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Yeah, I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off on the road.

Travel never looking back.

What's happening, podcast listeners? This is Sam Parr. I'm currently walking around SoHo in New York. It's Friday after work and I'm doing something I never do. I'm listening to a podcast that I was on. You see, a couple weeks ago Sean and I appeared on the Indie Hackers podcast with Courtland, and it was awesome. It was really good. And I'm listening to this right now and I was like, I think our audience are You people, MFM, I think you guys would love this. And so I'm sitting here on my phone, walking on the, uh, walking from SoHo up on the, uh, water up to my apartment, and I said, you know what the hell, we're gonna air this. So I'm doing it right now. We're launching it. I hope you enjoy it. Let us know what you think about this. My Twitter handle is @TheSamPar. Sean is @SeanVP. And on your Spotify, there's this new feature. They got this little bell Click that bell for me. That way you'll get notified when new features and new episodes come out. And let me know if it works. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good day. I'm gonna enjoy the rest of my walk. Listen how loud that is. Can you hear that? This freaking city, it's so loud. Oh my gosh. Well, enjoy the podcast. See you.

What's up everybody? This is Courtland from IndieHackers.com and you're listening to the IndieHackers Podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these indie hackers to discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of so the rest of us can do the same.

All right.

I'm here with Sean Perry and Sam Parr, two of my favorite podcast hosts. You guys host the excellent show My First Million. Welcome to the Indie Hackers Podcast.

All right, let me ask you a question. What was the valuation of Stripe when you sold to them?

I think it was like $9 billion in like April 2017.

3-part question that results in Sam knowing your current bank balance.

That was part 1.

Okay, I'm not going to answer the third question.

I know what the third question is.

I'm not going to answer. What's the valuation now? $9— $90?

It's $95 billion now, I think.

Damn, dude.

And by the way, it wasn't even risky back then. Did it feel risky when you—

They, um, Sean, uh, Courtland, you know Courtland has a brother?

Yeah. I found this out the other day that you have a twin brother.

Yeah, but they don't, they don't look identical, but yeah, they look similar. But he came to my, he came to Austin like a month ago or 3 weeks ago and he came over on like a Tuesday or Wednesday and we had a good time. And then he ended up coming over on Friday and we ate dinner and he was like, you guys wanna go out? And I'm like, No, I don't really go out. But Sarah, my wife, was like, yeah, I'll go out with you. And they went out until like 3 or 4 AM, like partying.

And I can't even get my brother to go out with me. I'm like, hey dude, come visit me in Seattle. And he's like, nah, I got better things to do. Like, I just saw him last week for the very first time since the pandemic started.

Oh my gosh.

But yeah, he's like my right-hand man at IndieHackers, kind of in the same way that you two work together on your show, My First Million. Why don't you tell listeners what your show is about in case they haven't heard it yet?

It's basically two dudes who started startups and have been doing it for like 10 years, just getting together and shooting the shit about what other startups either are cool that we've seen or we think would be cool if somebody started. And so it's kind of— it's basically a brainstorm. And what happens is if you listen to it, you know, most people who listen to it, they, you know, they get entertainment because it's kind of fun and it's off the cuff and it's, you you know, me and Sam go back and forth a little bit, but the big thing is it gets the wheels turning. Like once you start listening to this, you'll just start seeing business ideas and opportunities all over the place, almost to an extent that's kind of annoying. It's a switch you can't turn off. And that's how we're wired, that's how we are. And so we are kind of infecting other people with the same disease.

And a lot of people think that like we're just showing up and in some, like in some regards it's true and that we can totally go off the cuff, but we also research way more than people probably think. So throughout the week we'll see stuff and like, I don't actually know how Sean does it. I think, well, he probably does the same thing, but I'll like get on the phone with someone and I'll say, tell me everything. And I'm like taking notes and I'm like, thanks. So I mean, it's almost like it's very like traditional journalism. And I'm like, by the way, everything you say I'm going to talk about. So don't talk to me about anything you don't want everyone to know. And it's pretty cool.

So I did that the other day. I've seen, have you ever seen these semi-trucks and on the back they have what looks like a tail? It's like a, It's like a 2-foot— how do I describe it? Imagine the back of a truck and it has these like wings, but they kind of curve in. So it's like the end of a cube. I'm not explaining it well, but the end of a cube. And it's got these wings that point in. So I saw one on these trucks the other day and I was like, what the hell is this? And I looked this service up.

It's like a spoiler for a truck.

Well, it's addictive to listen to because even on my show, I'll do like a brainstorming episode every now and then. And if I just call an episode Business Ideas for 2021, it gets like twice as many downloads as every other episode. 'Cause people are like, hell yeah, I want some free business ideas. But then I worry that people who are like addicted to these types of shows aren't actually building stuff or doing anything. 'Cause you just wanna hear more and more ideas rather than actually like start working on something.

I call that getting addicted to the medicine where you take the medicine, it's supposed to cure the problem and you're supposed to like be able to move on with your life. And some people just love drinking Robitussin every day at some point, right? You don't wanna get stuck in that pattern where You just want to keep getting more and more advice, more and more ideas. It's like, well, yeah, if it's for entertainment, which I think is what most people do, they get it for— they use it for entertainment. Not— they want to have friends in their life that want to geek out about business the way they do. And we are like their friends who like to nerd out about business even more than they do.

And I also think that, like, we do have a lot of, like, legit ballers who are listeners. I mean, if you said you're a listener, so there's not that many people that ever take action on anything. But I do think we've got a really good ratio of that. I think in the future, I think actually we should consider almost— I'm incredibly fascinated with the idea of going daily. We haven't discussed it yet, but it's like an, it's something I think about. And like, because I find myself listening to like Brennan Schaub and all these other podcasts, and I love them because they talk about current events and they give their opinion on it. And I think there's a world where we could kind of do that. And the reason I'm saying that is we kind of already do. So like, when something happens, like the other day when Bitcoin like dropped, Sean did a thing right away on a Sunday morning and it was a huge hit. And so like we definitely, we, we don't do like a traditional maybe podcast like a lot of people in our industry do where they're doing like interviews or something that's a little bit more evergreen. And we, we do evergreen stuff, but we definitely can react really quickly to things with our angle. And that's kind of intriguing.

