We Got 100M Views In 12 Months, Here’s What We Learned

Episode 535: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) look back at 2023 and the nine new philosophies they’ve picked up after 133 episodes of MFM. No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (5:00) Shill without shame (9:30) Base hits over home runs (14:00) Question of the year: Like what? (18:30) Get uncomfortable negotiating (22:00) Real estate for tax savings (26:30) Loose cannon, loose results (31:00) Curate up market deal flow (40:00) Choose the game; play the sh*t out of it (46:00) You will always want more — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  If you want to stay being a broke idiot, don't listen to this video. And then he'll be like, here's the first lesson for you. Do this. And I know what you're gonna say, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's what I say about that. And then he'll like flashes like fancy shit.

• 0:21Shaan Puri?

  So Sam texted me this morning and he goes, we did over a hundred million views this year for the podcast. And a hundred million, I thought he was wrong. I was like, no way. You gotta go double check that. He was right. We did. And that is way more than I thought we did. That is a bonkers number. I remember when we started this podcast, that sounded completely crazy. And what we wanted to do today, it's the end of the year. We wanted to look back and find what were the key takeaways and lessons that we learned from the hundred million views that we had this year on the podcast? So what were the biggest things that stood out when we look at the whole year? What were the biggest takeaways that we had?

• 1:06Shaan Puri?

  Sam, where do you want to start?

• 1:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, let me, let's just get the lead out the way. Let's start with the numbers. So I'm going to give you, I'll be transparent about a bunch of numbers, but not all, but a few. All right. So in the last

• 1:21Sam Parr?

  11, so we have 11, we have 10 days left in the new year. So we're not actually at 100 million. I think technically we're at 95 million, but I think it's the past few months, it's been like 5 million a week. So on YouTube, we got 80 million downloads or 80 million views so far. That includes YouTube Shorts, which is, those pop off sometimes and will get millions of views. And so I don't put too much emphasis on that, but so YouTube was around 80 million. And then downloads for the podcast, the actual podcast, so we call, we call everything the podcast. But there's basically, we call it the RSS feed. That's Spotify, iTunes, whatever you listen to your podcasts. That was around 15 million. And so collectively, we're at about 95 million.

• 2:05Sam Parr?

  We did 131 episodes, which is a ton, by the way. Like this job, it's fun, but that's a lot of work. Do you agree? Like, or do you, do you still think that every episode is fun?

• 2:18Shaan Puri?

  Every episode is fun to me and I feel like I'm able to,

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  I feel like I'm able to improvise well. So it is a lot of work. But there are some days, some of our best episodes are ideas we have 90 minutes before we record and someone sends a text saying, actually, what if we tried this? And those turn out really well sometimes. And I think it's because what we've tried to do is make this podcast the byproduct of the other work we do. So it's like, the basic business model is do interesting business shit. So, so invest in businesses, create businesses, talk to interesting people. And then the pod is just distilled, you know, the, the most interesting 10% that you're allowed to talk about and go talk about it. And so if we do that right, the pod's pretty easy. When we don't do that right, then the pod gets pretty hard.

• 3:08Sam Parr?

  But it's kind of like exercising. Like, some days I don't want to do it. And then almost every single time, even if it's a bad episode or something I didn't like, I didn't love, I feel happy and I'm proud that I did it. So for me, it's, it's like exercise. All right. And I'll give you a few more stats. So do you want me to go through the most pop, the top three most popular episodes?

• 3:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. What are they?

• 3:30Sam Parr?

  All right. So we actually have two categories. So, which is weird, because the most popular episodes on YouTube are not the most popular episodes on podcasts. So again, RSS feed. So the three most popular episodes on Megaphone, that's what we use to track this. The first one is the greatest businesses of all times, PsyOps as a Service, Work Harder, Not Smarter, Hack. That was the, the title. The second one was brainstorming chat GPT business ideas with billionaire Dharmesh Shah. And the third one, Chat and Lean, I didn't think this was gonna be the top one, or one of the top ones, was Nick, Nick Huber, How to Make Millions From Content Without Selling Ads. That was the most popular, the top three most popular on podcasts, the top three most popular on YouTube. It was the same one, actually. It was brainstorming chat GPT business ideas with a billionaire. It was with Dharmesh Shah

• 4:15Sam Parr?

  that has 450,000 views. I don't know this for sure. I think he did something Dharmesh did to manipulate this. I think he for sure emailed this out to his audience. I wouldn't be surprised if he bought ads or did something because Dharmesh loves to win and be number one. So he's number one on YouTube. The second most popular one on YouTube, 10 Years of Money Wisdom in Under 20 Minutes, 425,000, that is you by yourself. And I think you made that episode with YouTube in mind. Is that right?

• 4:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I made that as a YouTube first.

• 4:47Sam Parr?

  And it worked. And then the third one was very recent. It was November 2nd. How I bought a multimillion dollar egg carton business for $0.391,000 views on YouTube. Sarah Moore and Sean. And then I'll just say the fourth one was Martin Sorelli. When we interviewed him, that had 257,000 views. So that was a, some of those were a bit surprising. What do you think about that?

• 5:10Shaan Puri?

  Those make sense to me. I mean, each of those is basically, when I read the title, I'm like, yeah, I'd click, I'd click that. And that's basically what, what works on YouTube is I'd click that. And then you got to deliver on the promise. And so, uh, you know, maybe this is, maybe this whole content thing is a lot simpler and you just got to get the, get the titles right. And then you work backwards from there, make the content off the title.

• 5:31Sam Parr?

  Well, and this, this point is for any content creator out there, we, you and I, this show, we are kind of bastard children of content creators. So we started without YouTube. We only went for podcast downloads on podcast apps. I think we had a YouTube channel, but it was really like you and I went to Best Buy and we bought a camera and we just set it there and we just uploaded it. And, and so we didn't really care about it. I think we only started caring about a year ago. And, uh, what's crazy is if you really want to do it the right way, or maybe not, but the really right way is you start with one in mind and you go all in on that. We didn't go all in on YouTube. I don't think we should have, but, but I understand

• 6:16Sam Parr?

  the argument that we should have because what works on YouTube doesn't always work on RSS feed and vice versa. Um, and so speaking of YouTube, by the way, do you want to hear, here's a few more stats.

• 6:27Sam Parr?

  So we added, uh, so we did 131 episodes. We added about 250,000 subscribers. I'm sorry, 210,000 subscribers, subscribers. We started the year at 150,000 and we ended with 360,000. And you want to know the, the biggest needle mover besides actually caring about YouTube? Uh, do you want to know what it was that got us subscribers?

• 6:47Shaan Puri?

  I, I'm gonna guess it's the gentleman agreement. Is that not it?

• 6:50Sam Parr?

  The gentleman's agreement. And so for all the listeners out there, here's another takeaway. When you hear a YouTuber say, click the subscribe button and all that, and you hear everyone say that, and it gets, you, you think it doesn't matter. We saw a, there's a distinct point in the chart where we asked people to subscribe and it went up. And so like, it absolutely works. And so it's sort of like the thing, you know how people say, Why are you buying ads on Facebook? Nobody uses Facebook. No one clicks ads. Nonsense. That is absolutely not true.

