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Shaan Puri: Hey there, Freedom Fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy, where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. Joining me is someone who I’ve watched now for years, Shaan Puri, and I’ve listened to him for years, [00:00:09] like many of you have on My First Million. And the thing that I always felt about Sean is That he was like this Silicon Valley wannabe guy, that he really dove into this [00:00:18] world.
Andrew Warner: He’s nodding, so I’m not being a jerk by saying this. He dove into the world in a way that’s so frickin admirable. He knew the right people, he worked with them, he raised money. I remember when I was talking to [00:00:27] Naval about something. I was fact checking one of my other interviews. And Naval said to me, by the way, did you see what Sean is doing?
I go, know what? He’s one of the first people to do a rolling fund. And he started walking me through what you were doing over there. And I go, [00:00:36] this frickin guy, he’s always the first on all these Silicon Valley new things. And then He goes and gets a newsletter
and I go,
what? [00:00:45] This is like, like Sam Parr going back to the hot dog stand.
He’s going and getting a newsletter. What’s he up to? I subscribe. The newsletter was hella fun [00:00:54] because Sean is way more fun than I am. And I watched the business grow and here’s my theory, Sam. And I should say this, this interview is sponsored by Beehive, which is the [00:01:03] platform you built on. Here’s my theory.
My theory, Sam, uh, Sean, is that you put more money in your bank from the Milk Road, this newsletter, [00:01:12] than you did from all the other, from any one of the other things that you’ve done before.
Shaan Puri: Not quite true, but, but, uh, maybe on a [00:01:21] time invested versus payout basis, because the milk road was a one year project and the other things I made more, but I worked on them for, you know, I was [00:01:30] grinding away for seven, eight years to try to make something work.
So definitely for the time invested, it was excellent. Um, so we’ll, we’ll give you half, half credit for [00:01:39] that. We’ll put in more money than that. What’s that we’ll put in more money than that. When we sold Bebo, it was more. [00:01:48] Oh, really? Yeah.
Andrew Warner: You know what? I think because of, I guess I didn’t realize you had a big stake.
Can you tell me about that exit and what your, [00:01:57] what your, uh, sharing that business was?
Shaan Puri: Uh, yeah. So we, I guess there’s a backstory here. I don’t know how far you want me to go back, but [00:02:06] basically Bebo back in the day was a social network, similar to MySpace, Facebook. They were all competing at the same time.
MySpace was the [00:02:15] biggest in the US at the time. Facebook was number two in the U. S., but growing very fast. And Bebo was the biggest in a bunch of other countries, Ireland, [00:02:24] UK, et cetera. So the way that game played out, MySpace sold to Rupert Murdoch for something like 500 million, Facebook almost sold for a billion, but [00:02:33] refused to sell, started growing faster than everybody and Bebo, which I was not a part of at the time, was owned by a guy named Michael Birch and his wife, Xochitl.
[00:02:42] And they. Decided to sell. They timed it beautifully, unintentionally intentionally. I’m not sure, but he did tell me, you know, he sort of saw that Facebook was kicking their ass [00:02:51] and he was like, okay, I don’t think we’re going to be the winner based on the trajectory, the slopes of these lines. Um, so he had offered to sell to AOL for [00:03:00] 850 million.
So he cashes out. Hallelujah. I meet Michael years later. Michael is now running a idea lab, which is what a lot of founders do. They [00:03:09] sell, they make a bunch of money. They say, well, what, you know, they go by the boat, they buy the island, they buy the things. No joke. He literally bought an island. And then he was like, well, [00:03:18] I still love building things.
I still want to do things, but now I could do it on my own terms, which is amazing. So buys a fancy office in San Francisco, hires up a awesome team of [00:03:27] engineers, engineers. Yeah. And he’s creating an idea lab. I joined to work with him. I’m 24 years old. I decide I want to go work with the guy who’s been there and done that in [00:03:36] Silicon Valley.
I quit my job. I moved from Australia where I was living at the time to San Francisco. I show up, I don’t know anybody, but I’m, I’m interviewing [00:03:45] for literally two jobs. One was a job at Stripe, which I got rejected for. And the second one was a job at this place called monkey Inferno, which is what Mike Michael’s idea lab was called.
When I join, [00:03:54] I’ll fast forward a little bit. I join, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. But I’m just trying to make things happen. I end up getting promoted. So he was CEO of the lab. I was just a PM. I was the youngest [00:04:03] guy in the company. Within six months, he actually gives me a promotion where I’m now CEO of a 20 person kind of company that’s making a few million dollars a year of profit.[00:04:12]
And we’re the job is you’re going to create new ideas. Along the way, after he does that, he pulls me aside. He says, Hey, there’s an opportunity to buy Bebo back. [00:04:21] I said, what do you mean? Like, so Bebo had gone to AOL 850 million exit. They then did a tax write off and basically a year or two later, once Facebook had dominated [00:04:30] everything and AOL was a mess, AOL writes it down, sells it for like 10 million to some guy.
That guy was a bit of a crook. He [00:04:39] is just like siphoning money out of the business, you know, illegally in a way business going bankrupt. Michael tells me, Hey, we have a chance to buy this at an auction [00:04:48] before it goes into bankruptcy. We go and we buy it back from 1, 000, 000. So sold for 850. Buy it back for 1 million in a crazy high stakes [00:04:57] game of poker where we’re at an auction table bidding against other players and we, we ended up winning the bid.
Um, so now we own the brand [00:05:06] again, but nobody’s really been able to bring anything back. If you remember at the time, my space tried to come back, they hired Justin Timberlake and shit like that, and they tried to make it cool and it [00:05:15] totally flopped. We took the opposite approach. We were like, okay, everybody’s going to think this is a joke.
And so we released, we didn’t even know what the product was going to be. The news breaks that we bought it back. And so we make a [00:05:24] joke video, uh, making fun of ourselves for buying it back. That video goes viral. We get about half a million people signing up to check out what the new Bebo is going to [00:05:33] be when it comes out.
So now I got like six to nine months where we’re going to try a bunch of prototypes to try to figure out what Bebo should be. We’ve got half a million people waiting [00:05:42] and I start creating products and I would email 10, people off the list, getting them to try something under a code name, and if it was good, the idea was we’ll roll it out as Bebo.[00:05:51]
Andrew Warner: Meaning like lots of different business ideas. Lots
Shaan Puri: of ideas, lots of shots on goal. One, two, three shots on goal. Uh, one was like a, [00:06:00] uh, this is, you have to rewind the clock a little bit. This is less popular then, but it was like a video messenger. So you would, it’s like a video walkie talkie. I could send you a quick video message.
You would get it. You could play it. You [00:06:09] just put your thumb on the screen. You record a video message. As soon as you let go of your thumb, it sends it back. This is back to me very fast. Ping ponging of video messages. Snapchat ultimately won that. They just [00:06:18] kind of added video, made it easy enough. It was, You know, not there.
We did a thing that was like a bitmoji type of thing, where you create this little character, whatever you typed in your character would do it. It’s kind of [00:06:27] magical. It’s kind of like the way Dali or AI tools work today, where you just type in give me an image of X and it will just give you an image of it.
