Creators Who Have Made $50M+, Multi-Million Car Businesses, and Sam Altman

Episode 408: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about multi-million dollar car businesses, Shaan's business offer for a female listener, creators who have made $50M plus, and Billy of the Week Sam Altman. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. ----- Links: * Bring a Trailer * Shaan's tweet * More Plates More Dates * Gorilla Mind * Marek Health * Kayla Itsines * Mark Rober * Ben Shapiro * Jeremy's Razors * Chamberlain Coffee * Pat McAfee Show * Dani Austin * Divi * Mindy McKnight * Christian Guzman * Sam Altman * Suli quotes * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (03:00) - Bring a trailer (13:50) - Creators who have made more than $50M (31:10) - Billy of the Week: Sam Altman (49:50) - Suli quotes ----- 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.

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  So he's got, uh, is it the Daily Wire? Is that what it's called?

• 0:03Shaan Puri?

  Daily Wire. So this is like a subscription media company that he created because they're just sort of like anti-mainstream media. That became a big thing, like fake news and F the mainstream media. Well, why don't we create an alternative, the Daily Wire? And the Daily Wire does some insane numbers. It's like only in year three or four, something like this, very new. And it does over a hundred million a year in subscription revenue.

• 0:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And have you heard of their, their spinoff, Jeremy's Razors?

• 0:27Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 0:28Sam Parr?

  What is it? Dude, you gotta go to the.

• 0:39Sam Parr?

  Dude, I've had a hell of a, of a, of a day. I'm not going to say who, but check this out. Friend wanted to come skateboarding with me. So naturally he got a concussion. So I took him to the hospital.

• 0:50Shaan Puri?

  By the way, did you even get like an hour of skateboarding in or was this like?

• 0:54Sam Parr?

  I got an hour in, I got an hour in. Uh, yeah. And then he was getting hyped up, seeing me do stuff. He fell, hit his head, take him to the hospital to get his concussion checked out. Turns out while we, while we were there, while they were getting the scan, their appendix ruptured. And they get rushed overnight or they get, they have to stay there overnight, get rushed to the different hospital, emergency appendix surgery. So this head injury basically saved his life and they were like, I don't know, like this is just a gift from God, but you definitely could have died from this.

• 1:26Shaan Puri?

  Did the appendix get damaged in the skateboard fall or no, just separately happened to be the same time?

• 1:32Sam Parr?

  Separate. It's just a weird turn of events, very separate. So that's where I've been. So I'm a little disheveled, but I'm wearing my cool guy jacket now. That's my new thing. I'm going to be the token cool guy. You could be the nerd.

• 1:44Shaan Puri?

  Congrats.

• 1:45Sam Parr?

  No, this is real leather, bro. This ain't, this ain't Tesla vegan leather, but I'm in my cool guy outfit. So I'm good to go.

• 1:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Um, cool is what I would describe that as.

• 1:59Shaan Puri?

  All right. Where, where shall we start? Where do you want to start? Are we still, is Sam still showing up to the BYOB empty-handed? Or is he bringing ideas to the table? Where are we at with this whole, uh,

• 2:11Sam Parr?

  Well,

• 2:11Shaan Puri?

  Sam does research thing? I know you started with a doctor's note there. So is that your excuse for why you don't have any topics?

• 2:17Sam Parr?

  We, I just went over a lot of my topics. I was the one who did the topics. Um, oh, you want to talk about your new seed oil only diet? Isn't that what you told me that you're doing a seed oil only diet?

• 2:29Shaan Puri?

  All oil diet?

• 2:32Sam Parr?

  Dude, so like seed oils are all the rage right now. Is it just in my world? We started talking about them and now I'm seeing everywhere. People are so anti-seed oils. My friend Dennis was like, screw it. I'm only eating seed oils from now on.

• 2:42Shaan Puri?

  I looked yesterday at the bag of, um, I was like, you know what? I kind of want to have one of these little, little bag of this little pretzel thing for a second. I just, let me just check the, check the stats on this. I was like, ah, it's not so bad. Not, not too many calories and whatever. And I looked at the, the ingredients.

• 3:01Shaan Puri?

  I saw canola oil on there or something like that, you know, sunflower oil, whatever these things are. And it was a Sam voice in my head that just told me these things kill you. And so I decided, I decided to put it down. I drank a big tall glass of water instead. So a pretty, pretty big net win there for me.

• 3:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I don't know why it's bad for you, but someone on Twitter told me it was, therefore it's true. If it's, if it's written down on Twitter or if it rhymes, or if it's like a cute phrase, I automatically believe it.

• 3:25Shaan Puri?

  Alliterations, rhymes are for people I don't know. Either any one of those three and I'm in.

• 3:33Shaan Puri?

  Let me tell you, uh, two things. One, you said something about like, oh, it's beautiful. It's well done. And it reminded me, I, uh, yesterday I found an amazing, what would be an amazing DTC product. Not amazing, like hundreds of millions of dollars, but, uh,

• 3:49Shaan Puri?

  A D to C business that is, I know would just, it would work. It would work really well. It would be very profitable. Um, I'm looking, if somebody wants to operate it, I will just simply give you an idea and a playbook and then I'll take my share and we can, we can start this company. But basically it would require somebody who's good at things that are beautifully done. So this, I think, requires the feminine touch. So I'm sort of fishing in a dry pond here with this, with this podcast, but to our four female listeners, if any, any of the four of you, you got a 25% chance each here to, to step in and take it. Or to one of our male listeners, if you, I don't know, see a female today, let her know about this opportunity. I'm looking

• 4:34Shaan Puri?

  for somebody who could do something that is, the product is beautifully done. It would be a successful D to C product. I have no doubt in my mind. You would just need to be good at a couple of things, you know, an aesthetically beautiful brand and short form video content, TikToks, or getting them made by other people if you don't do them yourself. But easier.

• 4:52Sam Parr?

  All right. You, you have been the palm of your hand. Tell me what it is.

• 4:55Shaan Puri?

  Um, I can't tell you on air because I don't want everybody to copy it. I will tell you off air.

• 5:00Sam Parr?

  Wait, really?

• 5:01Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 5:02Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is the lamest segment ever. Is that really it? That's really what you want to do?

• 5:08Shaan Puri?

  That's really what I'm going to do here. If it happens, then we can, we can reveal it. Uh, and if it doesn't happen, then I'll also reveal it because I have nothing to lose at that point. So just not yet.

• 5:17Sam Parr?

  I, I was going to remind people, this is usually the segment where I remind people of our gentleman's agreement where we work for you now, but all you have to do is go to our YouTube channel and subscribe. That's the gentleman's agreement. It's called the gentleman's agreement because I can't check to see if it's true. So you, it's just based on trust. But after that lame.

• 5:32Shaan Puri?

  I just violated it. Yeah.

• 5:34Sam Parr?

  That's lame. So if you want to do the gentleman's agreement, we owe you now. But all right.

• 5:38Shaan Puri?

  All right. I'm in the penalty box, but I'm going to fight my way out. Okay. So here we go. I tweeted something out the other day that I think is very interesting and reminds me of the Doug DeMoro, a YouTube creator.

• 5:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Shaan Puri?

  A YouTube creator who's not just going to make money off YouTube ad revenue, but has built a business that they built basically a $50 million plus empire off YouTube. Why did I ask this question? Well, Your boy's gonna start doing YouTube content, but your boy also wants to make more than $50 million doing this process. And so I wanted to see who has done this before, because I'm not really interested in being a pioneer. The pioneers get slaughtered, right? So I don't want to be a pioneer doing this. I want to be sort of a fast follower. So I was looking for examples and I got a bunch out of this tweet. I want to read some of them off to you and see what you think about these. First one.

• 6:22Sam Parr?

  By the way, when you tweeted that, I don't know if it's because I know you well, or if everyone like could read through the lines here, but it was very much like, uh, tell me what to do with my life.

• 6:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, hey, could you just, um, can you validate my parking pass here?

• 6:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  I need some, need something. So first one's right up your alley. More plates, more dates.

