The Total Man Lifestyle Explained & Two Of The Best NBA Players' Backstories

Episode 463: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about the Total Man Lifestyle, how to make money on OnlyFans, the backstory of two NBA Finals players, and more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That ----- Show Notes: (05:00) - Andrew Tate and The Total Man Lifestyle (22:50) - How to Deal With Woke (35:00) - How people actually make money on OnlyFans (42:55) - Pinkertons and Private Security (52:15) - Jimmy Butler's Backstory (55:10) - Nikola Jokic's Backstory (01:00:45) - FloSports and Minor Sports ------ Links: * The Light Phone * DuckDuckGo * Andy Frisella * Pinkerton * Deep Sentinel * Bannerman * FloSports * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ 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. ----- Additional 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?

  What else is traits of the total man? The total man does not get caught up in BS drama. The total man does not act like a wussy. So when things, you know, like David Goggins is like, I broke my foot. Good. I'm finishing this hundred mile run like, and the stories they collect and pride themselves on are not about lifestyle balance. Are not about, like, someone came over to my house the other day and they, she said this to my wife. She goes, it's okay to not be okay. And I go, total man would never say it's okay to not be okay. It's your lifestyles.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road. Let's travel, never look.

• 0:43Shaan Puri?

  You're turning into Sasha Fierce with that?

• 0:46Sam Parr?

  Trying to calm down. All right. We're live. I don't know who Sasha Fierce is, but I bet she's amazing.

• 0:51Shaan Puri?

  It's Beyonce. When she goes on stage, she has a stage character. She calls Sasha Fierce. She gets into that mode. So no matter how she was before going on stage, she's like, that wasn't, I'm a new person now and I'm doing my thing that I do with this.

• 1:05Sam Parr?

  It's hard.

• 1:06Shaan Puri?

  That's you. When you drink your Topo Chico, you take a big swig of that and you become Sam Fierce.

• 1:12Sam Parr?

  Where do you want to go from here? You drive.

• 1:14Shaan Puri?

  I got a couple of things that I want to talk to you about. So I think, I think this episode is not going to be for this, for the faint of heart. I think it's not going to be for the sensitive. I want to talk to you about a concept that I've seen, two concepts that I've seen.

• 1:28Sam Parr?

  The title, the title of this episode is going to be, I'm not racist, but.

• 1:35Shaan Puri?

  It's not illegal, right?

• 1:39Sam Parr?

  Like, I'm not, I'm not trying to be sexist, but that's what this, this episode is going to be.

• 1:43Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, so let me tell you something. So I'm doing this workshop that is clearly not a webinar today, right after this with our boy Nick Huber. And.

• 1:55Sam Parr?

  How many people signed up?

• 1:56Shaan Puri?

  Can you say? Take a guess. Take a guess how many people signed up for a webinar.

• 2:00Sam Parr?

  Hundreds?

• 2:02Shaan Puri?

  5,000 people have signed up for this.

• 2:04Sam Parr?

  No shit, really?

• 2:06Shaan Puri?

  Your boy pulls weight, I think is one conclusion, but the second conclusion is, I saw, I got to see up close and personal how Nick marketed this thing. So Nick does something I call mob marketing. He basically angers the mob.

• 2:22Sam Parr?

  Nick who?

• 2:23Shaan Puri?

  Nick Huber. Um, and he's on Twitter, he's at Sweaty Startup and he's got a big following, couple hundred thousand followers. And some people love him and a lot of people hate him. He's one of our only friends, like we have this group chat of people who all got big on Twitter. He's the only one of us, I think, that gets like death threats on a daily basis.

• 2:42Sam Parr?

  Dude, his home address gets posted all the time.

• 2:43Shaan Puri?

  People will post his home address, they'll post pictures of his wife, they'll talk about how he's evil. They'll post on LinkedIn separately, not even tagging him the next day, being like, ah, couldn't sleep at night, just thinking about how much this bothered me, what this guy said. And he'll say things that definitely ruffle feathers. He does it, I would say it's some overlap. I can't decide, you know, it's hard to get into the mind of like, you know, the Joker in Batman.

• 3:09Sam Parr?

  What's an example post?

• 3:10Shaan Puri?

  It's like somebody wants to, so he'll be like,

• 3:13Sam Parr?

  I've never met someone who has purple hair and also has their life together.

• 3:16Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I'm 0 for 8. And so it's like, some people think it's funny. Some people secretly kind of nod along, but they'll stay quiet about it. And then a bunch of people are like, dude, what are you saying here? And they're offended or they're like offended on behalf of somebody else. And then he'll do that again, he'll be like, um, you know, he'll, he'll say, I run my company.

• 3:40Shaan Puri?

  I have, you know, 20 people that are making $5 an hour in the Philippines and it's the best decision I made. Hiring my, my international staff is, is been, you know, an absolute game changer. I'm never hiring entitled Americans who care about A, B, and C again. You know, whatever. And then people are like, You're what? Are you anti-American? And then they're like, wait, $5 an hour in the Philippines? Do you feel good taking advantage of this labor? And he's like, well, you know, I'm paying them double what they were making before this. Otherwise, they wouldn't take this job. I'm not forcing anyone into anything, but okay. If that, if you wanna protect these people who like this job, okay, sure.

• 4:19Sam Parr?

  But the point is, is he posts up that he knows.

• 4:21Shaan Puri?

  He knows Ruffles feathers. He takes a very polarizing approach to it. And I would say in our world, in the business world, this is not common. Elon kinda does it, but not really. And he's the only, he's the only one I could think of that's like, maybe there's a bunch of other examples. But on the, on the business side, it's not that common. And the political side, you see it, right? Trump on the political side.

• 4:45Sam Parr?

  Trump did it before. He, he was doing it as a business person.

• 4:48Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think it was, I don't know, maybe it was because his whole business career was kind of pre-social media. So it's hard to say, right? Like, I think he always was this guy, but you know, when you do it in dinner parties, it's very different than doing it out loud on Twitter. Where anybody anywhere in the world can follow you and hate you.

• 5:03Shaan Puri?

  Tucker Carlson is like this. All, all of the like kind of media pundits that get really big, like Hannity and whatever. They take a very polarizing view on things. Ben Shapiro, right? And then you have Andrew Tate. And this kind of leads me into a, so first I kind of noticed this mob marketing tactic. I was like, this is very effective.

• 5:21Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if I would wanna do it. It sounds like it, you know, is a lot of like kind of firefighting.

• 5:29Shaan Puri?

  And I've been able to make it work without doing it. So I don't, I don't really intend to go do this, but it is one tactic that does work. The, the other thing that I've noticed with this is it ties in this idea I call total man. I think total man is a new lifestyle that is popping up. And I'd like to tell you about it. So here's the idea with total man.

• 5:48Sam Parr?

  Is this a trademark phrase?

• 5:50Shaan Puri?

  I tried to buy the domain. It's taken. I'd like to own this domain.

• 5:55Shaan Puri?

  And I think that this is going to be, is either already is or going to be the next big kind of lifestyle brand trend. It's whoever owns this total man thing. I think Andrew Tate kind of did it. So I'm a little bit late to the, to the game here. But basically, if you look at the following individuals, David Goggins, Joe Rogan.

• 6:15Shaan Puri?

  Jaco Willink, Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, even Nick Huber to an extent. They all subscribe to this like total man lifestyle. What is the total man lifestyle? So here. Did I get, did I get left off that bullet point? You, you are, you're like half of them. Like I think, I think you definitely, you're not total man, you're half man, but you might be. 2% milk. Yeah, you might be trying to get to that, to that level. Okay. So here's, so my trainer even said this, he's like, he's like, I'm just trying to live the qual, like I want to be a quality man. And I want to have this lifestyle. And I thought, quality man, that's a good phrase. I said, let me just sharpen that a little bit. Total man. I said, what do you mean by that? He goes, he's like, I just want to have my finances like set. I want to have, I want to be wealthy.

• 6:59Shaan Puri?

  I want to, I want to be fit. Like I don't want to be out of shape. I don't think it's cool to be out of shape. I'm going to push myself to be in phenomenal shape.

• 7:09Shaan Puri?

  And you know, I found some other characteristics that he didn't say these, but basically somebody who's unapologetic. So you see this with Nick, when the Bob comes at him, he never apologizes or backs down. He pushes back. He can. Trump does the same thing. Andrew Tate does the same thing. They double down instead of backpedaling. So they're unapologetic. Why? Because they live by a code. I think you do that too. They live by a code. It's an internal code and the internal code can be a little bit flawed, like Andrew Tate says some wild stuff. But the fact that they have a code is actually quite admirable. I think people are attracted to somebody with a code because they themselves don't have a code. And so you, it's sort of like, life is easier when you're just around people who live by their code.

