Hasan Minhaj - Comedy, Netflix, Haters, & Money

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) sits down with award-winning comedian Hasan Minhaj to discuss how he prepares for his shows, how he stays in the moment, his struggles dealing with anonymous Twitter trolls, what he has planned for the future, and more. _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Would you like to participate in our clips contest? Earn up to $10k by remixing My First Million episodes. To learn more, go to mfmpod.com/clips. * Want to win an hour of time with Sam and Shaan? Tap here to enter the contest. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. * Click here to find out if you won $1,000 from the review giveaway: https://youtu.be/xsaO0H-0wg0 * If you won, please contact [email protected] _____ Show Notes: (00:45) - Shaan and Hasan's daily routines (13:30) - Is entrepreneurship inborn or learned? Is comedy? (18:30) - Hasan's process for preparing for a show (21:00) - Why comedians need to work out (31:00) - How to deal with feedback/haters (55:00) - Creating instead of consuming (1:21:00) - How creators can get leverage back from corporate interests

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Netflix was like, where do you want to do the special? LA, Chicago, New York? I was like, nah, son, Davis, California.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  What's a day for you like?

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Cause you're completely free now, right?

• 0:28Shaan Puri?

  I'm completely free. Well, you're never really free. You know, you build a prison of your own making now. So, you know, two little kids. A day starts with morning shift, dad duty. Yeah. So I take the mornings. I got a two-year-old and an eight-month-old.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:42Shaan Puri?

  And so.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  We're like, we're the same.

• 0:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. When you were talking about it yesterday, I was like, I feel you.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:47Shaan Puri?

  And we, so I do the morning shift. That's just straight dad time. Then I basically pick between, I got three kind of major projects.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:56Shaan Puri?

  So I got investing. So sometimes we'll be looking at deals. Then it's, could be content, but content is really kind of on a specific niche schedule.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07Shaan Puri?

  Monday, Wednesday, for an hour, we sit down, we do the show, and that's kind of it. I don't do too much more than that. I write sometimes, like Twitter, emails, whatever. And then I have a business. So me and my wife started an e-commerce business.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 1:19Shaan Puri?

  And so that, that scaled up. So basically in the last year, that went from zero, like just an idea, to now we do like over a million dollars a month of revenue on that business. I was looking for something new.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31Shaan Puri?

  That I could do as a side hustle. Something that wasn't like, gonna take up all my time.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36Shaan Puri?

  But could still be a valuable business that was, you know, like some part-time, basically.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41Shaan Puri?

  And so that's what.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Have you always been like that? Multiple hustles? Have you always been that guy?

• 1:46Shaan Puri?

  I was always that guy. But I weren't working before.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:50Shaan Puri?

  I was trying to do that and I was failing at it.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Like since high school? Like you were that dude?

• 1:54Shaan Puri?

  So, no. So, so a lot of people have this story. A lot of entrepreneurs have this like. Oh, back in, I was, my lemonade stand, I was selling, I was doing newspaper routes and I hired all these kids.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, baseball cards.

• 2:03Shaan Puri?

  I was, dude, the lights were off in my head until like 21. So like, I was like, I'm gonna be pre-med, I was gonna be, I wanted to be a team doctor for an NBA team. So I was like, okay, what do I do to, I wanted to be on the NBA team, alright, genetics not working.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:15Shaan Puri?

  Team doctor, that, that seems like the blend of my genetics and like my interests.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:19Shaan Puri?

  And only when I met a team doctor, I was like, wow, this is boring as shit. Like, you're just like, you know, these are just joints that are in pain and it's only so much you could do. It was like, not as exciting. Shit, I needed a plan B. So I was 21 when I figured that out.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Wow. Like you were still in undergrad?

• 2:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I had just taken the MCATs, I was ready to go to med school, I was like, uh, what else? I had this random business idea with a couple buddies that sounded kinda silly. It was so silly that it was almost like not dangerous. You know how that is? Like, sometimes a very serious sounding idea is almost too intimidating to do. But this almost seemed so goofy, it was harmless. I was like, I'm just gonna go try, I'm just gonna do this, but obviously I'll eventually go to med school. Obviously I was like, I'm not gonna, you know, I just do this for a couple months.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Also, um, you're at a point in your life, college is so unique in the sense that you, you're leaning on this thing where if people ask you, hey, what are you doing? I'm a student.

• 3:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. I got my cover. I got my cover story. Yours is similar, right?

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. Yeah, freshman in college.

• 3:14Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And you were, how long did you have the like, okay, so let's take that. When did you decide, alright, I'm gonna do this for real, this will be the job? Was it right away or did you kinda play with it first and then decide a year later, two years later?

• 3:26Speaker 00

  This is really interesting. So for me, I was a, it's so funny, you were at the show last night and so you could tell, especially in the Bay, there's just this level of connection I have in this city, New York, certain cities where I'm like, I know you guys, we're, we're all Kumon kids. And they're like, ah, we're like type A, like, uh, we're gonna, we gotta do this, you know, I, I know you, like, I know you. I know what your house smells like. I know the way your mom talks to you. I know you. I've seen you at family parties. I know you. Like, I really know you. And there's a level of intimacy there with that material. The point of the story is, is that I was part of that camp where there was a clear track.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Um, relatively speaking in the community, I wasn't the brightest kid. Every community has like the Stanford kid. I'm always like, I go up to like people in Dallas, I'm like, yeah, you grew up in Dallas, right? Who's the Stanford kid?