• 7:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and actually, that was one of my takeaways for the year was when we were like, all right, we should start growing on YouTube. What are we, you know, what are we not like about? What's stopping us from wanting to do that? And one of the things is, dude, I don't want to be that guy who's like, all right, guys, if you like this video, click the like button and smash the subscribe button and turn on notifications as well as like, oh, God, I gotta turn into, you know, like inflatable armed YouTube guy. And, uh, you know, like in front of the car dealerships, it's like that, that way, you know, it's an alarm balloon thing. I was like, oh, God, I don't want to do this. But you had a really great idea of this idea of the gentleman's agreement. So basically, how do you do the cringe thing in the non-cringe way, right? How do you turn lemons into lemonade? You did it with the gentleman's agreement. I think we also did it recently with the thrill of the show where it's like,

• 8:06Shaan Puri?

  yeah, all right, look, we want to have ads to promote our businesses. Cool. That's fine. And I think the audience gets that that's fine. But how do we not make this an experience that's annoying for us to do? Like, sit down and record these like shitty ad reads? And then on the audience side, they just want to hit the skip button. It's like, what would be neither? What would be fun for us and actually fun for them to listen to? And then when we switched to the thrill of the show, I feel like that was a good idea. And I think that's something that people should do more of if you could pull it off. Right? You should basically set a standard of like, no, no, no, I'm gonna have my cake and eat it too. And, uh, I feel like we did that in two areas this year. And I feel like that's, that's something worth, worth remembering as we go into next

• 8:47Shaan Puri?

  year of like, all right, what would also be, um, instead of something that's kind of lame or a bit of a drag or just kind of extra work? How do we make it awesome for us and the audience? Because it didn't take that much more effort to do that. It just took a little bit of, uh, you know, charm.

• 9:04Sam Parr?

  No, and it wasn't hard at all. The problem was the gentleman's agreement that we would always tell people about. It like faded out, like it got,

• 9:11Shaan Puri?

  We forgot to say.

• 9:11Sam Parr?

  It got not, it got not novel. And we were like, oh, shit, we have to come up with another one. And I like watch all these YouTube videos and I just see one and I write down and I'm like copying that, copying that. And I just have forgotten to say it. So we've screwed up by not being consistent. Do you want to go like, uh, tit for tat a little bit and like just go through like interesting things that you've learned throughout the year?

• 9:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, all right. Um, I'll go first with one. So. This podcast is steady Eddie. This podcast is the tortoise, not the hare. So it grows very steadily. You could put up this chart from Social Blade. That's like your, our YouTube growth and it's great in that, you know, we started the year under 150,000. We're ending the year almost 400,000, but there's like no spikes. This thing is just a line that's just creeping up like a, you know, like this is like if my uncle goes for a hike, this is what it would look, this is like what it would look like. It's a map. It's like, this is his Strava right here. And so I'm like, what is this? This is so different than everything else I do because I am much more of a go for the home run,

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  try to do something incredible. And then if it doesn't work, or even if it's like, you know, you find something that's good, I just don't really follow through. And this is like a leak in my game in a way, but I kind of took some pride in this. So let me give you some examples. So on Twitter, we all joined this group chat called the 100K Club. We all had, I don't know, 10 to 20,000 Twitter followers and we all, five or six friends, we all wanted to hit 100K. We independently had that goal and we all did it. We all surpassed it, but we all did it very differently. Nick Huber, Nick Huber did it and he's kind of polarizing. So he'll say controversial shit that he believes, but he'll kind of spice it up a little bit. He knows what he's doing.

• 11:01Shaan Puri?

  He uses controversy to grow and Saul Hill's like, every day I wake up and I open a fortune cookie and then I type it out to whatever it was. I'll put that on Twitter. I'll do that every single day and I'll do a thread every, every Tuesday and Thursday. And why would I not? It works. And we're like, why would it not? Cause it's so boring to do that. But he's, he did it and he did it and he grew the most out of all of us. I think he's like at a million and he did it with like, what I'll call more cookie cutter stuff.

• 11:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Shaan Puri?

  Feel good. You know, kept it, uh, you know, pretty safe, no controversy, no real like, I would say like, not much original, you know, storytelling or wisdom, but more like general best practices, like kind of, uh, you know, stuff we've heard before, but packaged well.

• 11:46Sam Parr?

  He's posted so many videos of children and just probably titled it, humans are amazing.

• 11:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but I love my son. I'm like, I'm never gonna write that shit, right? Like, you know, I looked at my son and I was like, hey, listen, you're never getting that. All right. You're never getting that from me. I'm not, I'm not using you for that. And you're not using me for that. All right. We're not doing that. But jokes aside, you know, Sahil was more of consistency and, um, and just put out, uh, you know, he was ready to hit base hits and he just base hit it his way to a million. And I did the opposite. I didn't have a schedule. I didn't draft things. I didn't have a ghostwriter. I didn't do anything. I just had, I had probably six tweets that went viral. One was like this clubhouse thread. One was about the metaverse. One was about Elon Musk.

• 12:35Shaan Puri?

  One was about whatever. I just had a couple of these things go, go really, really viral. And I would go weeks and weeks without even tweeting, and then I would just do that. And, and I got to maybe 350,000. And so here's the lesson learned. The joke's on me in the end. So this is kind of the, the long one to take away is I was like, your boy's a homerun hitter. I just go for the big swings. I don't have to do all that consistency BS. I just come in, just mic drop with a viral thread and I peace out. And I was so happy with myself. And I kind of looked up at the end of the year. I was like, huh. Like the people who did the consistency thing got way further and had, and did way less like, uh, they didn't have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to do it.

• 13:18Shaan Puri?

  And I felt like I was having to pull a rabbit out of a hat in order to get growth to happen. And because that's so hard, I could only do it so often. The podcast, because I do this with you and you are a more structured, disciplined guy. You're like, let's set recording dates and let's never miss them. And I'm like, dude, what if we did like 10 episodes in the next two days? But then like, you know, if I'm busy, let's not do an episode. Like I would have had a totally different schedule. I would have such worse results. And when I look at this, it's like, damn, consistency wins again. This brings me to the real.

• 13:48Sam Parr?

  By the way, it's uh, it's five, I think we're, is this 550 or 520? So we're like 500.

• 13:54Shaan Puri?

  500 plus episodes, yeah.

• 13:56Sam Parr?

  533, Ari said, so we're 500 plus in. It's a lot, that's a lot.

• 14:01Shaan Puri?

  And we record like clockwork, same time, same days, every week, no excuses. And so I would have never done that on my own.

• 14:10Sam Parr?

  We've had some excuses.

• 14:11Shaan Puri?

  Well, we have reasons.

• 14:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sickness, children, and that's about it.

• 14:17Shaan Puri?