• 7:51Shaan Puri?

  What else is traits of the total man? The total man does not get caught up in BS drama. The total man does not act like a wussy. So when things, you know, like David Goggins is like, I broke my foot. Good. I'm finishing this 100 mile run like, and the stories they collect and pride themselves on are not about lifestyle balance. Are not about, like someone came over to my house the other day and they, she said this to my wife, she goes, it's okay to not be okay. And I go, total man would never say it's okay to not be okay. Lifestyles. Right? I think there's one lifestyle and so let me keep going. He knows what he wants out of life and then he has it.

• 8:31Shaan Puri?

  So it doesn't matter if what you want is a Bugatti and, you know, three model girlfriends. What matters is that you wanted it and you sort of whatever quote unquote manifested it. I think that's another trait of the of these people that do this total man lifestyle. And lastly, they have strong hobbies. Joe Rogan goes bow hunting. You know, Goggins does pull ups for fun. These people have strong hobbies and lastly, they are charismatic and they care about being charismatic. So to me, I think that you're going to see a bunch of mega influencers and a bunch of brands being built. Like in the same way that there's like right wing, conservative, like that became a lifestyle and an identity. And then a bunch of brands got built for that population.

• 9:16Shaan Puri?

  I think you're going to see a bunch of people, you're already seeing it with Andrew Tate and others, David Goggins and others, that are trying to do this total man lifestyle. And then build a bunch of products for other guys who want to be in this, want to be a part of this religion. And I think about this.

• 9:31Sam Parr?

  And this isn't anything, this isn't anything new. I'm reading like the biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger right now. And but, you know, he like.

• 9:38Shaan Puri?

  Something that somebody in the church of the total man would do is go read Arnold Schwarzenegger biography for fun.

• 9:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, he's, he's an eclectic person, but he was, you know, he was selling workout plans and things like that because people are like, oh, you're on the, he would, he would do these photo shoots in fitness magazines of him holding a surfboard on the beach in LA. And he, in the biography, he's like, I've never surfed in my life. Like I could barely swim. Look at me. Like, have you seen a bulldog swim? Like, it doesn't happen a lot. And like, he's like, you know, I don't really like, I'm not like that, but people wanted to look like him. They wanted to be around these hot girls. They wanted to live in LA and he would sell these plans. So of course, this isn't, isn't anything new. We're just seeing a different generation.

• 10:19Shaan Puri?

  Here's what I think is new. I have this belief that like almost everything that becomes a big trend is in response to the world being a certain status quo or the other way. It's a pendulum that swings. And so you had an era where it was like, the world was very conventional and traditional and blah, blah, blah. And then you start to see a bunch of unconventional, untraditional things. And this is people having different genders and pronouns and purple hair and all this stuff. And you see a big, a big movement in that direction. And then you see, um, like, I would say, therapy and empathy and all these words have never been more popular and amongst men and women. Um, and I think in

• 10:59Shaan Puri?

  response to that, I think there's an undercurrent of people who feel like it's all too soft. The world's getting too soft. We need hard men. We need, we need the total man. And, and so here's how I know it works. Everything I described is the opposite of toxic masculinity. It is basically, uh, being a man became something that got labeled as toxic masculinity. And now I think there's a bunch of people trying to take that back and be like, hell no, we embrace masculinity. And so that's what I see happening is people basically flipping that on its head and be like, I'm not, I'm not going to apologize for being manly. In fact, I'm going to double down on it. And then there's this wave of people who have been craving something like that. And I'll give

• 11:43Shaan Puri?

  you the example. I remember when Snapchat came out and I underestimated Snapchat at first. I thought, oh, disappearing photos for kids. And is this just for, you know, bleep pics? Like, you know, what, what is this? Is this, this is gonna be a real deal? What I underestimated was that Snapchat was the response. The pendulum had swung at when Snapchat came out, Facebook was basically at the peak of its powers. Um, or had like, sort of like was, was, uh, Facebook and Instagram were like at the top. And What Facebook and Instagram were, were every photo is public, every photo is permanent, every photo looks good and just trying to make you look, look cool. And what was Snapchat? It was the exact opposite. It was every photo is private, every photo is impermanent.

• 12:27Shaan Puri?

  And it lets, because of that, you get to be silly, you get to let your hair down, you get to just send goofy pictures instead of pictures that make you look cool. And so that, to me, the need for a product like Snapchat only be, only came out because the world had got so Instagram-ified, so Facebook-ified, where everything was public, permanent and, and, and pretty. And so I think that you see this, anytime you notice that the world goes in one direction, you could sort of anticipate that two or three years later, the counterculture response is going to be there. The opposite is going to become popular. And so this is like a way for me to get like, when I think about how to be ahead of the curve on trends, I start to think about what, what feels dominant today? And in three years, what would be the opposite?

• 13:09Shaan Puri?

  Because I think there's going to be an emergence of that counterculture. What do you think of this? Am I just, am I just doing fake astrology there, trying to piece things together?

• 13:17Sam Parr?

  Uh, no, your theory, I think is, is exactly right. You know, there's been things that I've been interested in, like, um, have you heard of the, the Lite Phone? It's L I T E phone.

• 13:25Shaan Puri?

  I, I looked into buying one because I, I crave that. Why? Because we're so, well, I guess explain what it is, but it's like, we're so heavy into our normal phones.

• 13:34Sam Parr?

  It's like a $300 phone, but it has the screen of a Kindle, so no colors. And I think you can only download, I think you can only do spot. I think it's just Spotify. I think it's just Google Maps and then phone calling. And you might be able to text, but you can only text like a Nokia. So you have to type in like, yeah, in order to see, you gotta hit one, three times.

• 13:54Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:55Sam Parr?

  And it's came out like maybe 10 years ago at this point, eight years ago, and it didn't really hit right away, but it's getting more and more, more popular. Another one that I've been preaching about forever, and it hasn't entirely taken off yet is DuckDuckGo. So DuckDuckGo is a search engine. It's just like Google, but it's, uh, you, you can't be tracked. And so if you Google DuckDuckGo internet searches, they actually have a graph and you can see like the number of searches per day and it's growing exponentially.

• 14:22Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So your theory, I think is totally right. I think, I think that what.

• 14:27Shaan Puri?

  Or whatever is going to know this. They're gonna be like, yeah, duh. Like when everything goes to skinny jeans, guess what's, guess what's coming back next?

• 14:34Sam Parr?

  Which is

• 14:34Shaan Puri?

  Bell bottoms and whatever the, you know, the baggy stuff, the high-waisted loose stuff or whatever.

• 14:40Sam Parr?

  But you have an issue. Here's a, here's a flaw with this premise, this particular one. It's not a flaw.

• 14:46Sam Parr?

  You're stuck in this California bubble, man. You gotta, you gotta come to where I'm from in Missouri. I think like, you know, this is, this has been gaining momentum now for a little while. I think the difference is, is that

• 14:58Sam Parr?

  California types, you know, the people like if, if, if I'm from like a place that's generally right of center. Now the left of center people I think are also craving a bit more than before.

• 15:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 15:08Sam Parr?

  Before it was like, kind of cringey guys. And then they start evolving a little bit to being a little bit more holistic. And so, for example, do you know who Andy Frisella is?

• 15:20Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 15:22Sam Parr?

  So he's in our world and that technically we compete against him in the podcast charts, but I had no idea who he was. But he was the, he was the, he's the number one business podcast typically in the charts each week. And he talks a ton about like politics and stuff and I, I believe he's right of center, but it's, that's mostly a stereotype of just the way he looks and some of the phrasing that he uses. His podcast used to be called the MFN CEO.

• 15:45Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 15:46Sam Parr?

  And then I started listening to him and I'm like, oh, you're way more eclectic than I originally judged you for. And you're actually really interesting. And I think that that's what's happening is that there's people who don't entirely fit into the previous bubble of, of, of whatever I would stereotype these guys as being. Which is like lower IQ, big ass meatheads. It's like, oh no, you're actually way more thoughtful than I thought.

• 16:07Shaan Puri?

  Totally. Uh, yeah, I think that's, that's totally true. Um, so yeah, I think this, uh, I'm keeping an eye on this and I think that they've been very successful. Like David Goggins is kind of like stunningly popular now. And, um, same thing with Andrew Tate.