• 4:16Shaan Puri?

  Which one? Yeah, which one?

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, who's, man, it was Nikhil. I'm like, yeah, yeah. So assuming you're not Nikhil, what was your path?

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Right, everybody has one. And somebody's like, Brunov, man, Brunov went to MIT. It was like, he's the star. Who is the star of your community? There's a kid, right? Yeah, you're not gonna name him, it's fine. So every kid-

• 4:33Shaan Puri?

  He won the spelling bee.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you're like, you're like, okay, this person is the shining star of the community? What, what's my path? And so, I was a speech and debate kid. I go to college, and the first open mic that I did, a friend of mine, funny enough, who I knew in college, was illegally downloading a ton of stand-up comedy. I went to college during like, the Kazaa-

• 4:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, LimeWire.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  LimeWire era. I think we're the same age, I'm 36.

• 5:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm 33, I think.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like, we're that same era. And, um, you said 33, I think?

• 5:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was like, I haven't been thinking about my age in a while. I think I'm 30, I think I'm 33. I'm either 33, 34, I think I'm 33.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm 36, and, um, so I, I went to college during that era. He downloads a Chris Rock special, Never Scared. I remember that special, he's in the purple suit. And I remember being like, oh, this is funny speech and debate. This is-

• 5:28Shaan Puri?

  Connected the dots.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is forensics but funny.

• 5:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Oh, I, I, I see the matrix. And then I come to find out, oh, like, a lot of the comics that I really loved, there were certain comics that really thought critically like that. Greg Giraldo, rest in peace, one of the all-time greats, he was a, a former attorney.

• 5:44Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  And then he became a comic, Dimitri Martin, who was really big at the time, in the early 2000s, early aughts. He also was an attorney, worked at the White House for a while, and then like, got into comedy, and he had a big run in, in comedy. Anyways, all these people that I liked, Carlin, they were these critical thinkers that kinda were doing speech and debate, presenting an argument or a take. And it just was a lightbulb moment. And I had this thing inside of me, I'm like, oh, this is one of the first things in my life where I have an alacrity and speed at which I do this, that I never had at Kumon-

• 6:16Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Or at the SAT, or at the MCATs, or at the LSATs. Like, I can pick this up really fast. And, I don't know if you felt this, I think a lot of, you know, Dacey kids have this, or whatever, kids in general. Your parents will put you in soccer or basketball or swimming and you're like, ah, there's always that kid.

• 6:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  From just the first drill picks it up fast. And so much of adult life is figuring out what's my thing that I pick up fast like that. And that was that, that was my moment.

• 6:48Shaan Puri?

  I had the same moment, 21 years old. Uh, when we started that, we had this business idea.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:53Shaan Puri?

  And it was like, we didn't even know what the fuck we were doing, right? As in, nobody does in the beginning.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:57Shaan Puri?

  And I remember thinking, oh man, my parents probably not gonna be cool with this if I, because especially, our idea was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So it wasn't like, even like a business idea like, oh, bioengineering, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, some new microbial, whatever.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Why does it sound like you were high when you said that? The way you said Chipotle for sushi is like such a like.

• 7:13Shaan Puri?

  I wish I was. That would be a better excuse.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 7:16Shaan Puri?

  We just, uh, I just tried sushi for the first time and all before that I was eating Subway and Chipotle a lot and I was like, why don't I just, why isn't sushi served like that, the way I'm used to?

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:25Shaan Puri?

  It's just as simple as that.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:26Shaan Puri?

  So I was like, alright, I'm gonna.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  Did you always have, so this, this moment, this problem solving thing, yo, why don't they do this like this? Have you always?

• 7:34Shaan Puri?

  That was the start of it. That's what I'm saying. I didn't always have it. I started to realize.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Naval has that too, right? I've seen interviews with Naval and Naval's like, I was always like, why doesn't that pizza place do this?

• 7:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I wasn't like that. And I, I say this because I remember I used to watch those guys like Naval, he's like a hero to me, right? He's like a mentor in many ways.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:51Shaan Puri?

  And when I hear him and, you know, you hear these people talk about how they, they just had it from day one, you know, early age.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:56Shaan Puri?

  It makes you think if you don't have that, your thing, which most people don't by then, it's like, I guess I'm just not that type. I guess I'm just not cut out that way. I guess they're different than me.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:05Shaan Puri?

  And so I'm always very like upfront about it, which is like, nah, there was no signs of anything. I didn't know what the heck I wanted to do. I didn't know what I was good at until I did. And that just like light bulb comes on when it came on.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:17Shaan Puri?

  And I remember going to my dad, I remember we started working on it. And like you said, I had this alacrity of, oh, I was good at pitching. It was a pitch contest that we were working on first, like business plan pitch. And.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Were you a great student?

• 8:28Shaan Puri?

