Just found out my neighbor’s business sold for $450M

Get our Business Monetization Playbook: Episode 668: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about the story behind Muscle Milk, Scott Galloway's bet against FTX, and how Bill Ackman spent $460M in 4 hours. — Show Notes: (0:00) The untold Muscle Milk story (16:41) Timelines of your heroes (19:43) Having a social agenda (22:29) Shaan pitches Sam a business (38:58) Scott Galloway buys FTX claims (47:17) The value of having a too hard pile (55:18) Bill Ackman spends $460M in 4 hours — Links: • Muscle Milk - https://www.musclemilk.com/ • Flavor Insights - https://flavorinsights.com/ • Hormel - https://www.hormel.com/ • Arfur Rock - https://x.com/ArfurRock — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — 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 • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  I'm talking to my barber and he tells me this story that's pretty crazy about Muscle Milk.

• 0:12Shaan Puri?

  So he's got my hair and he knows I have the podcast. So every time I go in for a haircut, he just gives me research and it's great.

• 0:19Sam Parr?

  Dude, my handyman knows, knows I have the podcast and he always asks me what stocks he should buy. And I'm like, that's not the point, bro.

• 0:26Shaan Puri?

  He thinks you're Jim Cramer?

• 0:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah. He's like, so what stocks, what stocks should I buy? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Don't ask me that. Just change the light bulb, please.

• 0:34Shaan Puri?

  If he asked you like, you know, what's the best way to increase my testosterone right now? Using an illicit drug? I feel like that is what he should be asking you.

• 0:43Sam Parr?

  Clearly he's not a listener.

• 0:45Shaan Puri?

  What can I buy from a forum that will make my tendons stronger? Sam has answers to those types of questions.

• 0:50Sam Parr?

  Do you want to know some really cool subreddits or an illegal place to download books? I got you, bro.

• 0:59Shaan Puri?

  I'm talking to my barber and he's like, dude, you know whose hair I was cutting?

• 1:04Shaan Puri?

  He goes, he's your neighbor. My neighbor. And he goes, yeah, the guy lives just down the street from you. It's the family that started Muscle Milk. So they started back in 1998. And it actually started because he bought a sub-brand called CytoMax from his employer. It's not ended up, it's not what ended up working, but I think it's a hilarious starting point.

• 1:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:26Shaan Puri?

  It's sort of like how SpaceX started because he wanted to send like a small plant to Mars. And now he's like, you know, built like a trillion dollar company doing this.

• 1:36Sam Parr?

  You know, what's the colostrum? I get so many ads on, on.

• 1:41Shaan Puri?

  Colostrum, good stuff.

• 1:42Sam Parr?

  Dude, and I don't, is it like from a animal or a human?

• 1:46Shaan Puri?

  It's from a cow. Yeah.

• 1:48Sam Parr?

  Damn. So I'm like depriving some newborn cow from, you know, like her fresh milk.

• 1:54Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's how, have you ever seen how milk is made? It's pretty insane.

• 1:57Sam Parr?

  No.

• 1:58Shaan Puri?

  Do you know how milk is made? Is that messed up?

• 2:00Sam Parr?

  Is it just tons of devices that hook onto you like an alien?

• 2:03Shaan Puri?

  All right. This is, this is, my wife's vegan, so she's forced me to like go down this road to like, acknowledge what, what goes on. Here's how a lot of milk is made. I can't say all, but I think this is like the mainstream way. They impregnate a cow artificially, literally a dude sticks his hand and then like artificially inseminates a cow, gets the cow pregnant, cow has a baby, baby is then ripped away from the cow, but placed nearby so that the mom could hear the crying and will produce more milk and then they take the milk.

• 2:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's sad.

• 2:36Shaan Puri?

  Fucked up.

• 2:36Sam Parr?

  I hate that.

• 2:38Shaan Puri?

  What kind of podcast is this?

• 2:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, dude, I literally drink a-

• 2:41Shaan Puri?

  Sad ass vegan podcast is this?

• 2:43Sam Parr?

  I drank a glass of whole milk just last night. And now I regret it.

• 2:50Shaan Puri?

  Back to Muscle Milk.

• 2:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so Muscle Milk, not actual milk, it's a supplement. And it starts out as powder, you put in a drink and he's like, cool, I think bodybuilders are into this. They're willing to drink this kind of chalky nasty drink. And he buys in and basically it's a family business. So it's Greg Pickett and his, it's his, uh, kids are involved with it. And what's cool about this business is years later, Muscle Milk becomes a household brand. They end up selling the thing for $450 million. This will make almost half a billion dollars off this Muscle Milk thing. The guy lives down the street. They basically started this as a cul-de-sac company. Meaning he lives in one house, the son lives in another house, the sister, uh, his daughter lives in another house. And they all just live in one cul-de-sac.

• 3:36Sam Parr?

  Sounds awesome.

• 3:37Shaan Puri?

  The kids play together and then they just built this behemoth that way. Like, isn't this insane?

• 3:42Sam Parr?

  That is badass.

• 3:43Shaan Puri?

  That is badass. That was like inspiring to me. It's just like a family, like you've heard of a family business, but dude, just imagine the cul-de-sac business. I'm kind of inspired by this, very much in the vein of thinking of find the people you love and do life with them. Like, so how, how did it win?

• 3:58Sam Parr?

  Wait, really quick, have you seen Landman, the oil show?

• 4:03Shaan Puri?

  Hell yeah, I've seen Landman. I might have wore cowboy hat yesterday, just feeling a little Billy Bob Thornton myself.

• 4:09Sam Parr?

  I haven't seen it, but this clip I just saw makes me want to watch it. But basically Jerry Jones comes on and Jerry Jones like gives this like amazing acting performance where he talks about the importance of working with his family and how he's proud of his wealth and his real estate and he's proud of his, the Cowboys, but you know what he's proud of most? Is that I got to spend time with my kids and we work together. And that's why they're here at my deathbed because they loved me and we got to spend a whole bunch of time together. And I heard that speech and I was all in for one, I was all in. And two, Jerry Jones, who would have thought? He like had tears in his eyes. I did not think he could act like that.

• 4:47Shaan Puri?

  Somebody was saying they're like, I don't think, I think this is such a good performance because he's not acting. I think all of this is just true for him and he just said the truth, which, um, which is great. By the way, Landman, fantastic show.

• 5:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was such a good scene. All right. So tell me about, uh, milking muscles.

• 5:04Shaan Puri?

  Milk and muscles. All right. So they start the business, pretty humble, um, plan. They bought this like kind of supplement and it's powder you mix into drinks. And they were like, look, if muscle, bodybuilding enthusiasts drink this, this would be great. We think we can make this more mainstream, but we don't really know how. We just kind of are believers in the general idea. And they were like, look, if this thing ever got to like 18 million in sales, that would be like, imagine that that would be crazy. And they, that was like at the dinner table talk. By the time they sell this thing is doing over 200 million in revenue. At about 60 million a year in profit before they, they sold. So they, they had built like a really sick, really successful company. How did they do it?

• 5:47Shaan Puri?

