Weirdly Brilliant Businesses You Can Copy in 2026

Shaan Puri

"I want to show you the **perfect landing page** — the best landing page I have ever seen, the greatest marketing landing page of all time. I want you to go to **www.suckmyguttersclean.com**. Today, I have three businesses that I would say are so simple, you're kinda going to be mad at yourself you didn't think of them." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Okay.

Shaan Puri

You're going to be upset. You're like, "It just— that's it?" And it's like, "Yes, that's it." These are all blue-collar. In fact, I'm bringing back some of our old favorite segments: **the blue-collar side hustle of the week**. I want to show you *the perfect landing page* — the perfect landing page, the best landing page I have ever seen. The greatest marketing landing page of all time. I want you to go to www.suckmyguttersclean.com

Sam Parr

We: "suckguttersclean" — 1,569 reviews, averaging 4.9 stars. "Suck My Gutters." This is just ridiculous. Okay.</FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

By the way, I'm not joking — this is actually the **best landing page I've ever seen**. A guy was driving. Shout out to Cody on Twitter — Cody DMs me and says, "Hey, I saw this truck driving by and it was like there was a great truck and they had this domain." I went there and I'm blown away by this landing page. I just kinda want to show you some of the things. So, here's some things that this landing page gets right. I'm just gonna take you on a tour — a deconstruction of this landing page. You land and it tells you exactly what they do: *they suck gutters clean.* Then it provides the most important thing in any sales pitch: the **proof**. They say **1,500 reviews averaging 4.9 stars**. Then they give you the call to action, so you can click "Call" or click "Email." Now, you scroll down and you get Wednesday's coupon.

Sam Parr

"What?"

Shaan Puri

It's every single day — they change the coupon. It's linked to the day, and they basically say, "Hey, this is Wednesday's coupon." By the way, it's always $20 off, but they make it feel like a *today-only* special. Then there are "gutter-sucking" pictures. Our guys are out there sucking gutters every day. It's normal to vacuum gutters 10 feet, 20 feet, even 40 feet high. There are a bunch of pictures from the field. Then it says: here are the two Wednesday coupons. You just click them. The first one is if you call before 6:00 p.m.; the second one is if you do it over the phone you get a free quote. "We'd love to suck your gutters clean." It basically says the process is painless. We have bookings available within 24 hours. It's quick, it's easy — we've done this a lot, over 6,000 times a year. Then it says, "So who will you talk to when you call?" There's a photo of this guy and it says, "Robert answers 90% of our calls. He's been with us for seven years. It's awesome." He'll give you answers, results, and customer satisfaction. It then talks about how experienced they are and their promise — how it's risk-free, damage-free, death-free, etc. More pictures from the field and reviews follow. If you go to the About page, it just continues — every single part of this landing page is perfect. There's a little video playing in the bottom left that says "Meet the owner." It's kind of like a little TikTok video where you can see the service in action. It makes it feel real. If you want to get in touch with these guys, here's a phone number, you can email us, or you can just text us. However you want to get your gutters sucked clean, we got you. It continues on with a section about price. It's like, look, we're not the lowest price. If you pick somebody who's going to give you the lowest price, here's what comes with that service — here's a couple of those problems. But we will suck your gutters clean if you don't remember. That's what we do, and here's why you should choose us. I just calculated some rough numbers from their website. They basically say they do about 6,000 of these a year. They're in North Carolina and they're in Georgia. If you do the math on the average job — let's say $250–$300 for a home in Georgia — this would be a $1.5–$2 million-a-year business. And it's just this guy who runs it. Dude, it's kind of amazing...

Sam Parr

Greatest. I think if you click the **About** page, they list their staff, and they say things like: "Matt F., a Georgia native, a loving husband, a hardworking guy, tall, great at basketball, looks a lot like *Jim from The Office*."

Shaan Puri

Exactly. This guy's like a *copywriting whiz* — he's like a *marketing whiz* who just happens to be doing gutter cleaning. You know, Garrett, the owner. Shout-out to Garrett for making the best marketing website I've ever seen.

Sam Parr

Did I call this? He's from Utah.

Shaan Puri

He's—he's from Utah. Exactly—you knew it. Then he's like, "I'm married to Georgia Peach, moved out there. I like warm weather... blah blah blah." Every single pixel on this page I love—just love.

Sam Parr

"Oh my gosh, this is awesome. How'd you find this?"

Shaan Puri

Cody DM'd it to me on Twitter. He's like, "Hey — check this website out; it's great."

Sam Parr

"Who's Cody?"

Shaan Puri

Some guy on Twitter that I don't know.

Sam Parr

**This is what happens. This is how you get your ideas** — some guy... yeah, like...

Shaan Puri

My next idea also came from a random person DMing it to me.

Sam Parr

Who? Alright. So, **Sean Hendrix** — shout out.