We made a thing that could do that that got [00:06:36] number one on the app store, got about half a million installs. Uh, but have kind of shitty retention. It’s kind of a novelty. So we’re trying a bunch of things. We end up creating a live [00:06:45] streaming app that sells to Twitch. Um, and so we got bought by Twitch, which is owned by Amazon.
And so that was the exit that you’re to take it back to your original [00:06:54] question. That was the first business I ever sold was that one. And now, you know, that was a business where, uh, Michael and Xochitl, the couple who I said bought it back [00:07:03] and we’re funding the lab, they own the majority of the company. I had a stake in that business.
Um, And you know, it was a good exit for everybody. And, um, you know, so that [00:07:12] was kind of like exit one. And then after that, I created the podcast. After that, I created a e commerce brand. After that, I created milk road, started creating other businesses after that.
Andrew Warner: You know what? [00:07:21] I didn’t realize that you had significant equity in that business.
I’m seeing here. I forgot how much it sold for according to tech 25 million. [00:07:30] Does that sound like the numbers high is it wasn’t that high. Okay. But, um, I, I just didn’t realize it. So, you know, why, one of the reasons why I didn’t realize it is. You still, even long [00:07:39] after the podcast had taken off, had this like, I don’t know, this energy of, I gotta succeed because I’m a failure and I know I can do better than this.
You [00:07:48] know, like at the end of How to Be Rich. Uh, what’s his name, that, that author talks about how, look at me, I’m now in a shed by myself [00:07:57] writing poetry cause no one likes me and my wife, I couldn’t marry anyone cause I have this glint in my eye like I’m gonna kill somebody in order to be rich and it could be whoever I’m gonna marry.
And I, I felt like you still [00:08:06] had that until recently and that’s where I thought, didn’t do that well with Bebo.
Shaan Puri: No, no, that whole narrative. I don’t know where you got that. [00:08:15] I have no idea what you’re talking about. You didn’t even know me. That’s a very specific narrative to have. Don’t you
Andrew Warner: think it’s enough for me to know you?
If I [00:08:24] follow you on like your podcast, obviously not. I’m clearly filling in gaps with my own experience. I do feel like, and I, for many reasons, I feel like. I need to do more. I’m not [00:08:33] enough. Look at all these things I should be doing and clearly comes out of lots of pores of my body. And so I do think
Shaan Puri: that’s one way to, you know, you can be fueled by, [00:08:42] uh, by that.
There’s many sources of fuel, right? It’s like if you give into a gas station, you could put diesel, you could put the unleaded, you could put whatever in and they’ll all make your car go. Some will make [00:08:51] you go and blow up and some will run really smooth. Some will gunk up your engine. I sort of think the same way about, um, you know, what inspires you to get up and do things every day.
And. [00:09:00] For me, it was very much after we sold Bebo, I remember it vividly. I went for a walk with my buddy. Who’s kind of like a mentor to me. I [00:09:09] think he’s a guy who lives life in a way that I, I think is, um, inspirational. He helped me sell the business too. He was kind of my, my, Voice in my ear, helping me figure out how [00:09:18] to sell a business.
I had never done that before. And, um, I remember going on a walk with him. We went for like a four hour walk and he said a couple of things. He was like, okay, so [00:09:27] what’s next? And this is the deal had just closed. So what’s next should have been, I’m going to go work at Twitch fest out and, you know, spend a couple of years there and I’ll learn so [00:09:36] much and blah, blah, blah.
I said, what do you think I should do? I said, how long do you think I should stay? And he was like, I think you should already quit. And, uh, he’s like, I was like, why? And he’s [00:09:45] like, you’re an entrepreneur. I was like, but there’s so much money on the table. If I just, if I stayed to one year to two years till three years, I get, you know, here’s the structure.
He’s like, I know the structure, but you know, [00:09:54] you’ll create so much more if you, um, if you do whatever he’s like, but that’s me. Uh, you know, what do you think you should do? I said, well, I’m about to have a kid. This is the [00:10:03] first big money I’ve ever made. I don’t really want to just give it up and, and, and not even hit that one year mark, because actually the way the deal was structured, if I left before [00:10:12] a year, I’d have to pay back money.
Um, so it was not even like, if you stay, you get more. It was like, if you stay, you get more. And if you don’t stay, you owe us money back. So there was like a real [00:10:21] penalty to not hit one year. Okay. So I said, let me use this as an opportunity to shift gears a little bit. I feel like for seven, eight years, I’ve just [00:10:30] been pushing a boulder up a mountain.
It felt so hard to make something work. And I desperately wanted to have a win, kind of like what you described. My motivation was like, I [00:10:39] think I’m good, but the evidence says I suck. Which one is it? And I said, I finally got, you know, a little bit of a win. I said, I think the next thing I should do is, [00:10:48] I should do the thing that I’m, um, I’m most excited about regardless of the opportunity, because like I spent eight years trying to make money.
Can I spend a year not optimizing [00:10:57] for money, right? Like if not, what was the point of making life changing money if it doesn’t change your perspective of life? It’s not just it changes the things you can buy [00:11:06] Right. It’s not you know, sort of I have freedom to go Buy this car, freedom to go do this. I have freedom from something.
So I have freedom [00:11:15] from the obligations of bubble. I have freedom from that pesky voice inside me. That’s saying you haven’t made it yet. You need to make a success. And so I really had a moment there. [00:11:24] It’s kind of the opposite of what you said. I, I had a moment there where I said, I want to spend the next year just doing whatever seems most interesting to me, um, and not prioritize money at all.
[00:11:33] That’s why I started the podcast. Cause on that walk, I told him, I said, he goes, so what’s that thing? And I go. You know, I think it would be amazing if I woke [00:11:42] up and I remember saying this vividly is what if I woke up and I was in a million people’s ear balls. I said, you know, like there’s, there’s been people who are like that for me, you [00:11:51] know, Tim Ferriss or Tony Robbins or Naval, these voices who really like, I enjoyed it.
I, it was entertaining. It was insightful. It was helpful. It was [00:12:00] like that friend or mentor who never met me, but they had a big impact on me and I was like, I think I could be that for other people. And I just think that would be so cool. [00:12:09] What if I got to just like be myself, talk, and that was getting in the middle of people’s ears.
So that’s why I started the podcast. I also said, well, I’m start, I’m starting a family. So I [00:12:18] want to be a great dad. I want to get in great shape. So I set a bunch of other goals for myself that was like, maybe there’s more to life than just, uh, this kind of career success [00:12:27] thing. And I wanted to dabble. So I also created an e commerce company.
I’d never done a physical product. So let me try that. See if that’s good. Spoiler, even when the [00:12:36] business is good, uh, physical products are a pain in the ass. It’s much, much easier to do digital things. But, um, that’s kind of what that next couple of years of my life looked like. And since then, other [00:12:45] things have happened.
But like, that was really that transition. And it, it didn’t come up from a place of, to answer your question, didn’t come from a place of, I’m not enough or I gotta do whatever. It was, [00:12:54] I got these chips now, these tokens, and I’m at Chuck E. Cheese. Which machines do I want to go put the chips into? That, that one looks fun.
That one looks fun. And I don’t have to play for tickets. I [00:13:03] can play the game that looks the most fun now. And that’s how I viewed the next few years of my life.