  They eventually, and, and what I love about these stories is you hear about the story and you're like, you nod your head, you're like, yeah, that makes sense how that happened. But then you look at the timeline and sometimes I'll force myself to literally draw out the timeline. So it'd be like, all right, nine, 10, 98, they start the company. And then I'll draw 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004. It's like 2004 is when they actually made the product that hit. Which is the ready to drink like we've all seen, you know, the muscle milk carton. And so you, when you hear that, you're like, okay, cool. 2004, then it really took off and you just sort of read the numbers and the revenue ramp and it looks good. But then you think you zoom in and you, you force yourself to look at that like five or six year time period.

• 6:29Shaan Puri?

  And you're like, there's not, they don't even talk about what they were doing during that time because it's just like the forgotten, the forgotten grinding out years of trying to make shit happen and staying in the game long enough to get lucky.

• 6:40Sam Parr?

  And what were they doing?

• 6:42Shaan Puri?

  They were just selling. They were just trying to sell and they were selling to like really small niches, but ever expanding out of that niche. And eventually he has an insight, the dad has an insight and the insight is basically like, hey, you know what? Flavor matters. And he's like, if more people are going to drink this, it's going to be because I, uh, I can't get this to taste like dessert. And he realized that the initial market they were looking at, which was bodybuilders, they took pride in drinking nasty shit. And so anytime you tried to make like a fruity, better tasting thing, sweeter thing, they almost kind of rejected it. Because it felt less hardcore and they were super hardcore and that's who the market was.

• 7:19Sam Parr?

  There's a lot of people who, um, like take, uh, testosterone or steroids or Ozempic. And a lot of doctors will offer you a pill, a cream or a syringe. And I've asked the doctors and they go, they all want the syringe because it feels more like this works better. It's going through my veins. I can feel it.

• 7:38Shaan Puri?

  Right. So, yeah. Exactly. And I think that's true for the early markets, the hardcore markets. You know, Ben is like this. Ben is an early adopter of every product. As soon as a product gets popular, his interest completely drops in it, right? Cause the fun part was doing the hard thing, getting the edge, being ahead. And so same thing for bodybuilders. So what the, the genius of the business is that they saw that, hey, okay, the market we see today, the people who are buying it today, actually is different. If we want to reach this other market, we gotta like ignore all the signals we're seeing today. So he goes in the lab and he starts doing small batch production and everybody else was so big that they could only test flavors in basically bigger batches.

• 8:18Shaan Puri?

  And so that meant slower cycles. It meant kind of like getting less like tight feedback loops. So what he did was he goes to LA and he starts testing flavors in like 15 gallon increments. And he pours it and he gives it to people and they're like, ah, too chalky. Then he gives them another one. They're like, too sweet. He gives another one and he finally makes this vanilla flavor that they're like, this tastes like dessert. I love this. And so he brings those flavors into the ready to drink beverage and it just takes off. It goes nuts. And eventually like Walmart starts knocking and Walmart's like, hey, we want to carry this. He's like, dude, we can't even fulfill Walmart. But he's like, all the specialty stores, the GNCs, it's flying off the shelves.

• 8:59Shaan Puri?

  And for like the first year, they're like so inventory constrained because he nailed the flavors. So what my barber was telling me, which is fascinating, what caught my attention about this, he goes, so this dude down the street, they created Muscle Milk, sold it for like $500 million. But the cool part is, he goes, he didn't sell the flavors. I go, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, there's some story. He goes, it's not out there, but the guy is like, cut my hair. He's telling me the story.

• 9:22Sam Parr?

  You're putting this barber on blast.

• 9:24Shaan Puri?

  It's not like insider trading. He's just telling me it's a really cool story, but he's like, you know, when you go and research, it's not, this part's not as reported. So maybe he got some of the details wrong. That's my caveat, but here's what, what we explained, which was basically the, um, when they did the sale, they sell the brand Muscle Milk. They sell the operating businesses, all the distribution. And then the buyer was like, cool. And the flavors, and they're like, ah, actually, we have our own separate company that does flavors and we're not going to sell you that company. And they're like, well, we need the flavors. Like, cool. Yeah, we'll do a licensing deal. Like, well, we could provide flavors, but we won't sell the flavor company. And again, this is where the details are not reported. So either that's what happened or right after they sold, they started a new flavor company.

• 10:09Shaan Puri?

  Cause now this is what the family does. They have this, um, flavor house that they created. And they were like, we're not going to do any brands anymore, but we will do flavoring. As like, that's our, that's what made Muscle Milk successful and that's what we're going to do now as a service. And now they've got a bunch of customers for this flavor brand that are this flavor house that they've created. And if you look at their facility, it's like this. Insane, like, you know, huge facility with like a fucking vacuum sealed room and they're like, oh, we do this technology like spray flavoring where you can add flavor to things that doesn't add any calories. And they're basically, it's all about flavor tech. And I'm just like fascinated by flavor houses and flavor technology.

• 10:49Sam Parr?

  It's called Flavor Insights. It looks awesome. And I see like the, they have a video with the father and his son and on the about page, it's the whole family. This is my dream, by the way. This is how business should be.

• 11:02Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you why this is even more your dream? While he's building Muscle Milk, he's got a hobby. And I know that you love a man with a real hobby. And his hobby is racing cars. And he has his own racing team that he created. And then he himself races and I don't know shit about racing, but is it Le Mans? Le Mans?

• 11:19Sam Parr?

  Le Mans. Yeah, it's like, it's like a famous, I guess, track, but it's like a, the famous thing is like, it's a 24 hour race. And so like Ford versus Ferrari and all these like things.

• 11:31Shaan Puri?

  I think he like won the race or he performed really well. How impressive is that? Is this like just rich guys doing it? Or is he competing against like real racers?

• 11:38Sam Parr?

  I'm not a real race enthusiast, so I could be wrong. But yeah, it's like, dude, like the story Ford versus Ferrari, it was about the time that Ford beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Like, it's like a big deal. Yeah, it's like a movie worthy deal. You know, like Rudy style movie of an underdog winning Le Mans.

• 11:55Shaan Puri?

  Right. You know, DHH, the guy, the Jason Fried's co-founder?

• 11:59Sam Parr?

  He competes in that. Did he? I don't think he won, did he?

• 12:01Shaan Puri?

  He won. Yeah, he won. I think he, I think he won the race and he said he's competed in it 11 times.

• 12:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's sort of like, and oftentimes, like, the company that wins, they win for some innovative reason. And then like 10 years down the line, that car part that helped them win becomes like the norm.

• 12:19Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 12:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so that's like a big deal.

• 12:22Shaan Puri?

  Isn't this a, it's a total like life goals story. Build a killer brand. You stuck with the thing. You built it with your family. You do it in the cul-de-sac. I just think it's amazing. Sell the thing for $100 million.

• 12:34Sam Parr?

  None of his kids are yoked.

• 12:38Sam Parr?

  Right? Like, these guys, they don't look very yoked. I'm looking at the family now.

• 12:44Shaan Puri?

  Well, as their public defender, here's what I have to say about that. One of the things they talked about with Muscle Milk is they go, we wanted to build a product that everybody would look at it and see a different thing. So they go, women see it as a weight loss product. Men see it as a muscle building product. Some people see it as a snack. Some people see it as a meal replacement. Our goal was to build a product that you, that would basically, you know, solve multiple problems for different people at once.

• 13:10Sam Parr?

  I'm just saying that I want to see some bigger buys and tries on this family photo. They look great. They look very healthy. More importantly, they look happy. The founder's teeth are beautiful. Like, he's got a really nice smile. I just think that we should see a little thicker neck.