Shaan Puri

We know Sean from the Hoop Group. He DM'd me this thing about *"this is the hillbilly of the week."* We have our *"Billy of the Week,"* which is about a billionaire doing world-conquering things. Then there's the *"Hillbilly of the Week,"* who just takes kind of the dumbest idea you can imagine and makes it successful. Sam, you may have heard of this — I don't know why. Have you ever heard of "Billy Bob's Teeth"?

Sam Parr

"Oh, of course. I know this—the fake teeth. Everyone knows this." </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Basically, this guy has such a crazy backstory that it's either a lie and he's playing a character like **Borat**, or he genuinely had one of the craziest lives you'll ever hear. I almost feel embarrassed to say what he said because I think there's a greater than 50% chance he's just making it up for effect. According to him, he grew up with not just no money, but no power and no electricity. They lived on a school bus with dirty sheep. They used to eat roadkill off the road—that was their only meat. Just crazy things. He lived in a cave at one point. As an adult, he brainstormed the idea for **"Billy Bob's Teeth"** when he was in a cave and was like: > "What's a low-priced product I can sell through the mail that would just be fun?" He came up with the idea and sold 20,000,000 sets of these teeth (20 million sets).

Sam Parr

"Wait, what? Yeah... this—what's the guy's name?"

Shaan Puri

Billy Bob.

Sam Parr

"I don't know Jonah White."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, **Jonah White**. There's a Bloomberg feature on him, and there are a bunch of articles about this guy.</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

**Dude, this is so funny. I googled.**

Shaan Puri

**The Red Tycoon**

Sam Parr

I Googled the founder, and the first article that came up was from my hometown — *Saint Louis Magazine*: the story of how Jonah White made millions of dollars selling novelty fake teeth. It says, "The story is nearly as bizarre as the product."

Shaan Puri

Exactly. The story is *crazy*.

Sam Parr

This article that I sent you—it's a Q&A—and the first question was: > "So your mom's Jewish and your dad was a Native American named Five Bears, and they met in jail after a political protest. Is that true?" "Exactly... in his... in his life. Isn't that awesome?"

Shaan Puri

Exactly. Every answer in that interview—every single answer—is more ridiculous than the one before it. So, again, either this is the *"most interesting man in the world,"* or he's lying. And, like religion, I choose to believe here.

Sam Parr

He looks great. Alright, there's a photo of him, like giving the teeth to **Miley Cyrus**. Alright — that's cool.

Shaan Puri

So I'm just gonna read you a little bit about this product. The very, very first thing that stood out is he goes, "You know how great marketers reframe what they're doing?" Like, they can be doing something that seems totally silly and meaningless, but they find a deeper meaning in the thing. He did that with his teeth. They're like, "So you just sell these fake plastic teeth, and you make a bunch of money off this. Is that what you're doing?" He goes, "No. **I'm giving people permission.**" He continued: "My teeth are a *permission slip*. People want to be silly, they want to be playful, they want to be fun. They don't know how to do that in normal day-to-day life, but as soon as you pop in the teeth you kind of have to be silly, you kind of have to be playful, you kind of have to be fun. I give you permission to be that version of yourself." I was like, honestly, I can't deny the logic—the logic's there. Suddenly this stupid gag gift, this cheap plastic stuff from China that he's marking up and selling, is about making the world a better place. I totally buy it. I'm with you, Billy Bob.

Sam Parr

When I hear stories like that, I almost always buy into them — they **always** work.

Shaan Puri

They always work on me. Yeah, for sure. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think that’s—you know, we had Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas on the podcast the other day, and his *whole life* is that story. I left that podcast thinking, “I’m going to quit doing what I’m doing and intern for you.”

Shaan Puri

Yeah. He was that *reality distortion field*—like, "oh my gosh." He makes you think there's nothing more important than doing what he's doing right now: playing banana ball out on the field, you know what I mean, or popping in ugly teeth. Not even—not even good-looking teeth, right? That's the *irony* of this whole thing. Logic would tell you it's about making people look better, and then, well... what's the opposite? What if I made them look absolutely ridiculous? What if I made them look silly? It turns out there's obviously a market for the **opposite**.

Sam Parr

Alright. A lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want us to tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. Really, many listeners have a full-time job and want to start something on the side—a side hustle. A lot of people message Sean and me and say, "Alright, I want to start something on the side— is this a good idea?" What they're really asking is: give me the ideas. Well, friends, you're in luck. My old company, The Hustle, put together 100 different side-hustle ideas and appropriately called it the *Side Hustle Idea Database*. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas. Frankly, I went through them—they're awesome. The database explains how to start them, how to grow them, and offers a little inspiration. So check it out: it's called the *Side Hustle Idea Database*. It's in the description below—you'll see the link. Click it, check it out, and let me know in the comments what you think.

