These Executive Doctors Charge $10k Per Appointment?!

Sam Parr
Sam, this the secret to my success right here. A plain gray t shirt, free shout out. Kohl's. This is the Kohl's super soft tee. I wear a new shirt basically every day, which feels phenomenal.

Shaan Puri
You remember the tv show cribs where Master P would only wear a pair of air force ones one time? What do you think my last name stands for? I am Master P myself.

Arie Desormeaux
I feel like I can rule the world. Know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like days off on a road. Let's travel.

Sam Parr
All right, I have an idea for you. So would you like to hear billion dollar healthcare idea? Actually, healthcare is the wrong word. Healthcare. Actually.

When people tell me healthcare ideas, I just kind of tune out and run away. I'm like, isn't that like, super complicated, hard, and impossible? Let me just, let me just ignore this completely. But I think you'll like this one. So have you ever done an executive health checkup?

Shaan Puri
Not yet, but Nick Hubers convincing me that I should do it. Okay, so these things are pretty interesting. Have you done one? I've never done one. I've, uh, I've tried.

Sam Parr
I've basically gone through the process of booking and there was like, that's kind of the point. They didn't have a lot of availability. Yeah. So they have a long wait list. Oh, I gotta travel to Arizona to do this.

Like, geez. Like, if this was just here in the Bay area, I would have done it yesterday, but it's not. Well, that's the idea. Let's open one of these up in the Bay area, in LA and in New York. Okay, so what are these?

So an executive health checkup is basically something that CEO's high net worth individuals will do where they basically pay somewhere between five and $10,000 usually to go for a one or two day visit to a medical center. And you do a battery of tests and just think of it like the Four Seasons meets a doctor's checkup. And so you go and it's kind of this executive vip treatment where you go and they just put you through a bunch of tests all in one day, which normally, if you try to do in your traditional thing, like, first of all, your normal doctor is going to be like, why do you need this test? You don't have any. Are you having heart issues?

It's like, no, I just want to, like, proactively measure my, like, heart health every year and, like, make sure I'm on top of that. Um, and so you. Most doctors won't recommend these, you know, normally. Secondly, if you. Even if you did, you wouldn't get all your appointments done in a day.

Just like one day, knock it all out, take months, it spread out, and it'd take forever. And if each one, you're like, kind of waiting in line, you don't have the TSA pre check to be able to just go through and do this. So this is our actually better analogy is actually flying private. And a lot of times they wouldn't talk to each other. Right.

It's not comprehensive. Yeah. Okay, so why is this an interesting business idea? So the Mayo clinic, which is probably the leader in doing this, is estimated to do over $100 million a year on just their executive health checkup service, right? So that's basically 17,000.

The last number they publicly released was 17,000 patients did it in 2015. And you basically got to fly there four locations, or Arizona, Jacksonville, Minnesota, or London. So, like, not in, you know, hot spots, but, like, that's where they have their, their big hospitals. And so Mayo is doing this, the Cleveland Clinic does this. And then there's a bunch of private practices that will do this, too.

So my idea is that somebody needs to create this for SF LA, New York. It's the Soho House for medicine. And just charge a ten to 20,000 a year membership fee. And it's an annual checkup for you or your spouse even. And if you can get basically 5000 members across in any of those geos, you're doing 50 million a year of recurring revenue.

That's like 100 patients a week. It's not insane, something like this, especially with the longevity. Brian Johnson Huberman there is a very, very big trend in this direction, and I don't really think that Jeannie's going back in the bottle. Like, I don't think that people are, five years from now, are going to be like, I just don't care about health anymore. Like, I just don't think it's going that way.

I think people will get disillusioned with some of the things that are happening. But I think on the whole, more people are becoming health conscious than before. And as that kind of high net worth class, it becomes a high status thing to do to be health optimized, I think that this is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Hey, let's take a quick break to tell you about our sponsor. Finding a service solution that keeps your customers happy can feel impossible.

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Shaan Puri
When we started this pod, I think I said, one of the big things that I'm bullish on for the next, like, 10, 20, 30 years is I always thought it's insane that you can have like, a cancer in your body. And, like, the conversation of, well, had we just known about this sooner, we could have fixed this, but we don't, or we didn't, so you're dead. And, like, that's kind of crazy to think that, like, had you just walked through the doors and gotten this test, you would have been, this could have been solvable. 100 years from now, it's going to be insane that you didn't know how your body was doing. Yeah, I agree.

Sam Parr
Maybe 50 years from now. I don't know. I don't know what the number is, but, like, for sure by a hundred years, like, the idea that you could, it's like, dude, my grandpa used to walk around and he had no fucking clue what his, like, glucose levels were. He didn't know if he had cancer. People just had cancer died.

It's like, you know when we talk about, like, smallpox and polio just killing people, or, like, you know, like, I don't know, like, how'd you get around without Google maps? It's like, oh, you just, like, you just keep stopping at gas stations. And then you'd unfold this map. You'd trace your finger, and then you'd ask a guy and he'd tell you, like, when you see a blue thing, turn left. And like, that's how you got across the country.

Shaan Puri
It's like going to a restaurant and saying, you want smoking or non smoking sections. It's like, wait, that was a thing? You, you could go to a smoking section of a restaurant. You know, like, because I, that was one of the things I was alive for. I remember as a kid, it's like saying, ah, you only have smoking available.

Fine, we'll do that. Do you know what else that's similar to starting a newsletter today and not using. That's what it's similar to. That's the thrill of the shield. Today, I'm going to tell you guys about beehive.

Sam Parr
Easiest way to start a newsletter. Spin it up. Start your newsletter. It has all the growth tools built in. It's got an ad network so you can start making money on your newsletter, even if you have a small newsletter.