• 13:26Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you one other thing? So this company that bought them originally, now they're owned by Pepsi. Pepsi owns it now, but before that, it was bought by something called Hormel Foods. It's one of these companies that you've never heard of. This company does $12 billion in revenue. They do like a billion and a half dollars of profit a year. And if you go to their website, they, like, the headline, like, tagline for them is like, we sell more pepperonis than anyone on earth. And they're this like food holding company. They own Skippy peanut butter. They own Planters.

• 13:56Sam Parr?

  They own Spam.

• 13:58Shaan Puri?

  They own Spam. And then they sell just a shit ton of ronies, dude. They just sell pepperonis worldwide.

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  They own Applegate. They own Justins. They own Planters. Skippy. Chi Chi's. I don't know Chi Chi's.

• 14:12Shaan Puri?

  Is that black label bacon? They own a lot of shit. I mean, literally Spam is like on their homepage as like their, like, their, their pride and joy. Like, the way my parents pinned like pictures of me up on the fridge, that's what this company does with Spam.

• 14:26Sam Parr?

  Which is like, it's pretty, pretty good. Horrible for you. But, oh dude, yeah, Hormel Pepperoni, I know them. That's one of my snacks. One of my snacks is like eight pepperoni with a little bit of mozzarella cheese on it, microwaved.

• 14:36Shaan Puri?

  It's a pizza without the pizza?

• 14:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I just call it like.

• 14:40Shaan Puri?

  A pizza, hold the dough? Just, just pepperoni and mozzarella?

• 14:43Sam Parr?

  Redneck fitness food.

• 14:46Shaan Puri?

  This should be your brand, a line of, of not that bad for you redneck snacks. It's like, it'll, it'll make you farm strong.

• 14:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Or do you know like PB dip? You know, I call it dip, but you know PB powder?

• 15:01Shaan Puri?

  The powder? Yeah.

• 15:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You get a spoon of that and you have

• 15:04Shaan Puri?

  Straight.

• 15:04Sam Parr?

  And you chuck it up on your, the top of your roof of your mouth and you suck on that thing for 60 minutes. I call it, uh, like fitness dip. So like, instead of like having like a fat lipper in, you just have a PB dip. You're just in your tongue, just rubbing against that, the, that dehydrated nut. Ooh, boy.

• 15:23Sam Parr?

  Ooh, boy. You want to have a good time? Put a little PB dip on the roof of your mouth.

• 15:29Shaan Puri?

  All right. We got our, we got our cold open for the episode.

• 15:33Sam Parr?

  By the way, let, let me show you one thing. You said something that I do religiously. I've just sent Ari a document that I, I just sent her one of the tabs. I have dozens of tabs on this. Ari, can you share your screen? So whenever I read a book, I have this Google doc that I've used since the year like 2010. All right. So check this out. Whenever I read a book, I do a few things. One, I make, whenever there's like a year and a money term or some type of milestone, I write it down in a sheet. And the reason why I write it in a sheet is because a lot of times when you're building a company or doing anything that's like really challenging, you, you'll read about someone else and you're like, that was easy.

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  And so I like to do timelines and you'll see like, okay, like they went four years with nothing happening. So for those listening, I have got a timeline of Coke Industries, which is like the largest privately held company in America. I read the biography of the family and I like did a timeline where every, everything major happened in their life. And then I converted the dollar amount into $2,019, which is when I made this particular one. And it's really fun to do because you could see that things took, like in this case, like 30 years.

• 16:43Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:44Sam Parr?

  And so if you like, uh, if you scroll all the way to the left, I did this with Kirk Kukorian, another one of the, a guy who I love. And I've, I, every biography I read, I, I create one of these.

• 16:56Shaan Puri?

  Just another man you love. Can I just point out a couple of things about this? What we're free sharing here that are just, just fantastic. It's just a peek into the mind. First of all, it's a Google sheet that's just called sheet, which is just a great title. Okay. Scroll over, Ari. Here's some of the milestones that Sam wrote down. All right. So he starts for Coke Industries. 1900 Fred Koch born, 1924. So 24 year gap, big break, finds mentor. Okay. So then it goes 1927, just a quick update, still broke. Then it goes 2019, 29, see success. 1931, big success with two G's.

• 17:38Shaan Puri?

  Just a big double G success right here.

• 17:43Shaan Puri?

  It's amazing.

• 17:44Sam Parr?

  And then 1940, he buys a company and that company, he buys it for $4 million.

• 17:50Shaan Puri?

  You also should just have pictures on here where it's them and the calves. And it's just your calves, just for reference, and you're just comparing calves. Cause I feel like, tell me that's not part of your research processes and looking at photos and judging their looks.

• 18:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, particularly the Koch brothers, because they're like these tall, uh, waspy guys. And I definitely am sizing myself up to them.

• 18:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. The, the, the total picture of success includes a picture for sure.

• 18:16Sam Parr?

  It's like tennis sweaters. It's like, oh, they're into tennis sweaters. Therefore I will wear tennis sweaters. But yeah, I definitely like two guys that are both six, two from the Midwest, with blonde hair, blue eyes, like we, there's definitely like a, there can only be one of us in this room.

• 18:34Shaan Puri?

  Dude, there's this girl who keeps going viral on Twitter and it's the same tweet she does every time. And she just goes, my dad goes to a bar with his friends every Friday and he makes a list of topics to discuss.

• 18:46Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 18:46Shaan Puri?

  And then she, she puts, she has a photo of him holding a printed out agenda. And I'll just read you one of them. Ted Perry's fun capital story shown on Fox News six. Next one, what's going on with the Bucks? Question mark. NFL overtime rules, take ball first or second? Question mark. Bahamas breezes. How close is too close to an alligator? Do you think people that throw garbage out of their car window are the same people that don't pick up their dog poop? When walking through my subdivision? And then it read at the bottom and goes, please be on time. As you can see, we have another week of a packed agenda. And it goes super viral every time. There's like a hundred thousand likes. And I think everybody who sees this is like, yeah, that's part of the winning life. I'd like to go to the bar with my friends every Thursday and have like an agenda that we print out and we talk about it while

• 19:31Shaan Puri?

  wearing our New Balances.

• 19:33Sam Parr?

  Do you know who does this? And he's not joking.

• 19:36Shaan Puri?

  I already know because you're talking about a legend, a social legend, and I know it has to be Nick Ray. Tell me I'm wrong. Is it not Nick Ray?

• 19:43Sam Parr?

  The second time I hung out with Nick Ray, we went to a bar called Lazarus. Sarah and I came and he goes, hey, guys, I would love to hang out. It's our second time hanging out. I thought it'd be nice to have an agenda so we could stay on track. And there was a 13-point agenda list where it was like, ask Sarah about her job, figure out how that's going on, explain my dating life and get opinions from it. Like, it was, and we stuck to that agenda and he took notes.

• 20:10Shaan Puri?

  Was it thrilling? Because I think I'm gonna absolutely start doing this.

• 20:13Sam Parr?

  It was thrilling. You know how like, you know how like-

• 20:17Shaan Puri?

  Was it the agenda that was great? Or the fact that he had an agenda that was great? Which, which of the two was greater?

• 20:22Sam Parr?