  So, all right, so, but I guess the, the, this takes me to one of the biggest lessons I learned was through the podcast, we met Andrew Wilkinson, people know about him, but I also met his business partner, who you know, Chris. And Chris said something at a dinner that I've, I've shared on the podcast, but it was the question of the year. He goes, you know, somebody was talking about some, something they did, they failed, they like, oh, but and then somebody else to like, kind of pat them on the back was like, wow, but you know, you learned so much. And they're like, oh, my God, I learned so much. Yeah, so many lessons learned, so many. And Chris goes, like, what? And you would think for somebody who went through this traumatic experience and had so many lessons learned that they would be like, number one, this, that's the most important lesson. Number two, this, number three, this.

• 15:02Shaan Puri?

  Those lessons weren't at the tip of their tongue. In fact, the lessons weren't even in their head. They learned actually nothing. And Chris correctly called it out. And I had never heard anybody question this assumption that when somebody says, I failed, but I learned. He was like, you know, I don't think people really learn. He goes, and in fact, some people who, when I asked them what they learned, they say something that tells me they learned the wrong lesson. And I think that's what happened to me this year on the consistency versus like big home run virality thing. I think I learned the wrong lesson. I was cursed by the fact that I did go viral a few times and I, I did pass my kind of 100K goal. And actually the lesson was, dude, if I just had consistently tweeted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday,

• 15:47Shaan Puri?

  probably would have took me 30 minutes. I'd probably be at a million followers instead. And um, and so I think I learned the wrong lesson. And I think that Chris's question of. Did you even learn the right lesson from this experience? It showed up everywhere for me this year. Everybody I talked to, I realized, uh, you know, more people fell into that camp. The outlier was somebody who went through something and had the right takeaway from it. The outlier was that.

• 16:16Sam Parr?

  Well, I would say to you, and this isn't a leading question, but it is for me. When I ask myself this, which is, is that even worth it? Is having, is being popular on social media even worth it? And I talked to a lot of people who are significantly success, more successful than I am in terms of traditional success. They've built bigger companies, whatever. And they'll ask about getting popular on social media. And my immediate response is like, but why? Like you're doing, you're doing awesome and you could be private. It sounds way better. And so I would wonder, is it even worth it to have a million for you? In your case, actually, the answer is probably yes. But that's something that I always ask people when they talk to me about social media.

• 16:58Shaan Puri?

  I think for a lot of people, the answer is no, because it's almost the cliche example of, uh, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It's like, if you play the, I want to be popular on social media game, you win the wonderful prize of having a bunch of followers who, you know, don't really know or care about you and you basically turning your life into a performance for them. Right? So you sort of win the stupid prize in the end. For me, my, like, you know, after a bunch of soul searching, it was became very obvious that the thing I actually wanted to do, the thing that would bring me the most joy in my life is like, if I get to be kind of like one of these like thinker guys. It's like, I think, you know, I don't actually want to be Elon Musk. I want to be Tim Ferriss. And once I realized that, and that sounded very true for me, I was like, okay, then I gotta do that.

• 17:43Shaan Puri?

  I gotta go learn cool stuff. I gotta synthesize, you know, information from a bunch of places. And then, yeah, which is super fun for me. And then I'm going to try to teach it and I like teaching it and I'll, you know, I'll try to share it. I'll try, I like sharing it. Why not? I'm so excited about the stuff that I'm figuring out. I'd like to create content and I'm good at creating content. So it's a good fit for me. And so, um, for me, it is probably the right game. I wouldn't say being popular on social media is the right way to phrase it. I think it is like, uh, Getting to be a thinker, like making that your, your actual job.

• 18:12Sam Parr?

  Sure, sure.

• 18:13Shaan Puri?

  But you're right.

• 18:14Sam Parr?

  Me, me calling it popular on social media, it's like calling it a creator. Like it just, it's like, oh, that's cute. That's how I meant it. But that's how it sounds like. Um, all right. The biggest thing I learned this year, and I have a bunch of them, but number one, the biggest thing. So I'll, I'll set the stage here. So I think last spring, I, I do remember what month it is. We were like, all right. I had, I was at the two. So basically when I sold the company to HubSpot, I had like a two year deal where um, I, the stock had a vest, whatever. That ended in February. And then we had to renegotiate some stuff, some, some contracts. And I think we started that. What did we start that? Do you remember which month?

• 18:55Shaan Puri?

  End of April.

• 18:56Sam Parr?

  End of April. It didn't end until September. Is that right? Did it? Was it September where it ended?

• 19:01Shaan Puri?

  Something like that. It's August, September.

• 19:03Sam Parr?

  So we go to negotiate this and I'm a pretty soft guy. I have known all along that I'm bad at negotiating. I just.

• 19:10Shaan Puri?

  You're like a fair roche. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.

• 19:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I just, I'm not good with uncomfortable conversations. I, uh, I, I just, I don't love confrontation. I want people to think that I'm easy to deal with. But I leave a lot on the table. I leave a ton on the table. And we go to negotiate this contract. And Sean, you were like, let me take a lead on this. And you did so many things that I thought were the stupidest thing ever. And I was like, you're being rude. This is stupid. You're being like, you're asking for too much. You're.

• 19:45Shaan Puri?

  Big difficult.

• 19:45Sam Parr?

  You're being difficult. You're in the weeds too much. Why do you care about this one? You know, it'd be like a five page or eight page contract. And you're like, this one sentence, guys, we need to talk about it. Like, we need to change this word from like, uh, uh, you know, like mandatory to optional. I don't even remember. Yeah, like you were like, and I think we probably had 10 revisions and we had, you and I had to hire a lawyer to go through all this stuff. And we sweat the details so much. In my heart, I was like, everything about this is wrong. And you want to know something? I was wrong. You were right. You negotiated this wonderfully. And I learned so many things and I could summarize this in something you'd said.

• 20:26Sam Parr?

  I think you said, someone told you, which is the person who could be most uncomfortable and then negotiation will oftentimes win.

• 20:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that, I think that's it. So the way you said it isn't actually the way I would say it. So you said, you know, whoever's more comfortable will win. And it's actually like, the first thing in a negotiation is realize it's not about winning. Like both sides want things, usually different things. You have to make sure both sides get what they want so that both sides feel like they win. But that, it is true that you have to be willing to be uncomfortable for much like, almost like the definition of the word uncomfortable, for longer than you're comfortable being uncomfortable, right? That was the, that's what I was trying to say. Cause you know, it's very easy in the moment to say, if I push this button, the pain stops and the uncertainty goes away and the item goes off my to do list. And I was very tempted to want to push that button.

• 21:16Sam Parr?

  Well, like, I'm not particularly that. So at The Hustle, we did enterprise sales, basically. So we, you know, a hundred thousand dollar plus advertising deals. I wasn't particularly good at that, but one thing that I learned early on was it's for any salesperson, it's best to not be like a hard hitting, like I'm going to sell you this, I'm going to sell you this. Instead you say, all right, so what are you guys looking for? Like what, what, what are you trying to get out of this? What, do you need more customers? Or, you know, you, you basically ask them what they want and then you tailor a solution or, or, or position your solution to fit their needs. You did a really good job of that. We were like, all right, HubSpot, tell me everything you guys want. And we'll try to accommodate or, or I'll phrase my solution to fit your needs. And, and you did a really good job at that.