It started— I don't know if you know how it started, but it started off when he was at the beginning. It was more like evergreen hits, long-form, super interesting blogs, like, like kind of like going for home runs. Like, we're going to talk about a topic nobody's talking about in a way that nobody's talking about it. It's going to be amazingly manufactured. And then we're going to distribute that and try to get that one blog post to like millions of visits. And it was working, but it was also like, dude, is this the treadmill I want to be on? Or what if we just went lightweight, daily, react to the news, summarize and react to the news, uh, give people what they need to know in 5 minutes and like not try to be a kind of like genius original content creator every week. That's my summary at least, Sam. I don't know if that's accurate.

That's very accurate. It, it was hard. I mean, I could do it probably, but it's a hard-ass life and I, it's really hard to hire for. There's a reason why Casey Neistat did what he did for a year and then quit. He was like, oh my God, this is exhausting. It's challenging.

Yeah, it's just too hard. Like, if your— if your goal is to produce content and your strategy is that you're going to come up with new interesting ideas for every video or every podcast, and like, that idea is dead on arrival. I think you got to index on some other source of novelty, whether it's the news or on this show. Like, I don't ever come up with new business ideas, you know. I just have people on who who have their own business ideas. And like, that is an endless process. Like, I'm never gonna run out of people to interview who have cool and interesting new business ideas. And so that's just a much better way to go about it. And I think you guys on your show, My First Million, you have, I don't know, you kind of the same thing. You're talking about other business ideas that others have come up with. And you also just got bought by HubSpot. So I'd assume at least you, Sam, probably have some sort of financial incentive to keep working on the show and making it good.

So we—

the podcast is his job.

Yeah, the podcast is my job. So when we, like, we were gonna sell, um, like, we— they started reaching out to us, and during that time I had basically already made an offer to someone to be the CEO so I could do, uh, podcast stuff. And they wanted to buy us, and I go, okay, well, I'm gonna have to rescind my offer to this guy because I was promising him that he's gonna run it independently, and that's no longer gonna be true. So I did that with him, and I go, but then you also have to promote someone from within or hire someone to be like the boss because I'm not gonna be the boss. I would love to be here and continue doing and do content because I love it, but I'm not going to be the CEO. So I— and also there's no— we don't have an earnout. Like there's no— there's like milestones that we want to hit, but like I don't have like money on the line in order to hit that milestone. And so it's a little bit different. Like when you're saying like I'm in the trenches, I am. But like if I— I would do it anyway.

I would say— I would say it's more like there's a period when you get acquired where you're like, all right, gimme the Kool-Aid, pass the Kool-Aid. Like, I'll drink it. You know, like, I think for, I think for a lot of people, I, I was this way at least. I'll just speak for myself. There's a period where you're like, ah, they give me the swag and then I show up. Well, at least when you're in person, it's, it's a lot easier than when you're remote. But like, it's very easy to just get swept up. It's like, oh, I'm gonna add you to this meeting. And oh, would love to pick your brain about X. And you know, you start getting pulled into all these strategy things cuz you're the strat smart, you like high energy strategy guy who's not like, scarred and jaded by all past failures. And so, you know, you start getting pulled into all these things and you're able to contribute and meet all these people and you're, you're in the cafeteria and you're like, God, my life is no stress now because I sold my startup. Like there's a period where you're like all about it. And then what I've seen, I'll just speak for myself. There's a transition period where you're like, okay, like working super hard here really doesn't really get me any more or less than, uh, if I just do what I enjoy and I work like a, with a certain amount of freedom and lack of oversight. I think, Corlin, you were talking about this a little bit earlier. I did this at Twitch, which is the first year I tried to kill it. I did everything I could. I wasn't like working 100 hours a week, but the hours I was working, I was like, I'm gonna do the most high-impact thing I could do for this company at all times, and I'm gonna be me on blast. And I was doing it, and then like a year in, I was like, well, I'm leading this team, and at a big company, it's really like you're doing all the jobs of a startup CEO without the upside.. It's like hire and fire people, set the strategy, dictate the roadmap, manage a whole, you know, like 30 people or whatever. Pitch for funding basically. And your funding is just headcount, uh, and resources. And so it's like all the jobs of a CEO without the like actual freedom and actual upside of a startup. And so I went to the, the CEO and I was like, hey, like, you know, I just hit my 1 year. I'm thinking about what's next. You know, it's smart to either like sign up now for another full year or like, bounce if I want to bounce. And so I said, you know, I'm having a lot of fun here, but like, if I'm going to do all this work for a startup, I should just go start my own startup. I should own all my upside. Uh, you understand. He's a founder, so he understood. And he said, uh, and I said, but you know, there could be a model here that works. Um, like here's what, here's what I would like. And I, and so I like sort of laid out a role that I thought would be fun for me. And it was basically like, you know, something I'm interested in with no direct reports, with no, like, kind of like, it's not like a mission critical project like the one I was doing before. So it's like more of a creativity, fun, freedom type project. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna work this hard and I still think I'll make an impact, but I'm gonna work like roughly this hard. And I got all these other things I do. The podcast is growing. So like, if y'all are cool with all that, then I'd love to stay on. And they gave it to me. And I guess like I've seen that that's a pretty typical path of a founder. You go from like, I wanna crush it, justify it, learn everything from this, learn everything I can from this company. And like, prove myself. Then you're like, okay, don't need to like prove myself so much anymore. Prove myself, learned a bunch of stuff. It's kind of repetitive now. Let me transition to either out the door or chill mode, you know, where you're cruising, just doing what, just the parts you enjoy with none of the stuff you don't enjoy. And then, and then it's like gets the itch to go do the thing again. That's the pattern I see.

And they know that. The buyers know that.

And they know that.

Yeah.

At first I was so afraid to be like, hey, but I love, I really love these people. I, and I connected with them. So I was like, hey, I'm gonna level with you. And I was waiting for them to flinch and they're like, dude, we've seen this rodeo like 100 times. Like, we get it. I know who you are. I knew that when I got you, like, you know, when we bought the company and like, look, I want you to be here forever. But if like literally Emmett, the CEO, messaged me one day, he just goes, look, I know you're going to want to go start a company someday. I wish we could keep you forever. I know that's not going to be the case. When you do your next thing, I'll be your first check-in. And so that was like a totally different mindset than this, like, what I thought would be, no, that like what you're saying is bad and evil and how dare you. Uh, but there's like, you know, the people pleaser in me was still like a little bit hesitant to like just be fully honest. But when I did, I was like, oh great, this is no problem. They understand. They're, and this, and it's a big show. Like I think I'm the star and they're like, dude, there's thousands of people at this company and next year there'll be a new, yeah, there'll be a new you. We've, we've seen this turnover 5 times.