  Here's why. So, look, in a world, everyone wants to be a tough guy. It feels good to be a leader, but you want to know something. Everyone likes getting led. And like, we'd like the assertive person.

• 20:34Shaan Puri?

  I'm just a leader who loves being led. That's me. That's on my LinkedIn.

• 20:39Sam Parr?

  I like leading some stuff, but then there's other times where it's like, just tell me what to do. And small talk is one of those things that no one just like tells you what to do. And when there's an assigned leader who has something outlined for small talk, I'm just like, yes, sir, I'll do whatever you like me to do. And thank you, may I have another, sir? Like, it's like the best way to go about doing stuff. And that's what Nick Ray does.

• 21:01Shaan Puri?

  Okay. By the way, that's how we do this podcast, actually. We both bring some agenda items and then we discuss in bullet point form.

• 21:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think it's good. And he's done that for years. And it's awesome.

• 21:13Shaan Puri?

  All right, we're gonna normalize having conversational agenda, hangouts with an agenda.

• 21:21Shaan Puri?

  I have a business that's pretty cool. Can I tell you about it? Here's my, here's my opening for this business. Sam, I found the business that you should have started instead of wasting your goddamn time with the hustle.

• 21:32Sam Parr?

  Okay, I like that.

• 21:33Shaan Puri?

  So you built the hustle. And if you recall, one time you came to me hat in hand, absolutely begging for an investment. You needed the money and you got down on your knees. And you said, please, sir, invest in my company. And I looked at it, I flipped through the business plan like it was a flip book. And I just said, no, thanks.

• 21:55Sam Parr?

  No, that's not what you said. You said, look, Sam, you're coming to a knife fight with a knife. I don't even want you to come to this knife fight with a gun. I want you to come to this knife fight with a magic fucking wand. And that clearly-

• 22:10Shaan Puri?

  And then I turned away on my heel with a dramatic spin and I left the room.

• 22:15Sam Parr?

  And then you tried to pull the door to open, but it was really a push door.

• 22:20Shaan Puri?

  Totally blew it at the end, did not stick the landing.

• 22:23Sam Parr?

  Like you clearly had just read that on a, whatever the equivalent was of Twitter. And you're like, that is now my line.

• 22:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Back when I was like, I had it written on the inside of my palm. And I was like, Peter Thiel says this magic wand, they say that to somebody, totally owns them no matter what they're doing. So, but you know, the reality was I looked at the business and you were like, here's what I'm doing. I am creating a media company. So every day we're going to write the news. So every, every day you had to recreate your product.

• 22:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it sucks.

• 22:53Shaan Puri?

  Oh, that sucks. It's like, do you get any, is there any benefit of all the work you did in the last three months? It's like, ah, not really. We got to recreate it again. We got to bake that cake every morning. Okay, sounds good. And then you said, and then I was like, cool. So then people pay you certainly for the service that you're doing. No, it's free. Oh, okay. But then the advertising, then we have to do a separate business, basically to a separate customer selling advertisers. I was like, okay, but certainly they're on retainer and it's going to be recurring revenue that's going to stack up. You're like, no, no, no, they're just gonna, if they feel like advertising, they will. If they don't, they don't. Every month we're going to start back at zero.

• 23:29Sam Parr?

  Yep.

• 23:29Shaan Puri?

  And I thought, damn, this is a tough business to win. And that's when I hit you with the knife and the knife fight and blah, blah, blah.

• 23:34Sam Parr?

  Which it is tough-ish to do well.

• 23:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And by the way, the best punchline of the whole thing is five years later, after you successfully sold the business and got rich doing it, I then copied your business model and did the same thing for crypto and was like, came back to you, basically being like, how do you, what was the business plan again? How do you do this? So that's the end of that story. Now, here's a better business that somebody created five years ago that has the following profile. They don't recreate the product every day. People pay them for the product on a subscription. It's in a hobby that you love doing, and it's a thing you were doing anyways for free. So I think you would have been great at it. And also, it uses your gift, which is making things simple, summarizing things, making them easier to

• 24:19Shaan Puri?

  understand, saving somebody time doing it. And this person has bootstrapped this business to 200 million in revenue with 30% profit margins.

• 24:27Sam Parr?

  I have no idea. What is this?

• 24:29Shaan Puri?

  It's called Headway App, and it is a book summary app. So this guy in the Ukraine created this company where he takes popular books and he summarizes them. And the promise is basically, instead of reading the book, I already read it, I summarized it, I could tell you main point one, I could tell you main point two, I could tell you the main point three, and in under 15 minutes, you can get the gist of what's in this book. You'll get, you know, the big ideas, and you'll get them explained to you. You could either read it, or we have AI that turns it into audio, and you can just listen to like a 15 minute summary of this book. And we've done it for 1,500 of the most popular books. And people

• 25:09Shaan Puri?

  pay a simple 12, 13 bucks a month for this, and this has become an absolute juggernaut. So I did not think that these book summary apps could get this big, but damn if that's impressive. 200 million in ARR, 30% profit, built this thing out of the Ukraine.

• 25:27Sam Parr?

  They just raised funding at a $2.3 billion valuation.

• 25:32Shaan Puri?

  Right, right.

• 25:33Sam Parr?

  Holy crap.

• 25:33Shaan Puri?

  So like, you could have done that instead. And I think you would have been great at this. By the way, you know, here's why I said that this, this like you could have done this. Because when I went and looked at their ads, right? The way, the way this business grows, they run ads on Tik Tok, on Facebook, whatever. And the hook of their ads, tell me if this sounds familiar. My boss thinks I'm a genius, but, and thinks I read 150 books a year. But actually, I just use Headway.

• 25:59Sam Parr?

  That's their ad?

• 26:01Shaan Puri?

  It's not word for word. I just wanted to really bait you with that one. But it's basically the, it's basically the gist of their ads. It's the same value.

• 26:08Sam Parr?

  I invented that ad. I invented that ad. I stole it from someone else and I invented that ad. That's my ad.

• 26:18Shaan Puri?

  That's the ad, that's my ad that I took.

• 26:21Sam Parr?

  Yes, I stole that from the skim and I invented that ad.

• 26:25Shaan Puri?

  Their ad is a little bit more like, um, it'll be, the average CEO reads 52 books a year. How many do you read? Right, so they're basically making you feel like a shitty CEO. Or it'll say, everyone thinks I went to Harvard with the amount of books that I know. But actually, I just use Headway. Or it'll be, hit meet the app that all the intellectuals are using. It's stuff like that. And so, um, those are the sort of hooks that they use to get people to do this where they're not saying, here's a book summary. They're basically saying, be a smarter person and be seen as a smart person. Because you seem so well read and here's your hack to seeming so well read.

• 27:03Sam Parr?

  So what's interesting is, um, thrive.

• 27:06Shaan Puri?

  By the way, we should do this for the podcast. It's like, my boss thinks I'm kind of retarded, but know a lot about business. The secret is, I just listened to my first million.

• 27:15Sam Parr?

  But I still sound a little retarded.

• 27:19Shaan Puri?

  My boss is so impressed that I know all these numbers, but then he wonders.

• 27:25Sam Parr?

  But then he fact checks me.

• 27:30Shaan Puri?

  My boss is wondering why I have pepperoni in my mouth.

• 27:35Sam Parr?