Andrew Warner: You know what? I think for some reason I thought my first million was Sam coming up with an [00:13:12] extension of the hustle. No, that was you.
Shaan Puri: No, no, that was me. I wanted to create a podcast. I created the podcast. And then I approached Sam and I said, Hey, you have a giant audience, right? Because the entrepreneur doesn’t turn [00:13:21] off, right? So you think, okay, I’m creating a product, but how am I going to get this distributed? I said, well, you know what?
So what if I went to Sam, he’s got a big audience, he’s got no podcast, [00:13:30] and so I asked him, I said, why don’t you have a podcast? He’s like, Oh, it’s, you know, I think podcasting is hard. I don’t have the talent. It’d be too, too expensive. We just got to stay focused on the newsletter. I said, well, here’s an [00:13:39] idea.
I’m creating a podcast anyways. Here’s the premise. Um, I think it’s going to be great. I will give you content. So I’ll give you content. [00:13:48] You give me distribution. We split the money 50 50. So you don’t have to put any out of pocket costs. Or do any work or distract your team. I’ll just give you the [00:13:57] audio file and you just put it in the newsletter.
Now your audience got extra content and you get extra revenue without any of the costs and work, kind of a no brainer offer, right? And so he became my [00:14:06] publisher and later I looped him in cause we were friends. I looped him in to actually be the kind of recurring cohost, um, somewhere, you know, six months in or something like that.
Andrew Warner: [00:14:15] That explains why. So every time I podcast on my Apple watch and I do that cause I like to ditch my phone, it will just randomly shift to the very first [00:14:24] episode. And I hear you doing an interview and. All right. I get it. Let me shift then over to, um, to the milk road. I was fascinated by the milk road [00:14:33] for, I’m not into crypto and never was not really.
And something pulled me in and I think it was the watching you build in public. And [00:14:42] obviously you built on, on your reputation and your audience that you had from, uh, from the, my first million podcast. But let me understand the whole [00:14:51] story of it. Cause I think this is an interesting bootstrap story. Why did you decide to do a newsletter?
And then why crypto? Let’s start with that. 100%.
Shaan Puri: So the two questions are actually [00:15:00] in reverse. So it was first why crypto and then, oh, we should do a newsletter. So the, basically the, at the time now, what year was this? I’m trying to remember. I don’t, I don’t really remember what [00:15:09] year this was. This must’ve been. 2021 or 2022. Um, you know, I was, I’d been into crypto for a while, was always interested in it, but my interest has just basically grown [00:15:18] every year.
My conviction has grown every year. And at the time this was pre AI. So it was pre chat GPT at the time. If you said what’s the most exciting thing in [00:15:27] tech right now, it was undoubtedly crypto, um, probably the really smart people were doing AI. They just, it wasn’t very popular yet, but for me, what I, of what [00:15:36] I could see It seemed like the smartest people I knew were all interested in crypto.
It seemed like the biggest upside industry. And it seemed like the new greenfield [00:15:45] opportunity. So I knew crypto was really interesting. I knew I wanted to be more a part of it. But I’ve always had this theory which is that it’s better to host the [00:15:54] party than attend the party. Meaning, Hosting the party is certainly more work, maybe three times more work, four times more work than attending a party, but it’s 100x [00:16:03] the return, meaning when you host the party, you meet everybody, everybody knows you, you know everybody, and you put yourself smack dab in the center of a network whenever you host a party, [00:16:12] even if at the beginning you didn’t know anybody, simply hosting a party will They fast track you to the center of a network.
And so I told Ben, who’s my business partner, I said, [00:16:21] look, we’re both really interested in crypto. We’re either going to be interested on the sideline. We’re going to be interested as investors. So some skin in the game, we’re going to be interested as investors and maybe [00:16:30] academically, if we just kind of follow along and we read along and we just scroll on Twitter all day, or we could host the party.
And I said, I think we should do something that puts us in the middle of the network, [00:16:39] because if we are correct, that crypto is super interesting, that this is going to be a big deal. Um, we should just get in the middle first and then [00:16:48] sort of find an opportunity, right? We’ll figure out what’s the right play.
Is it investing in other companies? Is it, um, starting a company ourselves? Is it being [00:16:57] the media player? Is it being a fund? Is it what we don’t know at this moment, but I knew that that was an area of interest and I knew that if it is an area of interest, it’s so [00:17:06] Greenfield. Just go host the party and you can become in the center of it very quickly.
You can bootstrap your own network very quickly. Now, once we decided that, then the question [00:17:15] was, what is the party? Is it an event? Is it a company? Is it a fund? Is it a newsletter? What is it? And I was fortunate that I had known Sam for many, many [00:17:24] years. I was with him. We were friends and we were in a mastermind together before he even created the newsletter, the hustle.
So back, you know, hustle might have 2 million subscribers or something today. It [00:17:33] had zero back then as I watched him build it brick by brick and also followed that space with morning brew and the skin, there was kind of these like That generation of newsletter [00:17:42] companies. So I knew that model. Well, I knew where it works and anywhere it doesn’t work.
Um, so once I decided to be in crypto, I was just looking for an excuse. I [00:17:51] said, what will be something that will give us an excuse, a forcing function, which is a great word. What’s a forcing function for us to be learning every day. [00:18:00] About crypto and to be, um, become super well connected in that space. So we meet all the smartest people and we, we get, we get access to all the best opportunities.[00:18:09]
And that’s why we decided to create the newsletter because I knew that model. I knew it would work in crypto and it wasn’t, I want to create a newsletter, okay, about what crypto. So it wasn’t [00:18:18] newsletter than crypto. It was crypto is where I want to be. Oh, a newsletter is a great vehicle that will get us to the center of that network.
And that’s why we did it.
Andrew Warner: I see. That makes sense. I thought you were watching this thing and [00:18:27] saying, okay, I can just copy it for any model, anything that’s interesting right now. Got it. Did it help you actually get to know people, make better investments, know something or get what?
Shaan Puri: Absolutely. [00:18:36] And by the way, the reason that’s important is. You know, the why everybody only sees the iceberg. They see the tip. They don’t understand the thinking that goes underneath it. And [00:18:45] I realized that the best way to do projects is to do them where even if this fails, it’s a success. Meaning even if the venture [00:18:54] fails, will the skills I pick up the network I build and the, um, experiences I have, the fun I have, will it still make it [00:19:03] worth it?
Let’s say 24 months in. And so I knew that even if the newsletter was a modest business or kind of a money losing business or sort of a shitty business, [00:19:12] I knew that it was still be a success because if you’re writing a daily newsletter, that means every day you’ve got to have something interesting and smart to say about crypto, which was like [00:19:21] our rate of learning about crypto will probably 300 X, right?
So I went from. Learning, you know, randomly whenever I watch a YouTube video or had a conversation or [00:19:30] scrolled Twitter to by 6 a. m. tomorrow, I got to send something out to 100, 000 plus people. And it’s got to sound smart and it’s got to be interesting. What’s the most [00:19:39] interesting, most smart thing I can say.
That was a forcing function to like really get me to get sharper, faster. And then in doing that, we now got well connected because we could go to anybody and say, Hey, [00:19:48] we have the largest crypto audience because we did in one year, we built to about, I want to say 250 ish thousand readers. And so that was the biggest [00:19:57] daily crypto newsletter.