Shaan Puri

Okay — my third one: check out this guy on Twitter. Ben told me about him. Ben went to an event last year called **Capital Camp** and said, "I met this guy named Cole. Cole is running a roofing company — a franchise — but he's doing something interesting." Cole decided to go all in on video content. He's trying to do the *MrBeast* approach for roofing. If you look at his YouTube channel, he just posted a video that has **400,000 views**. The video is basically about a guy whose roof was damaged and who couldn't afford a new roof. These guys surprised him with a free roof. The video tells that feel-good story: the homeowner says he can't pay for it, and they insist, "It's on us — don't worry. Your neighbor said great things about you; we just wanted to do this for you." He essentially stole a page from that playbook — putting together two things you wouldn't normally think to combine: MrBeast-style content and local roofing. He's making content to grow top-of-funnel awareness for his brand — a kind of blue-collar marketing hustle. At first I thought it was a little crazy. Going viral is hard, and he's only local — is this really the best use of time and energy? Ben suggested he's doing it to make the work more fun and interesting for himself. That made sense to me: sometimes doing the irrational can be the most rational thing you do. He's actually pulling it off and generating a lot of interest with one format. For example, there was a mom who was struggling to buy groceries, so they gave her a free roof. In another case, someone had no idea they were getting help — they surprised him with a free roof and even fixed his car. The idea is to go into rundown areas where people are struggling, help them out with a feel-good video, and use that to grow the roofing business. I thought that was kind of cool.

Sam Parr

Is it *working*? Like, is it *growing his business*?

Shaan Puri

I don't know. I haven't messaged him, but I mean... imagine it is, *I think*.

Sam Parr

It has to.

Shaan Puri

It has to, right? Like, the irony is—I think most roofers actually kind of have their hands full with demand, and actually the supply, that can be, you know, it becomes quickly a **supply-constrained** business, not a **demand-constrained** business. I think if he was building a *national brand*, I would be all in on this. I’d be like, “this is genius.”

Sam Parr

And maybe he is.

Shaan Puri

If he's a local franchisee of somebody else's brand, I think it's a little more challenging. So I really hope that what he's going to do—the bet that he could and should make—is to try to create a **national brand**. I think we had somebody on here who talked about *Pinks Cleaners* and this kind of renaissance of cool, blue-collar franchises. Cool branding, cool merch — it looks almost like a fashion brand. It's appealing to the Gen Z and millennial audience. You basically use social media in a way that all the mom-and-pop or even the old-school national vendors just don't know how to do, and you can create a really powerful franchise brand. If he did that, I would be like, "This is genius." I mean, that's a **multi-$100 million play**.

Sam Parr

Okay. If I'm looking at this guy, he looks like he's in his thirties, so he grew up with the Internet. It seems like, you know, he's probably hip enough to understand how **YouTube** works. But there's still a gap between being an *Internet native* and actually understanding how things go viral. Do you think he figured this out **on his own**? And what type of team do you think he has? </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

You're asking me questions I do not know the answer to, but I could speculate. If you look at his Twitter, it says: "Just had our second long-form video break 100,000 views." This was, you know, a few days ago—right. This is November, but he...

Sam Parr

I looked it up — it looks like he's been doing *shorts* for a while, then he went *long-form*. I think the move is you start with shorts, get momentum, and then you go to long-form. With our podcast, there have been times where we'll say something in minute 40, 50, or 60, and people on the street will come up to me and reference that. I'm like, "I can't believe you listened to that much of it." If we had to measure the value that you and I can capture for our own companies versus the audience size, I have to imagine that the ratio is really good: listenership to the value you can capture — because you spend so much time listening to us. Yeah. Usually, trust is equal to time spent listening, which is quantity of content times length.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and you can't fake it, right? This podcast is *not scripted*. This is actually us—improvised, talking, unedited—and we've been doing it for years. At this point, you either think we're idiots. You think we're bad guys and we're dumb. You think we're smart. You think we're somewhere in between. You have all the information you need to form an opinion about us, right? Outside of actually meeting us and being our friends, this is the closest approximation you can get. So I think **trust builds really fast** in a medium like podcasting, or especially video podcasting, because you...

Sam Parr

Long or... long videos. Yeah. So you need length. The problem is that that's hard to do. You kinda have to feel it out a little bit, and it takes forever to make these things. In this case, with this podcast we've done 700 episodes, so we're kinda good at it. But with this guy, it looks like he started with a short, and I think that's the move. That's what we're doing with Hampton a little bit—I'm relearning content. You start short, you see what works, you see what hits, then you go long. The second thing this guy is doing that really helps is about the team. When you have a staff, you want to create a *"culture of excellence"* or whatever values you have. A lot of times it's easier to create content for your audience, and a byproduct of that is twofold: first, you recruit people who know your content and understand what you're about; second, your current staff gets influenced by it and really starts buying in. So I think creating content like this is going to blow up his business, and it's a huge net positive for helping his company's culture.