And there's also this middle ground, which is like, You— it doesn't— who cares what the paperwork says? Like, there's a handshake agreement that says you got your— ethically say, I'm going to provide value to you. You're going to provide value to me. Me personally, I'm still more important. Like, I'm more important to myself than that company is. So I'm not going to, like, die to help you. But like, we have a handshake agreement. I'm going to give you value. I'm also going to extract value. And hopefully it's a 51-49, like, where you get more value. But that's what we're going to do.

Yeah, well, I think it's— I actually think it's fairly— it's fairly paved, this path. But I think that it's like a path that's been paved,. But then all of a sudden they built all these new roadside things. It's like, oh, that restaurant wasn't here before. Oh, there's a gas station. Wow. Now we can go way further. Right? That's what I see. So, so I grew up and like, I, there's a couple major influences on me, uh, when I was kind of like making a shift into business. And the first was, uh, Tim Ferriss. So somebody, somehow, somehow, somehow, some way I got my hands on 4-Hour Workweek and I had what you call the 4-hour fever, which is when you finish the book, for the next 4 hours you're like, fuck everything in my life, I'm changing everything. I'm like, I'm doing all these things. Why don't I have passive income? Why am I working so hard? Why don't I have a virtual assistant? Why don't I travel? Why don't I, you know, get fit? Like, you want to change all these things because he makes it seem so desirable and so achievable, right? So that was the first big influence on me. And a guy like Tim Ferriss, you know, in many ways, when, you know, the person who sort of shows you the way, you're like, well, I respect you, I like you, but also I kind of want to be you. And so I saw, okay, here's a dude who basically took his own life experiences, distilled it down into some kind of operating philosophy, and then packaged it up for the world to consume through books and a blog, essentially. And then later a podcast, later a newsletter, other things. Um, he translated his fame into access for deals. So he invested in Uber, invested, I think, in Twitter, a couple, couple other big ones. And also had like a great kind of like friend group that emerged from that. Was just always hanging with interesting people. That seemed super fun to me. So I really liked this guy's lifestyle. And I thought, I didn't really even like decide at that time, but I always just thought, oh, that's amazing. But to me at the time, it felt like if I wanted to pursue that, it felt like saying, you know, I wanna go be LeBron James or like I wanna go into Hollywood and, you know, be George Clooney. It just felt like a, well, that's a lottery game. There's not, I can't name 15 Tim Ferrisses, at the time at least. I thought this was, There's only a few people like this, so it's probably not a good path to bet on. So that was the first influence. Second one was Tony Robbins, same sort of thing. I was like, oh wow, this guy's great. I discovered his content, helped me out a lot, changed the way I saw the world with his operating philosophy. And I was like, I went to one of his events and I was like, holy fuck, there's 10,000 people in this arena paying thousands of dollars to like just attend this guy's show, this performance. And I was like, I've never seen anybody like this. Never seen a speaker captivate people like this? How the fuck does this guy do it? And I was pretty like enamored with that. It was very like intoxicating to see. And I thought, okay, I don't really want this lifestyle. Like, just like with Tim Ferriss, I didn't want to write books, and because that seems slow and kind of boring. Just like Tony Robbins, I didn't want to go on tour, but I wanted elements of what they had, which was a cool set of life experiences which help you, which you then distill into operating philosophy You share that, you build a big trusted audience, and then you turn that social capital into financial capital so that that funds you doing you full-time. Your job, your company is you. And so I just thought, oh, that's pretty fun. Like, I think a guy like Tim Ferriss, I think he basically wakes up. I don't know him. Sam actually knows him, but I met him once and he seemed like a pretty curious dude. What it seemed like his life is, is he wakes up, he's curious about a thing. Like, it might be because he's having some pain point in his life. Like, ah, I wanna lose belly fat, or like, I just got diagnosed with this like disorder and this is the traditional medicine but it doesn't seem to work so well. What are the alternatives? And then he just goes down that rabbit hole. He learns about it from the best, he self-experiments, and then he comes out the other side and he teaches that to everybody else. And I thought, oh, that's dope. This dude just gets to be like a curious student and gets paid millions of dollars for it. That seems like way more fun than what I was doing, than a normal job for sure,, but even more fun than being a startup CEO, picking a market, raising money from investors, having a team that you gotta go into the office every day and rah rah, keep everybody happy and keep everybody motivated, come up with your strategy. So I, I basically just looked at it once I sold my company, I was like, all right, am I gonna stop bullshitting or what? Like, am I gonna try that path even though the odds seem bad? Or, or, or am I, should I just put away that, that idea forever? I'm not gonna lean into it.

The odds aren't that bad.

At the time it felt really hard and impossible.

Well, to be Tim Ferriss, it's like you said, he was like one of the only ones doing that. There wasn't like a very clear path to follow. Uh, whereas now there's just so many different ways to get into levels, right?

Yeah. Like he might be number one in that kind of field. Actually, Tony Robbins and others are kind of a little bit bigger than him, but then, then you have him, but then you have like, you know, a rung down. You'll have, I don't know, whoever, pick your favorite, James Clear or, um, you know, Ramit Sethi or whoever. And then you have in every niche, you have a thought leader. So you realize, okay, it's not an all or nothing game. Like at the minimum, I can land in kind of like level 3 right now and feel some version of success. And then if I just keep going, maybe I'll get there. And I'm pretty like, I don't know, cocky slash confident. So I was like, okay, you know, why not me? Right? Like I met Tim, I was like, there's nothing, there's nothing magical about this guy. Uh, he seems like a normal person just like me who like, He just did him on blast for 10, 15 years. I could do that. That seems, that seems doable. So that's how I describe this path.

And it's not always about investments. Like, sure, Tim Ferriss made a lot of money from investing, but talking about James Clear, I just spoke with him and Mark Manson the other week. They were both prolific bloggers. And James Clear, for example, he was able to grow his mailing list to like a million subscribers just from blogging consistently and being really good at SEO. And then they both wrote books and they just kind of took their best blog posts that they had proven worked the best. And they turned them into like bestselling books. Yeah, exactly.