So that opened up all the doors we wanted. Um, and lastly, um, It also, um, [00:20:06] forced us to like refine our thesis of like, it’s interesting. It’s easy to be interested in crypto when the numbers are going up to say, Oh, I like it. Cause it makes me rich. Uh, when [00:20:15] you have to talk about crypto, even when it’s down, it forced you to ask yourself what’s actually fundamentally interesting about this, right?
So I knew I would get those benefits, even if the newsletter didn’t work.
Andrew Warner: [00:20:24] Hey, you know what? I get that. And at the same time, where all that benefit, it feels really scary to do it daily. I’ve done this podcast daily for years and I’m not doing it daily now, [00:20:33] but it wasn’t that hard because I could spend an hour researching someone and then I’m talking to the smartest person I know where I could get today.[00:20:42]
Um, and they could be incredibly smart. And that’s not scary. Writing a thing every day is so much pressure and you’ve got work. You’ve got other things to do. [00:20:51] How did you do that?
Shaan Puri: Um, well, I made it a priority. So it was my project for that year. I was like, this is the main project. So it wasn’t like a side thing for me. [00:21:00] Um, and also I didn’t write it every day. So I knew I had this, I knew if I can figure out the format, meaning if I can make one edition that I [00:21:09] think is dope, then I could probably make two or three additions.
I think, and by the time I get three, now I’ve got a template. Now I’ve got a format and a format is something I could train others. So. [00:21:18] From day one was the editor, not the author. So first I made Ben write it. And Ben was like, dude, I’m not a writer. Blah, blah, blah. I said, well, we don’t have any look around the room.
There’s [00:21:27] nobody else here. And, um, if I start writing this, we will never get off that train. Cause we’ll just always assume that Sean has to write it. So I said, all right, [00:21:36] you write this tonight. I’m going to be your editor and editor would mean at the beginning, I rewrite the whole thing, but I would do that two or three times.
And I was like, dude, you see, I’m. And I would not just edit it. I would [00:21:45] write the comment why I changed this line. So it was like a, took me like three times longer than normal, but I was like, this is training. So I trained him. He wrote it for about a month or two. [00:21:54] And then about two months in, I was like, cool, it’s your turn to be the editor.
You need to find a writer. And we found a writer. And then we, you know, we were on our way. So, um, I also [00:22:03] would have been scared of daily, but again, it’s sort of like the four minute mile thing. Once you see somebody run it, you’re like, oh, that’s possible. I had seen Sam already do this. I had seen Sam train a team of writers to do this.[00:22:12]
Um, so I knew if Sam could do it, I could do it. It’s not going to be that hard. Uh, it wasn’t scary to me. I do say, I will say, you know, daily is not ideal. Like [00:22:21] it’s much nicer to do the podcast, you know, twice a week. It’s very, that’s much easier. But, um, that was what was needed for that business. And so we did it.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. I think it was, uh, [00:22:30] I always forget how to pronounce their names, even though I’d interviewed them years ago, the Karestan brothers, you know, those two brothers who used to do a lot of crypto stuff. Anyway, they went on, [00:22:39] on a YouTube live daily thing and that helped them build their, their audience, but it wasn’t this kind of intensity.
Um,
Shaan Puri: Yeah, there was, there was a huge [00:22:48] appetite for crypto. So there was, uh, you know, there was daily news and there was a huge appetite for people who wanted to learn, keep up and found it difficult to learn and keep up. So it was, you know, [00:22:57] that was the need in the market.
all right. I should say this interview is sponsored by Beehive. You built your, your newsletter on Beehive. Do you know why you made that decision or was it someone else?
Shaan Puri: We looked at it. We looked [00:23:06] at a couple of different options, right? We, we, we. Looked at four options. We tried, you know, test them all. Beehive was by far easiest to use, had all the features that we needed. Right. So it’s [00:23:15] like, you know, what do you need in a newsletter? You need to be able to spin it up quickly because speed to like making it a thing matters, but it wasn’t just easy to use.
Then it had the depth. So it was like, [00:23:24] Oh, this can do all the automations we need. It has the referral program built in. It has the feedback and polling system built in. It had all the things built in because Tyler, the [00:23:33] guy who created it, yeah. Was that morning brew and knew that they basically built these all home homebrew solutions themselves.
He basically just productized [00:23:42] a bunch of the best things that worked for morning brew and just made it available to the rest of us who didn’t have to make that same investment. So, uh, yeah, it was a no brainer. Behead was [00:23:51] awesome. We, we, we used it.
And do you end up investing in them too?
Shaan Puri: We ended up investing, so we were already, so we turned them down first because I was like, ah, how big can a newsletter business be from like the [00:24:00] software side?
You know, venture investing requires like a billion dollar exit. It’s like, do I believe there’s gonna be a billion dollar company or could it just be a great bootstrap company? I wasn’t convinced. I started [00:24:09] using it, saw how fast they iterated, like everything we needed. They would just ship super quick.
And I told Ben, I was like, look, I still don’t know how big this market is. But I do know that [00:24:18] founders and teams that ship that quick and like to solve user problems that quick, they win. So I said, let’s, let’s write a check. So we, uh, we ended up investing in them, um, somewhere along the [00:24:27] way.
Andrew Warner: All right. I’m going to say for anyone who wants to try them for, by the way, one of the features that I love about them is the feature that I’m going to ask you about where you can incentivize people to share the [00:24:36] newsletter and get their friends to sign up. Um, and so I’ll talk about that in a minute, but for anyone who wants to try them out, the URL is to get, to try them free and get my discount [00:24:45] is mixergy.
com slash beehive. No one’s going to remember that. And so I’m going to put it in the chat if you’re watching live and you can email me And I will give you a link to [00:24:54] that so you can use my link to get it to try it for free for a while and then get a discount afterwards. My email address is alikeandrew at bootstrappedgiants.[00:25:03]
com a at bootstrappedgiants. com As a podcaster, how do you feel about the way that I’ve always done interviews and then interrupted and brought my guest into the sponsorship? [00:25:12] Now that you’re sitting here, does it feel awkward or good?
Shaan Puri: That’s slick. I like it. I mean, perfect for, for this case, because I’m a fan, I’m an investor, I’m a user, and I’m probably their best [00:25:21] success story as well, because, you know, a lot of people use beehive because they saw milk road and they were like, well, They spun up a newsletter with a two, [00:25:30] three person team, sold it for millions of dollars a year later.
Well, that would be great. I’d like that too. Right. So it ended up benefiting them. How do you do that? If, uh, you know, if you’re [00:25:39] shilling some product that I don’t know anything about.
Andrew Warner: I usually ask the guests about it beforehand and they might say something I like I don’t know about them And I’ll say do you [00:25:48] mind if I tell you about them and how you might use them and they go sure or sometimes they’ll Say I don’t like that company. I go. Do you want to be open about it? I mean don’t be mean but can you be open about why you’re not using them and people have done [00:25:57] that and that also creates A very honest conversation where I could say look Clearly gusto doesn’t work for your company because you’ve gone public and it’s too big Here’s where they are good and for everyone [00:26:06] else make your own mind
Shaan Puri: That’s pretty dope. I mean, you’re, you’re a pro. How many, how many podcasts have you done? You must’ve had thousand plus reps easily. Right.