  This is ridiculous. These guys, so they raised money from Thrive, which Thrive is a big VC investor in ChatGPT. Are they not worried that ChatGPT just does all this?

• 27:47Shaan Puri?

  Well, they're themselves using AI for a bunch of stuff. Like, if you go look at a bunch of their ads, they're all like AI-generated ads. I think, you know, businesses like this that are like super laser-focused on one thing, you know, even if you can use ChatGPT to generate a summary, that's not the same thing. And I think, you know,

• 28:05Sam Parr?

  Dude, they're not even old. They started in 2019.

• 28:09Shaan Puri?

  I know, right? Super impressive. They also have done this other app. So there's this one ad that was like so frustratingly good. It made me pissed that I didn't think of this. It's this simple-looking puzzle. Tell me if you've seen this. I don't know. I don't know how much you use these. Like, it's like in a lot, a lot of games, this ad pops up or TikTok. It's this like, it's like a maze. Imagine a maze. And it's like you're, you start on this dot, you have to get across without picking up your pen. And it just shows somebody trying to do it and they're messing up.

• 28:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:38Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, try, see if you can solve this. Only 5% of people, you know, can solve this, but 50% of fifth graders can do it or whatever. And you're like, ah, I gotta see if I could do this. You download the app. By the way, that puzzle is actually impossible. If you, there's, there is no solution to it. They just put it in. They put a thing that looks simple, but you can't figure it out. You can't figure it out because it is actually an optical illusion. It's actually impossible.

• 29:00Sam Parr?

  But is that their game?

• 29:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they have this other app called Impulse that's done like 70 million downloads. And it's a brain training app. And the, the framing of that is basically keep your brain sharp with these little like mini, mini mind games. Um, and like, you know, my mom likes a lot of these things because she feels like, oh, I'm getting older. I should, I should have these little things on my phone that, um, you know, keep me sharp. So she plays Sudoku and crossword and she, she downloads apps like this.

• 29:28Sam Parr?

  So their skill set, they're just like crazy good inter marketers, uh, internet marketers and really good, uh, like creating uh, apps that retain.

• 29:38Shaan Puri?

  Apps that first and foremost get you to convert and become a subscriber and then yeah, obviously, you know, the retention helps. Uh, and you know, this guy talks about it. He frames it as micro learning. He's like, micro learning is this, how do you get somebody to spend five to 15 minutes a day getting smarter? What if you use your phones to get smarter instead of just to waste your time? And so he makes it sound like this grand noble mission. And at the same time on the backend, it's just this ruthless funnel that is like,

• 30:04Sam Parr?

  Buy now, buy now, buy now.

• 30:06Shaan Puri?

  Get the download, convert, convert, convert, convert, convert. And like, that's the game. That's what you gotta be.

• 30:09Sam Parr?

  We, uh, we talked about, um, was it, remember the period app or flow? Were they, were they Ukrainian as well?

• 30:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So

• 30:18Sam Parr?

  Dude, these guys all have like a, a crew.

• 30:20Shaan Puri?

  There's like these Eastern European app makers where they have these family of apps. And you go look at their website and they're like, no, raise no funding. And then they'll have like 300 employees. And then their apps will do like, you know, a hundred million downloads a year. And it's like, based out of Kiev or whatever, right? Like, this just seems to be a pattern. I think there's like a, just a very high density of talent that knows how to build this specific type of company.

• 30:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're just like all homies and they all have this like, I don't know, this idea of like, it feels fun to get one over on someone, but then they're like, all right, if we're gonna have that attitude, we should also like provide value. So we stick around for a long time, which is like when every internet marketer ever has. They're like, I'm gonna do something shady and they win. And they're like, oh, but it'd be a lot cooler if the customers came back to us or if we didn't have to refund people constantly. So let's just like do the shady stuff, do it for something.

• 31:10Shaan Puri?

  Like if I could tell my mom what I do without shame.

• 31:13Sam Parr?

  Which is like what every internet marketer ever has done. Um, but this is badass. Uh, how'd you find this?

• 31:19Shaan Puri?

  How did I find this? Actually, that's another good story. Have you seen this Twitter account? Arthur Rock?

• 31:25Sam Parr?

  Well, Arthur, I know that Arthur Rock was

• 31:28Shaan Puri?

  No, it's a, it's like a parody account. It's Arthur Rock is his, his account. Have you not seen this? This thing is amazing.

• 31:35Sam Parr?

  How do you spell Arthur?

• 31:37Shaan Puri?

  Bro, just you try to spell Arthur and naturally and just see what happens. You'll land exactly at the right thing. It's A R F U R.

• 31:45Sam Parr?

  Got it.

• 31:45Shaan Puri?

  Rock.

• 31:47Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so it's this guy who's this like anonymous, he's like this anonymous VC. And what he did is he just created this Twitter account where he just tweets out numbers from companies that are raising money or trying to sell. And he's just like leaks information. And so he's this, this is a giant leak. And so he tweeted out the numbers for a headway app. But if you just look at his feed, his feed is like pure signal. Cause it literally just be like, uh, it'll be like post hog 13 million in ARR, growing 2x year over year. They're currently raising.

• 32:20Sam Parr?

  Crazy.

• 32:21Shaan Puri?

  It'll be like, or like somebody will be like, you know, the founder will be like, we're, we're pleased to announce that we raised our series C from Excel. It's a huge milestone and we feel so validated. And then he'll just tweet out, he'll read, quote tweet it, it'll just go 50 million ARR as of November, up 1.8x year to date. Congrats.

• 32:39Sam Parr?

  Or there's like another one that like, they raised that $400 million post. They did $6 million in 2024. Congrats.

• 32:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, how amazing is this? This is like the best Twitter account, right?

• 32:52Sam Parr?

  This is really good. And you know what's funny? And we've seen this again and again and again. These meme people, anonymous meme jokers are like right a lot. You know what I mean? It's sort of like how, um, Esquire, or what was it called? Uh, American, what, what was the tabloid, uh, that like is in the grocery store? Inquirer, National Enquirer?

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the National Enquirer.

• 33:17Sam Parr?

  Like they say a lot of bullshit, but they also like predicted that the Bill Clinton scam, uh, or Bill Clinton stuff before everyone, or like the John Edwards affair. Uh, and so like, I do love following these anon accounts. This guy's great. Yeah. Dude, he says hollow, a Catholic prayer app doing 60 million ARR, growing, uh, 3.5x a year.

• 33:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like he did, and he'll also post updates. So in May, he'll be like, Suno, the AI music app just closed around 15 million ARR in the first year. Like to be invested at 500 million post. Congrats. And then he'll, then, you know, that was May, and then in October, right? So like, you know, five months later, he just wrote at 40 million ARR now. This guy's just providing, I don't know, you're not, you're not as big of a like a basketball fan, but like in basketball, there's these two guys who were like famous on Twitter for just, like, they just have sources everywhere. So it'd be like Shams and it'd be Woj, and they would just always have intel. And there's all their entire Twitter feed is literally just inside info. It'd be like, you know, sources say Jimmy Butler wants trade. His list of teams that he wants to go to are these four. Or it'd be like, like during the NBA

• 34:22Shaan Puri?

  draft, like, you know, 45 seconds before every pick, they just say they're taking this guy. And it would just spoil the draft.

• 34:28Sam Parr?

