The high schooler making $20M a year

The high schooler making $20M a year Shaan Puri: By the way, it's it's it's noon on a Monday. Where are you right now? Zach Yadegari: I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Unknown Speaker: Let's go. Sam Parr: Oh, sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. Unknown Speaker: The boys are calling. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no different. Sam Parr: Okay, this kid right here on the screen is making $20 million as a high schooler. The high schooler that is making $20 million a year in revenue. That is absurd. Zach, welcome to the show, man. I think this is actually the make everybody else feel bad. When you find out that like a 17 to 18 year old kid is making $20 million in high school, I think a lot of people's initial reaction is wow and another group is like, oh man. Shaan Puri: How much of that per year is profit, Zach? Zach Yadegari: It's more than 30 percent. Shaan Puri: All right. So it's very good. Sam Parr: Fallen. We're going to tell the story, figure out how it's going. Sam, do we need to address your Letterman jacket? Are you just in the high school mood? What's going on? Shaan Puri: Look, I found out that Zach was coming on and I wanted to look the part, you know, like what's it what's that movie, Shaan? It's like Never Been Kissed, where they pretended that they're in high school. Sam Parr: Or 21 Jump Street. Yeah, that's us. Shaan Puri: Like this is actually the second group of high schoolers that we spoke with over the last two weeks. Sam Parr: I'm Jonah Hill. All right, Zach, dude, welcome to the show. You've you've listened to the podcast before, I understand. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Zach Yadegari: Last two years. Sam Parr: Would you say we maybe inspired you slash were the sole cause of your success? Zach Yadegari: Yeah, I'd say this is the sole reason for any of it. Sam Parr: All right, so let's explain. Start with what your app does because it's like what app is making $20 million for a high schooler. So let's explain what is your app and when did you start it? Let's start with that. Zach Yadegari: So CalAI is the app. And it lets you take a picture of any meal and get back the calories, proteins, fats and carbs to track it. So think any other calorie tracking app, but then heavy AI features involved. Shaan Puri: Does it work really well? That sounds like a really hard thing. You were literally 12 years old or maybe 8 years old when Silicon Valley the TV show came out and the joke was like, is this a hot dog or not? Now the app says a lot more. Does that work really well or is it mostly right? Zach Yadegari: So the scanning is about 90% accurate on average, which is really good when you look at the data for FDA nutrition labels, they can be up to 20% inaccurate. It's actually really good there, but we only recommend that you use it, well, if you're training for Mr. Olympia, let's say, we don't recommend you use our AI calorie tracker. You could use the food database, weigh your food on a scale. Shaan Puri: Well, and the scale stuff, like I, you know, I'm a weirdo. I've actually used MyFitnessPal for probably five years, almost every day now. And what a lot of people don't realize is when they eyeball their calories, they're probably always off by like 30 or 40%. Have you ever tried tracking your food, Shaan? Sam Parr: Yeah, actually, I think I came on this podcast a while back and I said this exact problem. I was like, my fitness pal, it's so slow and annoying to type in every single thing and estimate the weight of it. So, OK, I'm eating this. How many grams of it? I don't really know. I didn't weigh it out. And then you get this calorie thing, but also they have like five entries for whatever, for chicken breast. You don't know which one to pick. And I remember even saying, I think on this podcast, like, I wish somebody just had it where you could just take a picture and computer vision would just know. And I can't wait for that to happen. And it sounds like it's kind of happened. So you started this how long ago? Zach Yadegari: 10 months ago. Unknown Speaker: 10 months. Sam Parr: OK, so 10 months ago, you started this as a 17 year old. And can you just give us a sense of the growth? So in 10 months, you started obviously with zero. First month, roughly, where were you at? Zach Yadegari: So the first month it was a little bit slow to pick up. We probably ended having done $30,000 in revenue. The second month, and that's when we were testing the waters. Do people actually want a calorie tracking app? The hypothesis was that, yeah, it would make people's lives easier, but we are almost hitting this interesting intersection between people are very hardcore with tracking their calories, weighing their food on a scale, needing the precision decimal point accuracy, and then on the other end of people that don't track their calories at all. Our hypothesis was that there was a middle ground and that's where we threw the capital to test and it worked. So then the next month, which was June, we did our first six figures in a month. Sam Parr: Hey, quick message from our sponsor, Hubspot. You know, marketing in 2025 is wild. Customers can spot fake messages instantly. Privacy changes are making ad targeting a nightmare, and everybody needs more content than ever. And that's why Hubspot has a new marketing trends report. It doesn't just show you what's changing. It shows you exactly how to deal with it. Everything is backed by research, and it's about marketing plays that you can use tomorrow. So if you're ready to turn your marketing challenges into results, go to hubspot.com slash marketing to download the report for free. So, OK, amazing. Shaan Puri: Yeah, I mean, you're saying we talk like every 16 year old. You that's you sounded like this, right, Shaan? Sam Parr: He sounds more mature than us. So you're saying we, is there a we? Is it a royal we? Like, that's just kind of me. Did you start this with somebody? Zach Yadegari: Yes. I have three co-founders. So to give you a breakdown, one is also in high school. He's our CTO, Henry Langmack, a killer engineer. Sam Parr: Child technology officer. Yes. Zach Yadegari: Blake Anderson, who I think you guys actually did an episode about one of his apps, Umacs. So he had found previously two other apps that had gotten a few million downloads. So we partnered up. Sam Parr: How'd you guys meet each other? Because you're not in the same high school. How'd you find these other young builders? Zach Yadegari: Yeah. So Henry and I met at a coding camp when we were both 10 years old. He lived in Long Island initially, but then he moved to New Jersey. So we stayed in touch. Blake, I actually found on Twitter. Sam Parr: Gotcha. So you guys get together and who has the idea for the app? Zach Yadegari: So it was a mix of Blake and myself. I was tracking my calories two years before starting CalAI on my fitness ballot, or at least trying to. I was really skinny growing up and I wanted to put on weight, put on muscle, honestly, to impress girls in my high school. And it was super tedious. So I just gave up. But I knew there had to be a better solution. The coder in me, the engineer in me knew that there must be an easier way. And the following two years, all of these AI models started being released. And so after jumping into the app space and talking to Blake, who had a very similar path of these AI apps, we came to this idea. Shaan Puri: And having a $20 million a year business is a lot cooler, I bet, than having muscles, when it comes to impressing girls. Sam Parr: Which one works better? Zach Yadegari: Honestly, I thought that Once the I always had this vision as a kid that I just need to be Successful and all the girls will be on top of me all the time, but nothing really changed. Sam Parr: It's just dudes like us Having big muscles. It's also just only dudes and by you We're actually still not sure yeah, it gets the women to like you Figure that out. Can we pull up you posted a video of? Back when you were, how old was he in this video? Shaan Puri: That was three years ago, I think. Sam Parr: Three years ago. So you're like, what, 14, 15 years old. The video is titled, How I'm Going to Make $1,000,000 in High School. Pull this up because I want to get your reaction to this. It starts, by the way, it just starts with like... Shaan