• 6:42Sam Parr?

  Love it.

• 6:42Shaan Puri?

  More plates, more dates. You probably know this story a little better than I do. I didn't know he was doing this because I've watched his videos. He doesn't really pump product as much, uh, or at least in the clips that I've seen.

• 6:51Sam Parr?

  If you watch closely, he does. Not, not in an obnoxious way.

• 6:55Shaan Puri?

  Right. So this guy Derek, super likable guy, uh, puts out great content. I'm not even really interested in like testosterone and like steroid usage and something else. Occasionally I am with certain athletes, but usually not, but I find myself just watching this guy's videos because I like this guy a lot. Apparently he's got a brand or maybe two brands. One brand, uh, you know the name of it?

• 7:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah. One's called Merrick Health and the other one is called Gorilla.

• 7:20Shaan Puri?

  Gorilla Mind.

• 7:21Sam Parr?

  Gorilla Mind. Yeah.

• 7:22Shaan Puri?

  So Gorilla Mind, if you go to Gorilla Mind, Gorilla Mind is getting, I want to say almost two million, uh, between one and two million, uh, visits a month. Right? So let's say a million visits a month. I think it's pretty safe that this, that this brand is doing about a million dollars a month in revenue. So 12 million a year in revenue on his, uh, supplements brand.

• 7:43Sam Parr?

  I think more. I, I would take the, I would take the, the more on that one.

• 7:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's a, I would say conservative estimate. Uh, would, I wouldn't be surprised if it was as high as four million a month. Um, and supplements are an amazing niche to be in, right? Like, you know, everybody wants to be in the, uh, everybody wants to be in the, in the supplements niche. So, um, so that's great. Just gave you, by the way, two pronunciations of niche, uh, back to back, just to appeal to both, both sides of the, of the aisle.

• 8:10Sam Parr?

  You totally redeemed yourself.

• 8:13Shaan Puri?

  And then Merrick is this TRT clinic. So they basically do kind of like, you know, help men, you know, stay young. So hormone replacement, hair loss, sexual wellness, all this stuff.

• 8:25Shaan Puri?

  This thing's got to be doing pretty well, too. And I think they also do the semi-glutide stuff as well. I don't, did he start this or what? Because it has 200 employees on LinkedIn. Is he just a partner or he started it?

• 8:36Sam Parr?

  I think he's an equity owner. I don't know if he's the guy, but I think it's he's he's so popular that it appears as though he's a main guy and he's definitely pulling his weight. I know a lot of people who use Merrick Health. I don't know anyone who uses Gorilla Mine. I think Gorilla Mine's a horrible name for a supplement company. But I trust Derek. I think the branding on this is wrong, but it's interesting. And what's really interesting is like, he sells creatine. Do you know anything about creatine? It's awesome for one. And number two, it's basically like,

• 9:05Shaan Puri?

  Have you ever heard of creatine? It's awesome.

• 9:08Sam Parr?

  Well, I'm I'm almost positive that creatine is like a commodity, like it's almost like all the same. And he's selling it, but he has an upset. He has a, he marked it up because it's Derek. But yeah, that's a good example of a creator killing it.

• 9:22Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, these examples, I specifically said, I said, you get kicked out of the party if you come in here and you say Joe Rogan or Mr. Beast or like, it has to be somebody else, like not the examples everybody always talks about. So here's, here's a couple of others. Okay. So here's some that I'll go in order of the ones you know, to the ones I think you don't know. So another one you know, Kayla Itsines, I don't know how you say her last name. Kayla Itsines, I think.

• 9:49Sam Parr?

  No, I think it's like, it's new or something. I think it's pronounced a little bit different, but, but if you're, if you're one of the four women listeners, they 100% know who she is.

• 9:57Shaan Puri?

  There's one time that I tried to pronounce like Hermes or something like that on this podcast or like

• 10:02Sam Parr?

  Hermes?

• 10:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was, I, I, you know, I got a lot of shit for that.

• 10:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah. One time I heard you pronounce the, you're not exactly good at pronouncing, pronouncing things.

• 10:12Shaan Puri?

  My mouth doesn't fully work.

• 10:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I got a thick tongue.

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  So she created this app. So she's like a fitness influencer type person ends up creating an app called the Sweat App. I believe they sold it for $400 million. So her and her husband or boyfriend, and then they broke up, but they kept building the business together. I don't, I don't know what ended up happening there, but it sounded like there was some drama. $400 million on this exit. So I thought that was a great example of not just saying, "Cool, I'm going to hold up a detox tea and, you know, get paid $5,000 for a shout out. I'm actually going to create a business off of my following."

• 10:47Shaan Puri?

  Mark Rober. So Mark Rober, yeah, he's a former NASA engineer. He makes like engineering videos like, "Oh, I built the world's biggest t-shirt cannon."

• 10:55Sam Parr?

  I love this guy.

• 10:56Shaan Puri?

  He built a, yeah, he's a really likable guy. He's like, you know, the science teacher, everyone's favorite science teacher type of guy. He has a monthly subscription box. I think that does like, it's like a science kit and you're like, you get to build little products yourself. And that's a great idea. Super on brand. It's 25, 30 bucks.

• 11:14Shaan Puri?

  This thing is, I think, doing millions of dollars a year pretty safely. He's got a very, very big following.

• 11:19Sam Parr?

  23 million, I think, on YouTube. I mean, he's like one of the big guys.

• 11:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's been around for a long time. Okay. Another one you probably know, Ben Shapiro. So Ben Shapiro is, by the way, I'm going to make a little prediction. You don't agree with everything he says, but you kind of love this guy.

• 11:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 11:36Shaan Puri?

  Thoughts up?

• 11:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Shaan Puri?

  I'm projecting. I also feel the same way.

• 11:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Shaan Puri?

  I like his nerd swagger.

• 11:43Sam Parr?

  And he's, he's just fast mouth. He just like says things very distinctly and quickly. And I don't believe in most of the things he says. I believe in maybe some of them. He's pretty religious and I'm not into, I'm not into religion, but he says a lot of stuff that I'm like, dude, just the fact that you came with that, like pretty brutal reply so quickly, I respect you.

• 12:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like a rap battle, right? Like you just, at the end of the day, you know, whoever kind of insults the other person the fastest and the best wins. And he does not have a thick tongue like your boys do. So he's got that thin tongue.

• 12:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's good, man. So he's got, is it the Daily Wire? Is that what it's called?

• 12:21Shaan Puri?

  Daily Wire. So this is like a subscription media company that he created because they're just sort of like anti-mainstream media. That became a big thing, like fake news and F the mainstream media. Well, why don't we create an alternative? The Daily Wire. And the Daily Wire does some insane numbers. It's like only in year three or four, something like this, very new. And it does over 100 million a year in subscription revenue.

• 12:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And have you heard of their their spin off Jeremy's Razors?

• 12:46Shaan Puri?

  No, what is that?

• 12:48Sam Parr?

  Dude, you gotta go to this. So go to it's just Google like Daily Wire razor company. But so basically, uh, Dollar Shit or Harry's Razor was one of their spots. So basically Ben Shapiro is conservative or he's right wing, whatever he's you call him. And so naturally, like the left hates him. Um, and the right loves him because they feel like they're being canceled all the time. And so Harry's Razors was one of their biggest or big advertisers. And they bailed. They, you know, said, you know, we're not going to associate with Ben. You know, you're screwed up. And so the founder or one of the co-founders and CEO of the Daily Wire, his name is Jeremy. And so if you go to Jeremy's Razors, you'll see the website and they made this crazy video where they just said, like, it's actually pretty hilarious regardless of if you agree with them or not.

• 13:30Sam Parr?