  If I'm one of these Ukrainian guys, like, I don't have the skill set to do this. I'm not, uh, technical. But I wonder if you like, do you ever wonder, why aren't there more people just copying fast growing companies? Like, we'll just.

• 34:41Shaan Puri?

  There are. That happens a lot.

• 34:43Sam Parr?

  It doesn't.

• 34:43Shaan Puri?

  But I think your, I think your answer is actually pretty good, which is, why aren't there more? So actually, I think I answered your question wrong. I was like, no, some people do do that. And I think your question is actually correct, which is, why are more people doing this?

• 34:56Sam Parr?

  Cause like, I don't want to do this because I kind of have a reputation and I don't really want to do it. But if I was a little bit younger, and if I had the skill set, which I don't, uh, like if I see a company that's going at like 400X a year, which this guy does, he's like, here's some app that was only doing 5 million in revenue, but they're set to grow 4X. I'm like, yeah, just go to their website and copy that.

• 35:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not so easy, right? Like, you could copy a product that doesn't get you the customers. And so you have to not only copy the product, you have to figure out how they grow and be as good at growth as them.

• 35:29Sam Parr?

  You can figure that out.

• 35:31Sam Parr?

  You can use all this technology, like here's what their ads say. I'm just gonna do that exact same ad.

• 35:35Shaan Puri?

  You can, but you know, most people who have that ability, if you're, if you're that good, you're also able to create new things from scratch. And I think also what ends up happening is that a lot of things look similar, but they're, you know, they're 80% the same and they're 20% different. But that 20% difference is actually a huge difference, right? It's like, uh, if you've ever looked at, we were talking about flavors earlier. It's like the difference between two flavors is like a point one percent change in a certain, you know, certain chemical, but it'll change, you know, from vanilla. That's how, that's the difference between, you know, vanilla and, uh, you know, orange soda or whatever, right? It's like there's, it's not that big of a difference on the, on the whole, right?

• 36:18Shaan Puri?

  You're doing 80% the same, but it's 20% that's different. And so, you know, I actually advise this and talk a lot about this, which is, if you see something that's working, not as a company maybe, but like, let's say a trend or a business model, like, you know, let's say e-commerce or whatever. Try to figure out what's working better or worse in a category. And then, you know, if you're going to go into that category, you're probably going to end up, even if you're trying to be super original, you're probably going to end up with 80% of the things the same, because that's how business is. You're not a hundred percent different. Uh, but the key is to figure out what is your 20% difference going to be? And how, how well can you execute on that 20% innovation? Um, and I think that's a more humble, honest way of going about things versus, I think most people believe they're doing everything a hundred percent original and unique, and that's just not true, right?

• 37:03Shaan Puri?

  Like even, this is also for content or wisdom, right? Like how many truly original wise thing, you know? I love Naval, but how many of Naval's things are a hundred percent homegrown, not inspired by anything, not, not, not similar to anything else that was out there? Very, very rare, right? Like that's not how anybody does things. Tony Robbins talks about this. He's like, yeah, I, I learned under Jim Rohn and Jim learned, learned under Zig Ziglar or whatever. And like, it's the same school of thought, but like, me putting my twist on it is, is what makes all the difference. Then you have people like Rocket Internet, which are literally like pixel for pixel clones, but even they operate in different markets. So they'll be like, cool, we're building.

• 37:42Sam Parr?

  Amazon.

• 37:43Shaan Puri?

  You know, Amazon for, for Brazil or Thailand or whatever. And turns out, once you try to do that, you're going to like over time and a lot of things are going to end up different.

• 37:55Sam Parr?

  All right, let me tell you a story really quick about some investment thing that I heard about that I would never do, you would do, but it's a thrilling story.

• 38:04Shaan Puri?

  Okay, let me guess, it's obscure, overly complicated, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, too much risk, and we'll end up netting less than the S and P 500 in the long run.

• 38:16Sam Parr?

  No, this one, he came out on top, actually. So the story is this, first of all, like, I was just listening to Scott Galloway's podcast while I was driving somewhere. I think it was like over Christmas break and something happened at the very end of the podcast and I was with Sarah and I literally pulled over to the side of the highway and I was like, are you listening to this? And she's like, shut up. No. But I'm like, all right, but this is actually amazing.

• 38:41Shaan Puri?

  Can we get an instant replay on YouTube of your wheel diagram you just did? How big is your wheel? Did you're like literally driving a school bus? What was that?

• 38:49Sam Parr?

  It's like a ship.

• 38:50Shaan Puri?

  Arm fully out wide, like a tractor that you're driving.

• 38:53Sam Parr?

  It's a ship. I pulled the ship over and I literally had to sit down because she yells at me when I use my phone and I had to like type this out. So I had this note and remembered it. But Scott Galloway had Michael Lewis on. So Scott Galloway is an investor and podcaster. Michael Lewis is an amazing author, wrote about FTX's downfall and he was with Sam Bankman-Fried when this all happened. And so he, you know, he has a unique perspective. In the 45 minute part of this like 50 or 55 minute episode, Scott Galloway just mentioned something where he's like, yeah, I bought some of the bankruptcy claims against FTX. And Michael Lewis started talking about something else. And then Michael Lewis goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? You made a good investment where you bought the FTX claims?

• 39:37Sam Parr?

  What was that about? And Scott like just casually throws this out there, but the story's actually pretty amazing. So the background is this. So in 2022, FTX goes bankrupt because, oh, sorry, FTX goes bankrupt because SBF, Sam Bankman-Fried, he's over leveraged and he spent all the money and whatever. It didn't work out because of a bunch of different reasons. And because of that $10 billion in customer funds are lost, you know, they're just gone. And people are distraught. They're freaking out. But when a bankruptcy happens, one major thing happens, which is the person who had the money in FTX. So let's say I stored $1 million in FTX. I now am gonna have a claim against that company for $1 million.

• 40:20Sam Parr?

  So it's gonna go to court and we're gonna figure out, how do I get my money back somehow? And in a lot of cases, you get no money back. And so what happens is these kind of vultures, I mean, I don't know what you want to call them, but they come along and they go, hey, FTX owes you $1 million. You're probably not gonna get that back. You might get that back, but I'll tell you what. You have a million dollar claim. I will buy that claim from you for 100 grand. So you get the 100 grand today, whereas the other outcomes are potentially you eventually get nothing. Or maybe you'll get a little bit more, like 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand. But it's gonna be in like four or five years and you don't even know for sure. So just let me buy your claim. And so sure, you could do that. So it creates a market when that happens. But Scott Galloway, he's kind of a, he's kind of a strange guy.

• 41:05Sam Parr?

  And he had this quote on this podcast where he's like, when I see fire, I run towards it. Because when, because I've known enough, seeing a lot of bankruptcies, that when there's, when a bankruptcy happens, there's opportunity. And so Scott Galloway, he reads the paperwork about the claim or about the bankruptcy. And what he notices is that Sam Bankman-Fried, unlike a lot of different Ponzi schemes, a lot of times with Ponzi schemes, they're spending this money on coke, hookers, planes, like party shit. SBF maybe did a little bit of that, but you want to know what he was real degenerate about? Venture investing. He loved investing in companies. And one of the companies, he invested in a few, and I think a lot of them didn't work.

• 41:49Sam Parr?