Puri: Great video. Sam Parr: It's an amazing video. How many views does this video have? I can't see from the... Shaan Puri: Like 8,000. Sam Parr: Okay, 7,000 views three years ago you posted this you only have a thousand subscribers on YouTube I say only I mean, I just mean like this video is criminally underrated at the time That's 20 subscribers when I posted this so you could play you could play this. Zach Yadegari: I don't know if the audio will come through I'm going to make 1 million dollars before graduating high school and this YouTube channel is going to document the whole process Here comes the best part the mic. Sam Parr: The alignment of the text and then watch the microwave. Zach Yadegari: What is $1 million? It's enough cash to give you a luxury lifestyle. It makes life more enjoyable and stress free. It's every kid's dream. Wow. Sam Parr: Director's cut. Zach Yadegari: Making $1 million can be broken down. For example, if you're trying to make it in a year, it's just $80,000 a month or $20,000 a week or $3,000 a day. All I would need to do is sell 30 $100 items every single day. Sam Parr: All right, you can pause it already. Zach Yadegari: I'm really making it more simple than I love this video. Sam Parr: I love this video on so many levels. It's insane. I love that you're shooting your shot. You're calling your shot, I should say, right? This is Babe Ruth pointing at center field. So I love that you called your shot. I love that you were just having fun with it. Like you obviously weren't like super polished or like, you know, going back and editing this to try to make it fancy. And I love that your mindset, you were like, I want to do this. And then you sort of broke it down into smaller, more digestible chunks, right? Because you can't just make the million dollars in a second. You're like, I need to make, you know, $20,000 a week. I need to make $3,000 a day. To do that, I got to sell $3,000 items. That seems achievable. Can you just tell us, why did you decide to make that video? Zach Yadegari: Well, from such a young age, and I'm not entirely sure where I could pinpoint this, but I've always wanted to make massive impact on the world. And usually that is parallel with having a lot of monetary success. And so my goal was always make a million dollars while in high school. Part of that was because I was really stressed out about school. My parents were super strict about my grades and social studies was the one class I hated. I hated that I had to memorize flashcards and I vividly remember one night where I was sitting there trying to memorize these flashcards about explorers that came to the Americas. And I was so frustrated. I broke down the problem and realized that I'm studying to get a good grade. But why? Why do I want a good grade? It's to get into a good college so that I could get a good job and make money and then live a happy life. So if I could skip all those steps, it would remove the stress that I'm feeling right now. If I can make money right now so I wouldn't need to worry about a job, I wouldn't need to be stressed. And then I set out the goal to do so. Shaan Puri: You're not wrong. Sam Parr: It's the intelligent man's procrastination. It's like, yeah, should I study these 15 flashcards or make a million dollars? I think I'll make a million dollars instead. Shaan Puri: Are your parents entrepreneurs or are they just normal? Sam Parr: The house was nice. It's a nice house. Zach Yadegari: So my parents have both been lawyers for their career, but then recently, two years ago, my dad left his job at a company to start a financial consulting firm. And I always worry people are going to think, oh, because he started a business, that's where all of this came from. But I was entrepreneurial and doing things long before he actually left his company to start his. Shaan Puri: Do you like give him tips sometimes? Zach Yadegari: I don't. Sam Parr: I should offer to angel invest in his company and be his mentor. All right. So you, um, Sam, any thoughts on that video before we move on from the video? Shaan Puri: It's, it's the best, you know, Shaan, we brought this up, um, maybe six months ago, uh, on the, on a podcast. I don't know if you remember that. And it was still like, is this kid like, is this a joke? Like, does he actually have it? And, How real is this? And we brought that up saying, this is amazing if it turns out to be true. And it is true times 20. It's absolutely amazing that you've been able to pull this off. Sam Parr: Well, it's grown a lot. I think at that time, it was like a million dollar ARR app. So I think you were probably at something like $80,000 a month. Now, how much revenue are you doing? Zach Yadegari: Well, last month, we just did our first $2 million. Sam Parr: You're in a $24 million pace. Shaan Puri: Your first 12 months of full business, what will the revenue be? Zach Yadegari: Full business, the revenue would have exceeded $10 million from launching in May to coming this month. Shaan Puri: Is it entirely bootstrapped? Have you had any outside financing? Zach Yadegari: All bootstrapped. Shaan Puri: Wow. How many employees? I need to ask a bunch of questions so I understand all the info. How many employees? Zach Yadegari: Totally. Right now, we have 15 employees full-time. Shaan Puri: Wow. Okay. That's amazing. Wow. Sam Parr: That's a lot. So, how did you get it to work? Okay. So, you make an app. You're a coder. You started coding when you were 7 years old or something like that. So, I believe that you could make an app. Shaan Puri: Yes. Sam Parr: It seems like, let's just do a quick summary on making the app. So, how did you actually build this like thing? Are you basically taking A bunch of AI tools and then sort of, I'm not saying like you're just like a wrapper, but like custom building them for this use case of tracking calories in an app. Can you just quickly describe making the app and how long that took you? Zach Yadegari: Totally. So a lot of people do look down on apps like CalAI. They'll summarize them as just an AI wrapper and think that we aren't providing any value. And it's true that we started as an AI wrapper. And I think that that's something all apps should do. Just like in e-com, it's very common to start as a dropshipper and dropship a product. And then once you find success, actually manufacture yourself, store it yourself, create your own brand out of that. So it's just the proof of concept is the dropshipping. For us, The proof of concept was using ChatGPT and other AI tools kind of as a wrapper app, frankly. But then after finding initial success, which, so the first app, the first version, very, very bare bones, very, very basic. You were able to take a picture of your food. It would tell you the calories. It would have the daily breakdown. That was it. One feature. And then after we saw that people liked it, we started adding more features. Shaan Puri: How many people did you have using it to determine that they like it? Zach Yadegari: We had, so this is important to note, we've grown all through influencer marketing, which is how we've achieved our rapid growth. And so after working with two influencers, having them post on their stories, talking about the app, that's when we had the initial feedback and saw that people actually liked it. Sam Parr: So let's go step by step. You make the app, app exists. Who are the first 10 people that see it? Family and friends? Is that where you started with? Zach Yadegari: Family and friends. Although we just, I've never disregarded anything from them because I always think it's biased. Shaan Puri: Okay, smart. Sam Parr: You send it to them, they're kind of, they say, oh, it's great. You're like, all right, cool, but we don't really know. Next, what'd you do? What'd you do next? Zach Yadegari: So next, we started contacting influencers, fitness influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Shaan Puri: Did my DM get lost in the mail? Why did I, is this, is this in my other inbox? What's going on? Zach Yadegari: And we'll need to get you on it. But we reached out and most people just don't respond. It took me over two weeks to get my first response from an influencer. Sam Parr: Give us a sense of the pitch. What's the DM say? Zach Yadegari: So basically, you always want to start at least from what we've tested. We've ran a lot of A-B tests on this. Paid