  But they created this video that's like a hype video and it was launched nine months ago and it has 22 million views. And they're selling millions and millions of dollars. They basically just took the Harry's Razors, like it's pretty much their site is identical to Harry's Razors. But they just call it Jeremy's Razors. And it's like, and the picture is this guy who's he's like smoking a cigar. It's basically a big middle finger to, uh, to Harry's Razors. On the about page, it says, Harry's and the Daily Wire had a deal. They paid us, we advertised their razors. But after we said that, boys are boys and girls are girls. They publicly condemned our views as inexcusable and misaligned. And you know what? You're damn right, our values are misaligned. We value truth and the right to speak. We embrace masculinity and the courage to uphold it.

• 14:15Sam Parr?

  And so that's like their whole shtick. It's us versus them, regardless of what you feel about that. If you think it's right or wrong, very, uh, they capitalized on something and it's, and it's doing well.

• 14:24Shaan Puri?

  This is so good. This is, uh, wow, this is an amazing, amazing little case here. The video that's the like ad, the launch video for this, it starts with a, it's like, it's like professionally made. And basically it starts with like, you hear like a car and you're in a parking lot and it shows like the parking signs. And it's like, um, you know, the Daily Wire, and then it says God King. And a guy pulls up in a McLaren and he gets out with a, like a blowtorch. And he goes inside and just blow torches a bunch of like Harry's, um, like merchandise and just sets it on fire. And it's like, uh, such a, such a smart thing to do, to take this like great business model, right? The, the classic kind of Gillette, you know, um, razor cartridge model. And then just be like, no, this is the one done by, by us, for us, right? Like, um, yeah, that is so smart and.

• 15:08Shaan Puri?

  I feel like that just opens the door for them to do this in five other categories.

• 15:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's a very, very intriguing case study of what these guys are doing. So yeah, that's a good one.

• 15:17Shaan Puri?

  Can you write the word Jeremy on a stick of deodorant? Yes, you can. All right, great. Can you write Jeremy on a tub of toothpaste? Great. Yep, you sure can. What else can I write the word Jeremy on? That's not, there's now a guy running around grocery stores being like, we can write Jeremy on that. We can write Jeremy on this. Oh, my God, guys.

• 15:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're like, hey, Republicans like sunscreen. Let's do that.

• 15:37Shaan Puri?

  White people get sunburned. This is gonna totally work.

• 15:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, interesting case study. All right, what else is there?

• 15:44Shaan Puri?

  All right. So then there's kind of like the Emma Chamberlain, a lot of people talk about her coffee thing. People know that.

• 15:49Shaan Puri?

  Pat McAfee.

• 15:51Sam Parr?

  Killing it.

• 15:52Shaan Puri?

  You know, he kind of, he did a hundred, a four-year, $120 million deal with FanDuel for his NFL show, which is pretty insane. That's like a absolutely insane like brand deal to pull off. Okay, then there's some others that I hadn't even heard of. So.

• 16:05Sam Parr?

  He's also the host of like WWE. Do you know that? He's like an announcer there. He's kind of cross.

• 16:10Shaan Puri?

  I went down a very deep Pat McAfee rabbit hole one night because I was like, I think I love this guy.

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  He's amazing.

• 16:16Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, I'm doing this for the pod, this research. And then three hours in, I was like, this isn't for the pod. This is for my soul. I just enjoy this, watching this whole journey. And I was also like, I don't think there's even a story here for the podcast. I just think I really like this content and I'm, and I never talked about it. I just did three hours one night and I just never brought it up.

• 16:38Sam Parr?

  There was one time where I thought about our setup and I'm like, we should do it standing up because he stands up when he records and I love it.

• 16:44Shaan Puri?

  He also wears a tank top, which I know you love.

• 16:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So win-win.

• 16:50Shaan Puri?

  All right. So here's some others that I didn't even know who these people are. Danny Austin. Do you ever heard, have you ever heard of this person?

• 16:55Sam Parr?

  No.

• 16:56Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so she created a brand called Divvy and it's basically scalp care for women. So she basically took a problem in her life, which was, I think, maybe like as she was aging or postpartum, maybe she was struggling with hair loss, which is actually pretty common for women to struggle with hair loss. Like I know my wife, like after we had. Every time like you go kind of like after you have a baby, uh, like your body's just producing whatever different hormones and there's like, they all like complain about like, you know, their hair thinning or hair loss is a very common thing. So anyways, um, she creates a brand or she first was just talking about the struggle. And then she sold the solution. So her content was everyone's like, oh my God, Danny is so vulnerable, so authentic. Oh my God. So like, I'm so glad you're speaking up on these issues and like, you're a beautiful queen. You're so beautiful. This is like, don't worry about it.

• 17:40Shaan Puri?

  And then she sold a solution, which was like the scalp care thing. And she did $20 million in the first like 10 months or something crazy.

• 17:46Sam Parr?

  That's crazy.

• 17:47Shaan Puri?

  So it just like took off right away like a rocket. Um, so I like that one. There's another one.

• 17:51Sam Parr?

  By the way, do you ever watch dandruff videos on Tik Tok? That's like my favorite type of content of people just like flaking off dandruff. You ever do that?

• 17:59Shaan Puri?

  People like popping zits too.

• 18:01Sam Parr?

  Dude, cause I got crazy dandruff. If I like itch my head, there's going to be a snow day. I'm always looking for like a good, a good dandruff shampoo and I love watching dandruff videos on Tik Tok. It's a huge niche.

• 18:11Shaan Puri?

  Don't wear black around Sam.

• 18:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Not good.

• 18:19Shaan Puri?

  So there's this woman named Mindy McKnight. This is another cool example. So she started a brand called Cute Girl Hair, where she was, cause she was just doing hairstyle.

• 18:26Sam Parr?

  Love that name.

• 18:27Shaan Puri?

  YouTube. Yeah. Great name. Honestly, amazing name. Uh, yeah. She was making YouTube content, just doing hairstyles for her girls. That's cool content. Oh, here's how we do this hairstyle. Here's how we do this one. It's kind of like, you know, what your big sister should have taught you or something like that. And, uh, I think her story is like, she has five kids. I might butcher this story because I just, I don't remember it. This was like a couple of weeks ago when I saw this, but like, I think she's got five kids or something like that. And they all have different hairstyles or textures they may have adopted or something like that. And so she's like, her content is showing like this wide range of like hairstyles and how you can make them all look cute, no matter what your hair is, right? That's great. She does a launch with Walmart and it's the second biggest launch with Walmart. She just, they're doing nine figures in sales. So over a hundred million in sales.

• 19:11Shaan Puri?

  And her YouTube channel has five and a half million, uh, subs. Um, her twin daughters have YouTube, have a YouTube channel with seven million subs, right? Like this is just kind of insane how big that launch can be when it's like total alignment between creator, their personal story, their content, and then the product, once they have the distribution. And so that was pretty inspiring to me. I really liked that. And now, uh, now I have a good excuse to spend all day just making fun content for free and being like, don't worry. One day, this is all gonna become actual like this will this will be real work. This is not just me getting to play around and like, you know, be on YouTube all day.

• 19:51Sam Parr?

  All right. Well, what else is there? I mean, cute girl, Harold. Great name. What else you got?

• 19:56Shaan Puri?

  Uh, well, okay. I just gave you seven, but like, we can keep going if we if we'd like.

• 20:00Sam Parr?

  Oh, I thought you had a few. I there's one, one guy that I find very fascinating that I saw someone mentioned on your thing. Guzman. His name.

• 20:06Shaan Puri?

  I didn't know who this was. A lot of people mentioned him. So Guzman, he's, I guess, a fitness influencer. He's got athletes or something like that. Alpha lead.

• 20:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, his, I don't know if his, I think his niche is like Texans. I think he's Hispanic. So I think he has like a huge Hispanic following. But basically, basically, he's like a rip, a rip guy, but he like has like weaved in his family into his content. So you like know about his life and he's like a family guy. He launched something like a 50,000 square foot gym called Alpha Land. Uh, so probably not in your wheelhouse, but it's called Alpha Land and, uh.

• 20:37Shaan Puri?

  They have a sister branch for beta dudes.

• 20:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 20:40Shaan Puri?

  We go there to watch what's going on in Alpha Land.

• 20:42Sam Parr?

  Is there like, is there like a gymnastics like part of that?