  No, mediocre. And that's why I called my dad and I said, you know, hey, um. You know, I'm thinking about doing this thing. I was kind of expecting the Indian parent thing, which is like, no, stay focused. Med school. Remember the whole thing you just worked on for four years? Why I paid for this expensive ass college? Like, do that thing.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:44Shaan Puri?

  And he was like, he was like, I think you should run with this. I go, you think it's a good idea? He goes, no, I think it's a terrible idea. I think food business is awful. I think restaurants are terrible idea. I don't understand what you mean, you know, but you don't know anything about sushi. So I think it's a terrible idea in like 10 different ways.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:58Shaan Puri?

  He's like, but what time did you wake up this morning? I was like, I don't know, like 8:30? He's like, and what'd you do right away? I'll say, I started working on this. He goes, that's why I know you should do this because the light, obviously.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  This was your dad?

• 9:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he was like, we've been trying to get you to like, study and like,

• 9:11Speaker 00

  And just care about anything.

• 9:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, care and like, wake up with your own light bulb on and be able to go do that thing.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  What does your, what does your dad do?

• 9:19Shaan Puri?

  He's, uh, he, he kind of had a career where he was in like, he was engineer, research, like worked at a big company, worked at a big oil company. And then he, he realized, like, he was like 30 something. He looked around, he saw in his office, he's like, my office is the same office I've been in for 10 years.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:33Shaan Puri?

  I got all these patents on the wall. He's like, but these are just like certificates they give me to like, pat me on the head and keep me, you know, just to keep me doing my thing, sitting here like a scientist, like doing my thing. He's like, the guy I hand the patent, the idea to, he gets promoted, he gets to go to London and he gets to like,

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:48Shaan Puri?

  He takes my idea, makes it sound like it's his idea.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:50Shaan Puri?

  He's like, maybe I should do the business guy thing. Cause it's like, those guys just take my ideas and like, run with it. So then he switched into the business side. And so that's why he, he kind of, you know, most parents have this where like the thing they regret, they kind of push their kids like, no, do it. You know, like, so for my dad, that was two things was like, social.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:05Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I didn't, I didn't, didn't, I didn't know anything about socializing till it was almost too late. So like, go to that party. He would drop me off at a party.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 10:13Shaan Puri?

  He would be like, you need to go. And I'd be like, ah, I'm scared. I was socially scared. I was a high schooler, right? I didn't know what the heck was going on. And

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Did they let you have girlfriends and stuff?

• 10:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they were cool about it. They were like, whatever.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 10:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So they were pushing me to again, fill the gaps that they didn't have.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:28Shaan Puri?

  And one of his was business. My mom was, my mom, cause are you the oldest sibling?

• 10:33Speaker 00

  I'm the oldest, yeah.

• 10:33Shaan Puri?

  So the oldest paves the way. So my sister had already done it.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:37Shaan Puri?

  And so my mom was like, she had to talk to me.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  She went through Vietnam with them and all that stuff.

• 10:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, she was, she was like, all right, look, your sister didn't tell us anything and did everything anyways.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:44Shaan Puri?

  Everything we told her not to do, she did. And then she didn't tell us, which made it worse. And then we found out later, as we do, and it's like, bad. She's like,

• 10:49Speaker 00

  By the way, I know the listeners sometimes get mad at this. They're just like, get to talking about Bitcoin. The reason why this is, no, the reason why this is important to me is like, Understanding someone's drive shaft is so imperative to um why they are where they are.

• 11:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you're looking under the surface.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, sometimes people are like, ah, that's stupid, but I'm like, no, cuz all of your, I'll just speak on my, like, my field, which is not big, it's relatively narrow. If you take a hundred comics and you're all in the green room, you'll quickly see the ones that are talking shit, you'll see the ones that don't like to write, you'll see the ones that

• 11:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  use sometimes comedy in the comedy club as a crutch

• 11:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  to give them a place to go, to just socialize. The ones that love it, the ones that are sociopathic sycophants, all of those things. But if you start to find out more about them, which is why, you know, sometimes you come up in a comedy scene, I came up here in San Francisco in the Bay, you quickly find out, oh, this person's running from something.

• 11:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  This person, do you know what I mean?

• 11:52Shaan Puri?

  And

• 11:52Speaker 00

  And that informs the next fifteen dominos

• 11:56Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  of their career in their life.

• 11:58Shaan Puri?

  And when you did that, cuz comedy, I think, is kinda known for that, like

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:02Shaan Puri?

  comedy's like this um torturous field where it's like, you know, nobody makes it, then even if you do make it, it's like

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:09Shaan Puri?

  continue, you have to come up with new material, reinvent it every year, every two years.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:13Shaan Puri?

  It's just this brutal field.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:14Shaan Puri?

  And then even the better you are at it, you're a truth teller.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:17Shaan Puri?

  Right?

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:18Shaan Puri?

  And often these truths are kind of ugly, or they're kind of

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:21Shaan Puri?

  painful, or they're about yourself, or about society, or about whatever.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:24Shaan Puri?

  So there's this like darkness, that's with like a lot of great comedians.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 12:27Shaan Puri?

  Uh, it lives with them.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:28Shaan Puri?