I see people every week on Twitter posting that they're making $1,000 a month or $3,000 a month on their newsletters, and they don't even have that big of a newsletter. It's pretty crazy. Uh, putting your thoughts out there, aside from the money, is, I would say, the most underrated thing that a smart person can do. If you're a dumb person, you don't need to do this. But if you're a smart person, putting your thoughts out there and creating a magnet that will attract like minded people, create a little landing area for luck in your life where people can reach out to you because they heard something you said or they agreed with something you said, or they offer you a job or they want to work with you or partner with you.

That's what happens when you. When you publish and so highly encourage people to do it. And if you're going to do it, use beehive. It's spelled behiiv.com. Weird name, beehive.

But it's a good, great service. And Tyler's awesome, you guys. I do think people should check it out. Tyler's one of the most interesting entrepreneurs that we've come across, by the way. Actually, the best thing about Tyler is his playlist on Spotify.

So if you go on Spotify and you need music for while you work, he has a playlist called Big Desk energy. Is it actually good? It's awesome, dude. I listen to it all the time when I work. Big desk energy.

Great name, and it's a great playlist, and he keeps it updated, so he keeps curating it as he goes. And I've told him, I was like, dude, beehive's great, but the playlist is legendary. The playlist is so good, but you. Invested in Beehive, so that's the one that needs to work out. So I did invest in Beehive also.

I invested once. I use the newsletter twice a week, and I use the playlist seven days a week. All right. Behive. Beehive.com dot.

Shaan Puri
By the way, the companies that are, like, kind of testing this out, you did one of these, right? These, like, are they mris that you can go to? It's like $500 and you just walk off the street and get an MRI. And it tells you if you have got cancer or something like that, you. Could do a full body MRI at places and so I went and did one.

Sam Parr
The reason I didn't talk a ton about it afterwards was I just don't know the science behind some of these things. And so it might be great. I know several people that have said, oh, I did a prenovo scan, and we found something, blah, blah, blah. I've talked to doctor friends who are like, this is B's. And I'm always like, you know, there's like a, there's like a Theranos 6th sense in my body where I'm like, just be careful before you endorse something that you don't understand the science of.

That's making a very bold claim. That doesn't mean that they're doing something wrong or that anything is up with it. I'm just saying I have no idea if these things work. I do know that the stuff, like the executive checkup, where they're doing, like, more tried and trust, trusted, like, tests are, um, you know, a bit more. More safe.

Right? Just like the Lindy effect. Right? They've been around for a longer period of time, more widely accepted in the community. More testing has been done.

They've made it through that gauntlet. Whereas the new stuff, the full body MRI, it might be awesome. It might be overkill. I'm not sure. I can't say.

Shaan Puri
Dude, we have a lady. So we do, like, for Hampton, we have, like, perks, so you get discounts to different services. And we partnered with one of these MRI companies, and this member and her boyfriend or her husband went and got one together, and he had cancer. They caught cancer, and he got surgery, and he's good. And, uh, she was telling me the story, and I was like, that's insane.

That is absolutely insane. So there's one positive story for sure. Yeah. I thought. I think they said, like, what?

Sam Parr
When I was there, again, I don't want to repeat these claims. I don't know what. What's true, but I think they were like, you know, one out of 21 out of 30 people come in, find something. That's insane. It's so funny when you go do these, by the way.

You're just like, no news is good news. So you're like, I'm gonna go voluntarily check this thing, give myself a very high anxiety day, and then really, what I want is this anticlimactic. Like, yeah, you're fine, dude. 35. What are you doing?

You're normal. Do you feel bad? No. Okay, cool. Then that's the best case scenario at the end of these things.

Sam, did you see this thing that this guy tweeted at us. The AI MFM theme song. The rap song. The rap song. Yeah.

Ari, can you play this? Listening to the dudes who turn their dreams in a bus Sam Paul his hustle muscles sealed the deal on the cusp of millions they take 30 a figure lust with trust Sean spinning narratives his stories grip they clutch podcast vibing my first million stir in the pot Sean the baller shot calling no small boy stuff he's got both a sage and a slack of productivity unlocked sad six pack dreams, aesthetics they cannot be stopped MFM hosts with the most sharing that wealth of brain from tips to the realm of the game they still. Without restraint how did he do this? So he goes, here's my prompt. A rap about Sam and Sean.

The host of my first million, Sean. Sam previously sold this company called the hustle for an undisclosed amount. But everybody thinks it's 30 million. Sean is a storytelling master, the laziest, most productive person who loves basketball and says, no small boy stuff. Sam loves big muscles and six packs.

And then it generated that song. It says that I've got six pack dreams. I got six pack dreams. Yeah. It's so good.

It was, like, actually very good for a AI song. And the second one cracked me up. This is a. This is me coming into today's podcast recording. Just put the gif up on the screen.

If you're on audio, go to YouTube so you can watch this. Dude, did you see this thing? I believe it's called? Is it called Sona where you can make songs? Suno dot AI.

Shaan Puri
It is freaking awesome. It is so cool. It is awesome. And, like, you can make it sound like Frank Sinatra is singing any song that you want him to sing. And so you could use different theme songs for background music.

It was different things. It is awesome. It's one of the few AI things that I've seen. And I'm like, this is wonderful. This works.

There's a perfect use case for this. It's really good. Dude, my uncreative ass doesn't know how to use these. I'll be like, make it a journey. Singing don't stop believing.

Sam Parr
It's like their actual song. I'm like, I guess I just wanted to hear that song. I go listen to it. Yeah. Like a journey song about a boxer in Philadelphia and he's trying to beat the USSR.

Shaan Puri
And what do you got? And it's eye of the tiger, dude. There is a cool version of these, though. You see that Drake tweeted out a song that he made using AI, like AI tupac and AI biggie on his track. Yeah, it's awesome.

I love these things. Dude, let me tell you the story. So I had to do some camera. I had to set up this camera at my house, and I don't know how to do it. And a friend of a friend connected me with these three kids.

