa for the last like

X number of years.

And so right now he's going after this thing.

I'll check with him if I'm even okay to say all this, but I think so.

He's basically created here, I guess, let me put it differently.

There's this big problem that I had no idea about, which is that if you go to Africa,

if you go to Kenya, and we're not talking about like mud huts like we're talking about

in the condominium building and a high rise building, you own an apartment, you live in

that apartment and you need to cook meals every day, they don't have like gas stoves

like there's into the building, there's no gas pipe.

So where we go and we turn on our electric stove and you know, fire comes out, they don't

have that.

So what most people do all the way from mud huts into condos is they use charcoal or kerosene

or some like really dirty kind of like dirty fuel source essentially, but it's, you know,

relatively cheap.

And it's really all they got.

So they need to cook, you know, boil water, they need to cook rice and they need to make

meat and whatever else they're going to do.

And so people have been cooking like that for, you know, decades in these countries.

And so what they're replacing it with is a clean stove that uses wood pellets rather

than charcoal.

And so like you can, you've always been able to cook with this and it's sort of like, you

know, if we go camping, you know, we could use, we use one of these little small, you

know, stove tops and so he's trying to replace it.

And so what the net result is, you have something that is, you know, 98% cleaner for the environment

and also like even your own clothes, like forget, forget, even if you don't care about

global warming, most people don't want their, their home to just be full of like dark smoke

that's just getting into your clothes and like, you know, you smell like smoke for the

next three days, but that's just life there.

And so it's 98% cleaner.

It costs half as much to be able to do and it cooks in half the time.

And so you get just like a better experience all around.

And so, and they're doing the kind of nest cafe model where they give you the machine

for free and then they sell you the fuel on every month because you're going to, you're

always going to buy, you know, cooking fuel, cooking fuel every single month because you

need to cook.

And so pretty interesting business, pretty interesting problem that they're solving.

And you know, that's the type of fun I get to have now.

So the fund is good because I get to see this type of stuff.

Do you think that it's going to be a, I mean, a two and a half million dollar fund unless

it's like one of the best funds out there, which it could definitely become, it probably

won't be a needle mover in terms of personal wealth creation.

Is that correct or am I wrong?

That's correct, but it's remembered two and a half million per year.

So when most people raise a fund, they raise, let's say a $10 million fund, they deploy

that the fund takes 10 years to return, but they deploy it over, let's say three years.

And so that's actually a $3 million a year fund.

So this is the, this is the equivalent of call it a seven to $10 million total fund.

And so then you say seven to $10 million total dollars.

The math works out where let's say we do very well and we four, four X the fund gross.

So we, we turn, let's say $7 million into $28 million of gross returns.

And then of those $28 million, I get a 20% carry on that.

So I get 20% of 28 million.

So four, five bucks over, but it's over a seven to 10 year period.

So then you think that potentially this is going to be a needle moving.

I hope that in seven to 10 years, $4 million is not a needle mover.

That's my goal with all my other business.

Well, do you think that you're just going to raise more and more money?

I don't know.

I'm going to try it.

I'm going to see, maybe I hate this.

And maybe after a year, I tell everybody, okay, I'm not, you know, that money is deployed.

Great.

And for next year, I don't want any more money, right?

Like I don't want to do this anymore.

But I think what's going to happen is there's, I sort of view this as, for me, financially

it should be good, but it's not going to be like, oh my God, this is how I, you know,

built my kingdom type of thing.

But I just like sitting in front row for like people doing cool shit.

And this is an excuse to, this is, this is a season tickets to sit in front row, right?

I'm going to get to see a bunch of entrepreneurs.

So are my investors, right?

I'm going to share all my updates with them and they're going to get to see what are the

companies we invested in, why, why not?

And how do those companies are growing kind of in the private confidential side of things.

And so I think it's going to be, I think on a fun level, it's going to be a game changer

for fun.

And on a wealth level, I hope that in seven to 10 years, making four or five million bucks

will not be a game changer.

Yeah.

So we're in the, we're, we've been in the process of doing this for a while, like you were.

And obviously I, three weeks ago, I was like, Hey, let me talk to you in a little bit.

And so I guess we'll go through with it, but you see, from an outside perspective, it definitely

looks easy, but then you like get into it and you're like, this is going to be a lot

of work.

It's going to be a lot of work.

Like being an investor, just like all things, once you get past that, like, like for example,

my company, the hustle, like I worked really hard, but I definitely worked harder to get

it off the ground.

And so it's like, once you get, once you get past that point, then it's like, yeah, this

is a good life.