  You seem like a well-adjusted, you know, good-looking guy, happy person.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  You saw the show last night, did I come off as unhinged, or?

• 12:35Shaan Puri?

  No, you came off, you came off, like, you came off, like, I'll tell you exactly how you came off. To me, and I don't mean this, uh, this might sound

• 12:43Speaker 00

  No, no, no, be straight.

• 12:44Shaan Puri?

  like a backhanded compliment.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:46Shaan Puri?

  You seem to me like somebody who isn't the naturally, naturally isn't the funniest guy. Like, some comedians, you just see it, you're like, dude, they could just be doing this at their dinner room, dinner table.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:56Shaan Puri?

  And they're just probably slaying whatever room they're in, they just happen to be in a big auditorium.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:00Shaan Puri?

  Yours, I could tell, and my sister even said this, she goes, he works on his craft, like, I could see that the stories you were telling, the beats, the like, the punchlines, it just felt like Everything was put together, it was thought through, the lighting, the sound, the like position, your body language on the, on the stage.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:18Shaan Puri?

  It seemed like you had worked this set. Not like, this guy's just funny, he had two drinks, he gets up here and he starts spitballing.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:25Shaan Puri?

  Which is like, you know, the vibe that some comedians give off.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 13:28Shaan Puri?

  And so to me, that was what I got, was like, you're, it's like, it's ironic, like, this is kind of like the Indian kid who like, does like, hard work and practice, and is like, really good at the thing that he put his, he set his mind to.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:40Shaan Puri?

  That's the vibe I got. Is that accurate, or is that like, my own projection of shit?

• 13:44Speaker 00

  I think, I think that is definitely accurate. Like, I, I really do care. Like, I, I love it. I love this thing.

• 13:51Shaan Puri?

  Okay, do the thing, uh, do you agree with my first thing, which is amongst a hundred comedians that are like, at the same level?

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm-

• 13:57Shaan Puri?

  Are you naturally, are you the average, above average, below average? Where would you say?

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, so what you're talking about is just like, natural, um, there's people that look funny, talk funny, say things in a funny way.

• 14:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  So, their voice sounds funny, they look funny, you're already in the top heap. Think about those guys, Chris Farley.

• 14:17Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Uh, another comic, I love Felipe Esparza. Felipe Esparza just looks funny.

• 14:22Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Hannibal Buress has an, has an amazing voice. Chappelle has an amazing voice.

• 14:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Do you know what I mean?

• 14:26Shaan Puri?

  Yes, exactly.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  He just like, sounds funny. He's brilliant. He also sounds really funny. Chris Rock has a great voice, right?

• 14:32Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  He sounds funny. Um, yeah, I look like a news anchor. You know what I mean? Like, I look, I look like I should be doing like, the five day forecast or whatever. Um, but I also have like, uh, I have a genuine love and I have something that I want to say.

• 14:47Shaan Puri?

  Like, a, like, there's- You got a message.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just want to say something. I have, there's something inside of me that I want to say. And, um, yeah, one of the things that I, I definitely feel is like, when I put together a show, like, on tour, I want to give you a show.

• 15:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Like, I want it to be a show. And, um, for me- Putting together, mixing stand-up comedy, storytelling and theater. That to me was my elixir. Yeah, it was my elixir, like.

• 15:14Shaan Puri?

  We were at the show, I wanted, I was thinking about, what do I ask him? I was like, I got a bunch of questions, but the one that I truly wanted to know, which I don't even know if there's a good answer for this.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:23Shaan Puri?

  But the question, I was like, at the end, so you went up there for an hour and like by the end, it was like, you know, in tetherball, when one person gets the momentum and it's just swinging, the other, the person, the other person is just like flailing, they're helpless, like the ball is just out of reach.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:38Shaan Puri?

  But the one person knows, they're like, I'm about to, you haven't won yet, but the momentum is so strong.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:43Shaan Puri?

  From about halfway through the show to the end of the show, that's, I felt like it was tetherball, you were dominating and the crowd was just in the palm of your hands. It was so good. And at the end, you know, mic drop, crowd goes wild. What is that feeling like? Cause most human beings are never going to experience that. But it seems, sitting there, I'm like, that must feel fucking amazing, even though you've done this many times.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 16:05Shaan Puri?

  It must feel fucking amazing. Does that, what does that feel like?

• 16:08Speaker 00

  You know what it feels like, man? Every artist, and I think every human being, um, whether it's intimate relationships, personal relationships, collaborating and business, family dynamics, and hopefully your career.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Everybody wants to feel seen. And there's this moment in act two of the show where I basically go, man, I want to give you guys all of me.

• 16:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  I want to close the gap between who I am on Instagram and who I am on iMessage.

• 16:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  And when I look in people's eyes, I could tell everybody that's in like the Bay Area work from home crowd, they're like, fuck, I can't be me.

• 16:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  And there's part of me when I-

• 16:46Shaan Puri?

  There's a part where you're laid down.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, when I laid down, I'm sharing all these secrets with you guys.

• 16:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  And I'm like, there's this moment of, do you see me? I want to be seen.

• 16:54Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Like when I'm with Bina, when I'm with my spouse, she's like, hey, when we're disagreeing on something, it's like, you don't see me. Like you actually don't see me for who I am.

