#106 - The Q&A Special: We Answer Your Questions Live

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, everyone, we have a quick ad for HubSpot, but I want to let you know, I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool, which is what this ad is for. HubSpot sales platform, it makes it just easier to sell stuff, to do it faster, to look at your pipeline, to see what sales are going to happen, just prospect to cold outreach and get more customers faster and easier. Plus, it's easy to learn and free to start. So you guys can check it out, hubspot.com/sales.

**Shaan Puri** (0:26)
What's up, guys? Sean here, Sam is still out with his kidney problem, and we're wishing him a speedy recovery. It's scary stuff. Hopefully, it turns out not to be anything too serious.
This week, in the meantime, we're going to try to fill in as best as we can with a few different guests. Big shoes to fill, but we're going to do our best. Today's episode is actually a Q&A we did for Trends subscribers a couple months ago. And so, in the Trends community, it's pretty awesome. They bring in different speakers, and you can do a Q&A with a small group of people. And so, they asked us questions like, how do you find interesting businesses?
What are your contrarian opinions? What's something you were completely wrong about? How would you validate this idea I have for a mental health app?
What news do you consume? What other businesses do you own? How do you make great connections? How do you build a network in the digital era where you're not meeting face to face? And then business questions like, what are some big opportunities in the work from home world? What are your biggest failures in business? How would you build a newsletter from scratch? And then book recommendations and some other fun stuff. So hope you guys enjoy this Q&A episode.
Let's do it.

**Sam Parr** (1:55)
Okay, we will get going. We're at 70 people now. I think there's gonna be 200 people here. We'll get going. Okay, today is one year anniversary of, one year anniversary of Trends. And Steph asked that Shaan and I come here and just answer questions.
We don't have much of an agenda today, but for those of you who don't know, Shaan, who you can't see, I don't think you can see him now, but he's visible once he talks. Shaan and I have been very close friends since probably 2013, no, 2014 And we have this podcast called My First Million that Shaan created, and now I was brought on as a co-host.
And Shaan and I have an interesting perspective. First of all, I run this business, or I don't run everything about it, but I started it. And so I have a lot of insight to advertising businesses and subscription businesses, and we're like an eight-figure company or whatever you want to call it. And so anyway, I've got that insight, but what makes Shaan and I kind of unique is we have this massive network of people who are significantly more successful than we are. And we also have this massive network of people who are way less successful than we are, but are more likely than not going to be way more successful. And so we're able to see all these interesting things and behind the scenes of all these interesting stuff. And when Shaan started the podcast, he basically just interviewed people. So he's got all these other insights. And anyway, we just see probably more things than you guys do just because it's our job. So it's kind of a lucky job. And so what we can do today is answer questions on patterns or trends we see on.
What else, Shaan? What can we talk about?

**Shaan Puri** (3:32)
I mean, really it's whatever people are interested in. So we obviously on the podcast, we're always brainstorming new ideas, new opportunities, trends that we're seeing, or we'll break down a business and say, hey, have you heard of this thing? They are crushing it. Here's their model.
So that's what we like to nerd out about. But this is a sort of a community give back.
So, hey, we're here for an hour. Whatever you guys want to talk about, we'll talk about it structured as a Q&A. And there's two ways to do it. So you can either submit a question in the Q&A portion of Zoom. So you can type out your question if you prefer, or if you actually want to ask a question live on audio or video and hop in, we can do that as well. So just type in the chat, hey, I'd love to ask a question about whatever.