• 16:22Sam Parr?

  Well, so is Jaco.

• 16:23Shaan Puri?

  You saw Andrew, did you see Andrew Tate came out of prison and did an interview? Do you see this interview on BBC?

• 16:27Sam Parr?

  Just it ended mid-interview, didn't it?

• 16:30Shaan Puri?

  Well, there's the full thing got posted on like rumble or something like that like.

• 16:33Sam Parr?

  What hap- yeah, no, I didn't watch it.

• 16:35Shaan Puri?

  I mean, it's kind of a headache.

• 16:36Sam Parr?

  The thing about him is like, he started out like, if you listen to his messages, like, maybe 70% is like, good, like, you know, a man is someone who exercises, they get what they want. But then like, there's like 30% where I'm like, ah, bro, like, I don't want to be associated with that. Like that, you crossed the line there. But yeah, some of the stuff he says is awesome.

• 16:56Shaan Puri?

  So for example, yeah, the BBC, so it's a woman, she comes into his home and she's interviewing him. And she goes, you are, you know, how can you say these things that are, you know, toxic and dangerous and whatever? You've been named by the UK Commission Committee of whatever as the most dangerous man in the United Kingdom. He's like, dangerous man in the United Kingdom. He's like, he's like, what am I preaching that that is so dangerous? He's like, he's like, I don't, I'm Muslim. I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I tell people, don't drink, don't do drugs. I say, work out. I say, work hard, get rich. And you know, like, build yourself into a quality individual who lives by code. And he's like, you know, that's what I, that's what I preach. What is dangerous about that?

• 17:41Shaan Puri?

  And she's like, well, you said on an interview that if your wife does OnlyFans, you're entitled to have her earnings or whatever. Or like that, you know, if your wife is your wife, that she is your, your property as a man or whatever. And he's like, and he's like, did you listen to the actual interview? And she's like, you said that, that is, that's what you said. He goes, yes, but what's the context of the interview? Context interview is, or the context of the podcast is, I'm, me and several women are on a podcast, we're joking around because one woman says, if my man owns a car and I'm dating him, that's my car. I own that property too. And then he countered as a, he's like, he's like, I basically as a joke countered, if I'm dating a girl and she has an OnlyFans, then I, I get half of that too. And he's, he's like, well, the same logic, right?

• 18:27Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, so that's what I said. And she's like, so are you saying it's a joke? He's like, yeah, I'm saying you're taking it completely out of context. And he's like, you know, he's kind of like trying to defend himself and they're arguing back and forth. And he's like, He asked her a question and she's like, no, I'm asking the questions here. He goes, no, no, you're in my house. I invited you here. I'm doing you the favor. You know, you're begging me for interviews. And I let you in here. We are equals. You do not hold any authority over me. We are equals. If I ask you a question, you can choose to answer. If you ask me a question, I don't have to answer either. That's how this is going. It's a conversation. And she like was like rejecting that premise. And then you hear their handlers in the background that are all like getting really nervous about how the whole thing's going because it's like going off the rails.

• 19:06Sam Parr?

  The BBC handler or the tape handler? Because he has them?

• 19:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he has people who are like, you know, I wouldn't say maybe handlers, not the right word, but like, you know, he has this like kind of whatever, his PR type people that were like, he's answered the question already. Like, why? Like, you repeated the same question six times. Like, just move on to the next thing. Like, you're stuck here. Like, he's answered it. He's not going to answer it any differently. He's answered it five times now. Just move on to the next question. And so they were like, you could hear these voices in the background in the unedited version. Like even they take a break. They're like, how are we got to the camera? Camera died. We got to reset the batteries. Hold on. And then you could see what happens in the break. She like immediately is like, no, just make eye contact. She's like looking at her notes only.

• 19:45Sam Parr?

  And then they go like, good interview.

• 19:47Shaan Puri?

  And his answer was like, we don't have to do this. It's fine. It's fine. This is good. Actually, I want people to see how this goes. He's like, I want people to see her. Like, you know, how the mainstream media, how they don't, they don't do their research. They lie, blah, blah. He's got his like spiel. But during the break, there's like maximum tension. It's like, that's actually probably the most interesting part of the whole interview.

• 20:06Sam Parr?

  So I, I'm not, me personally, I'm not convinced I'm willing to sign up for that. I don't want to, I'm not, I don't want to deal with that headache.

• 20:16Shaan Puri?

  Agreed.

• 20:16Sam Parr?

  I'm willing to make sacrifices to some parts, not of my code. It's just that my code is like not that hardcore. Maybe is the right way to put it. But I've met a lot of people who run companies that you know, that are worth hundreds of millions and some that are actually worth billions. And I'll see them like do certain things that are common now about like,

• 20:39Sam Parr?

  like they use phrases like bring your whole self to work, which is like, kind of like a funny controversial statement to some people. Because some people are like, no, just bring your work self to work. Like, we don't, we don't need to do any of that stuff. Yeah. Or no, there's like a crew. And then there's like, they'll do like certain things that are typically like, that you see a lot of, that are categories as woke. And I'm like, dude, I know you don't believe that. And I see them say, they'll say things privately like, Yeah, but I want to win. And this is the game I have to play in order to like hire all these people. And I don't know how I feel about that. When I hear about that, I'm like,

• 21:12Shaan Puri?

  I had a funny experience with this. So when we got acquired by Twitch, I'm now in a 2,000 person organization and Twitch, literally, I think, I have 5% of the staff has like, you know, purple hair, like, and I don't mean that as a knock, I just mean like, we're in San Francisco, we are the stereotype of when people talk about like, kind of like, left-leaning social media companies, like people think this about Twitter or Facebook, I would say Twitch is probably more like that than, in terms of the staff. So I'm in a meeting, and I joined like three minutes late, as I do, as you know, that I, that that tend to be three minutes late every time. And there's a presentation on the screen, I don't really understand what's going on. I'm like, what is this presentation about?

• 21:52Shaan Puri?

  And I'm, I slack somebody and they're like, oh, it's like a, you know, just kind of like updating our copyrighting, whatever. I'm like, oh, copyrighting, I love copyrighting. What are, what are we talking about? And it was talking about like how we use genders from now on. It's like, we only say they, and then, and then they were talking about women. They're like, we don't say women, we say, and they spell this word, W O M X N. And I was like, I was like, how do you even say that? What is, womexin? I don't know. What is that? Or is it just women? Like, what do you say for that? And like, this is now how we say this. And I was like, what does that mean? Like, sorry, dumb question. Like, what is it? Who's offended? And what does this mean? It's like, oh, this is inclusive of like, people who were maybe not biologically born women, but now

• 22:33Shaan Puri?

  are women. And so this is like the inclusive term. And I was like, so I was like, how, I was like, how do you say this? And like, all of a sudden, I could see, I could feel like a bunch of heat on me, like, why are you asking all these questions? And like, there's kind of an undercurrent in the way I'm asking the questions, which is sort of like, is this, are you sure? Like, that's kind of all I was, I was like, I was like, wow, this is overnight, we're just changing, like, this is, we don't say that. And now we say this, like, this is a pretty big change, no? And, and so I'm hearing this and I'm like, okay, I guess, you know, that's cool. And, and then they, the funny thing is, the company then tweeted out for International Women's Day, they tweeted out International Womexens Day or whatever, right? Like, they tweeted it out like that. And then they got tons of blowback from the transgender, like the LGBTQ community,

• 23:17Shaan Puri?

  being like, don't, don't use that phrase, just call us women. Why are you trying to make us seem different? I was like, oh my God, they're backfired like their attempt to to like, you know, placate actually backfired. And I was like, wow, this is really like, this is there's a bunch of landmines. Like, you don't even know. But then what if the executive, were you like, hey, executive team, what are you thinking? You can't ask that. But I was like, I said it in a different way. I said, we're talking about like, you know, questions. I was like, um, Amazon has this thing where when you are doing your yearly planning, one of their questions is, what are the dogs that are not barking yet? And it's from this old Sherlock Holmes story of like, a crime occurs in a house, there's a break in, and there's no clues, and Sherlock can't figure it out. And he figures it out because he's like, um, well, the dog was here, right? So surely the neighbor heard the dog. And they're like, no,

• 24:02Shaan Puri?