Andrew Warner: It’s a thousand plus reps. I wrote [00:26:15] the book on interviewing called stop asking questions. You have this book yet? Can I send it over to you?
Shaan Puri: I do not have the book yet. I send it over. I would love to learn.
Andrew Warner: I don’t even know. I want to send it to [00:26:24] you, but I feel like for you and your podcast, the interviews are where you started. Where you’re really good is you being the center of attention.
You’re a good, I’m not great at being [00:26:33] the center of attention on a podcast. I don’t enjoy it. You’re almost like, as I’m going a little bit longer right now, you’re feeling a little anxious. Let, let, let me talk and the audience is feeling the same way. It’s not me, but I’m good [00:26:42] at interviewing and pulling stuff out of people.
You’re a fricking great storyteller. You can take something that you heard a year ago and tell it like you just heard it a second ago and wrote it down.
Shaan Puri: Oh, thank you. I appreciate [00:26:51] that. I still love to read the book. I’m always trying to get better.
Andrew Warner: All right, I’m going to hit you up for your address and I’ll send you, I’ll send you a signed copy. You can send that and you know, show it to your kids. How many kids do you have now?
Shaan Puri: I got three.
[00:27:00] Congratulations, me too, I just had another baby.
Shaan Puri: congrats. Fatherhood Club.
Andrew Warner: Alright, yeah, let’s talk about, [00:27:09] um
Let’s talk about what you did to grow. So, clearly we talked about the podcast, that helped.
What else did you do?
Shaan Puri: Uh, I mean, we’ve tried a bunch of things. This is one of the interesting things when you ask somebody what they did to grow. [00:27:18] I feel like you remember two things. You remember growing up. Probably 70 60 70 percent of the stuff that worked and you forgot 30 40 percent of the stuff that worked [00:27:27] that wasn’t as glamorous and then you remember the stuff that was fun to try that probably didn’t have too big of an impact.
And then you just forget all the failed experiments. And the problem is [00:27:36] then people go try to grow their thing and all they see are failed experiments and they’re like, I didn’t mention. All of the dead ends. And so I apologize. I’m not gonna remember all the dead ends either. [00:27:45] It’s just the sort of the nature of like the human brain makes you forget so that you forget how hard it is so you can try it again the next time.
Sort of like childbirth, right? If you remembered all of the [00:27:54] pain, you would probably not do it again.
Andrew Warner: You know, I gotta, I gotta tell you one of my dead end. So I had a newsletter company that I’d sold years ago. We hit 20 million, uh, [00:28:03] unique email addresses. And when I got started, I was so sure that the thing was going to, that was going to get me to grow was I would give away 10 cents every time someone subscribed to a [00:28:12] charity and it worked, it was hard to get a charity to even partner with me and lend me their name.
So I did it and then I started advertising it and no one gave a damn. It was so [00:28:21] painful. I thought, look, you don’t even have to pay anything and we’ll give. So. They sound so smart, these ideas at the time, and so stupid in retrospect. Do you have one of those?
Shaan Puri: Um, [00:28:30] well, let me tell you kind of what we tried in order that I remember. So I remember when we first started, it was obvious, you know, when you have zero subscribers, you don’t [00:28:39] need a growth plan. You need, you know, 10 friends. It’s like, all right, this is a good forcing function. Who are the 10 people that we think are most likely to love this?
It’s a powerful [00:28:48] question. Who’s most likely to love this? Not us. Who do we know not who might like this? Who do we think most likely to love it? And then we that forces you to get clear about [00:28:57] like, okay, who’s the person that we think this fits? And then where do we find more of those people will be in the next question, right?
But if you can’t get to 10, you’re not going to get to 100. If you can’t get to [00:29:06] 100, not going to get to 1000 sort of that type of logic. So very first thing we did was We wrote it at a Google Doc before even Beehive, and then he sent it to me, audience [00:29:15] of one. So I was like, okay, I want you to send me this for the next three days, and let’s see if you like writing it and I like reading it.
And if we don’t get that right, it’s not going to work. The next thing we did [00:29:24] was, all right, um, who are the, you know, 10, 20 friends that we can email this to? No, no newsletter platform, no design, no nothing like that. Let’s just email this out. [00:29:33] And so we tried to do that. Um, we, we emailed it out. After that, we went to kind of like that Twitter thing where I [00:29:42] tweeted out and I said, uh, By the way, can you hear me?
All right Hey, um, you were saying, uh, was that me? So you’re [00:29:51] saying sam you saw me with sam and the connection sucked back then You I thought I fixed it. All right, let’s come back into it. So you did, uh, the [00:30:00] newsletter sent to yourself using a Google doc three days to see it.
Okay. Couple of days like that, we were like, could pass that first check mark, sent it to a couple of friends.
Okay, so then [00:30:09] we said, time for the next step. What’s the next step? Tweeted it out and said, um, kind of like trying a new experiment. First hundred people who, who see this, get it right. [00:30:18] Um, try to use scarcity, try to use mystery to try to get the next kind of people in people who just like being early adopters of things.
All right, so tried that. That got us to a couple hundred [00:30:27] and then somewhere along the way we said, well, I don’t know. We know our initial audience if we use the podcast and whatever will get us a few thousand But they may not love crypto and so we [00:30:36] needed to get people who were really really into crypto So I had an interesting idea which was What if I put up a million dollars and I put it in a crypto wallet [00:30:45] and I said I was going to trade it and I was like, you can watch publicly what I do and I’m going to try to run it up to 10 million or I’m going to lose it all.
You’re going to watch, you know, you’re going to get to [00:30:54] watch the spectacle or a stunt. And I thought this was genius. I thought this would be great. In reality, a lot of people think this drove a lot of growth. In reality, this did not drive that much [00:31:03] growth. Um, it was. It didn’t go like super viral or anything like that.
I also didn’t really do it. Meaning all I did was I [00:31:12] bought ETH on day one and then I basically didn’t do anything else. I bought one NFT later and like that was it. And so I did, it was so busy running the company. I didn’t [00:31:21] have time to actually do the day trading thing. And um, I was not gonna, and I didn’t, I didn’t see that it was like, Drawing in a bunch of other, other eyeballs.[00:31:30]
So we just held ETH and ETH went down and then our portfolio went down. So that was kind of it, kind of it. Then now ETH is back up and great. The portfolio is back up to, to even or something like that. [00:31:39] Um, so that was another thing we tried. Really all it was, was writing, um, writing the newsletter in a way that was humorous.
So [00:31:48] the big differentiator, and I think it’s a good lesson to learn. This actually worked for the podcast too, which was. We think we need these growth tactics, [00:31:57] but actually just like a more. Remarkable product is better, meaning a product where a product that stands out because it’s different. [00:32:06] And is good and is worth telling other people about, um, was the thing that actually worked for us.
And in our space, in the crypto space, there was a lot of like [00:32:15] 9, 000 IQ people who could tell you the deepest ins and outs about the L2 chain and about like this, you know, advanced block transfer, like all kinds of [00:32:24] crazy jargon. And you just never know what they’re doing. You just feel dumb. And we said, we want to leave people every day feeling a bit smarter.