• 20:47Shaan Puri?

  We stretch and watch other men work out.

• 20:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's called Alpha Land. It's like a 50,000 square foot gym. I forget where it is. San Antonio or Houston or Dallas or one of those folks. One of those places where you'd expect an Alpha Land and, uh, and he also has a clothing line and I think he's killing it. I think he's doing a, he's big business.

• 21:05Shaan Puri?

  Right. I like how you acted like you hadn't been there or don't have a membership, but like.

• 21:12Shaan Puri?

  Uh, okay. Yeah. So this is my, these are my $50 million creators and all of these people I think have built off of their YouTube content. Uh, you know, an empire that's easily worth 50 million or more.

• 21:22Sam Parr?

  You, um, you, you made fun of me for not preparing and you prepared that list. I think I knew more about all of them than you did.

• 21:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Cause you were, you're like a real consumer of content.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  Right? Like, I'll be like, oh, uh, they use this technology in this music video. You're like, yeah, I love that music video. And I'm like, I haven't watched a music video and it literally. It's been 17 years since I've watched a single music video. I went to your house and you just had music videos on TV on loop.

• 21:51Sam Parr?

  I love music videos.

• 21:53Shaan Puri?

  I was like, this is what you watch? And you're like, I just leave it on.

• 21:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Shaan Puri?

  I just, I ran out of questions because I was like, wow, this is just a different thing that just doesn't happen in my world.

• 22:06Sam Parr?

  No, I watch music videos constantly. So yeah, that's one of the ways I know about stuff. Also, my wife is a little bit younger, so she just turned 30. So when we were dating, you know, only a couple of years ago, she was like in her twenties.

• 22:15Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 22:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Well, hey, I said younger than me and she's got a younger sister. So I'm kinda, I'm, I got my toe in the cool kids market.

• 22:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You like, you see people, you leave the house, you take supplements, you watch music videos, you watch movies, you read biographies, you do a lot of things that like, you know, I simply don't do. I'm like a, I'm just like a heat seeking missile for like, what's the interesting story? And then my stories are typically like, uh, did you know that there's this? And then for most normal people are like, yeah, I love that. Love their channel.

• 22:45Sam Parr?

  You're like-

• 22:45Shaan Puri?

  Watching Mark Rober for years.

• 22:47Sam Parr?

  You're a potato. What you see is what you get. You can pull the skin back a little bit. It gets something new. I'm like an onion, bro. There's layers. There's lots of layers. It goes all the way to the core. The layers don't stop.

• 22:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but french fries are made out of me and I think that's kind of a win.

• 23:02Sam Parr?

  Dude, all right, let me tell you something interesting. And this is more so, I want to put this on record that I brought this up about two years ago, but have I, remember when I told you about the company Bring a Trailer?

• 23:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. You said, um, you said you were talking about, um, car companies or auction companies, something like that. And you were like, dude, there's this thing, you've been told that this was like a lot, a long time ago, four years ago.

• 23:25Sam Parr?

  A long time ago.

• 23:26Shaan Puri?

  You were like, dude, there's this thing called Bring a Trailer. It's sick. You can just buy a car on this auction thing. I don't even know how it works exactly. You're like, it's started by this guy Doug Demore.

• 23:35Sam Parr?

  No, you're confusing two things.

• 23:37Shaan Puri?

  It was the guy from Inbox or whatever, right?

• 23:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was started, the main guy, I forget his name, Nathan, I think, the, the non-main guy, but also co-founder, I think his name is Gentry Underwood. And he started, uh, this company called Mailbox, which is like an email thing that sold for reportedly a hundred million dollars to Dropbox, like before it even launched because it built up such a huge waitlist. And it sounded like a cool product. I don't even think it got launched. But anyway, it's this website called Bring a Trailer. And if you go to it, it just looks like, almost like a blog. It's, it's fairly unsophisticated. Honestly, I think it's WordPress. And what they do is there's this neat niche of car enthusiasts who like things from like the seventies to like early nineties, which-

• 24:17Shaan Puri?

  Like your jacket?

• 24:19Sam Parr?

  Like my jacket, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like my jacket. And it started out small, but it sold recently and it was recently-ish announced that they last year in the trailing 12 months sold something like 1.2 billion dollars worth of cars in one year and they made something like 100 million dollars in net revenue with like 80 employees. And you go to their website and it's so basic and people love it. And there's this guy named Doug Demoro who has a YouTube channel where he reviews all types of cars and he does it just with an iPhone and he like always has like, have you know, like a bacon collar? Have you heard of a bacon collar? It's like where you wear an undershirt on your, on your shirt and your white shirt, the collar is all like shuffled or like the, the, the white sleeves are like

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  coming down below your polo. You know what I'm talking about?

• 25:06Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so your undershirt is showing? Is that the idea?

• 25:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, where you're like, like he's like, it's like where you're wearing, like imagine a guy wearing cargo shorts and like an Old Navy t-shirt with like a Hollister polo above it and like you have a bacon collar. Like he just looks totally dis shuffled. It's incredibly unprofessional looking.

• 25:23Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I got the definition. Shirts that have a wavy neck due to being stretched out from improper care.

• 25:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's just like, it's just like the very typical like.

• 25:33Shaan Puri?

  This is how all my shirts look.

• 25:35Sam Parr?

  You're a bacon collar guy. So that's what this guy is. Doug's a bacon collar guy, but he's hilarious and he's lovable and he's likeable and he's built this YouTube channel. Like he'll review like a $2 million Ferrari as well as like a $30,000 Honda Pilot.

• 25:50Shaan Puri?

  And it's right.

• 25:50Sam Parr?

  Pretty hilarious. He's got three or four million subscribers on YouTube now. I told you about two years ago, maybe, I forget when, maybe three years ago, he launched this new company called Cars and Bids and it's very similar to Bring a Trailer. And so I predict that this is actually going to be a multi 100 million dollar exit. And I want to make my prediction there now that that's going to happen. But what's really interesting here is curated auctions. I think that's very fascinating because the reason it's fascinating is if you go to eBay, have you ever been to eBay in the last like five years?

• 26:19Shaan Puri?

  I have not.

• 26:20Sam Parr?

  Dude, no, like not a lot of people do. Of course, a lot of people do, but like not a lot of people do. And it's because it's one of those things, no one goes there anymore.

• 26:27Shaan Puri?

  Perfect description. It's got like 100 million visitors, you don't know any of them.

• 26:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's too crowded. No one goes there anymore. And so it's one of those things where like you go to eBay and you like that one?

• 26:39Shaan Puri?

  Oh, smooth. It was really the timing that I enjoyed there.

• 26:43Sam Parr?

  You go to eBay and you get overwhelmed with options. And there's a couple of businesses that I've been looking at where I'm trying to think of what a curated auction could be. Cause I think it's like, I think it's cool and it feels, it's just a beautiful experience, you know? That's what we, that's our phrase. It's just a delightful.

• 26:58Shaan Puri?

  It's like an auction, but it's just beautifully done.

• 27:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's beautifully done.

• 27:02Shaan Puri?

  Really well done.

• 27:04Sam Parr?

  Anytime people can say like handcrafted or like ultra premium. Uh, that's what this is. And I really have been digging this. I invested in a company that is doing this for homes. Cause I've been looking at like, what are big ticket items that people will buy online that they previously didn't? But they will, because it's more well curated. So like, for example, we talked about, uh, I can never say it right, but Hodinkee. We had Kevin Rose, the founder. They sell like, you can buy like a $40,000 watch online and they do a really good job of editorializing it. So I've been thinking, what are other categories where someone can buy something online? That's 30 to a hundred thousand, even a million dollars plus. But if you curate it nicely and you describe it nicely with beautiful photos.

• 27:45Sam Parr?