Shaan Puri

Totally. It's also helping his business grow. There's this barber who I go to sometimes to get my haircut. He lives nearby and listens to the podcast. One time he basically had me captive in a chair — he'd cut my hair for an hour — and he said, "Hey man... can I ask you some questions?" I said, "Alright, shoot. Go for it." That haircut turned into a three-hour conversation. He's a great dude and he's got an amazing story. This guy, Siwa, I think started cutting hair just on the side. He basically couldn't afford a haircut, so he taught himself how to cut hair for himself, maybe for friends and siblings. COVID happened, that sort of thing. He started learning how to cut hair when he was about 16–17 years old. He ended up getting a job at a barbershop. [Explaining how barbershops work] The owner essentially acts like a mini landlord: the chairs are units for rent. Barbers rent a chair for the day and pay the owner — sometimes a cut of revenue or profits, sometimes a flat fee — and keep whatever they make on top of that. The owner noticed this kid hustling and said, "I want to open a second location. I want to open it with you." Now Siwa is something like 19–20 years old and part owner of the barbershop. He told me, "Dude, I feel like I got this really great opportunity because I'm a part owner of this thing, but I'm new to business. I don't know what to do." I told him there are *two* things he really needs to do. First, **learn one core money-making skill** that will serve him whether he's in this barbershop or any other barbershop after this. Right now he probably spends 100% of his time just fulfilling the service — cutting hair. That can keep you busy, but here's what you should do: basically reduce your income as a barber by about 20%. Cancel your last two appointments of the day (or your first two), and give yourself a 90–120 minute block. Use that block to figure out how the owner drives customers to the store. What digital marketing is he doing — Yelp, Google Ads, whatever else it is? You need to spend two hours a day learning that.

Sam Parr

Just... yeah.

Shaan Puri

Understanding and studying digital marketing—specifically for local businesses—whether that just helps grow this business, whether you open up a second location and you know how to do that now you can own it for yourself, or you decide to do something else altogether besides hair cutting. You've now built a core money-making skill, which is **online advertising**. That's the first thing you're going to do. The second thing you're going to do is recognize all the areas you're green to. You never owned a business before. You don't know how to read a **P&L**. You don't know how to do digital marketing. There are all these things you don't know how to do, and it's pretty easy to get in a pit of despair about how much you don't know. But what is it that you know that most barbers don't know? He said, "Well, I'm good at like... I don't know. I don't really know what that would be." We started brainstorming. "Well, you're on Instagram. You grew up with Instagram, basically, and you get it. You're actually good at making content." He replied, "Yeah, actually I have these videos that kinda go viral. That's where I get most of my personal clients from—just these videos I post." I said, "Alright, beautiful. You are going to become the best at content for this." I also said, "Study these other guys. There's these guys who are doing this content format where they're like, 'We're two college students who graduated, turned down job offers, and we're building, you know, a bar or something—building a bar. We're taking...'" [end of quote; last fragment unclear]

Sam Parr

Of those.

Shaan Puri

We're rehabbing the bowling alley. Yeah—we bought this abandoned Blockbuster and we're turning it into a barbershop. There are the guys who—friends of the pods—they're doing a project with a luxury Airbnb in Virginia. They're like, "We're trying to build the best Airbnb in Virginia. We just bought a piece of land, and we're gonna bring you with us every step of the way over the next two years as we build this thing." They already are pre-booked out because their videos get hundreds of thousands of views; people support them and want them to succeed. In short, they've solved their demand problem through content. So I told him, "Dude, you gotta do that with this barbershop. You need to carve out time to do this because this is how you can escape the treadmill that normally exists when you're working your way up." You can take an elevator if you go look for it and push the button. What this guy's doing is: **get good at content**, because if you get good at content you break out of what were otherwise your constraints.

Sam Parr

Like, give him a **shout-out**. What's his handle? </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

His handle on Instagram is **Siwa**, which he spells "s i u a", and "cuts" spelled "c u t z". We'll put it in the description here: **Siwa Cuts**. Go give this guy a follow, and let's encourage him to get some content. I mean, he's got a kind of amazing story—personal life-wise I didn't go into it—but where this guy came from and how he was hustling and trying to make stuff happen. He did not have any advantages. You know, people are like, "Oh, you gotta check your privilege." It's like this guy needed to go to the library and get some privilege. He was basically really grinding his way up, and I really want him to...

Sam Parr

Great head of hair, too. Great head of hair. Did you hear this interview with **Ari Emanuel** from *Invest Like the Best*?

Shaan Puri

I didn't *actually* watch it yet. No — I saw some clips.