They don’t have to feel like 9000 times smarter, just a [00:32:33] bit smarter, a bit more informed about what’s going on in a way that relaxes them because they feel like, ah, this person’s got my back. If I’m ever confused about what’s going on or I want to be in the [00:32:42] loop or want to actually understand something, I trust that these guys will make me feel smarter, not dumber and that along the way, at the very least, I’m going to have a chuckle so that even as my interest in [00:32:51] crypto goes up and down.
This will be light and leave me feeling, you know, leave me happy. It’s an email. I look forward to opening. So as actually [00:33:00] the product delivering on coming up with that as the promise and then actually delivering on that promise was the thing that worked. And that’s why we had, I think 40 or 50 [00:33:09] percent organic, uh, subscribers coming in through referrals and word of mouth and people sharing.
Um, because we did something actually different in the product, [00:33:18] meaning we said, well, we’re not going to be the most in depth and we’re not going to talk about all the smartest things and we’re not going to have the best thesis in the world about every best point of view about everything. [00:33:27] Um, we’re just going to make you a bit smarter and we’re going to make you laugh.
That’s the objective every single day.
Andrew Warner: I did find that it was interesting, even if I didn’t care about crypto, like I loved how you had, [00:33:36] um, what’s the name, uh, Ethereum founder on the bottom of every newsletter in some goofy old photo of him.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s an [00:33:45] example of something I think nobody would do.
Um, we’re basically at the bottom, the PS of every email. We just put a random picture of Vitalik and, uh, [00:33:54] Vitalik is the creator of a theorem and he’s just this Uber nerd, goofy looking guy who I love. I really admire this guy. I think not only is he brilliant, but like. I [00:34:03] just like his spirit. I just love that.
This guy is just like a total, he’s totally comfortable in his own skin and he’s super weird. And I just love it. I admire that. I wish [00:34:12] I was as comfortable in my skin as he is in his. And I always just thought one of the amusing things about crypto is the characters that are involved in the stories. You got Satoshi Nakamoto, [00:34:21] the mysterious founder that nobody ever knows.
And who is it? That’s cool. I think there’s like a movie element to that. I think Vitalik is a character that’s, you know, interesting. I think SBF [00:34:30] turned out to be a fraud, but he was a character. He’s just a villain character in this play and leaning into the characters and how funny they are and making it more like [00:34:39] the stuff I would send in my group chat with my friends, but now I just have a group chat of 250, 000 people and that’s how we wanted the thing to feel.
And [00:34:48] in fact, every day. When we would, before we would do like, before we would sit down and write, I forced the team, I said, send me a voice memo as if you were [00:34:57] just texting me, uh, you know, telling me. What’s the most interesting thing of the day and forcing them to say it out loud would get them to stop sharing stories like [00:35:06] You know, Gary Gensler and the SEC have decided that they’ve made this ruling say dude if you wouldn’t send that to me Why are we gonna send it to 250, 000 people?
We don’t even know [00:35:15] like just send me the stuff you think is funny or interesting and that’s the content we should cover And that’s why I’ve leaned a little more towards Barstool and a little way [00:35:24] away from, you know, the New York Times or whatever.
Andrew Warner: What else did you do to keep it funny and light? You’re really good at that, but to do it on command is hard.[00:35:33]
Well, I think
Shaan Puri: formats are underrated in content. So layout of the actual email. Yeah. Uh, not formatting. That was part of it. Like I [00:35:42] was, I’m a big stickler for readability, so I don’t care about grammar, but I really care that the fonts are big enough that anybody can read it easily and that the colors are clear and that like all that stuff.[00:35:51]
But we would experiment with formats. Meaning the opening line was always different, but the same structure. We would always start with, [00:36:00] you know, Hey, this is the milk road. We are your, you know, we’re your friend who keeps you in the loop on everything. Crypto think of us like that. Chia [00:36:09] pet, you pour a little bit of water on us every day and we grow a little bit of hair, right?
Is this like some nostalgic random reference that was lighthearted to be like, you know, we are the [00:36:18] reading. This email is the second best feeling in the world. The first, of course, is when you roll down the window and you do that dolphin thing with your hand out the window, right? Like just like random shit like [00:36:27] that.
That would try to get a chuckle in the first line while also reminding people what this is all about. What are we here to do? Right? We’re here to keep you in the loop. What’s going on? Where your smart friend who doesn’t [00:36:36] bore you with all the jargon. And so we would try to make that the first line. So coming up with a format that worked, the end of the email had the vitalic picture.
We had the fear versus greed index, which would show [00:36:45] you the sentiment of the market, but we would brand it in a more interesting way. And so coming up with a format made it both easier to write because we had a structure, but also. [00:36:54] You know, um, consumers actually want that. I think there’s a mistake that consumers want variety all the time.
If you go look at friends or the [00:37:03] office or the shows that we all love, the shows that people are addicted to that you’ll watch in season 12 and 13, you’ll stick with, you stick with it because the characters don’t change [00:37:12] and the set, the scenes don’t change. The settings don’t change. It’s what doesn’t change that builds that familiarity and that habit.
And I knew we wanted this to be a [00:37:21] daily habit. And one of the keys was to come up with. The right format and then stick to it and don’t get addicted to variety and change.
Andrew Warner: What’s your creative like writer in [00:37:30] room experience. So texting, using voice, let me hear you tell the story is a good one. What else is there that brings us out?
Shaan Puri: Um, [00:37:39] I think being a great thief. So, you know, you see something smart or clever that somebody else does. Um, and then you try to put your remix on it. So for [00:37:48] example, I thought the fear verse read index was cool. We didn’t invent that. That was the thing that was on this, uh, random website that looks like, you know, Craigslist or something like that.
And I thought, Oh, this is actually a [00:37:57] really interesting indicator, um, of where the market sentiment is and how this works. What if that was cool? What if we simplified it? What if we put our twist on it? And what if we [00:38:06] include it in the newsletter? Because I don’t think most people know about this and it’s not who’s going to remember to go to this site every day.
Nobody’s going to remember that. So let’s put it in the newsletter. Um, so I think stealing things that [00:38:15] you find interesting and use it, you know, Then the product will be as good as your taste over time and after that the trick is have good taste [00:38:24] very hard to do But you know, that’s something that you can’t can’t be copied either there were so many people who tried to knock us off and the problem was They’re the best [00:38:33] taste they had was that Sean’s good.
And what I said was Sean sucks. There’s people that are way better than me out there. And I had the taste of admiring them and learning from them. And [00:38:42] so our product got better than other people’s product got because our product over time would become as good as our taste and having great taste is a [00:38:51] creative.
It’s a, it’s a competitive advantage and is something that cannot be copied. Can data
Andrew Warner: help you do that? I know you always add, ask them the bottom of the email. What’d you think of this? Is that kind of [00:39:00] feedback helpful?
Shaan Puri: Um, not really. The data was extremely consistent. It was like great every day. It’s 77 [00:39:09] percent of people said it was five stars and the ratios were almost identical.
Occasionally you would have a real stinker or a real gem, and that was always cool to see, but we kind of [00:39:18] knew beforehand if we put out a banger post, I knew it was going to have a banger reaction. And sure enough, it did. So it was like, I wasn’t really surprised either way. The thing that [00:39:27] was great about the feedback was that.