promo, putting that first, the question mark, and then jumping into our app lets you track calories just by taking a picture of your food. We think it would fit your audience and would love to work with you. If you're interested, let us know and we can hop on a quick call. And so this works really well because it optimizes for that preview message the influencer will see in their inbox. They only see the first line or two. The paid promo is what sticks out. Shaan Puri: And which influencer took, what was your, who was it? Sam Parr: And where'd you get the money, right? So you're saying paid promo, but your kids, are you like, hey dad, can we get five grand to like seed money to try this? Where'd the money come from to start? Zach Yadegari: Sure. So before building CalAI, I actually built an unblocked gaming website my freshman year of high school. This website lets students play games in class while their teacher was teaching, bypassing the website blocking protocols. And I grew that to 5 million users through TikTok. It was generating money by putting ads on the site. And then I sold it. So that's where most of the money came in that we put into this. Sam Parr: By the way, Sam, that's now the third or fourth person that's come on this podcast who has that same origin story. I was in school. They blocked games on our school. I'm guessing you guys had like Chromebooks or something like that. Shaan Puri: It was, you know, very, very oddly, Shaan, it was Val, my friend Val, who came on and said his son did it. Sam Parr: His son was doing that now. Shaan Puri: Well, they went to the same high school. Sam Parr: Saeed Balkhi said that that was his origin story too, was he wanted to find a way to play games while at school and then because of that learned all these different parts of coding and technology in order to make that happen and that was their first taste of money. Jess Ma, same thing with gaming servers at school. So you had this, you figured out, all right, we have these school laptops, people want to play games, they're blocked. How'd you get around the block and what was this thing called? Zach Yadegari: The website was called totallyscience.co. And that's how it got categorized as educational. That was the main thing. But we also had all of these features on the website. For example, if you press the tilde key on the keyboard, it would redirect to Google Classroom. So if the teacher was coming, you could quickly hide it. Sam Parr: Oh, nice. Nice. That's crazy. Hey, how can you play? This is science. This is totally science. This is only science. All right. So you do that. That company, you were making how much and you sold that for how much? Shaan Puri: It made $60,000 for two years and then I sold it for $100,000 when I was 16. So this is like the first sign, you know, to have a kid, to have your son, from your parents' perspective, do 60 grand in revenue and profit or something like that when they're 14. Asking, you know, you're like, are you a drug dealer? What's going on? How are you doing this? Did that take convincing on your end to let them know what you were doing was totally legal? Like at any point, your parents or lawyers, were they like, are you breaking the laws, man? Are you are you sure you're on top of all this? Zach Yadegari: I definitely got questioned about breaking laws by my dad a bunch of times. He actually made me put up terms of service that said in all caps, you cannot use this while in school. This is only for breaks or at home. And my mom was always shocked every time I actually got a payout from Google. I think maybe it was that it didn't sound like a real business, unblocked games website. How could that make money? But I actually had money coming into my bank account that was under her name because I was too young to open one. And she was shocked every time. Sam Parr: Did you do anything cool with it? The money? Zach Yadegari: Well, not really, honestly. I put all of it into CalAI when we launched it. Shaan Puri: It's a pretty cool thing. Zach Yadegari: The only thing actually that I've spent the money I've made on, and this was recent, was my 18th birthday party. I flew my friends out to Miami for a weekend trip from high school. Sam Parr: That's awesome. All right, sweet. So you put the money into Kali. You got the money. You reach out to the influencers. You said two influencers start posting. And what are they posting? Is there some science to it? We just had Rob the Bank on talking about TikTok as a distribution strategy, about what makes great TikTok hooks and videos and how that game is being played. Do you know, Rob, and I guess, how have you guys played that game of short form content to grow your apps? Zach Yadegari: So Totally Science and CalAI were a little different. For Totally Science, I was the one making the videos myself. I was recording my screen in class saying, hey, if you want to play unblocked games, go to this website, and then I would put a little thing, a caption that says, comment what game to add next. And that would gather a ton of comments making the video go viral. For CalAI, I'm not the one making videos. No one on the team is. It's all influencers. So we still use the knowledge from, well, what I learned from Totally Science to We help these influencers make videos and make them go viral to give ideas. But for the most part, we just pay the influencer that fits our niche and then they're the professionals. They know what goes viral. As long as we can predict the ROI, which we have a ton of factors and variables we look at, then we let them run with it. Sam Parr: You pay them on CPM or how do you pay them? Zach Yadegari: So CPM would be a blessing and that's the dream for everyone if you could do that because then you guarantee profitability. But these influencers, they need to be paid usually in advance. Otherwise, they won't do it. They'll have another brand that's willing to work with them. So you have to predict before they make any video how many views they're going to get. You'll have to look at their previous videos. But then you also have to keep in mind not all views are worth the same. You have to analyze the comment section and see how strong their community is. And based on that, weigh how much you're actually going to pay them. Sam Parr: That's wild. So you, um, is this thing pretty sticky and where do you want to take this? So great. You, you, you go viral, you get people to download. I'm assuming they hit some paywall in the app that says keep track of all your calories, blah, blah, blah. Is it kind of one of these churn and burn games where it's pretty profitable for the first couple of months and then you lose people or is it a sticky product? Zach Yadegari: So it's sticky for the power users. They definitely stay around and I mean apps like MyFitnessPal, they're doing over $100 million a year. So I know we could get there. Shaan Puri: You look at the reviews, Shaan. So he has 65,000 reviews and it's a 4.8 out of 5. So, this isn't like an arbitrage or like a get-rich-quick thing. People really love the product. Sam Parr: Yeah, what's the churn on these subscriptions? Zach Yadegari: We actually don't know because it hasn't been a year and more than 95% of our subscriptions are annual. Sam Parr: Gotcha. Shaan Puri: Okay. Sam Parr: But they're still using it, presumably. So that, you know, if they're using it, they'll stick with it. Wow. This is amazing. And so you want to take this to be kind of my fitness pal or you're like, hey, if somebody offered us, you know, a buttload of cash, like, I guess, what's your mindset? Because I'm so curious, because if I was 18 years old, I don't know what the hell I'd be thinking. Even now, at 36 years old, I still don't really know what the hell I'd be thinking in this position. What's the mindset of an 18-year-old? Because you've got many hits in you. This may not be the only one. The same way that you kind of did a similar thing in Totally Science versus this, but this just had a much bigger market, much more market potential. You might be able to do even more things, or is this something you want to do for a decade? Shaan Puri: Yeah, and does it feel like You're still breaking the law. Like if you, if anyone, I don't mean that. Sam Parr: He's not breaking the law. Shaan Puri: No, what I mean is like when you go zero to $20 million in revenue in eight months, there's