  the dog didn't bark. And he's like, ah, that's it. That's the clue, Watson. And he's like, what? He's like, if the dog didn't bark, it's because he knows who the intruder was. That means this was an inside job. And so he figures out who it was, because there was the dog not barking. So they have this thing in Amazon, which is when you're doing your annual planning, they say, what are your dogs not barking? Basically, like, what are you not hearing that is actually telling you something? Um, or it's a different way of saying like, what is something, what is something that's not being said out loud, but could signal something that's worth? Yeah, yeah. And, um, so I said, I go, I think we should decide how woke we're going to be. And like, where, like, is there a line? And what does that mean? And who do we want to, like,

• 24:41Shaan Puri?

  we should say it out loud, what we want to be. Um, and then literally, my Slack just blew up of like, DMs me like, like, abort, don't say this, don't, like, don't bring this up. Like, um, what are you saying, dude? Like, this is like, you know, a side mission. And one girl goes, she goes, she goes, um, I didn't appreciate that. We don't use the word woke anymore. And I go, who, I go, we, who, like, there's a company policy, you can't use the word woke? I was like, I didn't even mean it as an insult. Like, I thought it's just like, yeah, because at the time, it really wasn't. This was many years, this is like, four years ago, or five years ago now. Woke was woke became a little bit more derogatory over time. Uh, at first, it was stay woke. It was like, uh, the kids were saying it as like, yo, if you're not, you're not like awake to what's really going on. Dude, I think.

• 25:26Sam Parr?

  Twitter had T-shirts that said, stay woke.

• 25:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was like a positive thing and then it turned into a criticism later. So somewhere in the middle of that and I was like, we should decide, and she's like, we don't use the word woke anymore. So I appreciate if you don't do that. I go, who's we? Is there a committee that decides what words we can say? Like, that sounds pretty non-woke to me. And she links me like a Vox article. I'm like, oh, you read this Vox article? You decided that I can't say this? And I was like, oh, this is just too much for me. And I was like, there's only one piece of advice that I needed. And it was a piece of advice I got on this podcast from a guy very early on, Daniel Gross. He's a super smart guy. He got acquired by Apple and I go, what was that like in that acquisition? You were there for three years. What was the best advice you got about navigating that? And he goes, don't give yourself brain damage. And I go, what?

• 26:10Shaan Puri?

  He goes, yeah, when you get acquired, this is a really tempting thing as an entrepreneur to like, I'm gonna, I see things that are wrong in this organization or that I want to be a challenger voice and not just like another, another person who just follows, you know, the company line. And I'm going to challenge, you know, maybe our innovation cycle or our policies or anything. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be the one who brings change. He goes, it's just brain damage. Don't, don't try it. And I was like, oh, I'm doing it. I'm giving myself brain damage.

• 26:36Sam Parr?

  How'd the woke story end?

• 26:38Shaan Puri?

  It ended with that one person telling me that we can't say, say these words anymore, which was backed up by nothing. And I was like, oh, cool. So you read this article and so you decided that I am not allowed to ask this question? Okay, gotcha. Just clarifying, great. Thank you, you know, whatever, head of important thing inside the company. Like, yeah, I'm glad that you're, I'm glad this is how this, this, this works.

• 26:59Sam Parr?

  And you know, do you think without calling out, well, Emmett is the CEO and he seemed, I don't know him, but he seems like an awesome guy. But I don't know if you can answer this without calling him out, but what do you think he thinks or someone like him? Can I say someone like him?

• 27:14Shaan Puri?

  Someone in his position, someone in his position with his name and face, what would they say?

• 27:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, I can't speak for him, but I guess my impression of it was basically, I think he's mostly shielded from this stuff. So like, I don't think the most of this gets to his plate. And then by the time it does.

• 27:29Sam Parr?

  He's, he's a total man. He doesn't care about drama.

• 27:32Shaan Puri?

  Like, I think he's, he's like a Renaissance man. He's a little different. I think two things. I think one, I think he's mostly just like.

• 27:43Shaan Puri?

  He, I think he's gotten a lot of CEO coaching to where he doesn't let his first reaction be his response. So like, something comes up and now instead of reacting, he responds and he usually responds with a question and he'll just ask them tons of questions. And he's like, I'm in the spirit of literally understanding what you're saying and trying to figure this out. Tell me, what does that word mean? Like, and they'll be like, it just, I mean, it means inclusive means, and he's like, well, like, no, like, could you please, like, use an example? Or can you, like, from, can you explain that from, like, you know, base principles? Like, what are you talking about? Where, what are the boundary lines? Like, let's make sure we're all talking about the same thing. And he does kind of like a Socratic method where he would, he would end up just like fatiguing out anybody who

• 28:26Shaan Puri?

  wanted to bring something up. And he would get his understanding of it and to decide, is this important or not? But I think most people are sort of intimidated by him. And then in the process of trying to debate him on something would sort of like, nobody could really, a very few people in the company could really like, hold up to any debate or any scrutiny from him in, in a conversation. I saw it just many, many times. And he was trying to dial that down because he knows that that's like, you know, already he's in a position of authority. Plus, he's like a, you know, world-class debater who's got this like wide breadth of knowledge to like pull from. So he already knows, he's like, you know, if he does that, he's just gonna shut people down. So he's trying not, tries not to do that. But I saw, you know, most people didn't want to bring it up to him.

• 29:08Sam Parr?

  Dude, I just avoid all of this, this shit. Like, I can't stand this stuff. And it's just, I just don't care, is really what.

• 29:15Shaan Puri?

  I guarantee it's the worst part of the job for Zuckerberg or, or Named, or anybody who runs these networks. It's like, the 1% of trust and safety or like angry people that's constantly angry about something, that's gotta be the worst part of the job. That's not why they created these networks is to like, be public policymaker in their own, like, kingdom.

• 29:34Sam Parr?

  But it is amazing how they get around it. Because I could, I could tell Zuck doesn't care about that stuff, but he still plays the game. And Zuck's a man. He's never had a controversy. He's never done anything. Not, a lot of these guys have it. Like, they've done pretty good with navigating some of these topics. And I'm amazed that they don't react by saying, oh, you guys want to form this union? Or you want to, like, protest over this? You're all fired. Like, this is a machine. You know, we don't need this. We don't need this. This is a machine.

• 30:04Shaan Puri?

  The habit of the MailChimp guy, right? Like, didn't he, he say something in an email which is like, you know? Let's not do it this way. And then he got fired from his own company.

• 30:11Sam Parr?

  What happened? I don't, I don't know. What happened?

• 30:14Shaan Puri?

  He, he, he was, he wrote an email to the staff about a trend he noticed in the workforce, which was new hires had to introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns. He says, this is completely unnecessary for a woman who is clearly a woman to tell us that her pronouns are she and her, and a man who's clearly a man to tell us those pronouns are he and him. He understands that the practice is rooted in kindness, but he says, in the long run, this approach does more harm than good because you're forcing people to behave a certain way, and that's the opposite of inclusion.

• 30:43Shaan Puri?

  And then, and so then, uh, he says, first, there's a tiny number of people at, well, he said peeps. So, you know, already that's a fireable offense. It's tiny, tiny number of peeps at MailChimp who are considering themselves transgender, forcing either with orders or guilt, the other 1,390 other peeps to adopt a new communication dime that humanity has never had to use in our 300,000 year existence and our 150,000 years of spoken language in order to make things slightly more comfortable for an extremely small group of peeps is completely illogical.

• 31:19Shaan Puri?

  So then he got fired.

• 31:22Sam Parr?

  It was probably for the peeps thing, to be honest.

• 31:28Sam Parr?

  Like into whoever bought the company was like, look, Ben, we need to talk.

• 31:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Sam Parr?

  He's like, but I didn't mean to hurt the, the trans people. He goes, what? No, look, we need to talk about this peeping.

• 31:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. He stepped down as CEO shortly after and voluntarily. And then also, then somebody came out and was like, by the way, there's no policy that says they have to do that. It's like shit.

• 31:51Sam Parr?

  We, um, one time at the hustle, we wrote an article on Sasha Grey. Sasha Grey used to be like this famous porn star and we wrote about how she was trying to change her image around to not be that. And every single night at like midnight our time, I would get all this traffic from Japan. Cause I guess that was morning time in Japan. It was all people searching for Sasha Grey and they were finding our article. Yeah. And I found out that she had hired this company called like reputation.com to like boost that article. So it showed up first. So we were getting all these people searching Sasha Grey XXX and.

• 32:27Sam Parr?

  They didn't get what they wanted to, but whatever.