And Mark, I think Mark's book, if you read like I went and read like an annual report from Fox or News Corp, whoever owns like Penguin Books or something, and they're like, what's this book called? It's like called like Fuck It, I Don't Care.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It was it like they like positioned it as like the breakout hit that saved the company. I mean, it was like a pretty big smashing success, right?

No way.

At least.

So you're telling me you think he made over $30 million off that book?

I think he made at least $30 million.

No way, I so don't believe that, that's amazing.

Yeah, books can be ridiculously lucrative, but it's hard. Like James Clear, again, he had 1 million email subscribers. And in addition to doing all the work of writing a book and getting all those subscribers, he also did like 400 podcast interviews before the release of Atomic Habits. Like these are like the top books in their categories. But I suspect that if you have a huge audience beforehand, you can kind of play publishers off of each other. Like I've had multiple publishers email me about doing a book for indie hackers. And you could probably negotiate to get higher than like the industry standard of like 15% royalties on book sales, right?

I don't remember if it's Tim that told me this or if I read it about him, but I think he said in order revenue streams were something like— so highest to lowest was investing, advertising revenue, and then significantly below number 3 was books, right?

And that doesn't shock me. I mean, I think successful tech startups are a lot more lucrative than books. And I think Tim was like early to Uber or something crazy.

And Shopify, dude, just those two alone.

That's a whole nother level.

It could be in the $100 million plus.

I mean, being early to $100 billion startup is among the best investments that any human has ever made, ever.

I mean, that, that's like, that pays the bills.

That was my salary, you know, that was my salary when I started. Yeah. Uh, so that's the first part. Then you take the carry. So you're basically saying of every $4 million invested or every $4 million invested, it's the equivalent of me getting to write about $800,000. Let's just round up to $1 million, uh, $1 million a year of startup investments. So, and the startup investments take, you know, let's call it 10 years to, to mature for that fund to, to fully pay out. So that's basically $10 million of investment, of money that I get to invest that I didn't have to take out of pocket. So that's $10 million of equity value without counting in the appreciation of any of those investments. Right. And a good fund might 3x in value. And so, you know, a good fund, it could do better. But, but even just like normal solid returns over the 10-year period would be a triple. And so that would mean that my $10 million in equity value becomes like $30 million in equity value. And this is for something that I did, I put, that's, I just, I just snapped my fingers and turned audience into cash. But it's a win-win. It's not like I'm charging them something. I'm giving them access into A, my brain of knowing what startup investments are good and bad, but B, my deal flow of deals they could never get access to in the private market. So you get this win-win with your audience, but it's pretty massive value. And that vehicle, that rolling fund, that didn't exist for, you know, Tim Ferriss. It didn't exist for Tony Robbins. They had to find a different way. It's just, Everything's easier now. Just like Stripe made it easier to take payments, like, it's easier now to raise money. It's easier to create merch. It's, it's easier to create a course. It's easier to do all the different business model tactics that you can do. Like, Pomp, Pomp is another kind of like solo creator. He's got like a job board. And so he's big in Bitcoin and he's, that's what he's known for. So he created Pomp's CryptoJobs.com or something like that. So he's making, I, I believe he didn't, he didn't confirm this, but, you know, just my own kind of sleuthing here. He's making almost $1 million a year off his job board. Right. So he was like a, you know, high-level person at Snap, at Facebook, whatever. He's basically replacing that with a passive income stream. Again, just snap his finger, spin up a financial asset. Tim Ferriss could have done that. Right. But they didn't have these tools nor awareness to use it. They were following the traditional playbook, which was like write books, give speeches, like go to go get paid $30,000 to go talk at some company. And the last one was like he created a TV show, was like, you know, go for mainstream media. And, and now we have like way more tools in our tool belt that we can use to generate much more income.

Right. And despite all these tools that help you make money, I still don't think it's like necessarily the most accessible path to start with because you got to build an audience first. Right. And that's a dog-eat-dog world. Like a ton of people are out there hustling, trying to make a name for themselves. And most of the people I know who've succeeded are kind of like the two of you. Where you have these previous business successes that lend you credence and help your audiences like build trust with you.

Yeah, but by the way, we didn't, we didn't have that audience either like 18 months ago, and neither did Pom didn't have that audience 2 years ago, 3 years ago. So it can be built fairly quickly, but you're right, not everybody wants to or can. I'm not— this is not a thing where I'm like, anybody can do it. It's— or sorry, it's, it's, it's anybody can do it, but not everybody can do it. Um, so it is open to all, but it is not going to be achievable by all.

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Okay, so let's, let's get into some ideas. Let's talk about ideas that like the average person can do or build. You guys have your own sources of ideas. Sam, you've got The Hustle. You've got a team of journalists who are literally working around the clock to find new, interesting business stories and ideas to bring to you. For me, I've got IndieHackers. I'll go to the IndieHackers product directory. YouTube. Yeah, I'll just sort by like recently updated and then I'll look at who's making at least $10,000 a month in revenue and just see what pops up. Like see what cool ideas people are working on.

You need like a growth rate one.

Yeah, I should add that for sure. I built this whole directory a few years ago and there's only like 100 products on it. And I checked the other day. Now there's like over 14,000 products where people sort of share what they're doing and how much money they're making and what they're working on and how they come up with their idea and stuff. So I should definitely add more features to it at this point because it's pretty cool. But one of the trends I've been noticing is just people sort of deconstructing and making like really small niche versions. Of big venture-funded apps. So a good one is like calm.com. It's a, it's a big mindfulness and sort of meditation app. Um, and there's some others in the sector that are making like tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and they've got like a ton of investment. And then on IndieHackers, I've found people who are making like little small versions of them. So one of them is called Mantra. It was built by this guy a few years ago, and you can look at his timeline and see like exactly what his thought process was. So he says he was lying in bed watching his girlfriend at the time use a daily affirmations app, and he figured he could build something better. And so this is the very first app he's ever made, and it's super simple. Like, I downloaded the app, you open it up, and it's just got different categories for affirmations. So it's got like, improve your sex life. These affirmations will help create a more satisfying sexual experience in your life. And generate wealth. These affirmations will help attract wealth, abundance, and prosperity to your life. And just stuff like that.

That's hilarious.