some type of like giddiness of like, I can't believe this is my life. I can't believe that this is allowed. I don't know. There's something, there's some type of like matrix breaking idea where you're like questioning, you're like, how is this possible? Do you still have that mentality or are you like, of course this is possible and this is just step one? Zach Yadegari: I definitely have the mentality of it feels surreal. I mean, it feels nuts. I'm 18 years old and I'm making, the company is going to generate over $24 million this year. That's crazy. The fact that I'm on your podcast, My First Million, saying that, it's nuts. And a year ago, I wouldn't believe it. So, I view this as a stepping stone. I want to build a company that touches the lives of billions of people. Something as ubiquitous as the iPhone. I think CalAI, if we shifted the idea where maybe it's nutrition tracking in general and we could link the photos of what you're eating to your health, that could be something that touches the lives of billions and that could be something I could spend a decade on, but I probably don't want to. Instead, I would want this to be something that sets me financially free, where I don't need to think about money. Where I'm not incentivized by generating revenue and so I can start another company that is purely motivated by impact and scale of impact. Something that I'm passionate about and can spend a couple decades on. Sam Parr: Sam, I saw a post today from his partner, Blake. He posted something on Twitter today and he said, I guess he's working on something called 10X and it sounds like it's an app for learning. Like, oh, you can learn anything. You can learn AI skills. You can learn the language. You can learn whatever. Sounds like it's a learning tool, which is more in the direction of kind of good for the world, good for humanity, impact style thing that he's building. And so it sounds like he's kind of looking, he started with like UMACS, which was literally like Probably the most superficial thing. It's like, how does my face look and what can I do to make my face look better? Then it's CalAI and now he's going into like, you know, a learning tool. It sounds like you might want to do the same. Was there something that triggered that in you? Like, did you watch like a movie or do you have like a conversation with a mentor when you were 12 years old? Like, what made you want to even, what made you think differently than the average high schooler who's hyper focused on just their grades and, you know, just Make it friends or whatever's just in their little pond. Zach Yadegari: It's funny you say movie. The social network totally had a big impact on me. However, I did also feel this way before that. So that amplified it. That showed me it's possible through specifically software, which made me super motivated to learn coding even faster. But I have, I'm not sure the initial seed where it was planted. Shaan Puri: Alright, my friends, I have exciting news for that business idea that's been sitting in your notes app. The Hustle, which is my old company, has partnered with IndieHackers, one of my favorite websites, to launch a pitch competition. It's called The Hustle's Big Break and it's a pitch competition with a simple premise. You tell us your business idea in 60 seconds or less and the winner gets $5,000 to turn it into a reality. Here's how it works. Record a 60-second video pitch of your business idea. Include your business name, description, revenue model and tagline. And finally, submit it at thehustle.co slash bigbreak and it all has to be done by April 4th. The winner gets $5,000 in cash to kickstart their business journey. Plus, we're gonna feature them in the Hustle's daily newsletter, which is read by around a million and a half people. And these are the smartest business and tech folks out there. The winner will be announced on April 11th. So again, if you have a business idea, go to the hustle.co slash big break. All right, back to the pod. What do you think the app is worth right now? Zach Yadegari: Right now, I think the app calculating its or taking its growth into account is close to $100 million in valuation. Shaan Puri: Which means you are presumably worth in the ballpark of $30 million. Zach Yadegari: I think liquid and on paper is really different. Shaan Puri: Oh, I know. But you're totally right. But like 17, 18 years old, worth tens of millions of dollars, I think is like a fair ballpark. Would you agree? Zach Yadegari: I would agree. Sam Parr: Yeah, that's amazing, man. Congratulations. I'm really I'm really inspired by you. And I would say there's like a handful of people I've discovered that are kind of like you who are super young that are basically AI first. So all the tools you're building, you build with AI because why would you not? You like code them with AI. The app uses AI. The users get an AI type of experience. And you figured out a growth channel that I think a bunch of old guys like us kind of suck at because You have what I call the bear on a bicycle phenomenon. So my friend Chris Williamson said this to me. He goes, you basically want to stack two skills that usually don't go together and it creates something remarkable. So you see a bear. Wow, that's a bear. Okay, but I've seen bears. You see a bicycle. Okay, that's a bicycle. But you see a bear on a bicycle. Holy shit, never seen that before. That's amazing. And for you, that's basically like you know how to code, but a lot of kids know how to code. And it's this other piece that you also had, which was, And you even said it in your video, video editing and just making fun videos, this kind of the TikTok knowledge. And you combined how to make TikToks that will get views with how to make apps that work. And that is your bear on a bicycle thing. And so I'm pretty inspired because there's actually like a group of people who are just like you. And I would say right now is like, A very golden window for that group of people to go build things. Hopefully, people listening to this, we trigger another 20 to 100 people just like you who hear this story and are like, you're their social network. They're going to hear this and they're going to start doing it. That set of skills, I think, is very, very valuable for this moment in time. Zach Yadegari: I totally agree. And that's honestly why I'm super motivated to go on podcasts like these. I was super motivated by others before me that I've watched on podcasts. And so this is almost a full circle moment for me to come on here. Sam Parr: Yeah, that's interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you're here, I'm like, oh, this is great content. I'm excited. But then there's like the fatherly part of me that's like, shut up, dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn't be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going. And you can always tell the story a little later. You don't need to invite. You know, the other Zach Yadegaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they're just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and spill your secrets? You know, why do that? Zach Yadegari: I've heard this before that usually you know what it takes or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They're looking for something that Coding is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn't require as much sacrifice. And I've been coding since I was seven. I'm 18 now. That's 11 years of coding. I've started totally science. And before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons. For almost a decade of my life, I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly. But it's only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result where I want to help those people. Helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren't entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people. Shaan Puri: You have a trait that like Shaan and I's good buddy Jack Smith is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. But a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like for example, my friend Jack is like he's so, he does things so differently from everyone. Because his way is actually better, but we've all done it in such a way for a hundred plus years that we're like, well, I don't know. We just do it this way. And so, like, for example, he didn't name his daughter