• 22:00Shaan Puri?

  All right. So let me do a simple one.

• 22:05Shaan Puri?

  This year, my cash flow, so my monthly income, I think went up by like four and a half X.

• 22:13Shaan Puri?

  However, I didn't, I was very focused on making money and I didn't, and I normally don't care about like, you know, expenses or, you know, it's like, you know, that phrase, it's like, it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. That's true. I just don't really follow it very well. And the biggest expense Sounds good. Always. Sounds smart. The biggest expense always is taxes and I didn't do a lot of tax planning. This is a very simple one. One of my big takeaways for the year is, um, a lesson learned again, that taxes are your biggest expense once you start making real money. And I looked into a bunch of different opportunities and at the, only at the end of the year did I,

• 22:57Shaan Puri?

  um, do something smart, which was, I know somebody very well who is phenomenal at real estate. They have a very niche application of real estate. Um, they crush it. Uh, like I'm talking about, went from zero to owning a billion dollars in real estate with no outside capital. Um, in like, you know, eight years type of thing. And I watched them do that brick by brick. I know this, this, this like specific thing that they do where they have a bit of an unfair advantage, where, why it works. And I never really asked them to participate in a deal. I was like, uh, you know, they don't take any external money. So why not? But I know that we have a good, really good relationship. So I was like, maybe they would take it. So finally it towards the end of the year, I was like, hey, can I like deploy

• 23:39Shaan Puri?

  some capital here? Because if I can invest with you, I think I'll get a great return, but also I'll get that sweet, sweet depreciation. And, um, so I will get a, you know, sort of a double return on my side because I get the, you know, returns for the property, but I also get the tax savings today. I just started doing it and it is so good. It is so smart and I'm, I am so regretful that I didn't take this more seriously earlier. And Jess Ma came on the podcast and she said, it was her that triggered me to go take action on this. She goes, I go, do you spend a bunch of, she goes, oh, I want to talk about what rich people would do to their taxes. And we didn't even really get to that in the episode, but during the pre-call, I was like, what do you mean by, uh, we should talk about it? Like, and she's like, well, I think just the general thing is that most entrepreneurs

• 24:24Shaan Puri?

  really don't spend enough time on, on their taxes. And I get it. They want to build their business. But she's like, if you just look mathematically, like this is going to be, Between, I don't know, thirty to fifty percent of all your income every year gets taxed this way and twenty plus percent of your gains of all your investment gains gonna get taxed this way. She's like, it's financially irresponsible to not at least spend five to ten percent of your time on this. And then I did the math and I was like, ten percent of my time would be five full weeks of a year. I was like, there's no way I'm gonna do that. But I was like, I should at least spend like, two, one, you know, like something where I'm actually focused.

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  So who did you hire? Like, did you like a tax strategist?

• 25:07Shaan Puri?

  I talked to a few, but you know, the reality was, it's not that hard. Like, real estate really is the best way to do this. Because what you do is you take, you know, you take income and you have taxable income coming from one place. You take that cash, you deploy that cash into real estate. And my, you know, my wife is a real estate professional, so we have, we can offset the active income. And so you, you put the cash there. Now that cash is gonna grow in the property, but you got all this tax loss to wipe out your taxable income, if that makes sense. So, so you get cash on both sides, but the taxable income gets, gets, you know, reduced by using real estate. So it doesn't really take, like, I don't need to do anything.

• 25:45Sam Parr?

  By the way, it is hard. It's hard to find deals that are, are good. I mean, like, I've bought.

• 25:52Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's the key. Like, I knew this for a long time. I was like, great, what am I gonna do? Go look for fourplexes in Missouri? Like, I don't have the time or the energy or expertise to do this. Then you have a bunch of different, like, you know, fund manager type people. You're like, all right, I gotta vet them and figure out if they're any good and, and do a couple of deals with them. And I could do that. In this case, I was lucky that I had a very longitudinal relationship with somebody that I had seen do this with their own money. They're not a money manager. And so, and they get, you know, far above average returns because of what they do. And so anyways, that, that became, you know, the thing I'm gonna do. So anyways. We should talk more later. You should do this too. I'm like so convinced that this is a

• 26:32Shaan Puri?

  good idea for people in our position. And I think most of our friends in our circle, we're all like internet money people and we like, kind of suck at the real world money stuff.

• 26:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I suck at it. Um, all right. I've got another one. I've titled this loose cannon, loose results. So for the majority of my career, I've been a loose cannon. I would say silly stuff and it would get a reaction and I would get results sometimes. Uh, I gotta put that asterisk sometimes. Uh, like, or like I was in the media business. We are still in the media business, which is like, I could, I can go the obnoxious or blunt or ridiculous route and I can get clicks. And the problem with that is as you get more popular, you have to decide, are you going to go all in on that? Or are you gonna not go all in on it? Or you want to be this medium ground?

• 27:27Sam Parr?

  The medium ground is bad. And so here's, here's an example of someone who goes all in on it. Dave Portnoy. The guy's a missionary. He, but here's what, here's what that means. So he says ridiculous stuff. He had a sex scandal this year. Uh, regardless of what the facts are, I'm not even debating what the facts of that, of his issues were. He was accused of being, uh, I, it might've been like crazy, like assault, like some really bad shit. And he went all in on it and he came out with like, and he like, he kind of, I don't think he joked about it, but he like confronted it head on. But then there's other things that he's done where he's like, look, I'm so rich. I can do all this stuff. And, but there's a downside to that. The upside is he got lots of traffic. He, uh, you know, whenever he goes through any type of scandal,

• 28:12Sam Parr?

  he gets lots of views and somehow I imagine he gets paid for those ads. The downside is obvious, which is you are now this guy where you've got to live this life where you're this loose cannon guy. You say whatever you want and you're a huge target. Then we've gotten really close with Andrew Wilkinson, who is not a loose cannon. He says some stuff bluntly, but in, and he's a very honest guy, but he's reserved a bit.

• 28:36Shaan Puri?

  More measured. Yeah.

• 28:37Sam Parr?

  He's more measured. We had Syed on the, what's, what's Syed's last name?

• 28:43Shaan Puri?

  Balki.

• 28:44Sam Parr?

  Balki. He's one of the best guests we've had. Very measured. The guy's only 32 or something and he's in the ballpark of being a billionaire. He owns all these companies. And off air, when I've hung out with him, he's a little bit less measured, but on air, he was definitely, he was very like, I, look, my reputation matters. I need to have a good reputation. And he cared about that stuff. We also had Kevin Ryan. Kevin Ryan, probably the second or third most successful guy we've had in the podcast. Very measured, very honest, but very like straightforward, but also like calculating. Sarah Moore was another person. Sarah Moore, Sarah Moore, she explicitly said, I don't want to be famous. I'm only going to be here. And she still said good stories, but I'm sure that she like,

• 29:26Sam Parr?

  her reputation was in mind, things like that. And I think that I'm not willing to go the Dave Portnoy route for sure. I don't want that flack. I've said very mild things and I'll get flack for it. And I'm like, yeah, I just don't want to live this life where I, or I go hardcore. So anyway, a takeaway is I've actually wanted to pull back some public persona stuff, not reveal certain numbers. I don't want to be a target. I don't want to have to fight these battles. I don't get joy from that. I used to get joy from that. And I would respond to haters constantly online, just to prove like, so you can't talk shit to me. I'm like, I'm a real guy. I read all the comments. That's stupid. I don't want to be that person. That, that, that's a pretty big takeaway. You, you've done a good job of like,

• 30:10Sam Parr?

  you've not, you've actually had a few fires this year where you said some stuff that you got called out on, and you didn't back down from it, but you also didn't engage in it.