• 32:30Shaan Puri?

  You're like photos at the bottom of this blog post. Photos inside our newsletter if you subscribe.

• 32:36Sam Parr?

  Dude, I didn't realize, I guess I realized it, but someone posted this infographic on Twitter of the biggest websites. And it was like, Google was just like the largest, it was like bigger than everything combined, but then like, I think four of the top 10 were porn sites and it's, it's wild. I mean, imagine working at one of those companies. Can you imagine that? What would that be like just sitting in the office? It's weird.

• 33:00Shaan Puri?

  I've imagined it many times. So I've been, I can't talk about these, but I've been, I've had very interesting conversations with a few people that own OnlyFans based businesses recently. And they're absolutely crushing it to the point where I can't talk about it because I would be kind of like, it's like.

• 33:19Sam Parr?

  Do you mean, do you mean the, the stars or like the ancillary things?

• 33:23Shaan Puri?

  All, most, I'm talking about the ancillary things right now, but they're all crushing it. The platform is crushing it, the stars are crushing it and the, the cottage businesses that get built around this to help this, to be a part of that ecosystem. But they're doing so well that I sort of, if I talked about them, I would be coming between them and like, millions of dollars because people, a lot of people would want to compete with the, the strategies that they're doing. But I will say one thing that I have learned that was pretty interesting. So I always assumed that OnlyFans was popular because,

• 33:53Shaan Puri?

  you're sending like, I don't know, nude pics or videos to guys and that's like the thing. That's what they're paying for. And I was always a little curious, I was like, porn's like free on the internet. Why would you pay for this? And I go, there must be something, I don't know. And I just kind of wrote it off as that. Do you know why they make so much money? Do you know what the actual moneymaker is inside of a, of an OnlyFans account? When these girls say that they're making like a million dollars a month? You know what actually drives that?

• 34:18Sam Parr?

  I've never, I've never subscribed to one. I guess you probably have subscribed to a few now that you're like researching it, but I've never subscribed to one.

• 34:25Shaan Puri?

  You know, I'm a married man and I did not do that, but you didn't need to, because I talked to the people who like run, they like run the accounts or whatever. Like what a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of these accounts are just, they're bought. So like a, a girl has a public persona. She does an OnlyFans, she kind of gets exhausted running the thing because it's like a lot and it's like emotionally exhausting, dealing with all these guys and, whatever. So she's, so somebody come, approaches her and says, we'll buy your account for. You know, I'll give you $200,000 right now for your OnlyFans account. And then I'll give you, you know, X percent of the profits and I'll run it. You just have to put pictures in a Dropbox folder and you give me good content and I will give you money.

• 35:04Shaan Puri?

  And that's how it goes. And then, uh, and so what, what, what actually people, so I was like, why do people pay for these pictures and videos? Like again, porn's free. That's like one of the, the rules of the internet is porn is free. So what, what do people really want? And it turns out that they want like the girlfriend experience. And so, um, yeah, not through the content, but through the chatting. And that the chatting has all kinds of weird things like. Is it one group chat or individuals? Individuals. And so they hire farms of chatters. So basically what OnlyFans is built off of, like a lot of the, the, the money is made through is giant, like customer support.

• 35:48Shaan Puri?

  You know, uh, call centers, uh, essentially in the Philippines, talking to, you know, it's basically like dudes in the Philippines, talking to dudes in the U.S. Pretending to be the girl. And so they, it's just like they have this army of chatters that will chat with these guys and tease them and flirt with them. And then upsell them and boom, cha-ching, got the sale there. And they're like salespeople. They, they got to, they get commissions and all this stuff. It's insane. And one. How? Within that, okay. So one of the highest ticket items, what's the, you know, if this was the, the county fair, what's that top stuffed, stuffed animal at the top? And it's basically like the number one is pretend to be my girlfriend for like, you know, a month. And it's like, text me as if you're my girlfriend. Um, and it's like, that's the, that's like the top prize, but there's other weird stuff underneath.

• 36:33Shaan Puri?

  Weird. So weird that I can't even say this. This is a family show. Um, and so I can't even say some of the weird stuff that they want, but it's not what you would think. It's not like super. Is it just like sending, sending pictures back and forth? Like, I'll give you one example. One example is the guy who's the customer sending pictures to the OnlyFans person. Asking for their opinion or rating of them. And that's like the service that they pay for. And so there's stuff and, and I guess like the two things stood out. One is. It's like the free market at work, baby. It's like you can really see what humans are all about. When you talk to this, to these people, because it's like, man, people are into all kinds of crazy stuff. These are like their real desires and these are desires they wouldn't admit.

• 37:18Shaan Puri?

  And I bet a bunch of these people are, you know, they're the person, they're doctors and they're the CEOs and they're, they're, they're other people like, you know, human desires got revealed. They were always there and they got revealed because only fans gave a, a better avenue to, to realize those desires, which is kind of crazy to me. The second thing is, I think it's wild how much money is being made in this space. And my reaction to it is not kind of like, like, I think you were asking, what's your reaction to?

• 37:48Sam Parr?

  No, my, my question is not, who cares that it exists? My question is, uh, you getting involved into it. What, how does it make you feel and how does it make your wife feel? And are you like?

• 38:01Sam Parr?

  Well, okay, you're, you're contemplating.

• 38:03Shaan Puri?

  I'm learning. I'm talking to these people because I find it fascinating. Uh, I have contemplated investing in some of these because I was like, I would not want to operate this. But yo, if you're, if you're already down there in the sewer, let me know if you got something, you know, hand it up here, you know, like I, I will, I'll provide resources.

• 38:20Sam Parr?

  Dude, you realize how hypoc- that's so hypocritical.

• 38:22Shaan Puri?

  Why is it hypocritical? I'm saying I don't person, I would not personally enjoy operating this. I, I also would not like operating a deli or an ice cream shop or whatever, but I'll go, I'll go eat a scoop. What's the problem with that? If they need resources, they need capital or they need advice, I will give them those things. I don't want to operate. So to me, that's fine. My wife, I-

• 38:41Sam Parr?

  It's also hypocritical of me, by the way, if I consume porn and to also shit on it. So I'm not acting like I'm whole, I'm not acting as though I'm holier than thou, but it is a conundrum.

• 38:50Shaan Puri?

  I told my wife, by the way, I was like, hey, I'm thinking about this and she just goes, okay, don't tell me, but if it makes money, that's fine.

• 38:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I would also say that it's really funny. I find it like amusing the way that the ecosystem works where it's like what you think it is is some woman with an account who's putting up content and guys want that and then she's chatting with them and it's like actually this like whole other thing. There's agencies that control the accounts. The agencies are 90% dudes. The chatters are like, you know, these call centers in India, the Philippines. And I find it amusing. I'm like, that's hilarious that that's what this like, that that's how this like evolved. And I find that

• 39:36Sam Parr?

  Dude, I always, I always get their reels on Instagram at night in bed. So like, I try not to keep my, so I like if I'm scrolling on my phone at like 10pm, it's normally like ripped guys and dogs in the day. And then even in the evening, it's hot girls that pop up on my reel, or you know, like when you're scrolling through your Instagram. And I'm like, wait, what is this? And then you click on their profile and it links to a link tree, which goes to

• 40:00Shaan Puri?

  Well, the funny thing is, you see it because what they, one of their main growth tactics is they pay meme accounts. So accounts that just post funny jokes 99% of the time. The way that those accounts make money is OnlyFans people will pay a lot of money to get posted one time at night on those accounts. And then you could delete it in the morning. And that's how they grow their, their own social followings. And so through these meme distribution channels. And so that's a funny part of it. But anyways, I don't even know, didn't plan to talk about this one, but that's a funny little tangent.

• 40:32Sam Parr?

  So, all right, listen, I don't know if this actually is going to interest you, but I'm going to try to make this interest you because anything that uses the H word, history, you're not into. Right? That's not, but the total man should understand history because history

• 40:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he actually, he actually has been alive through all of history.

• 40:54Sam Parr?

  So I'm reading this book. It's called like Killers of the Flower Moon. It's basically about the 1920s Osage Indians. It was Native Americans. They were given this plot of land when they were like, you know, like the government was like, hey, you know, we're taking this shit over. Here's your plot of land. Turns out it sat on all this oil and so they all got rich and white people take advantage of them and kill them to steal their money. And I was reading this book and they keep talking about the Pinkertons. Have you heard of the Pinkertons? Never. So they were like, kept talking. I was like, why don't they go to the police? And they're hiring these guys called the Pinkerton. So Pinkerton's, it was basically a guy named Alan Pinkerton. He started this company in 1950. And he started it because he was walking through the woods one day and he saw a bunch of like counterfeiters.