Sam Parr

Let me give you guys a little background. So Patrick O'Shaughnessy — I've met him a couple times. He's an amazing guy. He hosts this awesome podcast called *The Best*. It's been blowing up; he's been doing it for years, and lately his guests have been incredible. The guest he had recently was Ari Emanuel. For those who don't know (we've talked about him a bunch), the easiest way I can describe it is: Ari Gold from Entourage was based off Ari Emanuel. If you don't watch Entourage, he's a power player. He started out as an agent in Hollywood, worked his way up, and started his own agency. He owns — is it called Endeavor or IMG? They're kind of the same companies — it's called **Endeavor**, and they own everything. They own UFC, PBR (bull riding), WWE, movies... everything. The guy's a player. He recently took the company private at about a $40 billion valuation. A few things make him special. One, his brother is Rahm Emanuel — I think he was the mayor of Chicago — and he hinted on the podcast that he’s going to be running for president. His other brother is Zeke, who's like one of the most famous cardiologists on earth; he helped invent the artificial heart replacement or something like that. Just a crazy family. The podcast is great because Ari is a 10-out-of-10 energy when it comes to business. He had one or two lines I wanted to read to you. Listen to this quote — he was talking about buying live-event businesses: > "I don't know how to build a data center. I'm not in the chip business. I just know how to create really great live events, how to monetize them, and I know how to make a great user experience. I'm taking the opposite of an AI bet. The opposite of an AI bet isn't building data centers — the opposite of an AI bet is building live events. Live is gonna last forever. It's not gonna go out of style." He went on to describe the ingredients that go into a great live event and discussed all the businesses he's recently bought. What I didn't realize was that Endeavor, this massive conglomerate, owns dozens of event businesses. I want to talk about two or three that I had no idea about. First — have you heard of Frieze? You’ve definitely never heard of this... I don't even know why I asked. Frieze (F-R-I-E-Z-E) started in 1991, I believe. It was a monthly magazine about art — I'm not into art, so take this with a grain of salt — covering cool paintings and the latest happenings in buying and selling art. They eventually launched two art festivals where you can go look at art and buy a bunch of it. Ari said, "We bought that business for $200 million." Patrick O'Shaughnessy asked, "Well, why'd you do that?" Ari said they only had an L.A. event and a New York event. His answer was basically: we're just gonna do the same thing but in Dubai, in Miami, and elsewhere. All we're gonna do is do the exact same thing but more — we know how to monetize them. When I ran my first event, it was called HustleCon. I think we had 1,500 people come — let's say in year three — and I only made $30,000 in sponsorship. I hired a good sales team; the sponsorship 10x'd. It went from $30,000 to $300,000. Nothing changed: same amount of people, same people, same venue. Just better operations. Ari's point was: look, I know how to make money off events. We do this, we do this, we do this. We have lectures happening around the event. We know how to monetize. We know how to get Dubai to pay us ten years' worth of cash in order to host an event there. We're gonna do that in 20 different cities. He broke it down — it was very, very, very fascinating.

Shaan Puri

This positioning is pretty genius. You basically either want to say, "We are an **AI-enabled company**" — like the **AI** is gonna help us explode. If you're just not AI, that's not that interesting. Or you say, "We also win with **AI**," because **AI** is gonna destroy all this other stuff and it's gonna make life even more valuable. He somehow uses the **AI** tailwind as a narrative for his own business. By the way, don't—I'm not saying "narrative" as if it's false; I just think it's smart. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Our narrative to be it.</FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

It's smart to position it that way to investors, right? So I think that's one thing. This roll-up they've done with **Endeavor** is pretty wild. I think this was... we did an episode a year ago called *"Stockapalooza,"* where both Sam and I played pretend Warren Buffett and we both picked a stock. My pick was **TKO**, which is the public part of Endeavor.

Sam Parr

It's *really* complicated how they have it all set up.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's very complicated because Endeavor is private, I think, but TKO is public — it's just their fighting and entertainment side of that. If I look at the one-year stock chart for TKO, it's up 40%, so that's performed really well. That was sort of the correct bet in that sense. I think it's because of the same thing: *what's scarce is what's valuable*. In an AI world, what will become really, really scarce is **live human entertainment** — a place for humans to go to have a human experience with other human beings that thrills them, that's away from the keyboard, but still generates content that does really well on social media and benefits from social media at the same time. And I think their brands have done a very good job of doing that.

Sam Parr

I was listening to **Tom Haverford** from *Parks and Rec* — **Aziz Ansari** — on **Theo Vaughn**'s podcast. He was talking about how he "went quiet for a minute while I was writing and then I went back on tour," but it was like a six- or seven-year difference. He's like, "Now it's so much harder to find venues because everyone's on tour." He said podcasters go on tour, authors go on tour — there are all different types of experiences, like an interesting professor-like talk or other formats. You know your buddy **Hasan Minhaj** — he's a comedian, but his show is not really a comedy show, if I understand correctly. It's like performance; it's far greater than that. So, like, he was like, "There's just so many shows now and people can't get enough of it." Alright, so the second business — have you heard of **Barrett-Jackson**?

Shaan Puri

Barrett Jackson sounds like a kid I went to college with. Alright — he's good at Duke.