• 17:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  And the most, um, enriching thing about that last moment, when I say goodnight.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  And I see people and their reaction, I feel seen. I'm like, oh, I think y'all, you guys get me.

• 17:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  And to me, laughter in that exchange, in that live experience is an expression of love. You know what I mean? Because I can't make you laugh. I can't like force you to laugh. Much like lovemaking, it's an intimate act.

• 17:29Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  And that release of laughter is like, oh, you get me.

• 17:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  You feel me?

• 17:34Shaan Puri?

  It was the journey from the beginning of the show. So that's the end. That's the climax.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:37Shaan Puri?

  That's the I feel loved and seen.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  Before the show.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:41Shaan Puri?

  And again, we're sitting there and the openers went on and we said, okay, he's about to come on. And my sister goes, oh man, like, what would you feel if you were about to go on? And I said, well, you know, he's a, I was just thinking in my head, I was like,

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:54Shaan Puri?

  I know he's done this many times. So now he's figured out a system.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:56Shaan Puri?

  To how to, how to deal with that combination of excitement and nerves.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Gotcha.

• 18:00Shaan Puri?

  Uh, what's the, what's the feeling like for you now? And what's the system you've developed? To get on stage and have that switch flipped. Cause you, when you came on, within two seconds, it's like, this guy's in a state of mind. He's in a state, as we say.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:13Shaan Puri?

  Of like, he's here to perform. He, he knows what he's here to do.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:17Shaan Puri?

  There's no like tiptoeing into it.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:19Shaan Puri?

  So I was wondering, what do you do the five, 10 minutes before or an hour before? I don't know what you're kind of like warm up routine is.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Routine, yeah.

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I need to get ready.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  The listeners want to know this?

• 18:30Shaan Puri?

  I'm sure.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Really?

• 18:31Shaan Puri?

  I,

• 18:31Speaker 00

  This is your personal curiosity.

• 18:32Shaan Puri?

  I want to know it and I, my, my trainer has this great phrase. He goes, who are my customers? The people that love what I do. Like, cause he's, he's like, people always ask, oh, who are your customers? It's some demographic.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:44Shaan Puri?

  Some like, some like marketing intellectual answer. He's like,

• 18:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:47Shaan Puri?

  Easiest way in the world is the people who love, who, who, your customers are the people who love what you do.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:52Shaan Puri?

  So just do what you do.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:54Shaan Puri?

  You will naturally attract the people who love that. You will repel the people who aren't interested.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:58Shaan Puri?

  And you will never have to guess what the heck people want. Cause you just do what you want. And so that's the approach I take to the pod.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, no, I love it, man. I love, I love talking shop like this. For me, it's actually, it's a, it's the three hours before.

• 19:10Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  So what I try to do before any show, I try to make sure that like I exercise in some capacity because.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  And I don't know if you feel this way, maybe it's within our community. It's so funny to go back to what you're talking about where you're like, oh, he seems like a guy who works really hard. This is funny, I was doing Marc Maron's podcast and Maron said the same thing about me. He's like, yeah, you seem like really put together. He's like, why aren't you unraveling like the way other comics are, right? And I'm like, yeah, I'm just philosophically not from that camp. I'm not from the tortured artist camp. I'm more from the place of like, I'm creating from a place of passion and love. And actually, real talk, it's about emptying the tank. I just want to put it all out on the court. You know, and this court happens to be the stage, right? And I want to do my best. I want to be like, I put everything into picking out this outfit. I put everything into picking out these jokes, these tags, the stage design, the lighting design.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Like, this is it. And I want to know when I go to sleep here at night, when I put my head down on the pillow, I did everything I could. Like, living a life without regret, and only you can answer that, is the best. Everybody's talking about chasing happiness. To me, it's about chasing satisfaction, like that self-satisfaction. And you know what it is. You know what it is.

• 20:26Shaan Puri?

  And you know when you sold out. You got a good result, but you kind of didn't do it the right way. That sticks with you. And some people just like, let that stick with them. Other people say, alright, even if I won, I'm not going to win on those terms again. And if I lost, I can lose on these terms and be good at night.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Yep, and I'm sure there's listeners to the pod that spend their time retweeting the right things and quote tweeting and dunking on VC people. And, you know, they say the right things, they'll regurgitate the right opinions, but they know when they put their head down at night, hey, you were supposed to train, you jerked off instead. You were supposed to do this, you didn't. But only you can answer that. So you can signal all you want. For me, what that stage represents is like, no, I'm putting myself in a high level of accountability in front of 3,400 people. I'm putting it all out here. And if you don't think I'm good, if you think I'm corny, if you think I'm whatever, hey, it is what it is, but I stood here and I did it. And on my terms, and I did my best.

• 21:21Shaan Puri?

  So you're saying, so you're saying, three hours before you

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Three hours before, what I do is I like to do the, some form of exercise. And I try to get out of my head.

• 21:29Shaan Puri?