And so it turns out a few years later, 200,000 people have downloaded this app and he decided to add subscriptions. So you pay $20 a year to get access to themes and music and whatever. And I think he made $3,500 in his very first month.

He's got 10,000 reviews and the average rating is 4.8.

Sean, you should tell him about, um, Horoscopes. That's the exact same thing here.

What about Horoscopes?

Um, we— did we interview the guy? His name was Ross. There's this guy who raised money from, um, a bunch of New York media folks. Maybe he raised $15 million and he was— his app was in the same space as this Mantra app. But basically, Courtland, did you know that, like, women love horoscopes?

I've yet to date anybody who wasn't into astrology. So, yeah, I'm aware.

So, like, even like I dismiss horoscopes as like some, like, woo woo nonsense bullshit. But even like smart women like my wife and like Sean's wife, like, are into it, even if it's at a casual level. And I was like, they can like, oh, I'm also into like a ton of like bro science as well. So it's just like their version of bro science. And we, we found— so there was this app that raised maybe $10 or $15 million and they're probably making millions of dollars a year doing horoscopes. Then we went and found Horoscope— was it Horoscope or Sudoku, something like that, where it was like the most like old school, not nice looking website. And they were very likely could be making $10 million a year off of these things. And it was just getting crazy amounts of traffic because the amount of people who read or consume horoscope content is like, like half of America, because it's like 80% of women, like, check it out.

And it's smart too because it's daily. Like, you don't just check your horoscope once and then never again. Like, you come back and check it every single day. It's like, uh, what we were talking about earlier with the news and entertainment. Like, this is something where you can collect subscription revenue and people aren't going to stop coming back.

Yeah, it'll make you rich. Like, yeah, exactly. We like talk a lot about that on the podcast. We're like, it's pretty like raising money and going big, I think is sick. And I'm happy that the people who do it do it and maybe I'll do it one day. But if you're like, goal is to optimize for like wealth creation, some of these apps or smaller, relatively smaller ideas are actually significantly likelier to make you wealthy and perhaps be more fun along the way.

And a lot of them are just repurposing ideas that have existed in the past in some form or another. That used to be doing really well. So you can kind of just look at, like, what people used to do that worked and then just try it again. So, like, the horoscope industry, you know, has always had these influencers who people really trust. And I don't know if you guys remember Miss Cleo. She had this, like, mystical hotline in the '90s.

Yeah, you've heard. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Like, that business was crushing it. Like, they made, like, $1 billion or something crazy like that.

I mean, she was just a hired model, or, like, I mean, she actually was—

Whoa, she wasn't mystical?

Well, she was like— she was like a professional palm reader, but, like, the owners of the marketing company, like, heard her story speak and they're like, oh my gosh, like you are our— she's perfect. You're gonna be our woman. You know, you're our spokesperson. And they paid her like not, you know, like $100 grand a year or some like normal salary. And it was pretty wild.

And a lot of this stuff seems scammy, but here's— there's other examples. Like there's like sleep is a great category. So you're talking about Calm and one of Calm's biggest features is sleep stories and it's a paid feature. But like we, we know and have met owners of sleep apps that do everything from, you know, just white noise or like raindrop sound effects or whatever to sleep stories, to sleep stories, but just in other languages. And they just focus on like, you know, the Spanish-speaking market or whatever. And there's just like an infinite number of these niches that exist both in software or, you know, D2C. Like, for example, just to tie it back into what we were talking about earlier in the D2C space, like the fact that Tim Ferriss doesn't have his own like nootropic drink or like kettlebell brand left money on the table, you know what I mean? Like, and the person who actually did this really well was Joe Rogan. And, you know, right, he has like AlphaBrain or whatever that supplements company is. And I think, Sam, you know the numbers better than I do on this, but that's like $100 million a year company. I think it just sold— maybe I'm a little over—

Right. And so like A, that's his own passion area. He talked about it anyways. Why take sponsor's money to talk about somebody else's brand when like you could just be part owner or white label any of these things, right? So there's a whole suite of those types of ideas. And this happens again, like to look at another country, look in India, all the famous like kind of like gurus in India, it's like, oh, this guy's a saint. He only accepts donations and like makes millions of dollars off donations. And then as they get famous, like Miss Cleo style, I think the top guy like, has like his own ramen noodle company and like put— right, so he just licensed his face onto ramen noodles and crackers or something like that and is like a billionaire from, from this ramen noodle company. And yet at the same time, it's supposed to be this like religious saint. Just the most basic stuff, right? But like we can learn from them. Like if you're trying to learn this, like what is this solo, like kind of solo creator playbook? Well, you got to know what are all the tools in the toolbox and then use the ones that, that you want. But actually I was gonna ask you a different question, which is Joe Rogan reminded me of this. Who is having the most fun? That's a great question. With what they do for a living. Uh, I, somebody had asked me this question or, or in our group chat, somebody asked this question and I was like, that's a great question. Right? Because once you see that, you see a model, you're like, and it's, it's not they're having the most fun, but it's like, I think that would be super fun if that was me. It's kind of like a one question, one version of the question. Um, because that beco— that can become a blueprint then. Like, why don't, why don't I just go in for that? And my answer was Joe Rogan. And I'll give you kind of my defense for Joe Rogan, but I would love if you guys have other answers of somebody who you've seen just having a blast, or you— they're having a blast and you think it would be a blast for you too. I'm curious if there are any other answers. Like, the Joe Rogan reasoning to me is he basically— he's got the podcast, which like clearly he does for fun, because he was doing it before it made any money, before he sold it to— you know, before he sold the rights to Spotify for $100 million a year. He was doing it for free, kind of in his, in his bedroom. And, uh, when when there was no promise of money. So he's just meeting badass people, Elon Musk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, he's just having conversations with interesting people. Through that he gets a bunch of fans who love him, that sounds fun. Then he loves the UFC, he's a UFC commentator, but he also does it where he doesn't go to every event, that would be exhausting, that would be like the trade-off where the job become, the hobby becomes a shitty job, and instead he's like, no, I'm only gonna do the big pay-per-views in Vegas, that's an easy flight for me, I'm not gonna travel around the world trying to chase this thing around anymore. So that seems fun. And then he's a stand-up comedian, which is like a hard challenge, super fun thing to do. And he sells out arenas all around the world. And so like, and then he's got his brand Alpha Brain or whatever, and he works out all the time. Like Joe Rogan just seems like he is doing all the things he wants at the highest level. And so it seems like that's a blast. Who do you guys think is having the most fun?