Sam Parr

Dude, if you are in the Midwest and you have a dad who's 65 years old, this is actually the time of year where you're going to experience it. If you're at home, my dad would do this all the time—twenty-four hours a day during this time of year: **Barrett-Jackson** was on the TV. **Barrett-Jackson** is a car auction that happens, I think, in Arizona. It was owned by—I think—two guys: one was Barrett and one was Jackson. They auction off cool cars, mostly old stuff from the sixties and seventies. They turned it into a TV show, and it's basically running... *"I'm not joking."* If you look at the programming, it's gotta be twenty-four hours a day on a handful of channels. This company, for one, is awesome. If you read about the guy who owns it—I think his name's **Tom Barrett**—he's kind of a badass. You'd have to be pretty cool to start a car auction website, and he sold the company to **Endeavor** for $300,000,000. Ari was talking about how this has been exploding and more and more people are coming to the auctions.

Shaan Puri

"So what are you watching? You're watching the actual auction take place—so a car is revealed and then people raise their paddles to bid. Is that what's going on?"

Sam Parr

Oh yeah. But they have like *10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 people* — *thousands and thousands of people* — and they have different warehouses at any given time. There's going to be a theme. For example, one warehouse might feature famous cars from old TV shows, another American hot rods, another European 1930s cars. The programming switches from warehouse to warehouse, and you think, "Oh cool — the old motorcycles are coming up; that's going to be awesome. Let's watch that one." You watch, and each bid is probably five minutes long. You're like, "Oh my gosh, this one might sell for $60,000... oh my god, it's going to be $80,000 — this is going to sell for $80,000." They show the person bidding, and you wonder what he does, what's his name — you Google him. It becomes an event where you're guessing what things will sell for. The announcers on TV tell you the background of the item: "This car was built here; it's special for this reason." They might say, "This one is in particularly good shape because it was stored in Florida," since Florida's the best for storing cool cars. It all tells you the cool story. So Ari bought this business. I didn't know he bought it, but he bought it for $250,000,000. *Pretty cool, right?*

Shaan Puri

This is great. I feel like something like this could explode. You know how some sports are basically producing the *journey* of content? F1 famously did this — it's about how to get more people interested in F1. It's kind of hard to get into as a new fan, but they created the F1 show and that made it feel accessible. We're both UFC fans. One of the reasons I'm a UFC fan is because they used to have a show that was basically a reality show about these fighters leading up to the fights. "Tough" is the name of it. It's about these amateur guys coming from different backgrounds — one guy's a mechanic right now and another is homeless — but they both have this dream of being a fighter. They go through a reality competition, one of them gets a contract, and the finale is part of the actual UFC card. That was the first time I ever watched a UFC card: it was the finale of this reality show. I feel like these are closed-off worlds with high passion. If they just build an *on-ramp* — find the right kind of human-interest show that gets people to start going down the rabbit hole — these things could explode if they get it right. By the way, you see this now with companies too. Companies used to do content marketing by saying, "Let me tell you about our product," with case studies and updates. Then it shifted to more "work in public" stuff — posting numbers or blogging about what's going on. Now it feels like a lot of B2B businesses are basically building reality-TV channels. They'll say, "We're going to have a YouTube channel" — **Barstool did this amazingly well.** Barstool's content was just as much about what was going on inside Barstool as it was about the games.

Sam Parr

And I think that's... this is *table stakes* from now.

Shaan Puri

Which is crazy, because that's so hard to do. Crazy that that's table stakes. I don't—even— I don't even think it's table stakes, but I do think those who pull it off get *handsomely rewarded*. It's just so hard to do that well.

Sam Parr

Just sort of—think of *who was the second person to walk on the Moon?* Do you know?

Shaan Puri

It was Buzz Aldrin. I don't know.

Sam Parr

Fuck, I don't know. No one knows who's the second person who *broke four minutes in the mile*, you know what I mean? Like—who, who was after Columbus? It just doesn't matter. The difference between **first place** and **second place** is the difference between who got second place when Usain Bolt won the gold medal. The difference between who does this well and who doesn't do it well is... yeah, you're still like, you ran really fast and you got second place and you broke four minutes in the mile. But come on—Roger Bannister is Roger Bannister. Number one's number one for a reason. So I think the difference between first place and second place, when it comes to doing content well, it's not one place—it's like a thousand times in the results. I...

Shaan Puri

Every morning I write. I do a two-hour writing block for my book. I think I can write about whatever I feel like — it doesn't have to be good or on topic. I just have to write. Today I wrote one called **"Nobody Wants to Be Samsung."** Everybody knows **Apple**. Everybody knows **Steve Jobs**. We all love Apple. We all love Steve Jobs. We admire him. And Samsung — who's the founder of Samsung? Who is it, right? Who's the CEO of Samsung? I don't know. It's like, here's a company that's got—I don't know—22% market share of the global cell phone market, makes billions of dollars, successful. But there's a difference between being successful and being loved and admired. We all want love and admiration, and it's like nobody wants to be Samsung in this situation. I use the Usain Bolt example. I think something like 500 million people watched Usain Bolt at the Beijing Olympics when he broke that record. Five hundred million people were tuned in for ten seconds; you did not look away, and nobody could tell you who got second.

Sam Parr

And the difference between first place and second place was two, I believe. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Exactly. It would... I remember that, basically.