  Like it's a workout workout, or you're just trying to break a sweat? What do you, what's the

• 21:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, trying to do, on tour, it's just about body maintenance. So I'll do running, I'll do some pull-ups, some core stuff, just stuff to get my body going and start breaking a sweat. And what I love about, like, right around minute 30 to 45,

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Is I'll get out of my head and into my body. And so much of life right now. Getting out of your head. Getting out of your head. And it's funny, I called you randomly, I was appreciate, I appreciate you picking up the phone the other day. We had a long conversation, we can get into that later. But so much of, I think what you do and what you put out in the world, and I call it like, tech Twitter talk. It's all in your head. Intellectual. It's all just heady, anxiety inducing stuff. Oh, Ethereum's up, oh, this, Solana's this, it's like, it's all head shit. Right. It's not a body feeling thing. Right. Like grounding yourself two feet on the ground, I'm here in this moment. What do I do? And so much of performance, and to be great at it,

• 22:31Speaker 00

  the best Chappelle, the best performers, they're not in their head, they're in their body. They're really there. Right. Somebody screams, somebody says something, somebody heckles, they're in their body. When you watch Steph Curry play, when I watch Devin Booker play, these guys are so in their body. Right. Luca's the best at this, he's in his body, he's in the, he's in flow. Right. And so Luca's like a kid, and kids do this well. Yeah. Kids do this pretty naturally. I love that. The older you get, the more heady you get, which is you gotta. Yeah, you gotta fight that, right? And so, that's a great way to get out of my head, get into my body, then I'll probably, I eat something. Yep. Um, I take a shower, and then I put, I put on the outfit, and for me, it's like, being on stage. Uniform. And putting on that, it feels like a uniform. Yep.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  And like, for me, it feels, I want it to feel like a show. Like, from the watch, to the jacket, to the pants, I'm like, there's a level of confidence that you have when you move into a room, and you're like, hey, from, from my heels all the way up to my head,

• 23:30Speaker 00

  I'm wearing my armor. Right. Like, I'm coming correct. Right. And you just, you carry yourself with a little bop, you're like, no, I feel better about myself. My shit isn't slouching, there's no stains on my stuff, you know what I mean? Like, the moment I saw you today, you walked in, you're wearing your tech pants, I could tell you washed them a few times, Yeah. but there's some stains on the backside. You know what I'm saying? But that feeling of like, no man, when I'm coming in here, I'm gonna be fresher than Sean. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna be fresh. Yeah. That already gives me a feeling of like, confidence, I know what I'm doing, you know? And, and by the way, the opener, Marcella, like, Marcella was just like, dressed to the nines, you know, it's, it's a feeling. Then I get to the show, um, I finish eating, I'll meditate. So meditation for ten to fifteen minutes will allow me to just again get out of my head

• 24:15Speaker 00

  and drop into my body and something simple, just headspace. Right. Like I'm not getting too crazy about it. Um, and what I love about headspace specifically is so much of it is just basic breathing, establishing a level of intention. I'll meditate and I'll pray. And for me, like prayer is really important because it's gotta be about something bigger than just myself and my corporal being. I'm like, what am I doing this for? And just establishing an intention and for me, the intention is like love. Let me give joy to people. Right. And I, I want the seed of everything that I'm doing to come from that, not be like, not be petty energy, angry energy, um, I'm gonna prove you wrong energy, like. I'm in the laughter business. Right.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Like I'm here to make you feel joy, right? Um, and that warm feeling, so establishing an intention there, I get to the, I'll get to the venue about an hour before. I'll have a double shot of espresso. Um, I'll let my bowels do what they do. You always get those jitters, like you gotta pee, you gotta do what you gotta do. And then about like thirty to forty-five minutes before, I like to be loose, just with the, with the staff. Right. Let them know like, hey, what's up? How are you? Door guy, security guy, openers. Right. You know what I mean? Another way to get out of your head, by the way. Yeah. Be there, be with others, be there, talking to others, serving others in a way. Yeah, and then, um, about a half an hour before, um, I'll go to my green room. I usually write it down.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  I'll write down, it'll just be on hotel notepad paper. Hey, what are a couple of new tags that I'm working on tonight? Right. Just move the ball forward a little bit, remind myself, yeah, I'm gonna do this. Um, for example, last night, one of the things I talk about, act one of the show is fertility. And a new joke that I did was like, you know what it's like being infertile as a man? I felt like Woody in Toy Story when his arm got ripped off. All, that was a, that was just one line and I was like, hey, make sure you do the Woody Toy Story line. Right. You know? And, uh, every show I try to add a few of these extra moments. And you add that up over the course of like a year, two years, three years.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  You start to see what works and what doesn't work and I'll, I'll have a thousand, three thousand different variations of that, right? And then I get on stage and by the time I get on stage, there's just this feeling of like. Now it's just pure play. Whatever happens, happens.

• 26:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  And um, when I'm onstage, what I try to do is I try to remember when, when I'm opening in front of my crowd, they're like really hot. And one of the things I try to remember is, don't yell, don't scream.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Try to actually bring them to you. Like, set the tempo of the game.

• 26:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Don't get like too excited or too hot. Like, you can whip them up, but then like sit down at the stool, bring them to you. And like make the room feel like it's coming to you. You know what I'm saying?

• 27:11Shaan Puri?