Okay, I'm gonna go with the founder CEOs of these humongous, like $100 billion+ tech companies. And so I'm talking about like the Patrick Collisons of the world, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison at Oracle, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, just these absolute titans who are controlling a ton of resources. And they're not like just some hired gun CEO who came in later on to like turn the ship around. Like these are people who are working on the projects that they started that used to be tiny. So it's kind of like their life mission. It's kind of like their baby. And once it gets big enough, like it takes a lot, a lot of work, a lot of heartache to get to the point where they're at now. But once it gets to that size, like, you can kind of delegate most of the important, like, urgent work to other people, like your trusted lieutenants. And then you're kind of, you know, in control of like a massive amount of resources where you can work on your favorite thing and you can do side projects and all sorts of stuff. So I think that's kind of the most enviable position to be in.

We're having, I think next week we're having the co-founder of HubSpot on, Dharmesh, and I'll ask him, but I talk to him regularly and I'm almost positive he doesn't have any direct reports. And I'm also— you can look this up, actually. I think he's the largest individual shareholder of HubSpot and his value of just HubSpot shares is over $1 billion. And I was like, what did you do this week? He's like, oh, I bought my wife for her 40th or 50th birthday. I bought her this domain called humanist.org. It's like a— it's a— it's this like philosophy we buy into and it's this community. And I was like, is this what you do for fun? He's like, yeah, it's like the greatest job on earth. I'll have to ask him. So I'm not insinuating this, but it appears as though he's got a pretty nice life. Yeah, and I agree with you that having the resources of a huge company is quite amazing.

It's almost like you're at the top of a cult where you've got millions of people and like, you know, maybe they're not following you because they believe in you. They're following you because they're getting paid, but they're still following you nonetheless. They'll basically do whatever you ask them to do. You can set up whatever lifestyle you want to do, and you have a certain amount of power that I think comes from only having lots of people working in concert with you. That you can't get just from having lots of money. You know, you can deploy that money if you're super rich to get people to work in concert with you, but if you have a company, kind of everyone's bought into the Kool-Aid and they're pushing in the same direction, and you can launch any sort of cool, fun side project that you want to, or you could just go take off for a few weeks and like people won't really notice that you're gone because everything's sort of delegated. And when I compare that to like the content creators of the world, like Tim Ferriss, I'm sure Tim Ferriss has some fun, but it seems kind of stressful to like have to be Tim Ferriss all the time.

it, by the way, it's It's definitely stressful. I mean, he's like blogged about like depression and shit and he suffers. Although I would say that's part job, part genetic. But my best friend, Jack Smith, Jack Smith sold his company for $800 million, something like that. He probably walked away with before tax, nearly 9 figures. So nearly $100 million. He started the company when he was 23. He quit working there when he was 26. He's now 33 or 32. He lives in a house in Hawaii. He has no social— he has a Twitter handle, he has a Facebook profile, but he doesn't like— he probably has 150 followers. He's not trying to impress anyone. He doesn't do any angel investing. What he does in his free time is he's a pen pal for inmates in prison. And so he's currently pen palling with this guy who's like a math— who like taught himself math and he like gets joy out of helping. The guy's like, yeah, I want to get this book. And so Jack just buys him the book. Like the math book, and he enjoys conversing about it. He, he loves testing different supplements and testing different products on Amazon. And he doesn't have that need to create content or be a big shot. He's incredibly comfortable in his own skin. His wife started Coffee Meets Bagels, so she's also a big shot. And so he lives on the beach in Hawaii in a rental unit that he probably pays $10,000 a month for. And I think he is having the most fun because he doesn't feel the need I think both Sean and I and probably you, Courtland, because we're like these like public-facing things, we definitely have this need to be loved. Jack doesn't really have that. He, he, he only wants to be loved by his close friends. And I think that there's something great to be said about like contentment and like humbleness. And you, you are happy with what you have and you don't nearly— you don't really need much or want more.

And he's also not like on the content treadmill.

No, he doesn't need to.

He's not on any treadmill. He's not on the money treadmill. He's not on the, on the social climbing treadmill. He's not on the content treadmill. He's not on any treadmill.

I kind of agree with you, Sam, which has its downsides, like not having a mission. Sometimes it seems to get sad, so I'll have to like pick a project.

But go ahead.

I was gonna say, I, I, so I totally disagree with what you said, Courtland, and I kind of agree with what you said, Sam. So I'll give you both. So, Courtland, I totally disagree in the sense that what I've seen at least is the kind of the CEOs, the unicorns, here's your day. Your day is mostly a combination of people problems. So like, you know, your whole job was to put the right people in the right places, but then all— but people are one of the like buggiest pieces of code out there, right? So, so you're always debugging that. You're always debugging people. And then the second thing is, um, you're putting out fires. So there's like always a fire, uh, in any big company, any sufficiently large company, there's always, you know, some rotating set of crises every month. And, uh, you know, that requires your attention. And so like, you know, I don't think when Zuck creates Facebook, he wants people to be like sharing cool photos of their lives. He doesn't want fake news, misinformation. And like, you know how much of these guys' day has to like go into like solving the gnarly problem of the, of the moment. And so, so I think, you know, they try to hire away that, but like at the end of the day, they're accountable for it. And so they have to like ultimately deal with, with these problems, people problems. Then you have big company problems. And the last bit is like you sort of lost the magic and the connection and the fun of like building something yourself hands-on, which is probably what you like to do if you started one of these companies. Secondly, working with a small crew of people because now the place is so large you don't even recognize people in your own company. And also like you lose the like, you, in order to make a large company run, you need to recruit certain types of people, right? You need generals of armies and not like guerrilla warfare like you're used to at the beginning. So a lot of your good friends from the beginning of the company have moved on to do other things if you're still there. So I've seen there is a big trade-off in addition to the cool stuff you mentioned. And so that's why I wouldn't say— there's too many trade-offs for me to say, oh, they're having the most fun. I think they're the busiest.

I can see at Stripe, you can see everybody's calendar. And I just like pulled up Patrick Collison's calendar, like, what's this guy doing this week? And I can see like every single event that's on it. It's not—

it's not— screen share, bro.