• 41:38Sam Parr?

  And he got curious. So he starts watching them and he starts figuring out what they're doing. And then he calls the police on them and they're like, well, we can't really solve this. He goes, give me a few weeks. I'm gonna, I'll, I'll keep an eye on them. And I think I could figure out what they're doing, where they're going, and I'll be your detective. He does that and they get arrested and he's like, I love doing this. This is very fun. And so he keeps doing it and it starts like a small, like little mod and pop business where he goes to other people. He goes, hey, do you want me to help you solve this crime? Just pay me a little bit of money and I'll go and I'll go and do it and we'll report it to the police and we'll give them all the evidence that they need. So he does this for a handful of years. And eventually he works his way up to like the, uh, the government, American government is paying him money. And it gets to the point where

• 42:18Sam Parr?

  his people, this is pre-secret service, his people, uh, protect Abe Lincoln. So we didn't have the secret service back then. Secret service was invented after Abe Lincoln got shot. Didn't do a great job, I would say. Yeah. Can't win them all. Turns out. Yeah. Can't win them all. Can't win them all. Turns out. Yeah, that is actually totally true. He's had a bunch of losses, but, uh, so he, so he was like, uh, uh, failed to protect the president, but for some reason the government still liked him. So they start giving him contracts. So anyway, fast forward. Dude, the Pinkerton's are still around and they've done a bunch of controversial shit. So like as they grew, companies like Andrew Carnegie, like the Titans of industry would hire him to

• 43:00Sam Parr?

  basically like when there were unions that would go and strike, they would literally sit outside of a gate of a factory and like, like protest and shit and then also fight. And so the Pinkerton's at one point killed like 24 of these like protesters. It was like a huge thing. And so they're like

• 43:15Shaan Puri?

  You have a note here that says, at their peak, they had more agents than the standing American Army. Is that true? That's insane.

• 43:21Sam Parr?

  Dude, they had tons of people and their motto was Pinkerton's don't sleep. We don't sleep and their logo wasn't, wasn't, wasn't open eye. And so they like, it was just like, we are, we are there all the time. Uh, and we will always find out what's going on.

• 43:36Shaan Puri?

  You know, I thought that Mighty Ducks, Ducks Fly Together was the top, but uh, this, we, we don't sleep might be better than Ducks Fly Together.

• 43:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we don't sleep. But so this company was created in 1850, I think I said, I was reading about, uh, coincidentally, this other thing going on with like Amazon. Amazon was having some issues with union stuff. And dude, Amazon, this company still exists and Amazon hired these Pinkerton's. So basically what they do now, so the company was sold in like 2005 or something for like $400 million. So not a significant amount of money for how long it lasted, but because it kind of peaked in the early 1900s. But they're still hired by

• 44:15Shaan Puri?

  Look at their website. Have you been to their website? Pinkerton.com. It just says our story and there's literally a picture of Abe Lincoln as the hero image.

• 44:25Sam Parr?

  Do they have a

• 44:25Shaan Puri?

  Talking about owning your, owning your failures. These guys love it.

• 44:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Sam Parr?

  It just says whoops.

• 44:36Sam Parr?

  We've learned from our mistakes.

• 44:39Shaan Puri?

  Nobody, nobody fails faster than us.

• 44:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they took fail fast.

• 44:43Shaan Puri?

  Risk advisory, investigations, protection, embedded SMEs. I don't even know what that is. That sounds

• 44:50Sam Parr?

  Dude, so listen to what they do. So they basically they'll hire these guys. So Pinkerton, like there's like guards. Now, I guess I don't know what they wear, like blue jeans and a plaid shirt. And they like go to like, they'll go to Starbucks hired them and they'll go to the Starbucks to get a coffee and they'll just try to listen in and you'll hear like one guy talking to his coworker like, hey, we should unionize or you know, fuck this guy. Let's do this and that. And they go and report it back to like corporate headquarters or they'll try to figure out like when uh Amazon was launching a bunch of stuff. They'll go and just walk around the office and like, is anyone talking about some shit they shouldn't be talking about? And they like report it. They still exist. Google hires them. Facebook hires them. They still like monitor or monitor this stuff.

• 45:31Sam Parr?

  And it's a really, it's A fascinating that a company has existed since eighteen fifty or whenever it was and they're still like working. And B, I started thinking about like private police and security companies and there hasn't been that many like interesting security startups. So one of them that I actually invested in, it's called Deep Sentinel. Do you know what Deep Sentinel is?

• 45:51Shaan Puri?

  It's the uh security um, it's a security thing where you're like, it's a security camera where uh it'll talk. It'll like, there's like a human watching on the other side.

• 46:01Sam Parr?

  Uh, Deep Sentinel's whole thing, like they make a joke. They go rings awesome for watching your shit get stolen. And uh like I, I have Deep Sentinels at my house and like one time a drunk guy came up to my front door thinking that I was, we were his Airbnb. And like the camera like catches him and he says, hey, sir, what are you doing here? And they call the police. So I walked down at like three AM and I see the cops in my house like taking away this guy. And so anyway, that's kind of cool. Another one is called Banner Man. Have you heard of Banner Man?

• 46:26Shaan Puri?

  I have heard of this. It's like bodyguards, right?

• 46:30Sam Parr?

  Dude, we used to do it all the time. So it was a company that went through uh Y Combinator and we host conferences. Well, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out. The site's still up, but basically the, when you host a conference by law as well as like practicality, like you need it. You have to hire security. You you need security guards. And we would use Banner Men and we would hire like, and they have like a menu. It's like armed gar, two hundred dollars an hour. Non armed gar, one fifty, just a huge scary looking guy, hundred dollars an hour. Like you could like hire them by the hour and it was so easy. It was like Uber for security. It was awesome. But there hasn't been that much new startups like in this space.

• 47:07Shaan Puri?

  By the way, here's the pricing. Unarmed guard, fifty nine dollars an hour. Armed guard, ninety dollars an hour. Off duty police, hundred forty five dollars an hour and they're armed.

• 47:16Sam Parr?

  That's it. So I just get a big scary guy to walk with me for 50 bucks or 80 bucks an hour, whatever it was. I'll do it for free.

• 47:24Sam Parr?

  Rock type of scary.

• 47:28Sam Parr?

  So anyway, I'm just like interested in this space and I thought like the Pinkerton thing, it was wow that this shit still exists. Do you know how much they sold for? Is that, or do you know anything about their revenues or anything? Like this is a crazy business.

• 47:38Sam Parr?

  No, and I've looked everywhere and the founder, uh, he, he says, uh, on his LinkedIn, he goes, I don't use LinkedIn anymore. That's like what it said on his profile. So I. Founder's alive? Yeah, his name's Johnny Chin. How is he alive? 1850? No. Oh, I thought you were talking about, uh, fucking Bannerman. No, Pinkerton. No, that dude's for sure dead. Uh, how much does it cost? I don't. How much? Well, you said they sold to somebody, right? Oh, 400 million dollars in 1999. 400. In like 99. But it's pretty fascinating that it lasted that long. It got sold. So basically, and I was doing even further research on this, that like, there's this like, the security industry, it appears as though it's like a handful of big players and then tons of mom and pops.

• 48:23Sam Parr?

  But the handful of big players, there's like three of them and they each do like 10 billion dollars a year revenue. And what they do is they just acquire tons of like mom and pop businesses. And so now the biggest ones, you'll, you'll probably recognize a lot of their T-shirts because they'll see them at like,

• 48:39Sam Parr?

  concerts and shit like that. But then there's a bunch of private ones. Have you heard of Blackwater? No, that sounds good though. So dude, this guy, his name's, he's, his name's Eric Prince, very controversial guy. Uh, I haven't read his book, but I want to. But he was controversial because he started like a, it was basically a private security company, but they did shit for overseas. So they would like, protect like princes in Saudi Arabia and shit like that. And then also when Iraq and all that shit went down, they would do government contracts. And so they would eventually like, you know, do army shit. So they would like protect like a convoy and eventually kill a lot of people and they were like hardcore. And Eric Prince, uh, became a billionaire doing this and he's eventually sold it to private equity for billions of dollars. It's called Blackwater. Very ominous name. I love that name.

• 49:24Sam Parr?