  Did you ever watch a film of yourself, basically?

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I watch tape all the time. Yeah, and so I see bad habits.

• 27:17Shaan Puri?

  It's kind of brutal, huh?

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:18Shaan Puri?

  To watch yourself.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. But it's cool, though. Actually, like, those moments where you like, it's very painful for your ego and, but there's a lot of growth in that. The only way to break through and get to like the next part is, is that part.

• 27:31Shaan Puri?

  I've done that even in the business world, and I, I'm gonna keep bringing it back to this.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  No, let's bring it back to you.

• 27:36Shaan Puri?

  That's where a lot of the audience lives.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:38Shaan Puri?

  The things you're talking about of how to get ready for the, for your performance, your day, which you do. That's, I mean, I, athletes do this before they get on the field. You do, the performers do this before they get on the stage.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:51Shaan Puri?

  I do this before I get on my laptop. It sounds lame, it sounds like dorky, but it's like, well, I'm trying to be my, be the best version of myself.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:58Shaan Puri?

  I'm trying to set an intention before I go out here. I'm trying to get out of my head so I can do my best.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:02Shaan Puri?

  I do all the same things, and I just apply it into this world. And it doesn't matter if it's a call with a supplier, or it's a podcast episode or whatever, before you came here.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:11Shaan Puri?

  Got it, I got through my routine.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:14Shaan Puri?

  To make sure that.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Is your routine similar-ish?

• 28:16Shaan Puri?

  Very similar. Obviously compressed, not, because, you know, a longer day, so I'll, I'll try, I, I practiced it where I can do it in 10 minutes now. I can get that state in 10 minutes. That's my goal.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Really?

• 28:26Shaan Puri?

  It has three, three components. Breath work, so there's first three minutes of breath.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:30Shaan Puri?

  And so I can use breath to change my physiological state right away. It'll be pushups and breath work. So I'll just do 15, 20 pushups, I'll do breath. Next three minutes, again, how do you get out of your head? It's not about you. Gratitude and think about others. I have this little exercise I do, again, sounds a little bit cheesy, but I'll say it out loud. People want to try this, just try it. I just let, uh, I, I rotate through almost like in my head. So I'll visualize like, let's say my mom, my sister, whoever, people I love, people in my life. I just visualize them laughing. So I just visualize them laughing, which is them in their joyful state.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:01Shaan Puri?

  There's no like, I don't have to think about why I laugh, nothing. I just, I've seen them laugh a thousand times. I just see them all laugh in succession in my head.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:07Shaan Puri?

  Now I'm not thinking about me and my problems and my needs and my desires. My, I'm just thinking about them.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:13Shaan Puri?

  And I'm just, it's a good energy that I like.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:15Shaan Puri?

  The last.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  So you do, you, you do establish an intention.

• 29:18Shaan Puri?

  I do establish it. And then the last bit is I remember why I'm here. And so the thing you were saying, which I'm, uh, you were saying, I want to bring joy, love to the audience. Want to make them laugh, make them have a great time.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:29Shaan Puri?

  Same thing. I used to think, what am I going to say? Whether it's a meeting, a presentation, a podcast, what am I going to say? What, Hussin gonna show up? What am I gonna say?

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:39Shaan Puri?

  And that used to paralyze me. Just thinking, what am I gonna say? I want to get the right words. I don't want to fuck up. So then as soon as I start talking, there's a little editor in my head being like, that sounded dumb. Oh, yeah. You, you walked up and you said that thing is stupid. And then I'm in my head while I'm doing the thing. That was brutal.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  And you're not in your body and you're not.

• 29:56Shaan Puri?

  And I wanted to just be clear. And okay, how did I do that? So then I start, stopped thinking about, I just, I imagined the end. So I already imagined after the, I already imagined us saying bye to each other at the end of this.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:07Shaan Puri?

  And if that happened, that means this all went well.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:10Shaan Puri?

  And I remember, okay, the people listen to this, what are they going to be thinking? They're going to be thinking blah, blah, blah. They're going to be saying these things.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:15Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that, that episode was amazing. Dude, I love Hussin, man. You have him on again. He was so good.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:21Shaan Puri?

  So now I don't have to think about what questions do I ask? I'm already remembering what I'm trying to deliver. And then it's, I'm not going to learn a new skill in the next five minutes. Like, the performance is going to be based on all the hard work I've done over a decade about whatever I'm doing.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:35Shaan Puri?

  So I don't try to like cram for the exam. I just try to put myself in the right state of mind. So I just perform the way that, the things I already know how to do.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:42Shaan Puri?

  That's my routine for, for, you know, my, to start my day every day.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  How do you get over, you're part of this thing, again, I call it like the business internet world.

• 30:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Which can be filled with. People that are sincere in their intentions, it's filled with grifters. It's filled with sometimes people that are trying to do get rich quick schemes. You're part of this really, it's actually quite similar to Hollywood and politics in that way.

• 31:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Cause if you work in show business, you'll quickly see that too.

• 31:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  You know, shit can run from people that are like really about it, artist, artists. Nas, Kendrick Lamar, all the way to Logan Paul and Jake Paul, like that are just about like the WWF circus show up at all, right?