But in the early stages, like, Oh, this is, I'm just, you're just starting a business

from scratch again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

I think if you're doing it to make money, there's much better ways to make money as a

fun, if you're the manager of the fund, if you're an investor, cool, you're putting

a small amount of money into like a higher risk asset class and you're not going to do

any of the work.

So it's great.

But if you're the fund manager, there's way better ways to make money than doing this.

And so that's where that's the position that you're in or I'm in.

And so you got to, I think if you're going to do it, if you're a fund manager, you need

the fund to be a $50 million or greater fund for it to be good for finance financially,

personally.

And then if not, you're doing it for the sort of enjoyment because you are just sort of

down with the startup ecosystem.

And this is what you would, this is a hobby as well.

And even if you did it, even if you did a $50 million fund, what a lot of people would

realize is like, all right, you have $50 million fund, great.

You better not be hiring anyone, but maybe one person.

Yeah, exactly.

So like on a $50 million fund, you're going to be taking your 2% management fee.

So I took 0% management fees.

So again, because I'm not doing this as a way to, for me to personally make money every

year on fees.

But for 2% fees, you'd be getting a million bucks a year for all your overhead, your legal

cost, your fund administration, your employees, your whatever, marketing.

And so if you have two partners, that's like, let's say 500K each, that's no joke.

That's not something to sort of sneeze at.

But typically somebody who's able to raise a $50 million fund is earning more than that

already in their current job or business.

Or has earned more than that.

And so they, you know, they're not doing it for the 500K a year of fees net of expenses.

Yeah, it's definitely a fascinating exercise to look at all this stuff.

I've definitely enjoyed it though.

We'll see if we do it.

But it's, it's, I'm happy you were able to do that.

What did all the money pretty much came from your Twitter?

Yes and no.

Yeah.

So half of it, basically like, let's say 60% of it, I think came from Twitter.

And then the other 40% came through kind of like puzzle, like basically reaching out

and doing different sort of marketing and sales techniques to try to get people through

the door and get them to close.

Good.

Well, congratulations.

Rolling fund is just pay as you go.

And before, you know, let's say I wanted to go raise a $10 million fund, there would

be a specific time that I would open the funding window.

I'd say, oh, okay, I'm going to go for six months.

I'm going to go talk to a bunch of rich people and try to raise this money.

And I would have to raise my full amount then.

Sometimes you do like a first and second tranche, but like for the most part, you're

going to go and you're going to raise a bunch of money up front and then you're going to

spend the next few years investing it.

A rolling fund is different.

A rolling fund I could start today, every quarter is basically like a new little fund.

Every quarter I can take on new investors.

Investors who are my current fund can go up if they want and they could double down, they

could invest more or they could stop and they could say, I don't want to invest anymore

after four quarters.

So it's just more lightweight, more flexible for the investor side.

On the investor side, you just pay quarterly, so like my minimum is $6,000 per quarter.

So people can pay $6,000, $6,000, $6,000.

Over the course of the year, they invested $25,000, but not in a giant check at once.

And then for me as the fund manager, I don't have to take six months, 12 months to go raise

my fund.

I just start raising it and start deploying it and it can keep growing over time.

Like next year, my fund could be twice the size.

If I wanted to, if I wanted to keep taking more money in, I could double the size of

my fund.

You don't get that type of flexibility with a traditional fund.

A fund is sort of set in and how much you raise and who owns what.

So Angelist, basically the fund runs on Angelist.

They take an administration fee and they built the software.

So the way they're actually doing it is nothing in the law changed.

What they changed was they just automated it so that every quarter they're actually spinning

up a separate entity that's going to be a 10-year fund for what's called a Q4 2020,

let's say.

And then when the next quarter happens, they're actually automatically under the hood.

They're creating another entity with that quarter's investor batch.

And so normally, if you went to a law firm and you said, hey, every quarter I'd like

to create a new fund, I want to manage that fund for 10 years and it's going to have different

investors in every quarter, they'd be like, what the fuck are you thinking?

Like this is going to be, you know, really taxing legally and really complicated to keep

track of.

But Angelist did it with software and automated that process.

What else?

Do we want to go over things else or do we want to end this at 53 minutes?

Let me scroll through our list.

We're going to have to build this list out.

I had two.

I wanted to do today.

I forgot the other one.

Cool.

All right.

I don't remember what my other one was.

We have to go back and start filling this out again.

Now that you're back, we get back in rhythm.

So we'll call it here.

Yes.

And thank you everyone for all the kind wishes.

I got like literally a thousand DMs.

I appreciate it.

I don't know if I'll reply to everyone, but thank you.

And we will see you next, well, in two days.

Yeah.

All right.

Sam, welcome back.

Good to have you back.

All right.

I'll see you.

All right.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.