Let's go.

Well, okay, tell me, it's one of two, right? It's either 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes, and there's an executive assistant or two dedicated to like— There's one. Yeah. Getting this, like they work, their job is his calendar basically. And like everybody wants his time and he's gotta, and he wants his own time. And so, you know, there's 30 minutes back to back everywhere. And then there's the other one, which is super sparse where it's sort of like, well, I kind of don't do anything now, which is sort of fun at first, but I could also just quit if I really wanted to do nothing. Uh, so instead I'm kind of like in this like slightly unsatisfying position of like, My job is not to do any of the jobs. It's, uh, I'm sort of doing nothing. I'm supposed to think about the vision and shit like that. And so, uh, what do you think about that? Is that true?

Which one is he? It's, it's, it's the, it's the first one. It's the 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes here, the meetings. Uh, but also like he does a lot of projects outside of that and it's like very strictly like 8 to 5, 9 to 5, like then done. There's nothing outside of that. There are no obligations. And like he is working on extra projects. So he does, for example, uh, the FAST grants during COVID Where they're giving out money to scientific researchers.

Which is awesome.

Those are awesome.

Super awesome, and this is like a kind of a fun project. And before that, he was working with Tyler Cohen on doing a research project with like why scientific progress has like slowed down. He's also like learned to fly planes. I was talking to him a couple months ago about like a project we might work on together, just the two of us, about like helping to fund like underrepresented minorities and groups to like basically cool— do cool things. And so it's like I don't know if he's a superhuman who just works 16 hours a day, but like he's somehow finding time to work on all these cool pet projects with like small groups of people and to fund it because he's got the resources of an entire organization behind him. So it's probably— you're right, it's like not the most fun job. He still has like a crazy amount of responsibility.

He could cut out the Stripe part and do all those things also, right? Because, yeah, if he wants to go to these things. Sam, Sam brought up a good point, which is like there's the people who no longer are chasing desire and they're happy because they're sort of at peace. They're not just like at war with some part of their life. And that's like, you know, the monk, but there's like the modern-day monk. And you do meet some people like this who just like, they're not like driven by their desire, their desire, right? 'Cause desire is basically saying I lack something, right? And so you're agreeing to be unhappy with the current thing to go desire more. And then there's like the people who I think me and Sam try to be more like right now, which is, I don't think either of us try to be the guy with no desires. I think we try to be, well, I have healthy addictions. The things I want, I think are positive for me in the world and the pursuit of them will make me ultimately better, healthier, have more fun and a happier person. All right. So like, I got to choose an addiction. At least I chose a healthy one. And I think those are the people like kind of second, second, second most fun.

What's the endgame, though? Because I'm like, I guess in a way, like me and Sam are like following in your footsteps. Like both of our companies got acquired. Both of us are still working at the acquirers. Like, I don't have an end in mind, Sam. I don't know if you have an end in mind. Sam, like, when did— when do you quit HubSpot and what do you do after that?

I don't have an end in mind. Like, I think that you and I, Courtland, are in different positions. Maybe. Well, you guys don't have like— like, I don't have like a goal that I have to hit. And if I don't hit it, I don't make money. So like, truthfully, like, my life is awesome. Like, I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I spend most of my time doing podcast stuff. I'm happy. I'm happy with my life. I think that I enjoy being a HubSpot employee. Inevitably, I'm going to quit, and when I do, I probably won't start something. I'll probably chill for 3, 4, 5 years and then start something. But there— I don't really have an endgame. I do think about it a lot and it stresses me out, so I try not to think about it. I'm really trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible. I'm in a position now that like I have no wants. Out of— like I have, I'm happy where I am. I would be happy with significantly less though. And so I'm a little— I'm quite in a satisfied area for now. But I like, like I do experience envy. Like Sean, people love it when he invests in their company and I'm like, fuck, that's like easy money. That's a great deal. And he also is really good at spotting them. And so like I experience like envy or I experience like Oh, I want to do that too. But it's definitely not like a, I'm willing to dedicate my life to doing that at the moment.

Sean, what's your endgame? Because you don't have some date, you know, in the future like Sam does where he's going to quit and do something else. You're kind of just like staring ahead at the rest of your life. So what's— what do you do when you don't necessarily have like a specific goal in mind?

No, no, I love it. It makes perfect sense. I think out of every group of people on the planet, entrepreneurs have to be the most neglectful of the present moment. Like, we're always obsessed with some huge goal we've set. You know, we're gonna build that company, we're gonna, you know, launch this app, and we kind of forget about the days in between now and then. You know, like, we just sort of neglect the present for the future, which is dumb because the present is what life is made out of. It's made of an endless string of present moments, and so, uh, if you wanna have a good enjoyable life. Like, you can't— you have to kind of resist that entrepreneurial urge to only care about the—

yeah, like, if you just imagine, like, draw, draw a line, and that's the time of your life, right? And like, let's say it's a year or 10 years that line represents. And then like, you have this milestone at the end, this goal at the end you're shooting for. And you have two options. Either you say, I'll be happy when I get to the end. Okay, cool. Or you say, I'm gonna have fun the whole way, all along the way, right? Like, it's very obvious when you draw that line, which of these diagrams is better? The one where you have fun just in that dot at the end, or the one where you have fun on every single dot along this line. And this is like so obvious. It's nothing new. It's nothing insightful. Everybody's heard this cliché of enjoy the journey, not the destination. Like when I look at that diagram, I'm like, what the fuck? Who cares what that end destination is? I want this like this line to be dope. I wanna be having fun all the way, especially if this line represents 10 years of my life, then like I gotta make that happen. And so that becomes the focus.

Well, I think the issue is like, people hear this and it's almost like a cliché. And that doesn't mean that it's wrong. I think a cliché is something that's smart enough that it became common advice. You know, it's about the journey, not about the destination. But it's still hard enough that people have been repeating this for years and people still don't understand or follow it. You know, I think people hear this from a couple of rich guys like you two and they're like, okay, yeah, it's easy for you to say, but in their shoes, they often see themselves as having to have this difficult, arduous journey to get to the point where they have enough money, and then they'll use that money to have a good journey and do something else. So like, Sean, you are at this point where you can design this cool life for yourself, in part because you have enough money that you don't have to go to a 9-to-5 job ever again. And so when you say this, it's not like— it's not easy for other people to follow that advice.