the first year because he was like, I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her. And I was like, yeah, that makes total sense. It's just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, well, I'm worrying about grades so I can get a good job or get into a good college, get a good job, make good money. What if I just make money now? Like, that's like very that way of thinking is amazing. And it's really fun to be around people like you. And so I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. The first is you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what's it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you're actually running a real company? Zach Yadegari: So yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it's difficult to be honest with you. Sam Parr: It's hard at times to make them call you, sir. Zach Yadegari: Yeah, I do not make them call me, sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I still act how I know I should. I'm reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that That doesn't lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Shaan Puri: Are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show? Zach Yadegari: I think that we are pretty well-organized and that's mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn't mention, Jake Castillo. He's really good at organization. Sam Parr: So one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you is like, well, I want to inspire other people, but we don't want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we were like, hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren't doing this, you think somebody could go do right now? So how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you're at? $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18 year old. So what ideas do you have for us? Shaan Puri: Sure. Zach Yadegari: So obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Sam Parr: Okay, go for it. Zach Yadegari: So how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools where people have always taken notes by hand. People have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking. There have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food and it will tell you the calories. So I try to look at everything that doesn't already use AI and think, can AI make this more efficient, make this a better process? And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something Looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So almost going backwards and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience and then wrap a whole app around that. So for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that's great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there's a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There's another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI. And their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body and then it will tell your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So that's what draws people in to that AI tool, which is the aha moment. And then there's a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So that's the framework I generally like to use. Sam Parr: And so what do you think is, so you're saying work backwards from the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you're like, holy shit, that's cool. And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, let's take a picture, get the calories. And then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that's going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that's going to keep them around in the long term. Shaan Puri: Cool. Sam Parr: Got it. And the other thing you're saying is take any app that's popular, that we've already been doing, and just say, what's the AI version of this? Is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, all right, Evernote, what's the AI version of Evernote? Our buddy in San Francisco, Sam's buddy, he had this company called StudySoup. And StudySoup was literally for college kids. They would have paid note takers who would take great notes in a lecture. And then you basically had the slackers and you had the kids that were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace. They would give their notes and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, oh cool, I don't have to take notes in this class because I'm getting them done for me. And you're basically saying that TurboLoan has become an AI version of StudySoup, right? Where it's like someone records it and now you have well-taken AI notes for that class. Zach Yadegari: Yeah, exactly. Shaan Puri: So what are some examples? Zach Yadegari: Yeah, so here's an idea. I've actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, what are some insights you could give me to make my life better? You got it. Shaan Puri: Why don't I both do that? Zach Yadegari: Yeah, well, that's great. So I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app. And these journal apps already exist. So take an existing one. And this is the spin. So you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn't matter. But the key feature, the aha moment AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days. Sam Parr: Gotcha. Okay. I like that. So AI Journal. I feel like with the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas my generation and my parents' generation was like, therapy equals you're broken, you have a problem. And it was more taboo. Shaan Puri: The whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he's so soft. Sam Parr: Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it's almost like, a cool thing to do. I don't know. Maybe I'm speaking out my ass here. You tell me if I'm wrong. But it's way more normalized. It's not a taboo thing. And in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit Low status now at this point. And I feel like what the problem with therapy, of course, is that it's A, a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who's paying $100 a session for this type of stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket, whether they're using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment or not. What do you think of that space? You think there's something interesting there? Zach Yadegari: I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about and I haven't seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, chatbots, but I think they're all missing The feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So maybe it's the verbal aspect that's missing and something like ChatGPT's voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Sam Parr: Gotcha. And what are some other ideas you have? Shaan Puri: You have two more. It looks like you wrote on here. Yeah. Zach Yadegari: So the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that's because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it's more difficult because it's not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. Sam Parr: And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Zach Yadegari: Yes, every single time. So it's annoying. I think with all these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the code base to one native project and then it will convert it to the other. Now right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention. So maybe this would be best done as an agency that's very AI powered at the moment. But very soon it's going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Sam Parr: Yeah, that's a really good idea. Shaan Puri: We used to use something. I had an app years ago, a roommate finding app. What was it called where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Sam Parr: There's been a lot of tools like that. Shaan Puri: And they were horrible. It was really bad, but they were huge companies. Sam Parr: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like you have to maintain two different, two different, every feature you have to build twice. Every platform has its own bugs. And you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android and the iOS guy focused on iOS. And so now you have more headcount. And so you always want this thing that's like, But still, you're right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn't work as well as doing a native app. And so you're right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI. And then maybe you do it as an agency or you have one person who's doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work well. That's cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like To use a framework, it's a paper cut you have, right? So some of the best places to find startup ideas is you're trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that's like, God, I wish somebody had just built this and maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain and that's a very good source for startup ideas. Zach Yadegari: Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas and it's 100% true. So while working on CalAI and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, Every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what's coming, to explain something that's going on in the app or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you with a paywall. There is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom, in their own code base. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do A-B tests on these, Which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the app store, which could take a few days. So building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rates, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate remotely would be huge. Shaan Puri: Are you the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to Cal AI? Zach Yadegari: So for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly. And the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it's growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full time on CalAI because The same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel so one plus one can equal three instead of two. Shaan Puri: I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Shaan and I are parents and there's a lot of people who listen to this who are parents. Is there anything that you seem traditionally, obviously you're traditionally successful, but you also seem like You're very thoughtful. You seem like you'd be a good son regardless of who cares about this app. You have your shit together at a very young age. Emotionally, what do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born interested into this stuff at a young age? There's a lot of self-directed people. Zach Yadegari: I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was I'm very wired to want freedom and I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings so they wouldn't do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That's what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. Related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don't know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast at 10 could have burned the house down. So my mom didn't let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn't trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to I'm a local soccer field and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away and it's really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Shaan Puri: Well, but you have that now. Zach Yadegari: Somewhat, I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven't dropped out and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I always feel almost trapped in situations where The outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me, even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I'm in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That has to be free. Shaan Puri: You're going to go. Sam Parr: What's your GPA right now? Zach Yadegari: My GPA is a 4.0 and that's where we want to go. Shaan Puri: What did you get with the SATs? Zach Yadegari: I took the ACT and I got a 44. That's very good, I think, right? Shaan Puri: Yeah, it's like two points away. It's a 99th percentile, 98th percentile. Sam Parr: OK, so you haven't like neglected school. You got a 4.0 and you did get an ACT. Zach Yadegari: I'm doing this with school. I'm working hard in school. I'm not. Shaan Puri: By the way, it's it's it's noon on a Monday. Where where where are you right now? Zach Yadegari: I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Sam Parr: Let's go. Unknown Speaker: Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Shaan Puri: Are you at school right now? Are you home? Zach Yadegari: No, I left school. I'm home right now. Shaan Puri: And you told your parents it's because there's this podcast I want to go on and it's going to be good for business. Zach Yadegari: Yeah. Sam Parr: How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? Zach Yadegari: There's not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. Look at how he's already got the mastermind hand pose. Sam Parr: He already has the visionary hand position naturally, dude. Straight out the box. Zach Yadegari: I have a handful of people that I'm friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Shaan Puri: Do you guys have a club? Do you have a name? Like the Grubs? Zach Yadegari: Yeah, yeah. It's the Cool Kids Club. Shaan Puri: You guys are pretty cool. So that's a good name. Sam Parr: Always wanted to be in. Shaan Puri: Yeah, I've always wanted to be part of that. If you need another member, let me know. Have you considered just moving to Palo Alto and hanging out? In the movie The Social Network, Shaan Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college. Or are you dead set on going that route? Zach Yadegari: Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let's go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house. We worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, Pretty lonely, although we could talk to some people. Yeah, we made friends. We would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us always made it difficult to relate to them. Sam Parr: Yeah, that makes sense. Shaan Puri: We had a I have a friend that like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit. And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl and I eventually had to break it with her that I was filler in that I'm like, I'm 16. And so like, I imagined like, it's weird being in these situations where you're like in these You're more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of grown adults, but you're in this situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You're in these weird spots at such a young age that you literally couldn't go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it's pretty amazing. I hope you enjoy the time. I think being 18 and experiencing what you're doing, this is one out of a billion. This is a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? Zach Yadegari: So we haven't paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all. And that's not to say that we won't. We do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months we may start having a surplus where we can't spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Sam Parr: Yeah, that's great. Shaan Puri: New York City founders, if you've listened to My First Million before, you know I've got this company called Hampton and Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs. A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton. We have this big community of a thousand plus people and it's amazing, but the main part is this eight person core group that becomes your board of advisors for your life and for your business and it's life changing. Now, to the folks in New York City, I'm building a in real life core group in New York City. And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does $3 million in revenue or you've raised $3 million in funding or you've started and sold a company for at least $10 million, then you are eligible to apply. So go to joinhampton.com and apply. I'm going to be reviewing all of the applications myself. So put that you heard about this on MFM so I know to give you a little extra love. Now back to the show. Sam Parr: Dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations, and I'm excited to see what happens. Who do you admire? Who are you learning from and looking up to? Who's inspiring you? Are you just like, oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that's what I care about? Or are there other people that you're more interested in personally? Shaan Puri: Like you said, you listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Zach Yadegari: Totally. So I love your guys' podcast. I'm more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that's because I feel like they're not my competition anymore, or they are, but they're not progressing anymore. So I see exactly where they ended up. Shaan Puri: Psycho. Sam Parr: Love it. Shaan Puri: Yeah. I get it. You sick fuck. Unknown Speaker: Makes sense. Sam Parr: They're not my competition anymore. I've already finished them. