The 2024 Milly Awards

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Ladies and gentlemen, here we are. Four years in a row, the end of year, Milly Awards, where we get together and we recap the year. We make up a bunch of categories, we make up a bunch of answers, and we reflect on how the year is gone with our awards ceremony. So, Sam, are you ready?

**Sam Parr** (0:20)
I'm ready. I like your jacket. Are you going to start wearing this stuff more often? It feels like a little suit of armor.

**Shaan Puri** (0:34)
Yeah. I already got a compliment this morning inside the house. I think maybe I should start dressing well. Maybe that's going to be my change of the year. We'll see.

**Sam Parr** (0:40)
It's December 26th. You got a compliment this year. Probably the only compliment you got all year.

**Shaan Puri** (0:45)
Yeah. The only looks compliment for sure.

**Sam Parr** (0:47)
Men don't get compliments, so you should wear jackets more. All right. When I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like two million subscribers, and we made money through advertising. We didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is a crappy business model. So I remember sitting down and I'm like, what are all the different ways that I can make money off the hustle that aren't advertising? To make sure that you don't make this mistake, Shaan, me and the HubSpot team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. And we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research. And we call it, very appropriately, we call it the Business Monetization Playbook. Go to the description of this episode and you're going to see a link to that Business Monetization Playbook. It's completely free. You just click the link and you can see it back to the episode.
All right, where do we want to start?

**Shaan Puri** (1:47)
All right, we're going to start category. We have 11 awards to give out. We're going to start with number one, best investment of the year. And these are personal, by the way. These are our personal best investments, worst investments, that sort of thing. So Sam, what was your best investment of the year?

**Sam Parr** (2:02)
What do you think I'm going to say?

**Shaan Puri** (2:04)
The S&P 500 The S&P 500

**Sam Parr** (2:08)
Up 28%, but that one's boring. I don't want to just say that. The best investment we had this year, do you remember Jason Cohen we had on the pod? Jason Cohen started, what's it called? WP Engine. WP Engine.

**Shaan Puri** (2:22)
Love that guy.

**Sam Parr** (2:23)
No, I just can't remember the company. Anyway, he made a comment, I think after the pod where he talked about tipping. I was like, I like to tip. I was like, I just hate out fives. He goes, fives? You should be handing out 20s. He goes, I tip like crazy. I started doing that after the pod.
I carry around about $1,000 of 20s at any given point. I am just dishing that shit out like crazy. If you want to know something, it's made me so happy. That's been a great investment. I wanted to bring that up because my investment strategies are pretty boring. Man, I'll tell you what. I'll go to a restaurant and it'll be like $60 because we don't drink and it's cheap for cheap dates. I'll easily leave $100.

**Shaan Puri** (3:05)
Then you stick around to wait for the reaction too. You're like, did you see that? I just want to make sure you get that. It's right under there.

**Sam Parr** (3:11)
Listen, I thought it was tacky to do that. But I say screw them. I'm doing something nice. I want a compliment. It makes me feel good too. I'm doing this for selfish reasons. It makes me feel good. So I don't mind it. As long as I'm not filming it, it's okay. That's what I think.

**Shaan Puri** (3:27)
Do you guys share these or is that all yours right there?

**Sam Parr** (3:31)
No, but seriously, tipping has made me happier. But investment, it's hard for me to say best investment because I am so boring. Although I do have one angel investment and figure that's going to pay a lot of money so far on paper.

**Shaan Puri** (3:42)
Okay. So Sam's favorite ice cream is vanilla. All right. Here we go.

**Sam Parr** (3:45)
What do you want me to say? Am I supposed to make something up?

**Shaan Puri** (3:48)
All right. I will make up for your boring answer with, I have two answers. I'll give you the first one. Okay. So Sam, best investment. When I think of the perfect investment, right? What's my type? My type would be some people like blonde, some people like brunettes. Here's my type. My type is a passive investment that is tax advantage, that beats market returns, that is uncorrelated to the rest of my portfolio, tax, crypto, has low downside, and I'm betting on a beast of an operator who has an unfair advantage.