  So in the same way that Airbnb, I don't know if you know this, but they used to send out photographers to the really nice listings. Cause they're like, we charge a thousand dollars a night with better pictures. You can charge $1,500 a night. So it's worth us, worth it to us to help you make your shit look better. What else is like that, that these curated auctions can, can work at? Because I think they're really, really cool companies to, to, to run and they're really hard to break once they work. Once they work, it's like the people working there, you guys are important, but like the community has taken, you are, you are just a, um,

• 28:15Sam Parr?

  you, you're just there to, to help the community. It's no longer your business that you're pushing down people's throats.

• 28:21Shaan Puri?

  Golf equipment.

• 28:22Sam Parr?

  Golf equipment?

• 28:23Shaan Puri?

  Golf equipment.

• 28:25Sam Parr?

  Really? How much is an expensive, how much, why do you say that?

• 28:29Shaan Puri?

  Well, you have a enthusiast market. You have a kind of like a knowledge gap of, uh, which one should I get? What's better? What's worse? Blah, blah, blah. You have a super premium price point. And I think a golfer over the course of their lifetime is going to spend, you know, probably upwards of $10,000 on equipment. And I think that, so, cause I think, cause I think the, the thing you want is like cars, you want a high ticket, right? You need, you need a high ticket. You need to build ability to drive high ticket customers to something. And so I think that's one where people will nerd out on the content and, um, and get there. But I have other, this, what you said, by the way, is a perfect lead into two things I want to talk about.

• 29:08Sam Parr?

  Wait, let me say mine. Livestock. Livestock.

• 29:12Shaan Puri?

  Like animals?

• 29:13Sam Parr?

  Hell yeah, dog. Dude, my, my, so listen to this. My cousins, they're, they're cowboys. So they buck bull.

• 29:22Sam Parr?

  It's called, if you ask them what they do, they'll go, I buck bulls, which means they live in rural Oklahoma. And, and when I went to their house once, and instead of like, it was a Thursday night, and instead of going like the community softball game, we went to the community rodeo and there was only like 20 people in the stands, but they are practicing their rodeo, which is basically you get on a bull and bulls are mean. Bulls want to kill you, even if they, even if you raised them. They're just like mean and they get on these bulls and they buck them off and the bull, the person who stays on the longest gets a prize, but the bull who bucks the hardest, based off of like judging, wins a prize. And some of these bulls cost 50 grand.

• 30:01Sam Parr?

  My parents bought into a bull for $50,000 and they get a portion of the, like the offspring, like the, the, the sperm that they, they sell. And they get a portion of the winnings from the bull.

• 30:13Shaan Puri?

  Is it a good investment?

• 30:15Sam Parr?

  They make money off of it. Yeah. And they.

• 30:18Shaan Puri?

  What kind of money are we talking here? What, what did it do?

• 30:21Sam Parr?

  The return's not like that great, but like you, like, I don't know. You get a couple of grand every once in a while. So it's like, not that great. And like the bull can like break its leg and you're screwed, but, but like.

• 30:30Shaan Puri?

  Should we go havesies on a bull?

• 30:32Sam Parr?

  It, it is pretty interesting to own a bull, but it's a, it's a, it's a huge sport in certain parts of the country. My cousin went to college on a scholarship for bucking bulls for being a rodeo guy. And so, and all these folks, they, they, they, it's cash. So they'll come to the rodeo with like 10, 30, 40 grand in cash. And they're like playing right there on it. It's very fascinating. Have you never been to a livestock auction?

• 30:55Shaan Puri?

  Sure have it.

• 30:57Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's dope. It's awesome.

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  I do think we should go havesies on a bull. Uh, if there's a bull dealer in the audience, uh, hit us up. We are, uh, we're in the market for one. Uh, and we'll live stream our, our, our bull purchase. Um, yeah, this is great. Okay. Uh, okay. So livestock, that's one. Yeah, sure. I like that.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess. But HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better.

• 31:33Shaan Puri?

  All right, I think I've kind of done this, but I went even deeper down this rabbit hole. So I got to bring him back as a new Billy of the week.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.

• 31:51Shaan Puri?

  The new Billy of the week is an old Billy of the week. It's Sam Altman. And you would think, Sam, you know, you got nothing new to say here. What is Sam Altman? We all know Sam Altman. We've talked about Sam Altman. Dude, Sam Altman's, Sam Altman's onion status. He's got layers. Okay, so I want to read you some of the interesting. I went down to Sam Altman rabbit hole last night. Here's why. He did an interview and I was watching.

• 32:17Sam Parr?

  You got to explain who he is for the news.

• 32:19Shaan Puri?

  For people who don't know, Sam Altman is, he's like an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He created one company, didn't go that far called Looped, sold it for 40 billion bucks. Then he, but he had, he went through Y Combinator, the big accelerator down here.

• 32:34Sam Parr?

  When he was like 19.

• 32:36Shaan Puri?

  And the founder of Y Combinator, super impressed with him and kept him on as a partner and eventually named him president of YC, which is like, one of like, it's like being named the dean of Harvard after being a Harvard student because the dean thought you were so special. And so that's literally what he did. He became the president of YC, grew YC. He then created, he then created the nonprofit OpenAI. He then left to go work on OpenAI. OpenAI is now behind ChatGPT, which is like one of the fastest growing like tech waves that's out there, basically an artificial intelligence platform. That's, I think they launched ChatGPT and I think got 10 million users in like 10 days or something ridiculous like that.

• 33:16Sam Parr?

  It's worth $40 billion.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  The company is worth somewhere between 20, 40 billion dollars now. And he's the, you know, the leader of that thing too. Plus he's a prolific investor, was an investor in much things. All right, so I got some of those facts coming, but that's, and most people know Sam Altman. I'm not bringing up a surprise. If you listen to the pod, you probably know who he is. Okay. But here's some of the things I didn't know.

• 33:35Shaan Puri?

  I was listening to this interview and they go, um, you invested in this fusion company. And I'm thinking, okay, Fusion, I still don't know what the hell that is, but I know smart people talk about it. Okay, great. And they go, uh, you led the investment. Okay, that's fine. He led the investment. You put, you wrote a $375 million check into Helion. Uh, and I was like, what? You know, screw, like rewind, what, what did this person just say? And I literally went back and I re listened to it and I was, and, and I was like, oh, I didn't know Stan Altman has like a giant venture fund, like, uh,

• 34:07Shaan Puri?

  surely he's not writing a $375 million check himself.

• 34:12Shaan Puri?

  As far as I could tell, that is what he did. He wrote a $375 million check himself. And that got me down the rabbit hole of where did, how did Sam Altman get so wealthy? Uh, because I've heard several stories now. So for example, when he started OpenAI or even when he was president of YC, he donated $10 million to, um, a, a science research, uh, like, um, a project that he created, right? Like a science research nonprofit. To donate $10 million means you got a lot more than $10 million. And at that time I was like, how did he get $10 million? Cause again, his first startup, which he was like, whatever, 18 or 19, sold for $41 million. Out of that, he said that he got $5 million. So somehow he parlayed $5 million and in a very short amount of time, about four or five years was now donating $10 million. So that was the first thing.

• 34:57Sam Parr?

  Wow. It was that short?

• 34:59Shaan Puri?

  That didn't make sense. And I was like, okay, so he's, you know, this is now, you know, maybe six years max later. Okay. Then what else did he do? He also, um, donated to, you know, when he started OpenAI, but they didn't say how much. And then this $375 million check. So I started going back and trying to figure out what's going on. So, starts looped, sells it, nets about $5 million. From there.

• 35:21Sam Parr?

  How old was he, uh, at that $5 million, like 22, 23?

• 35:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, something like that. I don't have the exact timeline, but I think he's in his young, early twenties is pretty safe to say there.

• 35:32Shaan Puri?

  He then, uh, starts investing in startups and so he's investing in startups. Second investment is.

• 35:40Shaan Puri?