  But one of the big ones that he invested in was he invested in Anthropic, which is like the number two or the number three best AI company. And Scott looks at the numbers and they don't actually say what the valuation was of what, of what the, they didn't, they don't say the valuation of Anthropic when Sam Bankman-Fried invests in them. But what they say is that he invested $500 million. And Scott does a little math and he's like, I think the valuation was around. Five billion dollars, meaning SBF owns 10% of this company. And this was happening two years ago. He's like, I think Anthropic is going to raise money at a $10 billion valuation.

• 42:29Sam Parr?

  And then eventually one day at a $60 billion valuation, which by the way, as of today, there are rumors that that's happening. And because of that, I think I can buy a claim for 20%, so a million dollar claim for $200,000. And if you do all the math, I think I could actually triple or quadruple my money based just off this venture return, let alone if we ever are going to claw back any of the crypto that was lost. Well, turns out a few things happened. One, Bitcoin exploded. And because of that, well, not because of that, but they were able to recap or claw back a lot of the money and Bitcoin exploded. And so a lot of these people are going to be getting back a lot more money than they actually had in there because the money,

• 43:14Sam Parr?

  you know, the Bitcoin was just sitting there growing. And also Sam Bankman's freed investments, one of them killed it, knocked it out the park. And so I think now the people who lost money, they're getting something like 125% of their money back, which is not bad for a Ponzi scheme that you are a victim of. Scott said the numbers. He goes, I bought $250,000 worth and I sold, I bought a million dollar claim for 250 and I sold it for 90% of the million. So he like tripled his money. And Scott like goes through the story and he explains like his reasoning on this podcast. And it was amazing, to be honest, like how on earth you could find value in this way.

• 43:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's, that's super impressive. I actually happened to hear this segment too and had the same. Yeah, I wasn't driving a bus, but I had the same sort of like neck snap reaction where I was like, what? What's funny is you said a couple of things, but I don't think. You said a couple of things, but I think we have to correct a couple of things. One, it wasn't a Ponzi scheme.

• 44:18Sam Parr?

  No, I meant like a lot.

• 44:20Shaan Puri?

  He stole customer funds.

• 44:21Sam Parr?

  I didn't, I guess I wasn't meaning that this was a Ponzi scheme, but it's in that category of like schemes where, you know, a lot of people are like, how do I get my money back?

• 44:29Shaan Puri?

  Scam, you lost your money. Yeah, exactly. The other thing is that he was saying, you know, I valued FTX stake in Anthropic at four billion, but that's not really what happened. So they sold their stake for 800 million. So I think he put in 400 or 500 million and they sold it for 800 or 900 million in the liquidation. And so it wasn't the Anthropic investment that really paid off.

• 44:50Sam Parr?

  He was using the Anthropic investment as a downside protection where he was like doing the math where he was like, all right, that gets me, that gets my investment up just a little bit to like a safe zone. But then what else can there be?

• 45:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. So I, but I think his math was wrong. So he said in the thing, he goes, I valued the Anthropic. Basically, based on the Anthropic stake, I thought it was worth four billion. The total claims were nine billion. So I thought Anthropic was giving me 44 cents on the dollar for every dollar of claims that I would buy. Claims were selling for 22 cents on the dollar. So he says, to me, there's the easiest trade I ever made. But the reality is that the Anthropic stake ended up being worth less than one billion, right? So it would have been 10 cents. So he even, he got it right, even though his logic was wrong. And we had Shield on the other day and he basically said his two best investments kind of worked out the same way. He's like, I bought Nvidia in 2017 because I thought that crypto mining was going to take off.

• 45:46Shaan Puri?

  And Nvidia took off, but not because of crypto mining at all. It turned out it was AI. And you know, kind of like, I was wrong, but I was, I got massively right. He goes, same thing with Bitcoin. He's like, I bought Bitcoin early on because I thought it was going to be this fast peer-to-peer transfer thing. Turns out that was all wrong, but Bitcoin went up anyways because of this other store of value gold, you know, digital gold use case. And so I think what ended up happening is that he made a great investment, but I think his underwriting was wrong. I think that's one of the hard things about doing this, like what up, you know, the smart money investing is that. When you're right, you feel like such a goddamn genius. And when you're wrong, you chalk it up to, you know, whatever you sort of either mentally block it out. You either say you were wrong or you think maybe one of your assumptions got a little off.

• 46:31Shaan Puri?

  But this, there's also this weird state where you can end up right, even though your underwriting was wrong. And you conflate kind of like luck and skill. And I guess the question is, I guess like, that's one of my, my observations I've had in this process of like, as I do my own investing and to get some things right, get something wrong, I talk to other people. It's very humbling to realize how much of this, even your wins aren't your, aren't yours. They're not your wins because you got so much of it wrong.

• 46:58Sam Parr?

  Well, and there's another learning that I had, which is finding value in crap. Like this story, like this was the worst, like this was the worst asset, the worst company. Like you don't want to touch this because A, it's like a scam. So like there's a no go there and B, it's like a reputational ruiner. Like who wants to be involved in this guy? And then it's like, I have so much better things to do. Why would I waste my time with this pile of shit? And what was interesting was seeing Scott walk through his reasoning on how he can still capture value from a horrible situation. And I thought that that was really intriguing because that is not how I tend to do things.

• 47:41Sam Parr?

  Like what do they say, uh, trying to, trying to catch a falling knife?

• 47:44Shaan Puri?

  Like, yeah.

• 47:45Sam Parr?

  When something's bad, it's just going to get worse and just stay away. But that's not always the case.

• 47:52Shaan Puri?

  Dude, when I went to Monish Prabhas' house and we've recorded that podcast together. We did the podcast and then at the end, he's kind of just like touring me around and I go to his desk where he works. I like seeing like literally where you sit when you work. I think the environment kind of tells a lot. And he has this placard on his desk, like the way you would have, like if you walk into a bank or whatever, it would be like the name tag of the, of the bank manager or something like that. But instead of a name on it, it just said, trouble is opportunity. And literally, he was reminding of he wanted this on his desk because in those moments where there's panic, where there's trouble, he wanted the reminder that trouble is opportunity.

• 48:34Shaan Puri?

  And not all trouble is opportunity, right? Like, one of his isms that he had took from Charlie Munger and Buffett is he puts things in what he calls the too hard pile. So he's like, yeah, you know, I look at 100 opportunities. I could probably tell you the three obviously good ones, and I could tell you the 10 obviously terrible ones. But then the other whatever 77, I'm, I just put in the too hard pile. And I'm sure some of them are really good. But I just throw things in the too hard pile when they're too hard. And so, for example, I was asked like, what's your thoughts on crypto? And he was like, well, I think there's a case for it. I think there's a case against. He's like, but I just don't do anything because I put it in the too hard pile. So I like, I don't need to win in that. It's too hard for me to figure out. So I'm not going to bother.

• 49:16Shaan Puri?

  And I think this, the concept of the too hard pile is so valuable because I used to be very black and white about everything, like either it's good or it's bad. And if I thought it could be good, I would smash my head against the wall trying to like, make it work. And if it was bad, it had to like, stand out as bad for me to like, to throw it away.

• 49:34Sam Parr?

  So you said 100 ideas.

• 49:36Shaan Puri?