They're 20 years old, and they. They have, like, a marketing agency, but I guess on the side, they, like, help people like me set up their camera or whatever. They come out here, they help me out, and after about 4 hours of them in my house doing work, I'm like, all right, so what's your guys stories? Like, I could tell that you're, like, being polite and, like, you're trying to ask a little bit about me, and, like, let's talk. Let's hang out.

So it's these three kids that are 20 years old. They dropped out of college to start a marketing agency. And to get business, they go to. What's it called? Is it called a better business bureau?

Your local small town communities have these business bureaus. They go there and start convincing all these small businesses to make promotional videos for their website. So they start making videos for their website, and then they're like, well, what do I do with this video now? So they go to their clients, and they go, well, you should run Google Ads. We'll do that for you.

And we'll make a website. And they're like, all right, cool. I've got this website now. How do I get leads? And, like, well, we'll run the ads, and then we'll just get leads to you.

And I go, well, pretty cool what software you guys use? And they go, we just use, like, our iPhones. And they go, and matter of fact, my phone's ringing right now. It looks like someone's calling for this particular landscaping company. So they put their phone on speaker, and they go, hi, this is XYZ landscaping services.

How can I help you? And they go, hi, this is Rosemary. I live here, and I'm trying to inquire about seeing if you guys can come and, like, build this, like, small project at my house. And she goes, oh, yes, ma'am. I'm not the owner of the business, but I'll put you in touch with her right now.

And so they. You have their iPhone out. They click hold. They call their client right there, and this is at, like, 09:00 on a Saturday. They go, hey, Linda, I've got Rosemary on the phone right now.

She wants this. This and this. I'm going to merge you two right now. And she goes, all right, sounds good. He clicks, merge.

And he goes, hey, Rosemary. This is Anna. The odor, I filled her all in about what you want, and I'll let you guys take it from here. And then he clicks mute and just puts the phone in his pocket. And he goes, that's.

That's $400 right there. And they're doing $15,000 a month this way. These three kids, they're like, yeah, we, like, have been grinding at this for like, twelve months. We're finally at, like, 15,000. We're able to pay ourselves.

We've been each been doordashing in our free time in order to make bills, pay our bills because we live on our own. And I just think to myself, you've got it. Great stories begin exactly like this. You guys, they're asking me for advice. I go, guys, you're.

It's gonna work out. Just keep doing this for five years, dude. The best part of the story by far is that's $400 right there.

Sam Parr
I'm gonna start saying that every time I unlock my phone, I'm with my wife. I'm just gonna be like, another $300. It just. It was awesome what these kids were doing. And I disrespect the hell to that type of stuff.

Shaan Puri
And it just showed me these guys have what it takes. And this is how, like, great stories begin, is these little, like, it's not complicated stuff. It's really simple. It's not sexy, but it's awesome. Dude, my brother in law, I was asking him over the weekend, I go, yeah, what's your favorite job you've ever had?

Sam Parr
And he goes, oh, easy. Smoothie king in high school. I was like, smoothie king in high school, you've had a whole. He's 40. He's like 43 or something.

I was like, your greatest job was your first job 23 years ago or 26 years ago? He's like, yeah, no doubt. And I was like, why did you like it so much? Like, free smoothies or something? He goes, no, no, no.

My boss was so funny. He's like, my boss was this character. He's like, you know that thing I say every time I answer the phone? I go, yeah. He goes, I stole that from my boss.

And the thing he says on the phone is the thing his boss said. So one day he was in Smoothie King, and the phone rings. Like the smoothie King landline rings. And his boss is basically like, you know, if my brother in law is 17. This is like a 19 year old, you know, normal dude.

He's a manager of smoothie King, kind of an overweight guy. And he goes, must be Jordan about that summer league. And he picked up the front, and. My brother in law thought it was. So funny that he just came up with that on the fly.

Like, it must be Michael Jordan calling about summer league. And for literally 26 years, my brother, every time the phone rings, he goes, it must be Jordan bought that summer league. And I could tell it just puts him in a good mood every single time. Well, now, the new one is when you hang dollar 100, you want to do one? What do you got?

All right, I got another thing that's funny. Well, it's funny and not funny, but the funny thing about funny things is that if you take a really not funny thing like war and you multiply it times a funny thing, together, they become funny. That's the beauty. That's the beauty of humor. Bold statement.

Shaan Puri
Let's see. Let's see how you pull it together. The pizza meter. Do you know what the pizza meter is? I don't know what the pizza meter is.

Sam Parr
Okay, so the pizza meter is a way that people on the Internet knew that the Iran strikes were happening before the news reported it. You might be wondering, how could just random people on the Internet know this before mainstream media? And the answer is the pizza meter. And so the pizza meter is basically a signal that people watch for, which is basically they study the, they watch the pizza shops that are around the White House, the Pentagon, places like that. And they look that if there's a sudden spike and if, you know, for example, if you go on Google and it says busier than usual and you'll see like, wow, 10:00 p.m., it's like, spiked way higher than normal, that you know that something's going down.

That's the only reason that the closest pizza shop to the Pentagon or closest pizza shop to the White House would have spiked like that, is that there's something going down that has the staff there late at night ordering pizzas. And so they know. And it's basically been a signal for, like, the invasion of Kuwait, the Iraq war, most recently when Iran launched those missiles at Israel. And so people knew that this was coming because of the pizza meter. And the funny, the story behind this is pretty funny.

I don't know if you, I guess if you've never heard of it, you probably don't know the backstory either, but it got popular because there was a guy named Frank. And Frank owned 60 franchises of, like, pizza shops around DC. And he actually went and told the LA Times. He was like, the news media doesn't know about something big is going to happen. They're in bed sleeping.