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Zach Yadegari: People like… I think he's going to kill us, Sam. Sam Parr: I think he just threatened us. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? How do you learn from dead people? Zach Yadegari: I like audiobooks, but I don't actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Shaan Puri: Which dead people? Oh, so like founders? You like David Senra's podcast, Founders? It's one of my favorites. Zach Yadegari: I do listen to that. There's one I've listened to recently, How to Take Over the World. Sam Parr: Let's go. So let me ask you a question. What's a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it's totally normal? So like, what's a phenomenon that you're like, yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It's normal for us. Zach Yadegari: Yeah. Shaan Puri: By the way, is wearing Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing? Sam Parr: I think you've influenced Sam. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Zach Yadegari: Great sweater. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead with what cool young people are doing. Zach Yadegari: So there's something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I've seen recently and It's not a new software. It's not a new social media platform. What it is, is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It's called an OctoBuddy. Shaan Puri: OctoBuddy. Zach Yadegari: And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall. You could prop it up on your table and Watch videos is the purpose. I've never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they're designed to, but it's a trend among all girls in my high school. Over the last few months, I've just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it's fascinating. Sam Parr: It's like a TV mount. You can mount your phone to any surface, basically. What do you think? It's not used how it's supposed to be. Isn't that what it's supposed to be? Zach Yadegari: Well, I think it's more of something Where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and... Oh, it's more of a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Shaan Puri: Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I'm like, tell me everything. Zach Yadegari: Well, that's the main thing that you wouldn't typically notice. Shaan Puri: Are your friends drinking? Zach Yadegari: Yes, definitely. Shaan Puri: It's a party. Do you guys like to smoke weed? Zach Yadegari: I'm someone who doesn't do any drugs. I'm pretty against them. And I don't drink either. But it's I mean, everyone around me is. Shaan Puri: So drinking is common. Zach Yadegari: Very common. Very, very. Sam Parr: You also mentioned this TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. Who else is like you out there who's basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model? Zach Yadegari: So there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out. And honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it's really possible in the app space. So new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn. With all of these little social or like by having streaks essentially to gamify the whole experience. So that's a new one that just came out. Shaan Puri: You inspired these guys? Zach Yadegari: I'm friends with the founder and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing Kali. I really take off. He was with me in the early days. Sam Parr: That's cool. It's got 5,000, 5,000 reviews on on iPhone. That's pretty good. Zach Yadegari: Yeah, so they're on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new dropshipping. Shaan Puri: You know, Shaan has said this once where he was like, you know, Shaan was like, I'm a content creator. You know, he's got newsletters and Twitter and podcast. But these TikTok guys, it's as if I am really good at riding horses, but along comes Henry Ford and the cars are no comparison. There's no way my horse and I are going to outrun even the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I'm having right now, talking to you. For a long time, Shaan and I, our friends, will do dropshipping. When we were 25, that was the thing, create a dropshipping site. People still do things like that. Seeing what you're doing with tech and influencers is so much better than... You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate. What? That's crazy. You know what I mean? Sam Parr: But dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were, I was probably 24, 25. We were the prodigies. And it was like, Oh, probably that's very generous. But what I mean is like, it'd be like if there was something on the, on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it. Shaan Puri: Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they're like newsletters. And I'm like, yeah, like it's a thing. That's old news now. These guys are so much better and we are that person now. I'm going to go to his office and be like, just tell me everything. Zach Yadegari: It's something that always happens. It's going to happen to me too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive and there's someone that's going to come and be the next big thing. The growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it's just about building momentum and I'm pretty obsessed with this idea of Making sure that everything I work on will 10X the previous thing so that I'm always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He's actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. Sam Parr: By the way, I've heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18 and they're like fearful that when they're 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool. And I just want to say, I get it. Makes total sense. It's also Total Nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, But the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the I need to impress people phase. And the person who's 17, 18, they're still getting that high of of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody's kind of patting on the back. And actually, the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best looking, richest person, because you'll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize, like, Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me and like the act of doing them is rewarding and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is obviously easier said than done. But that's the real thing to focus on and not like this feeling of I'm running on quicksand, you know, because it's I'm getting older. Oh, no. Or like I have to 10x my growth, even though I'm already at, you know, 24 million ARR. Sure, that's all fine. I'm not against growth, but. Unknown Speaker: Somebody said this to us. Sam Parr: Actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, be very careful because growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell. And so, you know, growth for growth's sake is not not not where it's at. And there's there's more to the game than that. And he's like, I'll leave you with that to kind of figure out what what what is the answer. I'm not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I'll point that out, because I think for me, when I was young and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It's the only thing. And it comes from a little bit of a. I don't know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think. Zach Yadegari: Right. Yes, and I've had this a similar thought to this where I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I thought, OK, once I find my success and let's say I'm quote unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere? Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I'm financially taken care of. But then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. Shaan Puri: You're always going to be making stuff. I'll predict the future. Maybe you'll take the foot off the gas and want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Zach Yadegari: Well, that is why I'm going to college. It's almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. Sam Parr: I mean, I think that's really smart because you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends from college. So actually, the scarce thing is the friendships and that college experience because there's a window of time that expires. And so do that because you still have 50 years to make money after that. Shaan Puri: What school do you want to go to? Zach Yadegari: If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top. Shaan Puri: Surely we have listeners. This is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some people listening. Sam Parr: I know you're listening. Yadigari. Y-A-D-I-G-A-R-I-A. Shaan Puri: You can find him on Twitter. DM him. Actually, that's... Sam Parr: That's what they should do. If I'm at a college right now, I'm DMing this kid an acceptance letter. A college needs to hustle. I'm tired of these colleges sitting down their ass. Shaan Puri: Someone's going to be like, sup. You're just going to get a DM from the D, sup. Who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you work for. I want your info diet. Who do you get inspired by and try to make it people you think I won't know? Zach Yadegari: Who do I follow? I actually don't usually use Twitter for people I'm inspired by. Shaan Puri: That's interesting. Sam Parr: What's your main social network? What do you use when you're bored? What do you open up? Zach Yadegari: It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I'm looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So I have people like him that are inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok For You page. I only liked motivational videos. And anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So definitely those kinds of people. But it's mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk. I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who's a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge too, so definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he's a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Sam Parr: Yeah, yeah, we know Cliff. Zach Yadegari: Yeah, so he's super inspiring to myself as well. Sam Parr: That's dope. Okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Shaan Puri: That's don't ask me is there anything else that you want to inspire me by like you're you're you're amazing like anything else that you want to tell us did we miss anything. Zach Yadegari: I appreciate that i mean it's always hard going on these podcasts like. It's a whole full circle moment and also it feels almost bad speaking about all this i try to stay humble but then at the same time i know you have to. Speak your way into the world. If I wasn't posting anything publicly, I've had a lot of debate over the personal brand, then I wouldn't have so many opportunities that I have had. Shaan Puri: Shaan, one of my best buddies, Val, I think Zach asked him out to lunch or something the other day and was just asking him for advice on maybe coming on this podcast but also business advice because Val's a great guy and really successful. And I thought it was funny because actually you remind me of Val a lot, Zach. But it was funny. Apparently Val's kids were like, were you hanging out with our friend Zach like at lunch the other day? And he was like, yeah, but it was like a very, you know, oddly, a business context. But anyway, Val called me and was like, this guy, Zach, is one of the most impressive people I've ever met. And Val is a very hard person to impress. He's pretty low key. And so... Sam Parr: Well, one of the funny things is like, you have this paradox because you want to keep your asset. Your asset is You're young and ignorance is bliss. You don't know how hard some things are. You don't know what's possible. You don't have a ceiling on anything because you don't know any better, right? And that ignorance is a real tool, the naivete, the beginner's mind. And so you want to keep that. On the other side, you have this giant problem, which is that there's always kind of like this, I forgot what they call it, but there's this three known thing, right? There's the things you know you know. There's the things you know you don't know. But then the real one that matters is the things you don't know that you don't know. And so talking to whatever, smarter people, people who have played the game for 15, 20 years, they will help you surface that last one. And that last area of things you don't currently even know that you don't know, that's the thing you should be worried about. But how do you worry about it? You don't even know. You don't know where to look. But it's by talking to other smart people that that gets revealed to you. And so you have this paradox where you want to keep what you got as your big asset, your naivete, your beginner's mind, your useful ignorance. But at the same time, Talk to some well-meaning people who are a little bit wiser to try to get figure out like, You know, a little bit of a push in one direction or the other, they'll kind of nudge you. And that little nudge can totally change your trajectory, right? Because like, I mean, just imagine hitting a golf ball and even just changing by two millimeters the angle that you hit that ball, it ends up in a totally different spot. And so you want to find those people who are your two millimeter people, the people that will just give you that slight angle adjustment in order to make it happen. I don't know how you do that exactly. Keep both of those. But that's what I would do if I was you. I'd try to find a way to keep both. Zach Yadegari: I totally agree. I have heard that it's much easier to learn from someone 10 steps ahead of you than 100 steps ahead of you. 100 steps, so much is missing. But 10, you can piece together. They can lift you up the extra steps and help you get from 0 to 10. Sam Parr: Yeah, and one other thing you're going to figure out is that all successful people do not have equally valuable advice. So you will meet a lot of people who are successful or sound interesting. But their advice is not great and the hard part is figuring out how to parse it and dissociate it slightly from the result because their result might be totally dependent on the context, luck. There's a whole bunch of different variables that will lead to that or maybe just their understanding of your situation. And so trying to figure out how to parse advice is like an underrated skill. Shaan Puri: And make sure that the people you take advice from that they're actually happy. And they're people you admire. Sam Parr: They're happy for themselves and they're happy for you. Shaan Puri: Yeah, like you'd want their life. Zach Yadegari: It's a very good point. Sam Parr: All right. Well, on that point, let's call it a day. I think you got to go back to school now. Shaan Puri: Yeah, lunch is over. Hey, thank you, Zach. You're the man. Anytime you want to come on, please let us know. Sam Parr: Congrats, dude. Zach Yadegari: Thank you for having me. Shaan Puri: And I'm going to use the app. Sam Parr: I'm going to download your app right now and start trending. Shaan Puri: Thank you. And that's it. That's the pod. Sam Parr: Hey, Shaan here. I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story, one of the great ad men. He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. You wouldn't lie to your own wife, so don't lie to mine. And I love that. You guys, you're my family. You're like my wife, and I won't lie to you either. So I'll tell you the truth. For every company I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury for all of them. So I'm proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across my personal account, my business accounts, And anytime I start a new company, this is my first move, I go open up a Mercury account. I'm very confident in recommending it because I actually use it. I've used it for years. It is the best product on the market. So, if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and apply in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. All right, back to the episode.