Sam Parr

It's two.

Shaan Puri

Actually, it's infinite fame and, like, respect — and complete obscurity and working at Wendy's. Like, that's... that's the *result gap* of that. Too, right? And so, like, there are those disproportionate rewards for being **insanely great** that you just don't get for merely being good or even great.</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

And I think that "content" is one of the reasons. I don't know if "content" is the right word or if "story" is the right word. Steve Jobs had stories. He was magnetic; he had charisma. Have you ever looked at old photos of him when he was in his thirties, dressed in tuxedos and shit? He just looked awesome—he was so cool.

Shaan Puri

Is that the handkerchief and stuff? Yeah.

Sam Parr

**"Yeah, it just looked great."**

Shaan Puri

Naval has a great quote on this, by the way. He says, **"The internet democratizes consumption and consolidates production."** [Naval Ravikant] Meaning: the internet gives everybody access. A five-year-old with an iPad has access to more information than kings of prior times. Everyone has the same access to the same information now, so it democratizes the information side. But it consolidates production. I don't know how old your kid is, or if you let them have screen time or if you're a strict parent, but if you know who Miss Rachel is, she's basically like the world's preschool teacher. She's the best at doing preschool-ish stuff, so all of our kids go to her. Then there are the winners in music, TV, or art. All the rewards get consolidated into the best producers, and then those productions get distributed to everybody else. That's the dynamic the internet created, which is pretty cool.

Sam Parr

My kid goes to a singing class in Central Park with this lady who's like a *Miss Rachel* knockoff — she wears suspenders. For some reason she went over to my little girl and said, "You're so cute." Then she said, "Isn't it crazy? You never know who you're gonna meet. I have Miss Rachel's phone number in my cell phone — isn't that nuts?"

Shaan Puri

She told you that.

Sam Parr

No, my kidnapped... I was like...

Shaan Puri

"Does your kid even speak?"

Sam Parr

No, I was like, did then I name.

Shaan Puri

Dropping to a toddler.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I was looking at my daddy and I was like, "Did you just hear her name-drop that she has a [unclear: 'miss']?" She even said she talked to her. She goes, "I have her cell phone number."

Shaan Puri

Unprompted.

Sam Parr

"And then she was singing, and she said, 'Well, if I knew how to copyright my music like Miss Rachel, then I'd be rich too.' She kept repeating things — like, she was saying a lot. I was like, 'Miss Katie, are you... are you angry at Miss Rachel? What's going on? Are you working through something still?'"

Shaan Puri

"The next season of *You*?" "Hey, am I allowed to file a restraining order on behalf of somebody else?"

Sam Parr

"Yeah, it was nuts. It was very, very crazy. Bringing up all this **Endeavor** stuff—I made a mistake. I used to own an events company, and I hated it. I was like, "This is stupid." Boy, I was really... I was really dumb, because I think that if I—okay, so if you're like a **28‑year‑old** operator type (meaning you're **Type A**: incredibly well organized, a perfectionist, but not creative), what I would do is go out and find a niche that I like. For example, if it was clothing, you would find fashion influencers. If it was fitness, you would go find a runner. Then I would build events—a running event or a flea market or something like that—for some of these people. I think that the demand is greater than it's ever been. I think you could absolutely knock it out of the park. It's going to be hard, but I think it could be very rewarding, because when I hear **Ari** talk about these events—so we just had Jesse Cole from the **Savannah Bananas**; he's running an events business—I think it's just so much greater than I ever realized."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, do you remember when all those emails leaked? I think—speaking of, was it *Samsung*? I don't know who; somebody got hacked. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

"I think it was **Sony**. It was **Sony**."

Shaan Puri

Sony... it was the Sony hack. Exactly. Somebody was on a flight and they just go, "Hey, Amy — a couple random thoughts from *35,000 feet*, going from LAX to JFK." Such an LA way to start an email. A rising trend we're seeing with millennials is really extreme forms of experiential exercise, like **Tough Mudder** (it's sort of a filthy triathlon), or the **Color Run**. Even things like hot power yoga and veganism. Millennials want something to post with a sort of *"no big deal"* vibe on their social media — a no-big-deal humble brag. I'm wondering — they're talking about promoting **Spider-Man**. They're like, "I wonder if we could do something with the new Spider-Man movie to promote some sort of weird extreme thing." And then it was talking about **EDM**. "EDM is growing really fast; it's the defining music for millennials. I wonder if there's an EDM angle."