But my guys, my guys are out there on the front lines doing deliveries, and we know when something's going down because we'll get a spike of deliveries to the Pentagon at, you know, 11:00 p.m. At midnight. At 01:00 a.m. And that never happens. And so this happened.

And then the government basically had to shift their. They sent out a memo. They're like, hey, guys, you can't be doing this. And so now they send staff out to try to pick up pizzas and do all this other stuff to kind of like, smoothen out the curve where it's not so obvious that some shit's going down. Isn't that hilarious?

Shaan Puri
Dude, this is brilliant. There's a phrase for this, and I can't remember what it was, but it's basically where you do all of this work to protect something, and just the smallest, dumbest thing that you forget about that you don't even realize is the key to unraveling the entire thing. This is awesome. This is so cool. And I'm reading the Wikipedia right now.

It started in 1983 with the invasion of Granada, and then again in 1989, the invasion of Panama. What they noticed was that domino pizza deliveries increased dramatically right before the invasion, by 25%. So this has been going on for decades. This is. This is the password.

Sam Parr
One, two, three of wars. It's like the easy to guess password that, like, you didn't. They didn't realize. Actually, the true origin story was this, of this was apparently during the Cold War. The soviet intelligence agency was using indicators like this, so not just the pizza thing, but other things like this, to try to alert them of a potential global crisis.

And they called it pizzant, like pizza, and then intelligence peasant. And so that's how it started. And then Frank kind of put the spotlight on it, and there's other ones, too. So, like, recently. So this happened before the Iran thing.

People were like, uh oh, pizza meter spiking right now. And then, sure enough, within 24 hours, the news came out about the Iran thing. The other signals, people were like, hey, wait, it's not just pizzas. Because they realized that the second best signal is that gay bars in the area see a, like a big drop off in foot traffic when the government, like, is when they're busy, basically. And so people were looking at gay bars, there was a guy who was like, hey, guys, I can confirm because.

Shaan Puri
The, the politicians would normally be going to the gay bars. Yeah, exactly. So this guy who tweeted out, he's like, hey, guys, I don't know what this means, but I'm at uproar right now, and there's way less governed guys there than usual tonight. And normally, like, I don't know, whatever, Thursday night, this place is popping. There's nobody here.

Sam Parr
And so now there's the DC bear index, which is basically trying to measure, you know, like, the gay bar foot traffic as well. So this is up there on my mount Rushmore of silly indexes. There's some other great ones that you might not know about. Do you know about the Big Mac index? I think you probably know that one.

Shaan Puri
Is that just the price of a. Big Mac, or it's a better indicator of inflation or what they call PPP, purchasing power parity. Basically, how much is a dollar versus a euro versus a franc versus a yen? And the most common denominator between all of those countries is what's the price of a big Mac? You can go see that.

Sam Parr
Oh, man. A big Mac, relatively, is now more expensive in one place than the other. That basically indicates that that currency got weaker. It's a more true indicator of the currency strength or weakness than, like, what the government will tell you. So that's what the big Mac index is supposed to be.

And by the way, all of these are not. They're not bulletproof. So there's people who are like, oh, the pizza thing doesn't work anymore. Blah, blah, blah. Who knows?

I can't say that these are perfect science or anything, but they're funny. The other one that's great is the Waffle House index. You know this one? Uh, for hurricanes. Yeah, for storms.

Basically, they. There's a three color, a three color system. So Waffle house, which is opened 24 7365. So it's like, how do you know how bad a storm is? It's basically, green is Waffle House is still open and operational, full menu.

Yellow is it's open, partial menu, and red is it's closed. If Waffle House is closed. And the guy, like, the director of FEMA came out, basically was like, you know, it's bad when the waffle house is closed. And so it became a whole thing. The Waffle house index, a mount rushmore.

Shaan Puri
Of indexes, is awesome. That is a hilarious bit. I thoroughly enjoy this one. And by the way, have you ever noticed if waffle houses are supposed to be open all the time. Why do they even have locks on the doors?

Sam Parr
Do they? Maybe they don't. They do, because I went to one recently, and I was like, if you guys are open all the time, why do you even lock the place up? I'm sure they enjoyed that conversation. Like, look, dude, you want waffles or not?

Shaan Puri
Like, scrambled or what? What do you want? Uh, it didn't work out. Uh, that's pretty good. Uh, where'd you.

Why, why did this interest you? There's this general trend, which is like, whenever there's, like, a murder that happens, or like, a crime, or there's, like, the Boston bombing. Do you remember, like, Reddit was basically solving it almost in real time? Or, like, you know. Yeah, but they got it.

Like, they got it all wrong. Yeah, but there is, like, yes, that seems important, but it is pretty fun to follow along and just see what the open source intelligence community can do. And they do get things wrong. But there's several examples of this. If you go look at the root discovery of maybe some conspiracy or some expose, it's usually like some guy on a message board notices something, and that's often how things get figured out.

Sam Parr
And so that's how they caught the Silk road, for example. They went and looked at message board posting, for example. But I just think that it's cool that there is the official agencies, but then there's sort of this open source community of Internet sleuths. And I don't think they're not necessarily better, but I just think it's a cool in addition to what exists out there. Hey, let's take a quick break to tell you about our sponsor.

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They did an episode recently about scaling creator growth and influencer incentives that I thought was pretty cool. So check it out. Listen to DTC pod wherever you get your podcasts. Let me show you something that I saw recently that is actually related to indexes. So I got curious about.

Shaan Puri
I was looking at, like, I saw an article about some of the most profitable companies in the world. Now, let me list a few that are very obvious. So visa, of course, visa is going to be one of the more profitable companies. Something like 40% income compared to their revenue. Nvidia, Berkshire Hathaway, very obvious ones.

Two less obvious ones. Public storage. I think we've talked about public storage. They make something like 50% profit on each dollar that they take in on revenue. Another one is relics.

