#147 - How Sam Hacked Amazon's Book Rankings, A $600m Exit, And Crypto with Brother Aaaron

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
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**Shaan Puri** (0:32)
On this episode of My First Million, me and Sam, we talked about the idea of romance and romantic fiction books.
I feel like we talk about that a lot, but we did it again, because Wattpad sold for $600 million. So we got into Wattpad, the idea of romantic fiction, and how you would build a business around that, and an experiment that Sam ran in that space, and how he made a best-selling book in the romantic fiction category on Amazon Kindle. We talked about an idea around the COVID smell test, and at the end, the last 15 minutes, we invited Brother Aaaron back on to talk about his latest From the Rabbit Hole, and so that's at the very end, last 15 minutes. All right, enjoy this episode.

**Sam Parr** (1:13)
Thanks for.
So today's episode, I thought we could dedicate, cause it's the inauguration day, I just wanted to talk all about politics for the next two hours. Are you okay with that?

**Shaan Puri** (1:40)
Yeah, people love that.

**Sam Parr** (1:41)
So I'd read a couple articles. I think I know what I'm talking about. I figure today, strictly politics.

**Shaan Puri** (1:47)
If you read a couple articles, then I mean, we have an expert. So that's, we're good then.

**Sam Parr** (1:52)
Well, I read the headlines of a bunch. So I read the comments and read it. I think I know what I'm doing. So if it's okay with Abreu, if it's okay with you, we're going to dedicate the entire episode to politics, particularly our opinion in why that should be the rule of the land.

**Shaan Puri** (2:09)
I tweeted out a thing, just a bunch of memes, basically celebrating Trump's last day in office with like a bunch of funny Trump moments of the last four years.
And I got three DMs just now saying, bro, I didn't follow you for politics. You're like, hey, you said you tweet about business. This is not business.

**Sam Parr** (2:25)
Well, but it's also funny.

**Shaan Puri** (2:26)
Yeah, I was like, this is a joke. This is not politics.

**Sam Parr** (2:29)
Yeah, like-

**Shaan Puri** (2:30)
We'll see if they like that response.

**Sam Parr** (2:31)
You know, we actually get a lot of compliments that we stay away from politics.
I wouldn't say I'm not a political person. I wouldn't say I'm not not. I don't know, I'm pretty, well, I'm mildly interested. I think you are too, but we don't talk about it here because it's not really important. And if we do do it, I think it's from a relatively objective standpoint.

**Shaan Puri** (2:48)
I don't know if I agree with any of that. I personally don't think I try not to spend any energy on it in my own personal life. Therefore, I'm pretty badly uneducated on it.
Therefore, whenever I speak on it, I'm kind of speaking out of turn. But, you know, I think most opinions are quite uninformed also. So I would say I'm just I'm right in there with everybody else of mostly uninformed bias.

**Sam Parr** (3:08)
I want to bring one thing up. Last episode that I didn't make it, it was you and Sully. You guys, I heard talked a lot about religion, right?

**Shaan Puri** (3:14)
We had a segment on creating a new religion.

**Sam Parr** (3:16)
You just admittedly aren't a political guy, but and I don't give a shit if you listeners think this is fake or real. It's interesting to me and it's interesting to you. I'm going to sound like an idiot. I'm like, do you know what Bitcoin is? Are you familiar with like QAnon?

**Shaan Puri** (3:29)
Yeah, like I don't spend a lot of time figuring out what the QAnon conspiracies are of the moment, but I'm aware of it. Yeah.

**Sam Parr** (3:36)
But do you know the origin?

**Shaan Puri** (3:37)
No, tell me about it.

**Sam Parr** (3:38)
So this is just someone who has listened to a 60 minute podcast and I don't care if it's real or fake, whatever you believe, whatever. But basically, it started, I think, in 4chan. This right when Trump got elected, this guy, just an anonymous guy, no one knows who this person is. He says that he has the highest level of clearance at the White House called Q. I guess it's Q clearance, so they call him Q.