  Drumroll please, the best investment of the decade Stripe. So he's one of the first investors in Stripe. That was his second investment and there's this like thing that I've noticed, which is in D to C brands, they call your first kind of like couple of months. Your golden cohort, it's like, I noticed this about our customers and my, my econ brand, but I noticed this across many brands, uh, which is your first, that first batch of customers you get, for some reason their LTV is way higher and it kind of makes sense because it's actually like, the people who immediately get it with your message are willing to adopt your thing before you're a big brand, they probably really have the problem or they're heavy enthusiasts. There's something, there's the equivalent thing in investing. For some reason, it's very common for people's first sort of five to 10 investments to do

• 36:25Shaan Puri?

  extremely well, uh, in the world of angel investing, when you're, for, for great investors, often their best hits come early, like, uh, Chris Saka, who's one of the best early stage investors of all time. His, one of, some of his earliest investments were basically, you know, the combination of Twitter, Uber, Instagram, you know, things like that. And they came in the kind of the first 10, 15 deals that he did.

• 36:46Sam Parr?

  And I feel like that's the only stuff he did, like those were the hits and then everything.

• 36:49Shaan Puri?

  He did so well, he retired, right? He became a billionaire and essentially retired from the game because he was like, well, my first fund was like a whatever 6,000 X. I'm, I'm good. Sam said that in his first 40 deals, um, at that, at that time, he had invested in 40 deals, um, it was two years in and he said that, uh, five of the companies were doing really good. And then it was like, what's really good mean? It was over a hundred X.

• 37:15Sam Parr?

  So what's that?

• 37:17Shaan Puri?

  That's not really good, that's ridiculously good.

• 37:19Sam Parr?

  So what's a, what's a $50,000, how big of a, maybe 25,000? What's a hundred times, uh, 25,000?

• 37:25Shaan Puri?

  Well, you're violating the public math rule, but.

• 37:28Sam Parr?

  Is that 2.5 or 25 million?

• 37:30Shaan Puri?

  So 50,000 turns into 5 million for 100x.

• 37:33Sam Parr?

  Wow, okay.

• 37:34Shaan Puri?

  And so you stack five of those. That's pretty good. And I was like, okay, where do you get all this money? How was he doing all these deals? Was he just investing out of that 5 million? And the reality was, yes, he was investing personally, but I texted a friend. So I was like, yeah, I'm looking up Sam Altman, like, did he write this check personally? How did he get all this money? And this is somebody else who's young, smart and friends with Sam and that crew. And he's like, I think it was, I think this check was personal, this 375 million dollar check. He's like, I think so, but it might have been an SPV. And I was like, I was like, dude, I feel like there's like some underground, you know, like teen prodigy thing where like,

• 38:09Sam Parr?

  There is.

• 38:10Shaan Puri?

  If you're, if you turn 18 years old and you're like a phenom, Peter Thiel just gives you 100 million dollars. And I was like, I was laughing and I was like, you know, I think you're in that club too. And he was just laughing. He's like, yeah, Peter does actually back it. So I go and I Google it. Sure enough, Sam Altman, right after he saw this first thing, raises a 21 million dollar fund from Peter Thiel.

• 38:30Sam Parr?

  There 100% is, dude, I know a few of these prodigies. There is, there is a club. They exist. So people talk about like, like, you know, oh, just like, what do they say? You know, it's that boys' club and I can't ever break into it. Unfortunately, that's true. It's real. They exist. You and I aren't in that club. Maybe we have our own club, but these type of like elite clubs, they're real. They're 100% real.

• 38:53Shaan Puri?

  So somebody said something, they were like, you know, Sam, they're asking Paul Graham, I think they were like, what's, what stood out to you about Sam? Cause from the very beginning, I've talked about this before, from the very beginning, I think 2007, 2008, Paul Graham wrote a blog post about who are the five most impressive people he's met in Silicon Valley? Or who does he admire or look up to or whatever? And it was like Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey from Google and Sam Altman. And it was like, one of these does not belong. One guy invented Apple, another guy invented Google. Who's this kid I've never heard of? And he was like, when I talked to Sam Altman, I think, oh, this is what it would have been like to talk to Bill Gates when he was 20 years old. And I was just like, what an epic call for a guy who's now gone, gone on to do some pretty amazing things. There was a story I had never heard though. Or two stories I thought were pretty remarkable.

• 39:36Shaan Puri?

  I think there was a situation where at his school, when he was in high school, there was a protest from like the Christian or Catholic, you know, some protesters that were like, you know, protesting the, I forgot exactly what it was.

• 39:49Sam Parr?

  He's from my hometown. He probably went to, he's from St. Louis, where I'm from. And he went to a Catholic school, if I had to bet.

• 39:56Shaan Puri?

  I think it was a, I don't remember exactly what the protest was, but it was like, you know, here we go. So basically, a Christian group boycotted an assembly about sexualities. They're gonna have an assembly about sexuality at his prep school, John Burrows.

• 40:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, John Burrows in St. Louis.

• 40:14Shaan Puri?

  And so Sam Altman basically takes the mic, announces that he's gay, and then asks the school whether they want to be a repressive place or a place open to different ideas.

• 40:22Sam Parr?

  Baller.

• 40:23Shaan Puri?

  And then baller, right? And then the college counselor goes, what Sam did changed the school. It felt like somebody opened up a big box and then all the, and then all kids of all kinds got to be let out into the world. Like, you know, it just kind of like, he drew a line publicly.

• 40:38Sam Parr?

  That's a really good way to describe it, by the way.

• 40:40Shaan Puri?

  And that is, that is just an amazing story. I love that story. He also talked about like, okay, I want to read you some other amazing quotables. Because this guy's kind of remarkable and we just respect people who kind of like, would you say, let their freak flag fly, that people who just like do life their way and their way happens to be different than like the conventional way.

• 40:58Sam Parr?

  The craziest thing that he did was he did a speech about announcing something big and he wore two double popped collars that were pink and green. I love that guy. I saw, I remember seeing that. I'm like, you're awesome.

• 41:09Shaan Puri?

  Conference, like a big deal, a life highlight for most people. There's all these amazing anecdotes from these, these articles that I was reading. So one goes, so they got, they got in, him and his brothers, he's got brothers, Jack and

• 41:25Sam Parr?

  Max.

• 41:26Shaan Puri?

  Max. And so they, one of them started this company called Lattice and like, you know, he had some phrase about what Lattice was doing. And so Sam invests in Asana, the different company. And he writes this blog post about like, you know, just quickly, you have the morning of kind of writes this. Writes this blog post where he goes.

• 41:48Shaan Puri?

  He goes, he goes, he goes, um, yeah, I, uh, you know, I invest in Asana because I think it's great. It's gonna make people more productive because they do A, B, and C. And it turns out that A, B, and C were like the same marketing material that Jack, his brother was using for lattice. And so the article's talking about, it's like, Jack's like super pissed. He's like, dude, you just invested in them for the exact, you know, that's our mission statement. Why are you saying they do it? And Sam's like, oh dude, like I'm sorry, I totally, I must have just totally spaced like, I must have heard you say that so many times over the years that like, it just kind of became like a, a set of words I know. I totally didn't intend that. Edit, edit it. But Jack's mad, calls the mom and it's just like, you know, Sam did this. And they're, and Sam's like, are you still mad at me or whatever?

• 42:31Shaan Puri?

  And they're fighting and then they're like, and then the end of the story goes like, uh, like, and then Jack looks over at a board game called Samurai that's on their bookshelf in their home. And says, you know, Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids and always declared himself the Samurai leader. Cause he's, he always has to win. He's always in charge of everything. And says, and then says, uh, Sam, I've been shot back. You want to play speed chess right now?

• 42:55Shaan Puri?

  I read this and I was like, that's literally like if chat, I told chat GPT to like make up a story about like, young Silicon Valley nerds who are competitive, have a competitive streak, you know, like, oh yeah.

• 43:07Sam Parr?

  It's called Alpha Land.

• 43:08Shaan Puri?

  You want to take this outside and play some speed chess and see who's the real man?

• 43:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's Alpha Land in Silicon Valley.

• 43:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So I thought that was hilarious. There's another one that I thought was a kind of amazing thing. So, did you know that at some point he basically sold, what did he do? He sold, um, Yeah. So the story goes, he decided to get rid of all his comforts, except for the three or four things. So he kept a four bedroom house in San Francisco. He kept his cars because he loves cars.