  But there's like a, there's like a bunch of interesting players in this space, but not that much like of these like tech startups. So I think it's really interesting and fascinating industry.

• 49:34Shaan Puri?

  I'll give a quick shout out to this genius restaurant. So this guy Joshua Goodfield tweeted this out. There's a restaurant that basically named all of its like the number one, the number two, the number three, um, office supplies. So it'll be like mini dry erase board or like pack of pencils.

• 49:49Sam Parr?

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 49:51Shaan Puri?

  You can expense all meals from this restaurant.

• 49:54Sam Parr?

  It's called USB wired mouse, $5 french fries.

• 49:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. I thought that was a genius little, uh, little marketing hack. Uh, so shout out to that. And then, um, dude, are you watching the NBA finals? I got a little, little human interest story for you.

• 50:10Sam Parr?

  Uh, no, but, but tell me about it.

• 50:14Shaan Puri?

  It's pretty crazy. So the two teams that are in it's Miami Heat, Denver Nuggets. So, um, the best player on both the teams have just like crazy backstory. So, um, one, uh, this is the guy in the heat, Jimmy Butler. He, um, have you ever seen the movie, The Blind Side?

• 50:29Sam Parr?

  I love that movie. That's my favorite movie.

• 50:31Shaan Puri?

  It's his life. So the guy got kicked out of his house at like 13 and was crashing on friends couches. And then this white woman just took him in and, um, she just like joined their family. And he's like, yeah, she's, you know, she didn't have to do that. She just did it. Um, he calls her mom, like, you know, his brother, her, her real kids are his brothers and sisters. Like that's just like the way it was. And he was not like, unlike the blind side. With the blind side, it was like, it was pretty clear. This guy had like NFL talent. Like he was just like a freak athlete and was just huge. And so any coach would kind of tell you that, not to say that's why she did it, but like it was kind of like possible. But Jimmy Butler, he was like, he wasn't like, he, he went to junior college. Then he transferred to Marquette, then he barely got into the NBA and now he's a star. But like, it was not obvious.

• 51:14Sam Parr?

  Have you heard, do you know who the real parents in, in Blind Side that, you know, it's real people? He owns a shit. He owned a shitload of KFCs and like Long John Silver's and shit. And I Googled him, he sold it for $400 million, all of his franchises.

• 51:29Shaan Puri?

  Good things happen to good people.

• 51:30Sam Parr?

  Good things happen to good people. And so Jimmy Butler was-

• 51:32Shaan Puri?

  So this woman, this woman that took him in, single mom also. So, single mom with seven kids did this, took him in, basically put a roof over his head and he ends up grinding his way to the NBA and it doesn't make the thing. He also was doing something really, really funny. So, back when COVID hit, the NBA, to keep the season going, they had to create a bubble. Many sports had to do this. They created a bubble, which was like a-

• 51:55Sam Parr?

  Didn't they do it at Disneyland?

• 51:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they did at Disney World, I think. So they did it in Disney World in Orlando. It was like, you live on, on campus, nobody comes in or out. Like, if food gets delivered, it gets delivered in a, like, sealed box thirty feet away and it gets, you know, like, given to you. And they just, like, tested everybody daily and if anybody ever had anything, they got kicked out. And so, during, during that process, Jimmy Butler realizes, you know, supply and demand is out of whack. So he starts, he's making coffees. He brought, he brought a fancy coffee machine. He starts making coffees. And people are like, yo, can I get some coffee? The coffee here sucks. I want, I want the good coffee. He's like, yeah, cool, man. It's a hundred dollars.

• 52:33Sam Parr?

  It's half.

• 52:34Shaan Puri?

  Hundred dollars. He's like, that's the price.

• 52:36Sam Parr?

  You got somewhere else to go.

• 52:38Shaan Puri?

  He's like, these are NBA players who cannot leave this bubble. And so, and they're like, alright, man, fuck it. And they just start giving him a hundred dollars for this coffee. And so he creates this brand, I think it's called Big Face Coffee. And now he's like, so he, and during the bubble, people wanted to know what it's like. And there's a lot of the guys were like vlogging. So this was like one of the storylines. Yo, Jimmy opened up a coffee shop. He's just like, you know, killing us on this coffee. And he's like, yo, I make the best coffee. It's the best coffee in the world. Hundred dollars. And, and so now he's like creating a spinoff brand of actually that, that, that coffee brand, which I think is kind of cool.

• 53:09Sam Parr?

  And who's the other guy? That, that big white guy?

• 53:11Shaan Puri?

  The giant white guy, so Jokic.

• 53:13Sam Parr?

  Dude, he looks mean. That guy looks mean. I saw he got into it with-

• 53:16Shaan Puri?

  Small town in Serbia, Sombror, Serbia.

• 53:20Sam Parr?

  He got into it with some dude on the, on the sidelines too, I saw.

• 53:24Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, that's funny. That was the owner of another team. He basically like bullied an owner of another team. So, so this guy's, he's awesome. So he basically, his story's even crazier, I think. So, this guy's born in the middle of nowhere, Serbia. He's got two older brothers. And his, he is, even though they're really tall, he only likes one sport. Horseback riding. So, so he's just falls in love with horses. He's always on the horse track or whatever. But because he's so tall, like, you know, when he wasn't out with the horses, he starts playing basketball. And- What's interesting is that nobody would have ever known of this guy. Except for the fact that um there was one team that had a business model and their business model was basically.

• 54:07Shaan Puri?

  Let's find prospects that might have like NBA potential. We don't care if we win now. But let's just find like big dudes who got a lot of potential that like might get bought out by the bigger clubs and let's they're like kind of like house flippers. They're like, let's buy this guy. Let's see if we can turn like, you know, polish up the asset and let's flip them to a bigger team in Europe. Or let's hold their rights and maybe we get there and maybe the NBA team have to buy buy us out. And they had done this with a couple of guys. And so the guy's reading the newspaper one day. And he sees that at some youth basketball game, like say some eighth grade game. Some kid, you know, had like 25 points and 25 rebounds. And he's like, huh. So he goes and he finds this guy and he's like, hey, you ever thought about playing pro basketball? He's like, no. And he's like, come with me. So at like, I don't know, age 13, he like leaves his hometown.

• 54:49Shaan Puri?

  And joins this like team and they're like, and so you're so then you think the story is he's the best player in the NBA now. So it's like. He must have been. He's he's the best now. He's the best player in the world right now. And so it's like. And how tall is he? He's like seven, seven foot one, something like that. And so they're like, you would think, oh, he must have been dominating in Serbia. And then like, you know, he went to the. He's like, you know, tier four league, like, you know, he must be awesome. No, he didn't even play. The coach was like, this kid is so fat. He is just so out of shape. I will not play this guy. And so he's only allowed to go to practice and they're like, until you can run, like until you're in shape or this is not going to work. He's like, ah, what do I do? Like. Well, what's your diet? And the guy was drinking like two gallons of Coke a day. He's just, I was addicted to Coke. He just loved Coke, drinking Coke.

• 55:33Shaan Puri?

  And so they were like, you gotta stop that, like first of all. And um, and so he he stops drinking Coke. He loses like 30, 40 pounds in the course of like a few months, just by changing that like one habit. And we're going and running every day in practice because he won't, they won't give him the ball. He just have to run on the side while everybody else practices. And so he's doing that. Finally, he starts playing. He becomes like the top player on his team. Like as soon as he like was able to get in shape, he was the top player on his team. And he gets drafted in the second round, like basically he's like one of the last picks. The NBA draft, if you go watch the video of like, oh, I want to see when they got drafted. Like you've seen when LeBron gets drafted, he gets on stage, he shakes the commissioner's hand. He smiles, the light bulbs are flashing. Like people know this is the start of a star is born.

• 56:19Shaan Puri?

  Well, was he just like walking by and they're like, uh, here, take this hat. Here, just take that one. Even better. They just cut to a Taco Bell commercial. And at the bottom ticker, it just said, pick number 41 Nikola Jokic. And just like, he goes across the screen, it goes away and it's a cheesy gordita crunch ad.

• 56:35Shaan Puri?