• 30:18Shaan Puri?

  I don't even remember.

• 30:20Sam Parr?

  There was, there was a time where you criticized someone who worked for you and it caused a little bit of a spat on the internet.

• 30:28Sam Parr?

  And I, I don't remember another time, but I think that that's what I'm referring to. And in my head, when I'm hearing you say that, or and when I'm seeing that, I'm like, I want to stay out of this. I don't want any of this drama. I don't want to, I don't want, I don't want this stress. You know, we've seen it with Chama a bit where he put himself out there and he's done some contradictory things and he's taken a lot of flack. And I respect that he's like owned up to it and he like faces it head on. I don't want to live that life. I thought I did. I don't. As we've gotten more popular, I, I for sure do not want to live that life. And I prefer to be more private now than I was in the past.

• 31:04Shaan Puri?

  That's a good one. I have kind of a related one. So one of the best meetings I had this year was with James Courier. James Courier, for those don't know, he is the founder of something called NFX, which stands for network effects. They basically, they have like, I don't know, a billion dollars of assets under management. They invest in tech startups. He's been, he's a Silicon Valley OG, so he's been building successful tech companies for like, you know, 20 years or something like that.

• 31:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's had, I think, multiple hundred million dollar plus exits.

• 31:33Shaan Puri?

  Correct. And super fun guy. So I go to his office. So I drive down to Palo Alto. I don't usually leave the house, but for James, I'm there. And literally, it's just me and him in the office. I was like, where's everybody else? He's like, ah, we don't even have that many people, but also, yeah, nobody's coming to work anymore. Everyone works from home. So it's me and him in his office for a couple hours. And he shared with me a piece of advice that really stuck with me and I started seeing everywhere, something I hadn't really thought about. So he goes, he goes, can I give you some unsolicited advice? I was like, please. And he goes, you know, today, he drew this like line on the whiteboard. And he's like, he goes, he goes, I really like what you guys are doing with your show.

• 32:13Shaan Puri?

  But I don't know, like, where you go from here. He's like, you're kind of in the middle. He's like, meaning, if I think about really upmarket, he's like, you know, when we make content, we're not making content that we don't want a million views. If we did a million views on a piece of content, we probably made the wrong piece of content. He goes, because what I'm doing, I have NFX, he's like, I'm trying to invest in, you know, whatever, it's the next Airbnb, the next Twitter, the next whatever. So he's like, I need the most ambitious founders in the world who are building, you know, like, venture-backed tech companies to read our stuff, really care about it, and think when I'm going to raise money, I'm going to go to NFX. And he's like, so. You have us and A16Z and others that are trying to be really up market because we're trying

• 32:58Shaan Puri?

  to attract a certain quality founder of which there's only, you know, a smaller pool, but they also care about different things. They're only gonna, you know, they don't want to hear about the vending machine side hustle. Like, we'll be like, oh dude, this guy's got 18 vending machines. He's making 22K a month. Isn't that sick? And like, he doesn't care about that. They're trying to get, you know, only people who are gonna like disrupt the healthcare system or some shit like that. I don't know. Such a big idea. Who even knows what it means?

• 33:22Sam Parr?

  By the way, I would disagree with him. I think that the, I think they care enough to listen, but not enough to actually do anything about it. You know what I mean?

• 33:30Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah. The vending machine thing. Actually, you're right, because I meet a lot of these people and they're like, pretty fascinated by like, the economics of stuff that's outside of their world, because they're just business nerds.

• 33:40Sam Parr?

  I think they actually care enough to be entertained by it, but that's, but that's about it.

• 33:45Shaan Puri?

  But like, then you have on the other end of the spectrum, you have, you know, let's say, and I love Gary Vee, but you know, Gary Vee is basically like motivation, grind, like, hey, you gotta, like, his content will be literally, he's like, I'm gonna pull up to this garage sale and I'm gonna flip this VHS for, you know, on eBay. And imagine if I did that every day, you could, you, that could be your hustle. And it's like, so I could make, you know, a hundred grand a year. It's like, a job can do that, but this is, I guess, the, the entry level of entrepreneurship. And it's like, and he has a huge audience.

• 34:16Sam Parr?

  Which I respect, by the way. I just don't want to do it.

• 34:19Shaan Puri?

  Gary, you know, like, what's the deal for, like, the best investments Gary's made, I think, came from his peers, like, his friends he hung out with, not like, his listeners in that way, right? Not his fans, right? And he probably, like, I shouldn't speak for him, but I guess, like, it's very easy, if you're in that position, to be like, it's great, because I get huge numbers, but I'm not necessarily, it's not like a two-way thing. I'm not learning back from my audience as much. Maybe I'm, you know, I'm happy to sign autographs and take selfies, but I'm not, I'm not excited to go have dinner with five people in this group, because I don't feel like it's gonna, you know, iron's not sharpening iron there, right? Like, I'm a black belt, I'm more hanging out with white belts. And so I kind of wanna, when I'm trying to spar, I wanna spar with black belts. Anyways, so he's like, you have a decision to make. You're in the middle right now with my first

• 35:03Shaan Puri?

  million. You kind of have a foot in both camps. And he's like, it's gonna be very tempting for you to go down market. And he's like, don't do it. He's like, go, if anything, go up market. I agree. In the long run, you're gonna want, you're gonna be more interested in the topics that those people are interested in. You're gonna not wanna keep saying the same like beginner level. Here's how you, you know, literally, here's how you make your first million. Here's how you get, here's how you should quit your job. And here's how you get a startup idea. And here's how you incorporate an LLC. Like, you're not gonna wanna make that content as you grow. And he's like, you should steer up market. He's like, my only advice to you is that.

• 35:45Shaan Puri?

  I think that was so smart. And so I don't even know why he said that to me, because who's even thinking about that? I wasn't even thinking about it. But now, like, I'm just gonna give you an example. Alex Ramos, who I think is, on one hand, absolutely killing the content game. I think Alex is awesome. I think he's super, super talented. But I think he's making a mistake in that he goes very down market. I'm just gonna read you some titles of his last, of videos he's posted in the last like two months, okay? How to make so much money it makes you sick.

• 36:18Shaan Puri?

  How to get rich this Black Friday. Watch this if you're tired of being broke. Uh, the real reason your business isn't growing.

• 36:28Shaan Puri?