• 43:36Sam Parr?

  It was like a McLaren, like a really fancy McLaren.

• 43:38Shaan Puri?

  He has two McLarens and something else. He kept a property on Big Sur in case the world ends. And then he has a reserve of $10 million and he's like, the annual interest should cover my living expenses and I can just spend the rest of my money and the rest of my time trying to improve humanity. And so he's like, I just whittle it down to what are the things I really care about?

• 43:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the essentials.

• 43:58Shaan Puri?

  What do I need? The essentials, my McLaren's, my $10 million, whatever. And it sounds a little like trite because it's like, oh yeah, dude, like that's it. But in reality, like if you know people in Silicon Valley, like there's a never ending appetite for more, more fame, more money, more everything.

• 44:15Shaan Puri?

  And I actually think that somebody who can sort of figure out, well, dude, just accruing these money points doesn't do anything past a certain score. So what am I going to do with this money and my time to like, make sure I use my, you know, my time on this, this little blueberry called earth to the best advantage, right? So I like that he had that. Another thing that he said about being a prepper that I think you'll like, let me read this quote to you.

• 44:37Sam Parr?

  Dude, I think he like, didn't he like, wasn't he like saying, you know, in case there's like a pandemic or something like that, I want a place to go to.

• 44:43Shaan Puri?

  Exactly, exactly. So, um, so somebody goes like, he goes up to these, there's a story, he goes up to these guys at this conference or like whatever, at this meetup or whatever. He's like, so what do you guys do? And they're like, we just kind of work and whatever. They're like, what do you do for fun? He goes, well, I like racing cars. I got five cars. I have two McLarens and old Tesla. I like to fly rented planes all around California. Oh, and one weird one, I like to prep for survival. And they're like, survival? What? And he goes, he goes, yeah, I have a lot of friends that are constantly getting drunk and telling us, telling me about all the way that the world, all the ways that the world's going to end. And I read that this Dutch lab had modified the H5N1 bird flu virus five years ago, and it was super contagious. By the way, this is pre pandemic, right? This is pre COVID.

• 45:25Shaan Puri?

  So he goes, I read about this lab that was modifying this thing, making it really contagious. And I realized that the chance of a lethal, a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next 20 years was, well, non-zero.

• 45:37Sam Parr?

  Non-zero, that's such a, that, that, whenever I hear that phrase, that, that's like, oh, you either are smart or you're trying to be smart. Either way, you've got my attention.

• 45:46Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I have another one that when I was reading this that I was like, he kept saying orders of magnitude.

• 45:49Sam Parr?

  Orders of magnitude. I love that.

• 45:51Shaan Puri?

  I just decided that that's going to be the name of my gang. And so if you want to join my gang, it's called Orders of Magnitude. And we fuck shit up at levels that are 10x.

• 46:02Shaan Puri?

  10x the previous level.

• 46:03Sam Parr?

  Dude, I'm gonna have like the, the, the subcommittee on that. We're gonna call it parabolic or something like that. Like, I'm just gonna come up with like crazy names. Like, oh, you guys want to join the exponentials or not?

• 46:13Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Yeah, it's, it's the orders of magnitude. That's the Crips and Bloods. We go against the exponentials. So then he also says this before opening, he goes, the other one is that, that AI might, you know, get really powerful, be used to attack us and nations will use it.

• 46:29Shaan Puri?

  And then people were getting, he goes, he goes, you know, I try not to think about it too much, but I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, a gas mask from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land, a big sir that I can fly to if the world ever ends.

• 46:42Sam Parr?

  That's crazy. What a baller. There's also a story of him walking around with Brian Chesky. Brian Chesky was about to pitch at YC and this is Brian Chesky started Airbnb, Airbnb was just getting going. And Brian was explaining the idea to Sam. He goes, yeah, yeah, that's cool. I think it's great. Can I see your presentation? He shows him the presentation. He goes, yeah, I think we can make like a hundred million dollars a year doing this. He goes, Brian, do me a favor. Can you add a zero to every single number that you have up there? I need to see a billion in revenue, not a hundred million.

• 47:09Shaan Puri?

  Change all your Ms to Bs.

• 47:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, change all your Ms to Bs. And that, that's, that's actually gonna be my new.

• 47:15Shaan Puri?

  Small boys stuff, as we say. Sam, you just needed our phrase. No small boys. Change all your Ms to Bs?

• 47:22Sam Parr?

  When I was.

• 47:23Shaan Puri?

  Mic drop.

• 47:24Sam Parr?

  I used to work at this office and they took the exit signs. You know how there's exit signs in offices like above the door? They changed the exit sign to say, they like molded it in such a way. So it said IPO. So the exit was an IPO. So, oh, it's the IPO side, the exit side. And I always thought that was awesome. And we need a new sign. So it's change it, change the Ms to Bs. And that's what he did with Brian Chesky when he was.

• 47:46Shaan Puri?

  Fire marshal would like a word, but yeah.

• 47:51Sam Parr?

  Only nerds will survive. Only nerds will get that joke.

• 47:53Shaan Puri?

  So he had another, um, he had another, um, quote about that, the M to B thing. He goes, he goes, he goes, look, I listened to your whole presentation and you need to change that. They're like, are you sure? And he goes, look, either you don't believe what you told me, or I'm dumb and I didn't understand what you told me, or I don't know math. One of those three is, is what's true here. Like either you're ashamed to say it, you don't believe it, or I'm dumb and I don't know math.

• 48:20Sam Parr?

  That's great.

• 48:21Shaan Puri?

  That's a pretty baller way to say things. Um, I want to read you some of the other, uh, little like, you know, isms.

• 48:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Let me give you some more. So, uh, here's some like quick chat advice. So, so I'm pretty into my meme of the year. Is that, that what I call the midwit meme. Uh, you can throw this up on YouTube. So you can see it, but it's basically like, there's the dumb, the ignorant kind of beginner on one side. There's the Jedi master on the other and every in between is the sort of like stressor, type A personality that's like over analyzing everything. And my goal for the, for the year slash life is to live life like either the dumb beginner or the Jedi master. It doesn't matter. They, they think the same way. Um, and so, and then not be the stressor, stressor achiever type A over analyzer type person. And, um, and I'm just seeing that meme everywhere. When I meet people, I just classify them instantaneous. Say they're they being right now.

• 49:12Sam Parr?

  Where do you think you've been historically?

• 49:16Shaan Puri?

  I started off for sure as the dumb, the dumb troll, like my first, my sushi restaurant startup that that was the greatest thing in the world. My next thing, yes. Uh, even just when I applied for my job and moved to Silicon Valley and got a job with a billionaire, like, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I was so dumb that I like, my approach was correct. I was like, well, I'll just, I'll just reach out to the guy and I'll just send him a letter saying why, why I'm the right guy for the job. And then I'm not really going to apply for other jobs. I'm just going to prove to this guy, this is, I'm good at this job. And I just, that was my job search, right? Like I didn't do any of the traditional things. I just did what. It seemed like the dumb thing to do, but that would also be the Jedi move too. In that case, it's like, uh, you know, find the thing you really want and chase it with reckless abandon. Don't like, just put a resume on 500 desks and see who calls you for the job. Um, so, you know,

• 49:59Sam Parr?

  Dude, I, I'm still a mouth breather. I think I'm still pretty far left on that. On that, I'm still pretty stupid. So I'm glad.

• 50:06Shaan Puri?

  I do it from time to time. I'll often do it with my econ biz, like, um, Sully is my like, kind of like mentor coach on that side. And I feel like he's the Jedi guy. Uh, I know he's the Jedi guy because he's like, he says something about frameworks. He goes, everyone in Silicon Valley talks about frameworks. I don't know what a framework is. And, um, at first I used to think maybe I'm too dumb. Like, should I learn this thing? I don't understand what everyone's talking about. And now I realize they're all dumb.

• 50:31Shaan Puri?