I gave people a way to feel like I made it a two way connection. So you got to see people’s people felt like they had a voice in it. And we would then [00:39:36] include the funniest reviews in the email. So it built a culture of who are the other readers, right? An email is normally a solo experience. You don’t really know who else is here.
You don’t know the vibe of this party. [00:39:45] By including the funniest emails that would either make fun of us or give us a backhanded compliment, things like that. We set the vibe of not only are we [00:39:54] talking this way, but so were our readers. And if you’re a part of them, that means you’re cool. Because I can make it seem like all of our readers are cool.
And again, I stole that from Bill Simmons, [00:40:03] my favorite writer, because he did that. And so my taste was shaped by, Oh, how does Simmons do this? He does these mailbags and his mailbag, which is like, ask me [00:40:12] anything, but his questions are never dry. The questions themselves really entertaining content. And it showed that the readers were as, you know, fun and [00:40:21] interesting to hang out with as he is.
And it’s set the vibe that if I’m a reader, I’m cool too. And so I stole that from him.
Andrew Warner: How high did ad revenue get? [00:40:30]
Shaan Puri: Uh, what do you mean? Just like total monthly revenue or just like
Andrew Warner: how significant was it?
Shaan Puri: Um, we had crossed a million dollars a [00:40:39] year before we sold. I don’t remember what the exact run rate was.
Now it’s been a couple of years, but somewhere between a million and two, 2 million bucks. I think, um, when we sold, I
Andrew Warner: [00:40:48] heard that the exit was kind of tough that you did it justice. Crypto was. Getting questioned and it was going down. That’s why that portfolio you put at [00:40:57] the top of the newsletter was, was lower than the million that you apparently put in kind of, what was it like to sell it?
How’d you find the buyer? [00:41:06] What was the experience?
Shaan Puri: Uh, what do you mean by exits tough? So I think all exits are a rollercoaster and an adventure. I’ve never sold a business. I’m now sold [00:41:15] maybe three or four. I think three, three done one more in progress. There’s, um, every M and a event I’ve ever [00:41:24] had is like the most exciting time.
And then it also has these ups and downs, right? There’s the excitement. It’s like, you know, you’re speed dating, but instead of, you know, hooking up, you know, [00:41:33] you might get paid in a big way and it’s this great thing, but then deals. Often will fall through or get renegotiated or whatever. They go slower than [00:41:42] you want.
That’s like, but that’s completely par for the course. I’ve never seen an M& A deal that doesn’t have any [00:41:51] back and forth negotiation. I mean, it’d be crazy to have an M& A without negotiation or without diligence or without something taking longer than one or, you know, So I would say that’s [00:42:00] pretty normal.
The exit for this was not tough. Uh, it was amazing. It’s probably the best exit experience we’ve had. Um, because it was so quick [00:42:09] and what? Yeah, it was just, I think we had an asset that people wanted. Um, You know, that makes things easier. We had leverage, which [00:42:18] meant we were happy to keep growing it. Cause like the business was working and the business trajectory was in the right direction.
So that was good. Uh, you’re right that the [00:42:27] crypto macro had changed, like basically crypto prices were going down. So when a bull run ends, um, that’s definitely [00:42:36] not ideal. So that was probably the only downside of the M& A process was that it was kind of clear that the bull run was ending. We didn’t know how long a bear market was going to be around.
[00:42:45] Um, So, you know, that was probably the only, but, but that wasn’t difficult. It just meant we weren’t going to get a ludicrous, we weren’t going to get [00:42:54] a ludicrous money that we could have got had we timed it differently, but you can’t control timing. So there’s never something that we really planned for.
Anyways, how much did you sell it for? We’ve never, [00:43:03] never disclosed. Is it more than Sam got for the hustle?
Andrew Warner: Uh, I don’t know how much Sam got for the hustle actually. I thought he started to talk about it publicly [00:43:12] more than 20 million. Can we say that? Uh, never, not even a little bit. Can’t say, can’t say. Not even
Shaan Puri: a
Andrew Warner: little bit,
Shaan Puri: nothing.[00:43:21]
Yeah, we agreed when we sold we weren’t going to talk about the term, so.
Andrew Warner: Why not?
Shaan Puri: Nick, you could’ve You have to honor that, right? Like, because I have business partners, I have people on the buyer’s [00:43:30] side. It’s not really cool if you agree that you’re not going to share details and then suddenly one guy goes on a podcast and starts sharing all the details.
Andrew Warner: Alright, I thought maybe it would’ve been long enough ago [00:43:39] that it would’ve been okay. Did you do anything differently? Did you buy anything fun for yourself?
Shaan Puri: I got my [00:43:48] mom, uh, and her, all of her sisters, like, like a, I kind of like they were on a trip and I got them a surprise or they all went down. They got like a spa [00:43:57] day massages for all of them. I remember that happened like a couple days after. Um, I always buy socks when I sell. This is my tradition. Um, cause I [00:44:06] love, I hate the feeling of, you know, Having either bad socks or just a bunch of mismatch.
It’s like this annoying part of my day, trying to like find a good pair of socks. And so every [00:44:15] time I exit, uh, I will always get rid of all of my socks and I’ll buy whatever the best highest quality socks I could find. I’ll buy like a hundred pairs of it. And it’s my way of [00:44:24] like splurging in, um, I don’t know.
It’s just like my own little tradition for myself because I find it pretty cliche and lame to be like, Oh, I [00:44:33] got I went and bought a Lamborghini like this. It’s not me. Um, I also what’s the point if we’re not going to celebrate it all? And so, you know, you kind of toast to success with the people who got you there.[00:44:42]
But then, um, I just thought it was funny to just buy socks and buy like, go just ball out on socks rather than balling out in some other way. And I also, um, [00:44:51] have this theory that I think most people spend money the wrong way. So I think people spend money on these, um, expensive, [00:45:00] Either depreciating or one time assets.
And I think that the underrated thing is things that add a little bit of pleasure every single day or multiple times a [00:45:09] day. So for example, like, uh, I hate when I lose the remote and I’m on trying to find, I’m digging through couch cushions. So I’ll buy like 15 remotes or I’ll have a charger and a computer charger in [00:45:18] every single socket in my house.
It seems a little extreme. Like, do you really need to charge your every socket? I’m like. Yes, because I hate that little paper cut every day when that happens. And [00:45:27] so I found that like, you can either get a lot of pleasure once, or you can get a little pleasure every single day for the next five years.
And I find that those things are super cheap [00:45:36] and easy to do. And I kind of appreciate it every single time. And it’s a reminder of like, uh, Oh yeah, we had that win. This is great. Spending money isn’t really. [00:45:45] Super, super fun. Um, aside from, you know, I guess like the first time the probably the biggest thing I did was the first company we sold, I got a private chef and that was probably the [00:45:54] biggest value add because you get, you know, three, four hours of your day back, you get healthy food that is really tasty, better than you could cook.
Like, so you get a time when a health win and a [00:46:03] taste win. Um, that was definitely the best way to spend money. And I think anybody, anybody who buys like 100, 000 car, uh, you know, Before you have [00:46:12] a chef, I think is a wild decision.