  A bunch of these, right? So like, I don't wanna, you know, pick on these, but these are more down market video concepts. And they'll get views for sure. And like, the comments will kinda show you, people like, oh, my God, you changed my life. You're my hero, blah, blah, blah. And like, it's not that he's not doing a service for those people. However, I, I look at that, and I think for me, the game I wanna play is definitely gonna be not to go down market, to resist the temptation to try to create that content and to focus on creating upmarket content, which is gonna have a lower view count number. But it's gonna have a higher value per viewer and more of the audience. And it's like, I'm creating a magnet. I'm not creating an audience. I'm creating a magnet with my content.

• 37:09Shaan Puri?

  And I wanna attract the right people. And so, uh, anyways, that was a big lesson or takeaway for me that I wouldn't have otherwise thought about.

• 37:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think so. Like sometimes some of the contractors who work on this podcast will suggest ideas because they're just looking at like YouTube analytics. And I'm like, no, I ate eight out of the 10 things I don't think would would work.

• 37:31Shaan Puri?

  If Apple sold iPhones for $5, they'd sell more units too, right? Like, but if you're building an upmarket brand, or if you're Louis Vuitton, like you don't want to go downmarket. There's another guy we met.

• 37:41Sam Parr?

  And we fall victim to it as well. I don't want to act like our shit don't stink. But like, even though you and I will fight it, like, sometimes we will.

• 37:48Shaan Puri?

  Correct. The only reason this lesson resonates is because it's something I'm wrestling with, right? If I have a solved problem, I don't really care about it. It doesn't stand out as a big takeaway because I didn't, I didn't have the problem in the first place. This is a problem I have. So I'm trying to figure out where to go. And this advice was very helpful. There's another guy who does this. Have you seen this guy on Instagram? The Genius CEO?

• 38:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. He's in Austin right now. I think he's so funny. I think he's so funny.

• 38:14Shaan Puri?

  Funny. So like, I find him hilarious. And like, when I met him.

• 38:17Sam Parr?

  I can't tell if it's a joke. Like, it's like, there's a lot of like, nuggets in there, but he'll be, he'll be like, Bad Bunny is only making $30 million a year. What a bitch move. We're gonna teach this guy how to make a billion. Like, he'll like, insult these people. And it's pretty funny.

• 38:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he'll be like, he goes, this product, this product is gonna bust faster than a bunch of you chumps out there. So let me tell you how I would do it. I was like, whoa, what a hook. But so we met this guy in real life. In real life, total sweetheart and very smart guy, right? Super nice dude, humble, whatever. And then I'm like, and then I'm like, what do you have this like ridiculous mustache? Your fingernails are painted? You got this like, crazy chain and a Gucci purse, but like.

• 38:58Sam Parr?

  Well, he looks like a celebrity. He's like a tall, good looking guy.

• 39:01Shaan Puri?

  Like an IG, like, like a male IG thought. But you're in person, you're a totally respectable, humble, nice guy dad. And he was like, oh, yeah, I created this character. He's like, I realized like, what hits on IG is gonna be like, fancy cars, fancy shit, six pack abs, hot girls. And so he's like, you know, I just do that. It's my character. And I built a following. So he's got 200,000 followers on here. His content is hilarious.

• 39:26Sam Parr?

  It's so funny.

• 39:27Shaan Puri?

  He's but he's selling, you know, FBA.

• 39:31Shaan Puri?

  Uh, you know, basically like I made my millions selling dropshipping. Basically, I, you know, I was doing FBA brands. Uh, you know, you're, if you want to stay being a broke idiot, don't listen to this video. And then he'll be like, like, here's the first lesson for you. Do this. And I know what you're gonna say, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's what I say about that. And then he'll like flashes like fancy shit. He's like, this is a video of me buying this Von Cleef, uh, you know, necklace.

• 39:56Sam Parr?

  It's so funny. I love it.

• 39:58Shaan Puri?

  And I'm like, wow, what is happening with this guy? But I think he's also gonna be trapped in the down market thing, right? He's selling a mastermind. You gotta go pay to get into. He's gonna make millions of dollars doing this, but I don't think he's got any like, you know, I don't think he's got any way out. You know, that, that is a, uh, he's cornered himself in that way.

• 40:15Sam Parr?

  Sure, sure. Yeah, I, he's a good follow. He's very funny. Um, all right, let me give you another one. So the biggest takeaway that I, I want people to have in this podcast, we've done it now for three or four years is, and, and, and at first I, uh, like, I'll go get a haircut and they'll be like, so what do you do for work? And I was like, oh, I do this. I do that. I, I work on this podcast and they're like, what's the podcast about? And I'm like, well, it's called my first million, but it's not like the title is inaccurate and, and I'll, I'll explain what it's about. And what, what I, what I tell people is that, look, we've had multiple, multi billionaires on this show. We've had employees at companies on, on this show. I think what we care about is people who create a path and they do it.

• 40:58Sam Parr?

  Not necessarily, like, I don't necessarily think just because you are a billionaire, you are particularly better than anyone else. Like what I care about is someone who says, I'm gonna be great at this weird type of art.

• 41:09Shaan Puri?

  Intentionally choose a game. So they choose a game with intention and then they play the shit out of that, their game. Right? Is that the description? Cause that's what it is for me.

• 41:18Sam Parr?

  That's exactly it. And so for example, the guy I talk about all the time, Brett Adcock, he's not like me. He's like, well, I'm gonna raise a billions, billions of dollars and try to create a $500 billion company. I'm, I'm inspired by that, but I will never, I don't want to do that.

• 41:32Shaan Puri?

  Or even this example we just gave, the genius CEO, he chose to play that game and he's playing the shit out of it. I respect that. I don't want to do that, but I, I, I kind of admire people who intentionally choose their game and then play the shit out of it.

• 41:45Sam Parr?

  I admire the hell out of it. Or we've had John Coogan. John Coogan started Soylent, which scaled to be a fairly large business. He's got another company and now he's like a full-time content creator. He has a YouTube channel and it's beautifully done. He's doing it wonderfully. And then we've had Rob Dierdik on. We've had Laird Hamilton on. Guys who aren't the Silicon Valley's type of lifestyle, but they kill it in whatever they do. And I admire all of them equally. And so the takeaway that I've had, which is there's a million ways to get to where you want to go, or there's a million ways to get to a certain way, to a certain place. And for a lot of these people, it's money, but there's still a million ways to get there. And there's, you shouldn't just like, for example, when I moved to San Francisco, I was like, you have to raise VC, you have to do this, you have to do this. But then we

• 42:28Sam Parr?

  meet Syed, who, I imagine, yeah, I imagine he's worth 500 to a billion dollars. He started a WordPress blog, which sounds crazy stupid if you don't know what you're talking about, which I didn't. Turns out that killed it. Then he bought tons of gas stations. Now he owns 50 different WordPress plugins. Collectively, that does over 100 million in revenue. He's a young guy in Florida, not even a cool part of Florida. He's not Miami. I think he's in like Tallahassee or I forget where, like somewhere in Florida. Yeah, no disrespect Tallahassee. I see Ari, but look.

• 43:00Shaan Puri?

  There's just, there's just people that listen to this pod, just like, oh, man, their hometown where they grew up.

• 43:06Sam Parr?