Sam Parr

Dude, this is one of those *viral* things: when your boss, who makes a whole lot more money than you, asks how X, Y, and Z work. It's like—person earns $3,000,000 a year, and she's like, **"Just do an EDM."**

Shaan Puri

There was another one I forgot, but it was basically that they were explaining how *out-of-home entertainment is going to explode*, and here’s why. Basically, it’s the combination of two things. First, people are spending so much time online that it will create a craving for offline experiences. Second, offline is just scenery or a landscape to create *humblebrag content* that they want to post back online. If you can create something like Tough Mudder, a music festival, or the Savannah Bananas, you can work backwards from what people want to portray: How does the 22-year-old show they’re cool and have friends? How does the 34-year-old mom show that she’s a good mom? How does someone show that they’re a good ex? You can almost design an experience from those signals—Museum of Ice Cream was given as an example. They all sound different, but they’re basically the same thing: a place you go for an offline, out-of-home experience that creates incredible social media content for you. That content says something about you— that you’re tough, cool, fun, hot, or whatever you want to convey to the rest of the world.

Sam Parr

Alright, let me tell you one more thing. We've talked on this podcast about the importance of marketing — how one or two lines can start a movement or make it really easy to sell an idea, especially when your product is related to that idea. I saw one of those the other day. I have six bullet points. I read the study, but I just want to bullet them for this show. A Barcelona study looked at 2,700 children and found that **"noise at school slows down their cognitive development."** Have you heard of this study? No? OK. They basically put the kids in two identical environments. They examined the public school system teaching the same curriculum and the same grades. They noticed that the difference in decibels — the quietness or noisiness of a school — made a drastic difference.

Shaan Puri

"What's the one where there's a train outside one of the classrooms?" "Yeah, I think I did hear this." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Yeah, so listen to this: for every **5-decibel** increase in traffic noise, children's working memory became **11% slower**, and their **complex working memory** — what you use for solving problems and recall — was **23% slower**. Then scientists looked at a meta-study of 21 similar studies. They found a **-0.46 effect size** on attention, memory, and reading. Meaning this is a medium-to-large hit on a person's cognitive performance from noise exposure. The real problem wasn't just a light humming in the background. It was trains going by, cars honking outside, things like that — and those noises made a significant difference. We're talking a **23% difference** in a child's development. So I thought: I should be careful with my kid. Then I thought about myself in my office — people interrupt me all the time. Should I wear earplugs? Should I use noise-canceling headphones? Is that enough? Should I pay to insulate my office so people can't disturb me? Would that make my memory **23% better** by reducing noise? I think this is a really cool study you could use as the backbone for something — sort of like **Claude Hopkins** (one of the best copywriters of all time). He single-handedly made toothpaste popular in America by using one simple quote: > "Rub your tongue over the front of your teeth. Do you feel that film that shouldn't be there? You need toothpaste in order to get rid of it." I think this study could be the basis for launching some type of **sound** business.

Shaan Puri

It's great — it's a great insight. Two hours ago, **Hormozi** tweeted this out. I just saw it right before the pod. He said: > "The best $5,000 you'll ever spend: soundproof your entire office. Make it so quiet you can hear your heartbeat. Kids next to noise pollution achieve consistently lower grades. In those quiet areas — and no one is immune — noise destroys." Sounds like he read the same study.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think it's going viral. I think we all saw the same stuff at the same time. It was great. They'd all be the same. It was a *very clear takeaway*.

Shaan Puri

Yeah. It's interesting — you thought about this for yourself and for business. I thought about this, like, for study, literally for students. So I wonder if you could basically rebrand just "headphones." What if you had *headphones that didn't have to play any sound*? You could make them a lot cheaper. You could make the form of...

Sam Parr

Totally agree.

Shaan Puri

Different. If you basically created something like *Steady Ears* and positioned it as, "Hey—just doing this one thing is going to make you smarter," and you use **TikTok** to distribute these, I think that's a strong approach. If you can change the form factor and then change the positioning—make it clear: this is **not** for sleeping, it's **not** for loud concerts, it's **not** for listening to music. These are things you put on your ears to improve your memory and study better. Your one hour of focus is going to be, you know, twice as productive as somebody who doesn't have these in — it's a hack, an advantage. I think you can sell a lot of a product that already exists as a commodity; you can sort of rebrand it.

Sam Parr

Brother, **studyyears.com** — it's available on **GoDaddy** for **$5** right now.

Shaan Puri

Not anymore, *I think I...*

Sam Parr

I mean, this is one of those things that sounds ridiculous, but it makes total sense to me when I think about my own behavior. I use my AirPods and I just put noise-canceling on. A lot of times I play nothing or just white noise when I'm working. I'm in my office right now — I'm filming this in a small office inside my big office — and I have a sign over here that I keep up that says **"Don't disturb the animals."** I cannot stand it when I'm trying to write and people come to my door saying, "Hey Sam, can I ask you about that?" I'm like, "Don't ask me about anything."

Shaan Puri

Right.

Sam Parr

I have them: when you see these headphones on, **don't talk to me**. Yeah — the noise does bother me terribly. I think that's a really cool idea.

Shaan Puri

I love it. All right, is that it?

Sam Parr

I think that's it. I think that's the *pod*.

Shaan Puri

"You didn't say *'that's the pod'* last time, and I saw that YouTube comments were a little upset at you about that. So, can you **do your job**?"

Sam Parr

That's my... that's the one thing I do here. **That's it.** That's the pod.