  He's a hundred percent right. Like, uh, I'd be like, you know, hey, should we do influencer marketing for the brand? Blah, blah, blah. He's like, remember I told you Facebook ads? Just write the word Facebook ads at your computer. And then every time you think about doing anything else besides Facebook ads, look at that sticky note again.

• 50:46Sam Parr?

  That's hilarious.

• 50:46Shaan Puri?

  And he'd be like, um, if you're going to call me and talk to me about another idea, you better have, be doing 500,000 a month and don't call me about another idea until Facebook ads has got you to 500,000 a month. And it's like, the Jedi simplicity is something I like, you know, revere now. So he had a few, um, a few Jedi quotes in this. I'm gonna read you. He goes, uh, founders will come to me and be like, oh, you know, what, what if, um, you know, I'm worried about saying this to my investors because then they're going to think this, that might affect our series B raise, blah, blah. He goes, just tell them. And then he goes, uh, people are worried about, you know, you don't know how your customers are going to feel about this? Just ask them. Um, you're worried about competitors? Don't worry about them until they're beating you in the market. Um, and he's like, oh, you want to do these five things? You're trying to decide? Like, just pick one and

• 51:31Shaan Puri?

  do it. Most people just simply do too many things. Do a few things relentlessly. Another one, he goes, you need to every, every year, you need to think about how you're going to add one zero to what you're doing, but don't think beyond one zero. And I thought that's a good Jediism. It's like a way to think big without being kind of like, Just a delusional talker and like, you know, living in fantasy land. So you had a bunch of those as I was reading this that I thought was was pretty dope.

• 51:56Sam Parr?

  He's um, he's great, man. He, I always see picture. There's that famous conference in Idaho, like the Sun Valley thing. And you'll see pictures of him.

• 52:04Shaan Puri?

  Oh, no, the rich guy won.

• 52:06Sam Parr?

  The rich guy won. It's like, we're like, it's almost like a Davos, but something like that. But it's like, all like the who's who. I think it's mostly media, though, which includes everyone. So like the Murdoch family and like the people who run CNN and and you see like, you know, uh, there's ex-presidents there. And then you see Sam Altman and he's wearing like cool running shoes with like cool sunglasses and like his hair is all dis shuffled. He is a, he's very, he's a very interesting character. Sam Altman's cool. He's kind of been like a little bit under the radar while he's been building his company, but he said something the other day. Uh, someone was like, we're really hyped about GPT-4. Can you tell us? He goes, all I can say is like, people are setting themselves up for a lot of disappointment. I have, I don't think we're gonna live up to your expectations or something like that. And I was like, oh, that's a pretty cool response. Now, now I'm interested.

• 52:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he goes with, he goes with AI. There's people who think um AI has changed the whole game and everything. Google search is dead. AI is gonna change everything. GPT-4 is gonna be like, you know, friggin sentient and whatever. It's gonna be amazing. He goes, that's that's wrong. And people who think, oh, ChatGPT, this thing's overrated. It's a big nothing burger. It's a you know, look, it makes this mistake. It makes this mistake. It can, you could trick it into saying this stupid thing. He goes, they're also wrong. They're also being dumb, but in a different way. Uh, you know, they're being dumb because they're not realizing how fast is things gonna improve. And the other guy's being dumb because they think it's already there, but it's not there yet. Uh, you know, the truth is like somewhere in the middle. And um, I thought that was like a, you know, a much better like reply.

• 53:34Shaan Puri?

  I also thought there was like a couple of kind of remarkable little things that I want to share as well. Things that I didn't know about Sam Altman. So that first fund that Peter Thiel gave him $21 million for in, I think, three years or so. Let's see, three years or so, the fund, four years, the fund was up 10x already. Um, so that's like what people want after like, you know, a 10 year period and, and in four years he had done that. Um, the second thing was, how did he do it? He made like pretty ridiculous bets. So he, he was like, all right, if I wanna, if I wanna help create like, you know, trillions of dollars of progress, that's gonna come from science and technology, not just like the next random app. And so he's like, uh, all right, I gotta invest in more science, technology.

• 54:18Shaan Puri?

  So he goes for, he goes to Cruise, uh, which was a self-driving car company that eventually got bought by GM for a billion dollars. But at the time, nobody was funding Cruise, nobody was funding self-driving cars. Um, it just seemed too hard, like hardware.

• 54:30Sam Parr?

  Seems like an obvious bet now, looking back, right? I mean, that team was like A plus.

• 54:33Shaan Puri?

  Completely non-obvious back then, and they were struggling. He puts $3 million directly into that one company. And the same thing with this $375 million check, they're like, the lady was like, most people can't write that big of a check. He goes, especially not into a extremely risky thing like nuclear fusion. And it's, it's completely right. Like, that's gonna be like, you know, a zero or massive, and he's writing massive checks into it. And he did this several times. He puts like millions of dollars into single bets that he like had conviction on. He then reflected on it. He goes, of all the biggest winners, um, uh, he goes, I looked at the five biggest winners that I haven't had in that early portfolio. He goes, four of the five, nobody wanted to fund. They were not oversubscribed.

• 55:14Shaan Puri?

  People generally thought they were bad ideas. In fact, I almost got talked out of doing them because smart people were telling me why these are bad ideas. Only one, Optimizely, was an idea everybody thought was a good idea that turned out to be a good idea.

• 55:24Sam Parr?

  It didn't even do that well, I think.

• 55:25Shaan Puri?

  Well, it did okay. I think Optimizely did go public, I think, in the end. So, you know, it did make it, but, um, maybe, maybe I'm wrong about that, but like.

• 55:31Sam Parr?

  I thought it got bought by PE, but like it was, it compared to the other, oh, no, it says they have a thousand employees. I'm wrong. Yeah, it must have been a hit.

• 55:39Shaan Puri?

  So, so, uh, the other ones, you know, Zenefits, uh, Cruise, um, you know, things like that. Uh, basically he was like Stripe, he's like at the time, now Stripe's everything, but he's like, at the time, it was 18-year-old kid saying, we're gonna like work with banks and change the payments industry and the, everybody was like, these guys don't know what they're getting into, except for like, you know, a handful of people that believed in them. Same thing with Airbnb. He was an early investor in Airbnb. That was non-obvious. So he kind of got really into this like non-obvious but correct mentality, which is the, the Peter Thiel like school of thought too, like.

• 56:11Shaan Puri?

  He's like, the investments that didn't work out, people also told me those were bad ideas. So it's not that all bad ideas are good ideas. It's that some bad ideas are actually great ideas and that that's where all the returns are. And so you need to be willing to go where it's unpopular.

• 56:24Sam Parr?

  Which is so easy to like, talk about. And it sounds like, oh yeah, just do not obvious things. Therefore, any bad ideas, see, I shouldn't invest in. I get so many bad ideas and I think I would say, no, these are actually all bad ideas. That's such a challenging thing to figure out. That's the, that requires so much talent or skill. I don't know what it is, but it's really, really, really impressive and really hard. Because looking back, Airbnb, that sounds, that sounds incredibly obvious, but uh, it's just crazy that he was able to pull that off.

• 56:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's insane. So anyways, that's a giant, you know, Sam Altman gasm, but uh, the guy's just really interesting. He's one of the more interesting characters, I think, that exists in the tech world. So uh, so yeah, I like some of those quotes.

• 57:08Sam Parr?

  I think this was a 10 out of 10 pod, you know? So here's how I know it's a good pod. So it's a 12:30 in Texas where I'm recording this. Usually I go and take a nap till about two o'clock after we have a good pod. I, I require, I require sleep and rest and that's how I feel after this pod. I'm like, I need to take a nap and that's how I know it's good.

• 57:31Shaan Puri?

  All right, great. Glad to hear it.

• 57:34Shaan Puri?

  Oh, and by the way, I'm gonna show my tax return on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe and then you'll see it. Go. My first million on YouTube. If you want to see it.

• 57:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And if you find the glitch, you might be able to see his social security number. It's somewhere in there.

• 57:50Sam Parr?

  Uh, 10 out of 10.