  Jordan Lauderdale, Autumn Care. I'm from, I'm from St. Louis. All right. I can say these things. I'm not from a cool place. So all the Baltimore's out there, you know, like, I feel loved for you.

• 43:16Shaan Puri?

  Shout out to the tier seek cities out there.

• 43:19Sam Parr?

  It's, it's objectively not like the place to be. And, but what I'm saying is, I appreciate the hell out of people like that and learning about all of these different ways. And my biggest takeaway from this year and doing the podcast, which is, there's a lot of different ways to do it. You just have to choose where you want to go and you got to choose what rules you're willing to play by. But there's not one way to do it. And I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even go as far as to say there's one that's likely. In fact, if I had to say that, I would say the one that's likely to get there is starting a small services business and just growing it over 50 years and paying yourself a good salary after year 10 and doing that for, for decades, which is not at all what I would have expected. You know, it's just a, a normal,

• 44:01Sam Parr?

  small business owner that does it for a long time is significantly more likely to have a higher income and die rich than any other way. But there's a lot of different ways to do it. And that's one of the things I appreciate, appreciate by doing this podcast.

• 44:15Shaan Puri?

  That's a great one. And I do think that that's the, if you zoom out, that is kind of the point of the pod. The point of the pod isn't saying do X or do Y. It's check this out. You can do X. Here's how that works. You could do Y. Here's how that works. You could do Z. Here's how that works. And by the end of it, you're either going to be in one of two positions. Some people hear all that and get overwhelmed. They don't know where to go. There's too many, too many paths, too many possibilities. They, it's what paralyzes them. But I hope that's not most people. I think for most people, that that reaction is kind of like, wow, winning and being successful is this thing that feels scarce if you're not around it. Right? Like where I grew

• 44:57Shaan Puri?

  up, I didn't know any business people. Nobody in my family was a business person. Nobody, not my cousins, not my aunts, not my uncle. None of them did businesses.

• 45:04Sam Parr?

  Were you raised in Tallahassee?

• 45:06Shaan Puri?

  Born in Oklahoma. And, and so, you know, I wasn't around it.

• 45:10Sam Parr?

  Ari just flicked me off or make it better Tallahassee, by the way.

• 45:15Shaan Puri?

  And so, so you know, I, I wasn't around it. It seemed like this faraway thing that I didn't really even understand. There was no map. And I thought maybe there's one path, but I don't know it. And I'm not invited to that, to that party. And then my hope is that if you listen to this podcast, you're going to hear over the course of a year, 100 different examples of ways to win and how they work. And at that point, it's just a matter of choosing. And all of a sudden, winning and success becomes this thing that instead of being scarce and difficult is abundant. It's everywhere and it's right at your fingertips. If you just start, start doing whatever sounds most intriguing to you, and then you just keep playing the game,

• 45:55Shaan Puri?

  you know, it'll, it will work out for you. That's, I think that's what the pod ultimately does for people.

• 46:02Sam Parr?

  Good. I hope it does. I have one more. Do you have one more?

• 46:07Shaan Puri?

  You go.

• 46:08Sam Parr?

  All right. My last one. So we had Scott Galloway on. Scott Galloway is a guy who he said on the pod, he goes, I'm worth over a hundred million dollars. And he also said in that same sentence, I'm deeply afraid of running out of money. We had Morgan Housel on most recently, and he said something like, um, he knows that you shouldn't necessarily set goals for money. And he knows like objectively, he's got enough that he likely won't ever run out. And he knows that he shouldn't check his net worth. But then also, we pressed him on it. And he was like, but of course, like, if I'm laying at bed at night, like, just because I know what I'm supposed to do, I still wonder what it would like be like to have more. And I don't think we've ever had anyone on the podcast.

• 46:51Sam Parr?

  Maybe Jack Smith, maybe Jack Smith, but Jack Smith is like a freak. But I don't think we've ever had anyone on the podcast, regardless of what they have, they don't want more. And that sounds like a really negative thing of like, uh, uh, what you have enough. Why do you need more? Why do you need to achieve this and that? I think it should be the opposite. And I think the takeaway is no matter what you have, you're always going to feel that there's another level and that you should one up. And I don't think that's a depressing takeaway. I think the takeaway should be you will always want more accomplishments, more achievements. And that is okay. That is totally okay. And that is normal. And just expect that wherever your goal is, once you achieve it, you're going to feel satisfied only for a short amount of time. And then you're going to want to achieve more. And

• 47:34Sam Parr?

  that's basically 95 or no, I would say 99% of the time, that's true. And that's okay. It's okay to want more. Uh, I think there's a healthy way to go about it. And there's an unhealthy way to go about it. I would say Scott probably has unhealthy ways. I would say I have unhealthy ways. And I think you can change those unhealthy ways to healthy ways. But no matter what you have, you will accomplish it, whatever your goal is, and you'll get there. It'll take six months and you'll say, what's next? How do I do it again? How do I do more? And just expect that that's going to happen.

• 48:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think when people hear that, it sounds like, you know, it sounds wrong or sad or bad or something like that. But another way of looking at that same thing is the concept of infinite and finite games. And so the, my, my understanding of it, I haven't spent a ton of time on this, but my understanding of it is a very simple understanding is a finite game is one where you play for the result. So you play in order to achieve an outcome and you're hoping to get to that outcome. That's the purpose of it. And then an infinite game is one where you play for the sake of playing. And so you, you play because you want to play. Now, if you look at that in practice, so for example, for me, basketball is something I, I consider like an infinite game, right?

• 48:52Shaan Puri?

  Like I, I play because it's so fun to play and I want to play. And my goal is not to like win and stop. My goal is to win, but I, I wouldn't stop if I won because, but not because it's like greed. It's like, well, winning is a, is bait. The scoreboard makes the game more interesting. And in a, in a small burst, yes, of course, we're trying to win the fourth, you know, by the end of the fourth quarter, I want to have the higher score. But ultimately like, you know, hey, all right, let's run it back. Let's play again, let's play again, let's play till our legs fall off is basically how it's always felt for me. And that's the closest thing I felt to an infinite game until kind of business came in. And it's actually very, very similar. It's like, I like having a scoreboard and makes it more fun to play when you do keep

• 49:37Shaan Puri?

  score. But I'm not trying to get to a result to, I'm not doing work to get to a result and then I'm going to stop working. It's, I like playing, I plan to keep playing, I'm playing for the sake of playing and, but the scoreboard makes playing a lot more interesting and fun and intense.

• 49:51Sam Parr?

  And that should be the takeaway. The takeaway is that because I had the, I previously had the, if I get to this, I will not feel stressed and I won't work anymore. The reality is I still felt stressed. I felt less stressed though. There's no doubt, no doubt about that. I felt a lot less stress. And six months later, I was like, but I have to go and do something. I, I feel like a piece of shit just sitting here and I feel good contributing.

• 50:15Shaan Puri?

  By the way, why do you think you, if I just said, why do you still feel stressed? Why do you think you feel stressed after, even after the event?

• 50:23Sam Parr?