We've talked about relics. They own the academic publishing industry. And it's a very controversial thing because it's a pay to play model and it's a little weird. But there's two that stood out to me. The first one, I'll tell you, because you may not know, but it's called the intercontinental exchange.

Do you know what the intercontinental exchange is? No. Well, the second one that stood out is Nasdaq. So the Intercontinental exchange owns the New York Stock Exchange. And so these two stock exchanges are some of the most profitable public companies in the country.

Something like, I think in 2018, the Interconnect exchange, I think they call it ice. Ice. 60% profit for every dollar that it took in. And this company is worth something like, I think today's worth 35 or $40,000,000,000.01 of the most profitable companies out there. And it makes, I think, 10 billion in revenue.

So it's just like printing cash. And it kind of got me interested that these stock market exchanges might be the world's greatest business models. Because when you think about a stock market exchange, once a company lists on an exchange, they're basically never going to go away. And hopefully a great company like a Ford or something like that, can last for 100 years. It's incredibly challenging to build a new stock exchange.

There's actually only, I think, 15 of them in the world. Like 15 legit big ones. And the barriers to entry are super big. But it got me interested. Do you know who started a stock exchange recently?

Have you heard about this? It's called the long term stock exchange. Eric Reese. Eric Reese from the book the Lean startup, one of the most famous startup books of all time. So I think he started this in 2010 or 2012, a while ago, and it's taken a while to get going.

And the reason he started it was at the end of the lean startup, in like the epilogue, he lists a bunch of ideas that are interesting to him. And he said on this talk. He goes, all these ideas have been started. My readers have messaged me saying, I've started this, this and this after this book. And he goes, the one thing that no one started was a long term stock exchange.

So I decided to do it. And one of the reasons he decided to do it was because, so the large index funds or a lot of the large traders, do you know how long they hold a stock for on average? No, I have no idea. Ten minutes. That's how long on average.

It's. I'm super bullish on this stock for the next ten minutes. Yeah. And his point at home with all my ideas, yeah, it's for ten minutes. Is the average hold time.

And he was like, I think that's insane because nothing has changed with that company. And it really bothered him. Another thing that bothered him is there's this chart. You like one chart, businesses. There's this chart that shows the average number of public companies.

And it's been going just straight down. So I think 20 years ago there was something like 10,000. I think today there's like 4000 public companies. So people just don't want to take their company public for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons being is that it's kind of a short term.

Like, what does Warren Buffett say in the short term? It's a, it's a. What does he say? It's like a measuring stick. But in a long term contest.

Sam Parr
Long term it's a weighing machine. Yeah, that's right. And he's like, that has, a lot of people don't like that. They don't want to take their companies public because of that. So basically, in 2011, he proposed this idea of this thing called the long term stock exchange where you get more votes for how long you've held the stock.

Shaan Puri
So if you held the stock for longer than someone who just recently bought it, you get more votes into how the company is run, theoretically. And he actually raised something like $100 million to start this. I think Jason Horowitz funded it and a bunch of other. That wasn't the only thing. Right.

Sam Parr
I think there was like a mandatory one year hold time. Right? Wasn't there like a, if you buy, you can't sell within a certain period of time. Wasn't that the rule? Yes.

Shaan Puri
And there's, and there's a few other rules where the companies, in order to get listed on the stock exchange, you have to do what you just said. You also have to, like have a plan as to how your company is going to be great for the next many decades. And so they, like, it's all about long term stuff. And so, yeah, there are a whole bunch of rules about this. Now, the story isn't exactly going well because I think there's only, like, two or three or four companies listed on his exchange so far.

I think it's Twilio. I think Twilio, Asana and Thredup. I think those are like, I don't think there's that many companies listed there. And those companies are also listed on the Nasdaq. So I don't know why you would use Eric Reeves's long term stock exchange.

However, I thought this idea, I didn't understand it when I was younger. I'm like, why do you need to do that? Now I'm kind of growing to understand, like, that is pretty badass. And this is an epic idea that has not played out yet. But I was researching these exchanges, and they're so fascinating at how they work.

It's this weird, it's a little bit crony capitalism because they're in bed with the SEC, so they're in bed with the government, and there's a lot of regulation around this whole thing, but it's so fascinating. And Eric Reeves was talking about starting it. He was like, in order to start it, you have to file paperwork. And it's called sec zero zero one. So when you file paperwork with the SEC, even for a startup, it's all these paperwork.

This is literally paperwork. Number one, it's the first, like, it's their first document. And he, like, has any filled out all this paperwork, and now he's finally kind of starting to get a little bit traction. But I found this to be so fascinating, these, these stock exchanges and how they're probably one of the best business models I could think of. All right, I have a bunch of short stories related to this.

Sam Parr
Number one, I met the CEO of, I think, either the Nasdaq or NYSE. He came to my office once, and he came to meet Michael Burch, who was our main investor. And they were hanging out, and he said, oh, come in here and join. And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, I didn't even know the exchange was a business. I was like, what the.

Why would it have a CEO? It's a business. And he's like, oh, it's not only a business, it's a phenomenal business. And he's like, basically, we have the exchange, and the exchange of the US, obviously, is the big one, but what they do is it's a software company, actually. So what they do is they power the stock exchanges of like a whole bunch of different countries.

So it's like, oh, I mean, Finland needs a stock exchange. They're not going to build their own thing. They'll just take the US's like battle tested, super military grade exchange and they'll just be a customer of it. And so that was the first like line of business is basically that countries will use their software to run their own exchanges. The next is that they basically fight for ipos.

So hes like, yeah, big deal is basically, how do we versus the Nasdaq compete to get facebooks IPo? How do we get the next big tech ipos? Thats why he was in Silicon Valley meeting people was like, these are long term relationships, and when the time comes that theyre deciding which exchange to list on, thats a big deal for us. And its a network effect. The more great companies you have on your exchange, the more valuable your exchanges.