Well, so what I'm saying is— what I'm basically saying is I'm not telling people don't chase the money. I guess what I'm telling people is it's a false choice that you either, you know, you suffer till you have money or you have fun but you don't have money. There are plenty of examples. And so if there is even one example, that means it is possible. There are plenty of examples of have fun, have fun and make a ton of money as a byproduct. So if that's an option on the table, you're crazy for settling for anything less than that if you're a sufficiently talented person, right? If you're a talented enough person, which most people are who are listening to this, if you're sufficiently privileged and you have your faculties about you, that is an option on the table, you know, have a shit ton of fun and make a shit ton of money, both, then choosing one or the other is a silly option.

Okay, so question for both of you. What's your favorite example or story of how somebody can do that? Like if you're an indie hacker right now, you're just starting out, you got nothing, How can you do something that works and that makes money and that also allows you to have fun in the process?

Can I give one?

Yeah, give me one.

I think it's low risk. I don't think it's super like strategically difficult, but also is that like fun? Like how many people really enjoy going out in the hot weather and like trimming trees?

Also, I don't mind. Like I just paid a guy $80 an hour to come to my house off TaskRabbit to power wash, and he had like a rinky-dink $250 washer or whatever. And I asked him what his plans were for the day, and he was like, I've got 8 of these planned. So I mean, like, and is power washing that like— I know, does anyone love it? I don't know, but it's kind of fun to like start a job and finish it, and you could work outside in the sun.

I did this with, um, there's this guy named Ben Askren who's in the UFC and he's an Olympic wrestler. And I was a fan of his. I became friends with him on Twitter. He started talking to me about digital stuff because he didn't know anything about it, although he was like, had a huge following. And I was like, why don't you start a course? He's like, I have no idea how. I was like, dude, I'll just call you once a week for like 4 weeks and we'll get this shit done. And he did it and he's got a wrestling course. And so I totally— I didn't charge him anything. I just wanted to become friends with him. But he would have paid. He offered to pay me money. So I agree that that could definitely be a thing.

Right. And you literally did that for free. I mean, so that was just because you have fun.

I think it's different. People have fun doing different things. So I'll just speak for myself. If I was 21 again or 22 or whatever, and I'm like, all right, how do I have a bunch of fun and make a bunch of money at the same time? What I would do is actually very similar to these guys who hooked me and Sam up with our podcast, like studios that they set up for us. And, uh, and they're crushing it right now.

So here's what they are, 21, by the way.

They were basically like, hey, we're big fans of the show, right? Cuz they are fans of the show. I would be a fan of our show if I was, you know, a kid again. And, um, and they basically reached out and they're like, hey, your guys' camera stuff like looks like shit and your sound kind of sucks sometimes. Like, we're really good at this. Do you want us to come like help you out? Like, I'll set your thing up for free. Uh, just set, you know, basically like pick a weekend, next weekend, the weekend after that. When can we come and set your thing up? I like, I'm tired of listening to you guys with crappy audio and crappy video. And, um, and so we were like, uh, okay. And then they, they showed us their YouTube channel. They're like, oh, here's my YouTube channel. I don't have a ton of followers, but just look at the quality, and you'll see, like, would you like to look like this? And I'm like, hell yeah. And then he sent me a menu. He sent me 3 setups. He's like, here, you could look like this famous guy, this famous guy, or this famous guy. Which, which setup looks best to you? And I was like, all right, fine, come on out here and give me, give me option C. And he's like, great, we'll be there this Sunday. They flew out here, they hung out, they did the hard work. They didn't ask for anything in return. And I was like, dude, let me pay you guys like something. Like, this is, you know, so, so what would I get to do? I'd, I'd meet somebody who I'm really like I'm a big fan of. I would hook them up with something using a skill that's pretty easy to learn, really. Like, you know, they basically found some lights, they drilled into the wall, and then they like picked the right microphone, they plugged it into the right slot, and whatever. They just, they did this setup. And then they followed up and they were just like, you know, already I was like, dude, I want to, I'll help you guys out. I'll mentor you guys. I'll hook you guys up with your, you want another opportunity? What do you want? And they were like, yeah, we're just trying to figure out what to do. And what they figured out was there's a lot of podcasters like us out there that had really good hour-long content. And what they did was they had, uh, from, from their own content, they had stumbled into this setup where they find talented video editors basically overseas in the Philippines or wherever else, and they train them on how to edit clips. Uh, and then basically they have a business where they just charge podcasters like us tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Yeah. Have you seen those? Have you seen ours, Courtland?

Yeah, they look super good. I see 'em on, on Twitter.

Yeah, we pay 'em $30 grand a month.

They look super good. Have you put them on, uh, YouTube yet? Cause I'm trying to find you on YouTube right now.

I can't believe they pulled that off. They told me that they were going to try and do that and I was like, yeah, I mean, it'll work. And these guys just kept at it, kept at it, kept at it. They killed it.

I mean, that's what my podcast editor did for me. He basically kept sending me clips of my show where he had edited, edited the episodes better than I was editing them. So I eventually just hired him.

So what does that do? That does 3 things, right? You get good at content creation because that's— you're basically practicing that craft every day. That's a really valuable skill to start compounding at a young age. Second thing, you meet a bunch of cool-ass people who are highly networked. They love— they know you and trust you. And if you ever wanted to do a thing, if you have bigger ambitions, that you can hit them up in one call. You're no longer cold, you're warm. And then the— and they know you're good. They know you hustle and you do good work. And last thing is, they're gonna make at least half a million dollars, probably close to $1 to $2 million of profit off this business in the next couple years, right? That's, you know, you're a millionaire. Congratulations, right? You had a bunch of fun doing it. So that's a— that's an easy example to me of something I would have done if I was there.

That's it. That's it. That's one path. That's one path that works. There are many.

That's one.

Cool.

Well, that's a good takeaway to end the show on. Sam Sean, thanks for coming on. Can you let listeners know where they can go to find your podcast and whatever else you're working on?

Yeah, you can find our podcast if you just Google—

You may have to scroll all the way up to the top of the charts because we're pretty high up there now. So just go all the way up to number one and then we're just below that. So My First Million in the podcast app store, whatever. Follow Sam, he's @thesamparr on Twitter. I'm SeanVP on Twitter, seanpuri.com, that's my newsletter.