Andrew Warner: What does it cost to get a chef
Shaan Puri: full time or how many hours did you get? Not that much.
I mean, I pay now and I pay. [00:46:21] A lot because we have like a great chef and I live in the Bay Area. There’s a bunch of reasons why it’s higher costs, but I pay about five grand a month. [00:46:30] Um, so 60 K a year, you know, like you, again, like you buy cars for more than 60 K a year and a car gives you nothing compared to the value of having a [00:46:39] chef for your family.
Every single day, three meals a day. It’s amazing. Um, I have friends who once I did this, you know, they live in Georgia or other places, you know, they’re [00:46:48] able to do it for two grand a month. And so two grand a month is is extremely affordable for such a big life when, especially if you care about, you know, your time and your health.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. And it’s much harder to eat [00:46:57] healthy when you don’t have time. It really sucks. And
Shaan Puri: for my kids, right? Like anybody who’s got kids, like, you know, I’m trying to get my kids to try new foods. My kids are picky eaters and it’s [00:47:06] such a demoralizing thing for me to Try to go, go to the grocery store, get the broccoli, try to cook it in a way that they’re going to like it.
And then it gets thrown away. And that happens three straight times. And then you throw in the towel. You’re like, all right, [00:47:15] mac and cheese for life. And so one of the good things here is that he’s always trying new foods because the chef is doing it. And I’m, I’m happy to, to try to feed it. I [00:47:24] don’t have to bear the cost of the effort there.
It’s a little parenting thing, but, um, the food is, you know, the chef thing is obviously fun for me, but like the fact that it’s for my whole family, my [00:47:33] wife is vegan. My kids are picky. It gives all of us something that we want is such an amazing. Amazing way to spend money. Highly recommend. And the reason I bring it up is not to like, [00:47:42] obviously, like I remember once I brought, I, I, I tweeted about it and somebody was like, dude, what a douche move.
And I was like, okay, fair. Maybe it is. But at the same time, [00:47:51] in the same way that you have to learn to make money, actually learning how to spend money is a skill. And, um, and for a lot of people who start to win, [00:48:00] um, We lack the imagination, the creativity of how do I use money as a tool to improve the quality of the light, my life and the people around me versus what most [00:48:09] people do.
Sadly is money just becomes a measuring stick. It’s like the more I have, the more I’m worth and that’s it. And like, no, no, no. You, you forgot the purpose of this thing. This thing is a tool [00:48:18] to improve the quality of your life.
Andrew Warner: Give me two things before we close. One of the thing that you do, that’s like a way of passing on what you’ve gotten from entrepreneurship to your [00:48:27] kids.
Do you do anything like that? I don’t really except for getting
Shaan Puri: them. My kids are so little, my daughter’s five. Right. So like, what am I going to do? Right. Like we, we play [00:48:36] tag and hide and go seek and things like that. Like, I’m not trying to make her an entrepreneur right now. Um, I do think that, you know, the best thing to do with [00:48:45] kids is to be a kid.
So like, instead of trying to make them like me and like, Oh, you know, grow up faster and learn [00:48:54] these skills. It’s like, how do I. Play with you, which is what all they want. Quality time, have fun, [00:49:03] feel that connection, but also keeps me young and youthful and playful and curious, all the traits that. I value an adult kids just have out of the box.[00:49:12]
They’re not stressed. They’re not anxious. You don’t find kids who are like, Oh, I need a therapist. Like, you know, like my mental health is not in the right [00:49:21] spot. Like that’s adult shit. Uh, you know, kids don’t have that kids and dogs, man. They kind of have what’s going on. And so I actually spend more time trying to learn from them [00:49:30] versus trying to teach them how to.
Be more like me, um, is really the way to go. And I think in, in exchange, they get the thing that they want and they need at this time, which is just presence, [00:49:39] just some joy and, uh, and play and play is also the way you learn. So for example, like, you know, you don’t learn business by going to business school.[00:49:48]
I know I’ve learned more about business from playing poker or trying to, you know, do a summer project where we found all these cans and we tried to flip them, like, you know, things like that. And [00:49:57] so just doing games and projects is, I think it’d be a much better way to teach them, but they’re a little young for, for that.
All right. And my oldest is five.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. My [00:50:06] oldest is 10 now, but I did take them out to do lemonade over at the farmer’s market in Noe Valley. It’s a great place. A lot of people who want to support kids doing it. They didn’t fully [00:50:15] understand, but they started to get it. Yeah.
Shaan Puri: Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool. I’m excited for that phase.
I’m not, I’m not there yet.
Andrew Warner: Um, all right. The other thing I’ve been just curious about now, based on what you’re saying about [00:50:24] my first million is. Ownership of my first million who owns it. Is it you and Sam 50 50? Is it you Sam? And HubSpot owns
Shaan Puri: the IP they do [00:50:33] so when when the hustle sold They wanted the podcast as well.
And so we cut a deal where HubSpot owns the IP [00:50:42] They wanted to start a podcast network as part of the acquisition. They wanted to make sure it worked And so we just got a deal that worked for everybody’s like, okay, how do we make sure that? Retain the [00:50:51] things that matter like creative control and we get paid as it grows.
And like, as if we owned it, like, what do you want? You want upside and you want creative control. So we maintain that and they get [00:51:00] to own the IP. They get to feel like they, they have that asset and that asset came with the rest of the assets of the hustle. And so that’s how it all worked out.
Andrew Warner: It’s a great [00:51:09] fricking podcast.
You guys really made. My first million into a must listen in this world and it gets me fired up without any politics talk Like [00:51:18] I don’t know if you ever do it and maybe I missed it But I just like getting fired up about ideas and stuff like that.
Shaan Puri: Cool. Thank you, man. I appreciate that
Andrew Warner: All right. Thanks so much on [00:51:27] thanks for doing this and I think don’t you think that the beehive?
Spelling needs to be changed because I would like to tell people you’ll get my discount Just go to mixer G comm [00:51:36] slash beehive, but they’re gonna spell beehive any other way
Shaan Puri: Yeah. Who owns, uh, spelled the other way, the weird way, uh, I’m sorry, the normal way, not the weird way. [00:51:45] Bernstein Society General Group.
They’re never selling it. Their vision is, is their vision is to service their institutional [00:51:54] investor clients with best in class research and execution. Fantastic. Everyone’s going to there for a new one.
Andrew Warner: Maybe they could, maybe they, they can actually buy it from them because you know what? [00:52:03] Bernstein has no connection to beehive as a name.
They’re redirecting from beehive, the word. com to beehive, like to Bernstein [00:52:12] society general. Yeah,
Shaan Puri: it’s, it’s going to Bernstein research. com anyways.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think there is an opportunity to switch. Tyler doesn’t believe in that. He thinks, look, it doesn’t really matter that much, but [00:52:21] maybe that’s his negotiating ploy through the conversation with me.
Shaan Puri: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s supposed to say that while desperately trying to
Andrew Warner: get it. It is a damn good product and I will get everyone access to it for [00:52:30] free. If you email me. A at bootstrap giants. com. Sean, congratulations on the success here and on investing in beehive.
Shaan Puri: Thank you, man. Thank
Andrew Warner: you. Bye.