But it's like a network effect married with enterprise, super enterprise contracts, married with complete defensibility, literally regulatory defensibility. So you get the defensibility of network effects and of regulations, and then you get the business model of enterprise, enterprise sales. And so pretty phenomenal business, actually. It's also a marketplace, right? Because they could take fees on all the different transactions that exist.

So pretty phenomenal business. You're absolutely right. And I was surprised to even learn that this was a business. It's just another reminder that, like everything you see around you, it didn't just show up. It's there because somebody somewhere has a motive and a profit in order to generate that product or that service or that thing that exists.

And once you see that, you can't, like, unsee it. So that's my first story. Second story is about Eric Ries. So I love Eric Ries. Like, his blog was one of the key blogs that shifted my entrepreneurial journey.

I was like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. That's why we failed. We should have been doing this shit. And I got to meet Eric. I went to his house in San Francisco.

Nicest guy. Nice guy, but also wasn't just pleasantries. He was nice, but he was so helpful. I was like, oh, we're planning on doing this. And he's like, okay, that's an interesting idea.

I was like, yeah, we're doing this big launch, blah, blah, blah. He's like, don't do the big launch. And I was like, but I just told you, I told, I like, talked for five minutes. About my big launch plan. He's like not a believer in big launches.

Here's why. And he's like, basically here's what you can do. You're going to take the worst version of the product that you've ever made and will ever make that you have no idea if there's demand for and you're going to completely blow your wad telling everybody how great this thing is and you have this, like you're going to put all this energy into that and it's going to completely like the odds of you just getting it right and your initial product being good enough is so low that youre actually lowering your odds of success by doing that. And now its pretty common, this fallacy of the big launch. This is like ten plus years ago.

And at that time, big launches were still kind of a thing that people tried to do. And he talked me off that ledge. And then also I was like, I came to him and I was like, we have this idea. Its not really working. So Im thinking about pivoting to this.

Hes like, okay. Hes like, how are you planning to pivot? I was like, oh, I think were going to make these, change this feature and start to test this and blah, blah, blah. He's like, cool. Here's what you need to do.

He's like, you need to take your old idea and you need to bring it to town square and you need to shoot it in the head. I was like, what? And he's like, your team is going to be so confused unless you explicitly tell them that, hey, all the shit I've been saying for two years, it's changing. Like, the old assumptions turned out to be wrong. We learned this by doing this and now we know that's not the path.

We now know that this is a more viable path or that this is a better path to be trying. That old idea is done. That old assumption we had is done. And he's like, you need to take it in the middle of everybody and you need to do a public execution of the assumptions and the ideas that you no longer are married to because nine out of ten CEO's are too afraid to sort of admit that they were wrong or to be really explicit that like, no, that was a dead end. We need to go back and we need to try something new is that you try to blend it together and just kind of like keep iterating in the shadows basically.

And you're like, kind of like your team is always like half confused and they don't really know what they're supposed to be doing? Is that the thing we've been saying, or this new thing? Or do we just bolt this new thing onto the old thing and then that doesn't really work either. And he's like, you know, when Instagram pivoted and they became Instagram, they basically were like, look, this other thing, bourbon, this idea of location based check ins, we're not doing that shit anymore. Locations suck.

We used to say, location means everything. Location now means nothing. It's photos with filters. Okay? And we may have a new app with a new name, and it's photos with filters.

And they're like, but the old app had photos with filters in it. He's like, yeah, but the old app was about the old shit, and this is not about that anymore. This is now about this new thing. And that was very, very valuable advice that, I don't know, nobody else had ever told me, and I bet nobody else would ever tell me. And I'm saying it here on the pod because, you know, there's probably 100 people out there that need to pivot.

And, like, this was good advice. It really helped me. That's such a good metaphor too. That's a very. That's a very.

Shaan Puri
That's a very sharp metaphor. Yeah, exactly. I needed to be punched in the face, because, like most founders, we ask for advice. And really what we're asking for is, can you please affirm the things I want? And anything you say that I don't want, even though it's important, I'm going to, like, ignore to my own detriment.

Sam Parr
And then three years later, two years later, when it's all failed, I'll be like, huh. Maybe there was some, like, wisdom in that. If only I had listened. And I thought it was really good that he just, like, punched me in the nose so that I couldn't ignore the advice. And most people, that.

That's actually very generous. Most people won't put themselves out there to do that. Most people don't need it doesn't. Didn't help him. You know, I went to his house.

That changed my life. He never heard from me again. Right? Like, I've never bumped into him again. And so, you know, I paid back nothing for that.

But he kind of went out on a limb and was like, look, I'm gonna be direct with you, bro, and I really appreciate directness, because that's actually what I. What I wanted. Do you think his new company is going to work? Well, it's his old company because it's ten years. It's like ten plus years old now, dude.

Shaan Puri
Yeah, I don't. I mean, as much as I love the guy, it just seems like this idea has not come to fruition. There's. You said Twilio, Asana and thredup. Twilio delisted voluntarily, so now there's Asana and thredup.

Sam Parr
They have two companies listed on the exchange. So, like, in terms of objectively, it's not working unless there's some other, you know, momentum. I know that for a long time, they really couldn't do anything. They needed the, like, regulatory approvals, and that was, like, a multi year thing. So it does seem like they crossed that, but, you know, it doesn't seem like they have a lot of traction at the moment.

I wish they did. I think it's a great idea. I wish they did, too. I wish they did, too. In the words of what's his name, Gary Halpert, never has more money been lost than trying to convince the market what they should do versus what they want to do.

Maybe long termism is what you want. The market you think the market should do, and not necessarily what it wants to do. Maybe that's not what companies or investors want. I think when I was thinking about this, I'm like, how do you make this work? And I'm like, well, I think the biggest way to make it work, but this has to do with the SEC, is to get rid of quarterly earnings calls.