  He didn't even have that starting moment because nobody thought this guy would turn into anything. And then he's basically become, you know, the best player in the world since. How old is he? Someone like 27, 28, something like that. He's, he's pretty young still. And he actually wouldn't have even made it to the NBA like this team in Barcelona was going to buy him. That was going to be the flip. It was like, he goes from the Serbian team to the Barcelona team. And the day, like the day before he was supposed to sign the contract, like it was already the lawyer just had to finish one thing. He played in a game and he was so terrible that the team backed out. So he had no choice but, but to go join like the NBA team that had bought his rights or drafted his rights. And he's like, ah, I guess I'll go to the NBA then. Like, you know, I, I don't really know if anything's going to come of this, but whatever. And so he goes and he's this very stoic guy. Like in all his interviews, they're like, they have these narratives. The media has all these narratives. They're like,

• 57:20Shaan Puri?

  how has becoming a new dad helped you become a better basketball player? And he'll just look at them being like, what? It doesn't, that's, that's not how that works. He's just like, he's like, just very matter of fact, like, you know, like, you know, like the kind of like Dagestani guys in the UFC. He's kind of like that, but for basketball. So he's a fascinating character. It reminds you of this quote that I heard from this, this VC. I was like, you know, what's, uh, he had this Twitter bio. Um, this guy Nico, uh, Nico, I don't know how he says that same Bon Santos, Buenos Santos. I don't, I know exactly how you say it. Oh, from, uh, General Catalyst? Yeah, from GC, exactly. The guy, he invested in Snapchat super early on. And, um, I was like, Nico, why is your bio, why is your bio quote what it is? And his quote was, um, talent is everywhere, opportunity is not.

• 58:05Shaan Puri?

  So talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.

• 58:09Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, why is that? What does that mean? He goes, because it's true. He goes, talent is everywhere. But opportunity is not evenly distributed. And if I do my job right, we're going to distribute opportunity to more people who have the talent. And I think about both these guys, the two guys that are starring in the NBA, like, you know, they're kind of like one little bounce of the Plinko chip away from it being a zero. And instead they get to be world famous basketball players. It's like, if this guy didn't get discovered while playing in like a youth farm league in Serbia, or Jimmy Butler didn't get, you know, adopted by this woman, like, who knows if they would have ended up actually even getting their shot? Um, and it's like, that's how fragile, like, you know, like, success and failure can be.

• 58:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, last night I went and hung out at this, like, uh, have you heard of Flow Track? Or Flow Sports? Sorry, Flow Sports?

• 58:54Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 58:54Sam Parr?

  So Flow Sports, uh, started as, um, uh, it was basically this guy would go, they started out of UT, University of Texas. This guy would go and film track meets and wrestling meets.

• 59:06Shaan Puri?

  Stuff that wasn't going to be broadcasted otherwise.

• 59:08Sam Parr?

  Stuff that wasn't going to be broadcast. And he was just like, uh, he was a track and field athlete, and I think they had friends that were wrestlers. And he's like, but, you know, I'm, I'm a fan of running and like, people love that shit, but just not on TV. So he starts filming this and then he puts it online and he forms a company and people start buying it and paying like a hundred bucks a year to watch this stuff. And it's been around for 13 years now, and now they do over a hundred million in revenue. And I was like, what's the fastest growing segment? And he said, uh, uh, um, motorsports. And I was like, oh, like NASCAR and shit? He's like, no, it's like, he's like, it's like the pre NASCAR. So it's like with 18 year old kids, they do this thing called dirt track. So it's like, it looks like a buggy kinda and they're all, it's like, he's like, it's grassroots.

• 59:47Sam Parr?

  But he didn't say it, but it's like redneck shit. And he's like, that's our fastest growing segment. But we have like 18 sports, I think. They have wrestling, grappling, running, cross country, track and field, whatever, all this stuff. And so he, um, I went and hung out at their office because they had a little party and I was with like, three different guys who had won gold medals in the Olympics. One guy in the decathlon, one guy in the mile and, uh, some other guys. And first of all, Here's what was interesting. One of the, a bunch of the Olympians, I was like, hey, do you still run? You know, they're like maybe 40 now and like, you still run? And they're like, not a chance. Like it was my job and like, I don't want to do that at all anymore. Like I'll exercise and go for walks and I'll lift weights, but I don't want to like run like I used to run. I'm done with that. And the second thing was interesting is like, dude, these guys are all freaks.

• 1:00:32Sam Parr?

  Like one guy, his name's Trey Hardy. You can look him up. His body is crazy and they are freaks of nature. But it's cool being around people like that who are A, the best in the world at something. Like they are literally, if they won a gold medal at that point, they are the best in the world at what they do. And it's so fascinating to like, hear the stories. Like they would tell stories, they're like, dude, that guy, we used to go to the hotel and he'd be wearing flip flops. And he'd be like, hey, I bet you I could touch the ceiling. And the ceiling was 15 feet high and he would just jump and just touch the ceiling. And they were like, we just would see little like things like that. This guy would do shit all the time or he'd be like, watch this, I bet I can backflip. But he would backflip, but he would jump so high in the air. And like, we would just see these like freakish stuff all the time.

• 1:01:11Sam Parr?

  And so I was thinking, would you give up any of the success that you've had so far in order to be a broke, but Olympic medal winner or like the best athlete or whatever in the world? Cause I was thinking about that and I think I would.

• 1:01:28Shaan Puri?

  No chance on the, uh, the gold medal. Well, best athlete in the world. Yes, I would do that. That's

• 1:01:33Sam Parr?

  But there's a lot of sports where you're, you could like be the best like NCAA wrestler, best like normal wrestler.

• 1:01:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I thought you meant overall athlete. No, no, no. If it's, if it's, uh, I'm, I'm the fastest miler or NCAA, you know, uh, nation, you know, national champion or whatever. No chance. I've said this before, the Olympics are for suckers.

• 1:01:54Sam Parr?

  Oh, you are so crazy. Cause I'm hanging out with these guys and I'm like,

• 1:01:58Shaan Puri?

  Congrats, you're the best bobsledder the world has ever seen. You've dedicated your entire life to this absolutely arbitrary thing that got you, that got you no money. That got you, uh, you know, no, no skills beyond this. I'm just joking.

• 1:02:13Sam Parr?

  Dude, I'm so, I so disagree because they're, they were asking me advice on business shit. And I'm like, hey, just so you know, I'm like, The hundred thousand most successful person in America, maybe like.

• 1:02:24Shaan Puri?

  That's what I want to do. I want to play a game where the hundred thousandth person wins and has an awesome life, not where I have to be the best person in the world. And even then, I gotta start over at age 27 and create a new career because I'm done with the thing and my joints don't work anymore.

• 1:02:39Sam Parr?

  These guys had shaved arms and shaved legs. I was just staring at those calf muscles. And I was like, dude, I could see every vein or forearm. That's so awesome. I would kill to have that. I want some of that vascularity. Like, look at that vein pop. Like, I just love that.

• 1:02:53Shaan Puri?

  Cool. His business advice is great, but then he said he wants to put butter on my chest. I didn't understand that.

• 1:02:59Sam Parr?

  Look, they kept saying I had a really nice ball calf at the top of my leg. Like, dude, they, their calf muscles were just so solid. A little tennis ball was stuck in there. I just saw that. I'm like, so I remember I was thinking of this one guy. I told Sarah, I was like, dude, I bet that guy's wife is so hot. Like, she just, she's.

• 1:03:17Shaan Puri?

  You said to your wife?

• 1:03:20Sam Parr?

  I'm like, dude, they're so lucky. And then she's like, well, he worked hard. And I was like, no, the wife. That wife is so lucky.

• 1:03:31Sam Parr?

  Can you believe that she gets to see that body? Like, I was just thinking about that shit, man. And I just love these Olympians, man. I'd give it all up just to be, to be a gold medal in, in the high jump. So I don't know where we go from here. This is the total man episode.

• 1:03:48Shaan Puri?

  That's a point, Sam, loving men.

• 1:03:51Sam Parr?

  Dude, I do. Like, I can't, you see a guy with like, you know, like some sick calf muscles. You gotta admire it, you know?

• 1:03:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I guess you, I guess you do.

• 1:04:00Sam Parr?

  You don't do that?

• 1:04:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, definitely not the way you'd.

• 1:04:06Shaan Puri?

  Like, there's been several people that come on this podcast and I'm like, I'm pretty sure Sam's just imagining them without their shirt on right now. I feel like Sam does that, like, pretty frequently.

• 1:04:18Sam Parr?

  You have some sick pecs, bro. How'd you, how'd you get some of those things? Yeah, if I see a guy with big pecs, I just want to ask him a bunch of questions.

• 1:04:27Sam Parr?

  I don't know where we go from here. This is, this is something.