  The story is, the story is this, he's at the, he's at a lunch with Warren Buffett. And he goes, Warren, I think one of your great gifts is you're a great judge of people. And he was talking about like, you know, Warren Buffett hired that guy Ajit, who like runs their insurance business. He's like, I just think you're a great reader, reader of people, judge of people. How do you do it? What's your secret? And he goes, I don't think I'm a great reader of people. And he's like, but I'm not trying to be humble. He goes, I just approach it differently. He goes, it pays to be a harsh grader when it comes to people. Meaning, the cost of being optimistic about somebody who turns out to not be great, to let them into your circle of friends, or to do business with somebody who turns out to not be great, is so costly that I just rule a bunch of people out. He goes, if you put me in a cocktail party, and you let me have five minutes with 100 people.

• 50:21Shaan Puri?

  In that five minutes, I could probably tell you the five people who are really outstanding. I could tell you the five people who are really lousy and I just don't want anything to do with them. They just obviously came off super bad, like in a five minute interaction. But then there's 90 people that I just can't make a judgment on in five minutes. And I, but he goes, so I just put them all in the bad pile. They're all the too hard to know pile. And so I just rule them out because it's not worth the brain damage to try to figure it out on a case by case basis. Just so you don't miss a good one, because the cost of a bad thing is worth way, cost me much more. Than missing out on a good thing, because there are more good things that I could just filter for. And I'll find those good things like over time, that'll be obviously good. I'll just focus on the obviously good things. And he does this with investing, he does this with people.

• 51:06Shaan Puri?

  And it's just a very useful heuristic, because I think most of us try to be, if there's a hundred, we try to be accurate at the hundred level. It's like, I want to have an accurate grade on all hundred. And I'll spend all my time on the hard to judge things and I'll get a lot of them wrong. But I'm trying to get them right and therefore I'm taking too much risk. Whereas his take is, don't take too much risk. Take the obviously good and act on it, obviously bad, throw them away and everybody else, put them in the too hard pile and ignore it.

• 51:32Sam Parr?

  Can I dumb this down? Let me explain why I'm a genius. When I go to a restaurant, there's like two columns of entrees. I start at the top and I skim down and the first one that I see that's a seven out of 10. I go, oh, that's it, menu over.

• 51:50Sam Parr?

  I don't look at the menu for the rest of the meal. I don't second guess it. I just say, the first one that's a seven, that's, that's done. And I'm able to do that right away.

• 52:00Shaan Puri?

  Is this, does this apply to everything? Is this marriage advice? Is this, what other things does this apply to? Where does this not apply?

• 52:05Sam Parr?

  I mean, yeah, I think like it could apply to marriage. Like the idea of like settling is like good. Like you settle for something that's pretty good and you can like make it great. I don't know, like, is there any like data on like Indian couples who have been?

• 52:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like arranged marriages have like the same quote, quote, success rate as like American marriages, which are like involve dating and selection and courtship. And then eventually, you know, engagement and then marriage versus like, the way that Indian couples do it is very much the menu. That you scan the listings.

• 52:37Sam Parr?

  Like that'll do.

• 52:37Shaan Puri?

  Engineer, good family, full set of teeth, seven out of 10, let's go.

• 52:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 52:43Shaan Puri?

  I will see you at the altar for the first time.

• 52:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 52:48Sam Parr?

  No, I, um, I, uh, I just think that's how I order. Like, I've done that for years. It's just, I just don't want, I want less choice. And I think what Warren Buffett is actually saying is similar, which is like, I know for certain that these three are fine enough, therefore I don't care about the rest.

• 53:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You know that book, um, the Mark Manson book, Settle Art of Not Giving an F? Uh, like, I think that book, it got so popular that it sort of got written off. You know what I mean? Like, do you ever hear a smart person being like, man, I learned so much from this book, The Settle Art of Rocket? Like, it's not like, it's not like a cool intellectual thing to reference. Because it's pop, it's like pop.

• 53:24Sam Parr?

  So popular.

• 53:25Shaan Puri?

  It's mainstream. It's like if I'm like, oh, I really like Justin Bieber's music. It's like, okay, what? That does like a low status thing to, to sort of say. But there, you know, he brings up one good point in the book. The book is basically around one point, which is, um, life is not about caring about everything or not caring about everything. It's about choosing, you know, assume you have a limited set of, you know, Fs to give in your pocket, like you got five to give. Choose wisely. Choose the things you're going to care about. So like, you know, the menu, you, you just don't have to care to get that right. And that's kind of like the Warren Buffett, like you could just throw a bunch of things that is too hard pile and ignore them. Um, and then like, there may be a few decisions where actually getting it right really, really matters. And then you have enough bandwidth to actually care about those things.

• 54:10Shaan Puri?

  Cause you're not caring about everything.

• 54:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I think that's good shit. What do you want to do now?

• 54:14Shaan Puri?

  I want to give you one other story. Have you heard this, uh, Bill Ackman story? Of his running into the fire when everybody else was running out story? The, his, his four hour investment decision. Do you know this?

• 54:25Sam Parr?

  Oh, man. I thought it was like literally a fire.

• 54:28Shaan Puri?

  Well, kind of. It was the 08 crisis, which I think to people on Wall Street felt like, you know, the, the giant fire.

• 54:35Sam Parr?

  Oh, you mean Bill Ackman, the famous Twitter influencer? He invests?

• 54:42Sam Parr?

  Wait, he's an investor?

• 54:44Shaan Puri?

  We're joking. I hope you're still coming on later. All right. So he tells the story of it's 08, the financial crisis happening, banks are failing, like Bear Stearns fails, and then this other bank is going to fail. And people don't know what's going to happen, widespread panic. And the bank Wachovia was on the brink. And basically, what he did was he did a four, he's like, I had four hours. I spent four hours just looking at the business of Wachovia and came to a decision in four hours that the panic was overblown and that Wachovia would be saved and that Wells Fargo, which ended up buying Wachovia was, you know, far healthier than the market believed in that

• 55:24Shaan Puri?

  moment of panic. And so he made a huge investment and it was like, you know, one of his most lucrative investments ever. And it was a four hour decision. And it was made at a time of extreme panic, when trouble was opportunity. And when everybody else was just running out, you know, screaming, he was calm and basically looked at the situation and assessed the risk return differently, which is sort of like what you're talking about with the Scott Galloway, when, when FTX just feels taboo in every way, and it feels like, you know, the worst possible situation. And he's like, cool, it's the worst possible situation at a price. And there's a price for everything. And the price, you know, for him to buy those claims at 22 cents on the dollar turned out to be the right price.

• 56:05Sam Parr?

  Dude, Bill Ackman's also like 6'4", I think, which is pretty cool. We should create an index for CEOs above 6'2". And I bet it'd do all right.

• 56:19Shaan Puri?

  All right. So he bought, let's see, 178 million shares at $3.15 a share. So he spent $560 million after four hours of thinking. And his estimate was that it was going to be worth more than double that. And the next week, Wachovia bought it at about $7 a share. So he basically doubled 500 million in a week.

• 56:44Sam Parr?

  That's insane. All right. Well, that's cool. Bill Ackman's great. All right. Great story.

• 56:49Shaan Puri?

  Great story. All right.

• 56:51Sam Parr?

  I think that's a pretty good podcast. What do you say?

• 56:53Shaan Puri?

  I think that was alright.

• 56:55Sam Parr?

  Alright, that's the pod.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  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 days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.