Shaan Puri
I think quarterly earning calls should probably go away. I think that this is actually something that. I think Trump proposed this, but many other people have proposed this. I think he's like, no, audits, never check anything.

He. I think. I think that's something he proposed, but I think earnings is ridiculous every three months. It's kind of crazy, but that's beyond, I think, long term stock exchanges, like, purview, like, I think that's, like, some SEC bullshit. But anyway, I thought it was interesting.

I doesn't sound like it's getting the traction that I wish it would get, but I still think it's intriguing. The coolest innovation in this space was actually from crypto. Crypto, basically, they had the token FTX. No, no, no. Like, crypto tokens that it wasn't.

Sam Parr
They didn't clear this for regulatory wise, but the idea was actually really good, which is that a app should be able to issue tokens to the users or members of its community that are helping build it. We've all been a part of things early on where without that user contributing without them being a part of it, without them actually participating, whether it's Airbnb or it's the drivers on Uber, like, for them to not get anything, or, like, you know, Reddit, for example, Reddit, after, like, 20 years, was like, we're going public. We made billions of dollars. And the mods who, you know, have made this place what it is and who actually created these communities and run them, they're like, you. We're gonna go.

We're gonna do the thing no company does. We're gonna let you buy the stock at the, at the price 20 years later, when in reality, like, the proper way to do this is what crypto was trying to do, which was let any app create an incentive mechanism that will reward early participation of people who bring value to the network. So that if the network actually becomes valuable, you, by being there and putting in work that was like the equivalent of an investment, you were able to invest energy. If you do that, it actually gives you a chance to spin up new networks or new things. Now, of course, all these things have the other side of the coin, which is you might attract the wrong person.

The person that's just there to get the early coins right. It's like the. The worst customer is the one who's like the coupon clipper, who's just there to just redeem their early thing and then quickly cash it out and bounce. So there's all kinds of things you have to get right to make this work. But a lot of them are evangelists.

Yeah. The idea that you could allow your early adopters, early evangelists, and early contributors to own a piece of the upside in something I thought was a really good idea and a big step forward that just simply doesn't exist in the traditional system today. All right, well, that's my bit on stock exchanges. I'm going to be paying attention. I think this will make it to Eric.

Shaan Puri
Eric, you got to reach out to Sean, man, and let him thank you face to face. What do you got? All right, this is my hustler of the week. So we kind of have. We got the blue collar side hustle.

Sam Parr
We got the billy of the week. That's for the billionaire of the week. I don't know what we call this lady. She's the hustler of the week, which is just somebody who's just making shit happen. Her name was Danielle Basket, which I thought was the same name as the Tiger king lady, but maybe it's not.

Here's her story. So I saw that this lady is doing a fruit swag company. Go to brandedfruit.com dot. Basically, imagine you're a company and you're hosting some conference, your HubSpot hosting inbound, and you want to have something cool, something unique for, like, 10,000 attendees. They got enough t shirts.

How many koozies can one have? Oh, great, a pen. How thoughtful of you. And so what she does is, she's like, I got it. Put your name on fruit, baby.

Let's do a salesforce avocado. Let's do a lift banana. Let's do a mailchimp pineapple or whatever it is. I guess it should have been a mailchimp banana. But basically, she prints corporate names onto fruits and charges $5 per fruit to the companies, and companies pay for this for their conferences.

And she's made a bunch of money doing this. I think it's awesome. And what I liked about her was I looked her up, and she's like this, like, kind of this opinionated artist, and she's done a bunch of these random businesses. So she. She was like, bike helmets are ugly.

So she painted her own bike helmet, and then she kept getting stopped at places for. For her bike helmet. And so she's like, okay. And so she created a bike helmet company that just does, like, cool looking bike helmets. And then that was, like, her first business.

And so she was doing that. She made us. She's like, I don't know anything about tech, but she went on, like, I don't know, squarespace and then got, like, a put stripe on there or PayPal on there and started taking payments. So that started to work. Then she's like, all right, where do I sell these helmets?

And so she bought a vintage tricycle that has a wagon attached to it, like a three wheeler with a wagon. And she just piled up all the helmets into the wagon and made, like, a cool little stand. And then people are like, yo, I love your stand. And she's like, huh? All right, I'll start selling these stands.

And so now she sells the helmets, and then she built the stand for the helmets, and then there, people loved her stand so much that she started doing. She started selling sands. I think the fruit thing started the same way. She was like, oh, yeah, just to be funny, I created this fruit thing, and then people were like, hey, can you do that for my brand? And it was just a great example of this awesome quote from the founder of Geek Squad.

He said, marketing is the tax that you pay for an unremarkable product. And this lady has such a remarkable product. She just builds remarkable products, products worth remarking on that she never does need to do marketing. And she actually just spins up new businesses because she'll make something for herself, and then ten people will talk about it, and she's like, okay, that's business. That's a thing, and she'll make it.

Shaan Puri
She has another thing called mask alike, where you upload a picture of your face and it makes like a COVID mask, but the bottom half of your face on the mask. And on her branded fruit website, she needs some. Her copy is funky. She needs to move this part up. This is actually good.

This should be the tagline go bananas. And it says, uh, how they work with local, local farms to source produce, and then they put these, like, stickers on the produce. It's pretty cool. This is pretty cool. If we do a MFM meetup, we need to have this at one of them.

Sam Parr
I don't know what our fruit would be, but, like, I'm a beat. I'm a beat guy. I like beets. Big, big fan of beets. You eat beets?

Shaan Puri
How do you eat? How do you eat a beet? Dude, I think I told you this. My buddy Sam Soley from college one day sent me a PowerPoint deck. He's like, oh, I was listening to the podcast.