  Because I think that I, the, the stress, I, I think that I, well, like to get like therapeutic, it's all baked into some type of childhood trauma and, and that just takes years to like unwind. But why does it, uh, why, uh, part of the stress is comparing yourself to others. Um, and so you want to achieve more and also wanting more stuff, which is, uh, what do they say? Desire is hell or desire is pain. Yeah, or desire is suffering. So wanting more stuff, um, which I try to combat. But I just, I'm like, no, that won't, I try to like, say, this won't make me happy. Uh, comparing myself to others, wanting more stuff and also just wanting to get rid of a chip on my shoulder.

• 51:01Shaan Puri?

  Right. I'll offer you a different answer that might be true for you. I don't know if it is or not, but I, I think, I, I believe this is more true. Cause I hear a lot of people talk about it and it's like, uh, childhood trauma. It's like, all right, well, nothing I could do about that. That's literally the past. It's written and it sounds like it's a, it's a long unpacking process that I don't want to do that. Like I, I still got suitcases over here. I haven't unpacked from vacations I've been on like, I'm not trying to unpack years of childhood trauma. Similarly, it's like, oh, I have to like, stop the feeling of envy or desire. Oh my God.

• 51:36Sam Parr?

  Which will never happen.

• 51:37Shaan Puri?

  Wired as an animal to do that. That sounds like a game I'm never going to win. So I actually think there's a different answer, which is, um, emotion, the emotions you feel are much like muscles. It, it, it's basically, you've had a lot of practice at stressing. So what happens is people practice feeling a certain way and they don't think about it as practice. But what does it mean when you do something all the time or regularly? You are habituating yourself or practicing doing that. You're getting reps at doing it. And then some, one day, suddenly they changed the, the environment and they think that all that practice and that muscle that they've basically developed and practiced and repped daily will just go away. And this new muscle called contentness and contentness and happiness will appear.

• 52:20Shaan Puri?

  Because the money, the, the bank balance in your, your Bank of America account has changed. No way, right? And so I would actually say it's the opposite. If you want to change that feeling, it's not the money. It's you have to find a way on a daily basis to practice having that feeling. You want to, you want to feel happy? You got to practice happy. You want to feel content and peaceful? You got to practice content and peaceful. You got to practice that more than you're practicing anxiety and fear and stress and all these other things. And so for anybody out there who's listening, Sam is absolutely right. Your feeling is not going to change, but I don't think it's because of these like deeply rooted, psychological and historical reasons. A simpler example, a simpler explanation might be that I've really just gotten a lot of reps practicing one thing.

• 53:03Shaan Puri?

  And therefore that's easy and familiar and habitual for me. And I got to start practicing the other. The same thing happened when we sold the milk road. I talked to Ben and I was like, Ben, how does it feel for your first kind of big exit for you? And he's like, honestly, it doesn't feel like I'm kind of disappointed. Like, it doesn't feel like very much like it doesn't, I don't feel that much. And I go, he's like, maybe it's because maybe if the number was bigger, maybe this, right? You started going down that path. And I was like, no, dude, it's because you're trying to feel like this kind of victorious joy. How many days out of the year, the last 365 days, did you feel that? Like zero, did you let yourself feel that zero? And so what did you think? All of a sudden today, you're going to turn on and be really good at feeling that? Like, no, dude, it's practice.

• 53:47Shaan Puri?

  Like you, if you want to feel that, we got to do that regularly so that that muscle's there. And

• 53:52Sam Parr?

  Do you, uh, did you come up with this theory on your own? Or did you steal it from someone?

• 53:56Shaan Puri?

  Tony Robbins, when I was at that event, he has a similar thing. He calls it your emotional home. He goes, everybody's got an emotional home. He's like, cause he's like, he's like, look, watch, watch this. Raise your hand if you're somebody who, uh, you know, sometimes gets a little pissed off. Everybody raises their hand. He's like, raise your hand if sometimes you are just super silly, having fun, being playful. Everybody raises their hand. He's like, okay, so we're capable of both. You are not like just an asshole or just a super nice, easygoing guy. We all fluctuate. And he's like, but it is true that we have an emotional home. It's the place, like your home, it's the place you spend the most time. And he's like, if your emotional home is that you are stressed out, it doesn't matter if you sell your company for a billion dollars.

• 54:38Shaan Puri?

  If you did, if you grinded for seven years, you were stressed all the time. You're not just going to become a different guy all of a sudden, right? Cause that's your emotional home. But he's like, good news is you can move it. He's like, you can move it if you basically practice it, right? And he's like, so we want to basically,

• 54:55Shaan Puri?

  You know, you don't want to wait for the for things to happen to feel a certain way. He's like, you want to have it on call that you can change the way you feel like that fast. Can you do that? Can you change the way you feel that fast? And a lot of the event of Tony Robbins, and the reason why people feel like almost like he's manipulative is because he literally is manipulating the way you feel. He's showing you that like you can change the way you can go from focused to jubilant to zen and calm and reflective to motivated and inspired in like a 30 minute span just by the way he's kind of prompting you. And the trick obviously is to learn to do that yourself so that you now are in control of your own mood. You're the master of your own mood. And that's that was big. That became a big focus for me after that event.

• 55:39Shaan Puri?

  That was my big takeaway from the event was that. And then I started practicing that for like six, seven years.

• 55:44Sam Parr?

  I wish you had come up with that on your own because you don't realize it. But one of the big three like psych, you know, so there's like Sigmund Freud. And then there's two other guys who are considered like the godfathers of 19th century, like psycho analytics and all this stuff. And one of the guys is Alfred Adler. And he's got, there's a book called The Courage Should Be Disliked. That's quite good. And what you're saying is exactly in parallel with what he has said about like happiness. And like, it's like, well, you're anxious because you're choosing to be anxious and you don't, you're not choosing to do this other thing. And he's got this whole book on it. But you didn't, you didn't realize it, but you've just discovered relative, you know, the theory of relativity, just like Albert Einstein. You didn't even know about it.

• 56:27Sam Parr?

  So you're kind of like one of the big three.

• 56:30Shaan Puri?

  Adler guy sounds like a smart guy. Yeah. Yeah. I like the sound of this. I'm gonna go check this guy out.

• 56:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So, so, so that's you. Um, all right. Where do we go from here? Is that it?

• 56:37Shaan Puri?

  That's it. I think we wrap it up. Uh, thank you for everybody for listening. You know, those, those views ain't gonna view themselves. It's because of you guys. But you know. We just talked about wanting more. Sam, are you satisfied? Are we, do we have enough subscribers? Would you say?

• 56:55Sam Parr?

  We only have 360. You know, Mr. Beast has 100, 100 million. We're nothing. We're losers. I'm anxious about this. And so if you've enjoyed this episode, if you enjoyed any of our episodes, subscribe on YouTube, but also go to Spotify, go to podcasts, the, the Apple version and subscribe on all of those.

• 57:11Shaan Puri?

  Therapy and stop wanting this? Or you could just click the button and make us feel happy. Which one? Save us years of therapy and just click subscribe. And just say, you're welcome in the comments. And we know when you say you're welcome, it's because you saved us years of therapy. You just gave us what we wanted instead.

• 57:29Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the pod.