Sam Parr
I haven't talked to this guy in years, and he's like, oh, I heard the podcast. You're talking about health. Here's my beats presentation. I was like, what? And he just has this slide deck of all white slides, no design, and it just says, beats want to have a longer life?

Next slide. Beets want to have better sex. Next slide. Beats want to feel good every morning. Beets.

And he's just like, everything you want is on the other side of just a few beats. And he's like, you need to buy raw beets. You need to put them in a smoothie. Here's my recipe. Beets are amazing for you.

Shaan Puri
How do you eat them? I just blend them up in a smoothie. Like, what's that mean? What part of blended up in a smoothie is unclear? What do you mean?

That's incredibly unclear. Do you literally take a bunch of beets and put them in a smoothie and, like, you juice it? Like, it becomes smoothie and one of the ingredients is beets. Okay, that's what I was asking. You just said.

But what you said was you just put beets in a blender and make it into something. So what do you put? What is your beet? Smoothie recipe. His recipe.

Sam Parr
His recipe will be spinach, beets, water, I think, like, a splash of OJ. He puts, like, olive oil, salt. He puts, like, different stuff that I never put in smoothies, like, olive oil. I never would have thought of hemp seeds. He makes, like, a killer, like, super healthy smoothie.

And, uh, I'll try to. I'll publish the recipe. I gotta go find the exact recipe. I haven't done it in a couple of years, but for, like, a year and a half, I was all on the beats train. And now.

Shaan Puri
Did it make you feel better? Yeah, it feels great. Uh, well, mostly because his presentation was very convincing. And so, like, I got placebo'd pretty hard there. But the hard part is that raw beats are the worst for cleanup.

Sam Parr
Like, you have to peel them and then there, and then everything is red. Your hands are pure red. The cutting board is red. Your whole kitchen is red. These things are just pure ink.

And so that's the only reason I stopped was for a period of time. I was like, I'm just tired of, like, having red hands for the. All day, you know? So I need to figure out a way to do this. I need some gloves is the answer.

Dude. What a dork. I love this guy. Yeah, you made a face, like, it's gross. But this is everything you stand for in life.

Doing weird overkill stuff for healthy. I'm not that overkill. But beats are. Like, you're running right now. How long is that race you're training for?

What are you doing? You're not overkill. How long is it? About 50 of them. About 50 of the miles.

Okay, so, like, a marathon wasn't enough. You needed two, but you're not overkill for sure. All right, well, congratulations to Danielle. How'd you find her? I honestly have no idea.

Shaan Puri
Are we like the Chris? You're like the Christopher Columbus, where it's like, you discovered America. It did not exist before you. Before you, it was not a thing. You came across it.

Now it is a thing. Yeah. By the way, she, to me, is like the female Peter levels in real life. So, you know, he's like the indie hacker, just spins up cool ass projects online, makes a bunch of money. I feel like she's the female real life Peter level.

Sam Parr
So that's. That's how I think about her. I also have a couple of her ideas that she's had that she's been tinkering with. So, um, Baskin has been tinkering with other applications for this idea. For example, what if companies sponsor produce that's at the store, so you could buy discounted fruits or vegetables if it came with the brand's logo on it.

What if taco Bell sponsors some tomatoes or avocados, for instance? And then you could think about the brand as you make your Super bowl guacamole. These are the thoughts going through the mind of Daniel Baskin. Dude, she has a whole website full of, like, crazy things. So she's done drone sweaters, sweat sweaters, and clothing for cold drones.

Shaan Puri
She's got the helmets thing. She's. Oh, my God. She. She has an escape room for your baby in your womb.

Womb escape game is an escape room kit for newborns, complete with a tiny we escaped sign for baby's first photos.

Sam Parr
She hosts funerals for expired domains. Oh, my God. This woman is. She is something. She has touch base, collectible and rare trading cards.

Shaan Puri
A venture capitalist, including stats, a foil pack and a stick of gum. She has SF sign maker, a sign making company doing painted and printed signage for local businesses in New York and San Francisco. She's got the Trillo box, a phone mounted compatible with irregular handlebars for your for bike share companies. This is funny. She has a stained glass window for airplanes, a removable window decal that transforms your flight into a place of prayer.

This woman is really good. Yeah, she's got some other ones. Founder Fitness Club, a service that will print your pitch deck onto a yoga mat. So if there's an investor at the yoga mat, at the yoga club, they will be attracted last chance tours, a immersive scanning service that will. That will tour a place that's about to be demolished that you can later revisit in VR.

She has blue check homes, which is a satirical service that offers verified, like a Twitter verified blue chest crest that goes on to your home if you're a public figure.

Sam Parr
She literally has more on here than we have time to say. Pretty impressive.

Shaan Puri
She's awesome. Is it. Is this stuff like making a living? Surely it is, right? I mean, you have 20 of them.

Sam Parr
Yeah. I'd like to believe that. That's true. She must be doing well. You can't be this talented to not do well.

Shaan Puri
Yeah, I'm a fan, Danielle, you're awesome. Is that it? Is that the pod? That's it. That's the pod.

All right. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know. Hold on.

Sam Parr
We had to come back on. Sam found Daniel Baskin's best. Best one of all. It's called moonlight. Moonlight world.

Shaan Puri
What tagline did you just say, Sean? It's sass for witches. All those witches out there who've been needing a sass tool to let them do their tarot card readings, she made. It finally up for transformative social rituals, experience interactive and deep, illuminating tarot card sessions right from your browser. Sass for witches.

Beautiful. I'm all about it. Danielle, you're awesome. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

Arie Desormeaux
I put my all in it. Like a days off on a road less travel, never looking back.

These Executive Doctors Charge $10k Per Appointment?!

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: The Business Model

3: Broader Health Trends

4: Technological Impact

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

Companies

Content Warnings:

Transcript