• 31:22Speaker 00

  This world that you run in and people are now talking about money in business in a really interesting way. When people come out and they comment about you and your businesses and they quote tweet you and they're dunking on you. And that's a part of now the social currency. This is all, this is a social currency that you're a part of. Oh, the more subscribers I get, then I can do me undies commercials and we can sell the pod and you're a business guy, right? How do you deal with those negative critiques? Does it bother you? Does it, what's?

• 31:51Shaan Puri?

  So the honest answer is, yeah, every negative comment is like 10 times 10 for every positive comment, you know? And so that is the initial reaction. But there's also a difference between response and reaction. So the initial, if I'm not in the right state of mind, that initial reaction. I'm gonna clap back or they're so dumb because of this, this and this. I'll go look at their profile. Oh, you only got 11 followers and you're saying this shit? Maybe. Maybe this is why you have 11 followers because you think this way, you know, I'm right, you're wrong, blah, blah, blah.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:22Shaan Puri?

  And really, that's pretty quickly, that doesn't get me anywhere. In fact, it would waste like almost like half a day or a whole day of mine. Just checking the mentions for good and bad. Like this happened, if I go viral, good, you know, I go check all them. I'm just addicted to refreshing that thing. You did an amazing bit about this. That was the most, for me, the most relatable.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:39Shaan Puri?

  You played it up. It was amazing. People aren't gonna notice. Go see the show. You'll see this part about the, the, the.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Cloud comments, likes. Yeah.

• 32:47Shaan Puri?

  Social media.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  That cocaine cloud.

• 32:49Shaan Puri?

  That cocaine cloud, exactly. But with that comes the, the kind of the negativity and that also is fun and exciting. It's this, it's this thing in its own way.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:58Shaan Puri?

  And so what are kind of like, where did I land with all that?

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:02Shaan Puri?

  Uh, okay, so, you know, the good, they think I'm like a genius guru. I'm not, like, you know, my wife will remind me of that real quick. And, you know, the other people who think I'm an idiot, uh, scammer or whatever, people who think I'm an idiot who doesn't know anything about anything.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  Or I'm wrong, or whatever.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:18Shaan Puri?

  Or they'll point out that I've stumbled and said this, said this the wrong way, or whatever.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:23Shaan Puri?

  Um, okay, where is my focus gonna go? Like, focus on why I'm so great, or why I'm so terrible, really does nothing for me.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:31Shaan Puri?

  So I said, okay, I do need a sounding board. So I'll say, so, so I get a reaction from people, good or bad, I'll be like, hmm, let me just get curious. Why are people reacting this, in this way? I'll take a minute to observe that.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:44Shaan Puri?

  Then I'll go internal and I'll say, what's my, what's my judgment? Cause I, I guess my rule that I created for myself was that I want my own opinion of myself to be higher than anybody else's opinion of me.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  You mean positive opinion?

• 33:56Shaan Puri?

  Any, anything. If I think something sucks that I did.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:59Shaan Puri?

  I don't care what anybody else says. I think it is. So I basically want my opinion of myself to be the trump card.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:05Shaan Puri?

  And so that works, uh, for self-respect, like.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:09Shaan Puri?

  I stopped seeking the respect of others, cause I'm like, well, if I don't have the main respect, my respect, then what is all this other stuff worth?

• 34:16Speaker 00

  But then how did you get that wisdom? Cause that's, cause we are social creatures.

• 34:19Shaan Puri?

  My trainer. So my, my trainer's kind of my, my, brought my, my trainer brought it from my personal trainer. He's also like a, kind of like a, he's like me. He's like, dude, it's all in the mind. This is a solo player, solo player game.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:29Shaan Puri?

  And we gotta train this just as much as we train the rest. And so he, he said something at the very beginning. He's like, why do you want to work out? And I was like, oh, I just wanna get fib, I've got real fat doing my last company. I just wanna lose the weight. Okay. He wanted, like you, he wanted to know the drive shaft. What's driving you to do this?

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:43Shaan Puri?

  What's making you think that? What's making you think you're fat? What's making you, why'd you call me today? Why today? Why didn't you call me six months ago? What changed?

• 34:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:50Shaan Puri?

  And eventually it got down to, I had this experience where I went with my two best friends, who are business, kind of like mentors, a bit older than me, all the things I do, they've done a little bit more.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:59Shaan Puri?

  And we all went on a Spartan race together. And I thought, oh, I'm a little bit out of shape. Oh, we're all a little out of shape. It's no big deal.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:06Shaan Puri?

  We went on the Spartan race and I was way behind. And I was just huffing and puffing and I was dying on this thing. And they were like, trying to help me. And every time they helped me, I just felt like a bitch. I was like, oh, man.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 35:17Shaan Puri?

  Like, this is embarrassing. I'd rather they just ran and finished the race.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:21Shaan Puri?

  And left me to like, you know, die on my own on this mountain here. The worst thing you could do is like, push from me from behind because I'm like, it's like, don't give me the pep talk. No, anything but the pep talk.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:31Shaan Puri?

  So I told him, I said, I was pretty embarrassed. I had this situation. I said, I just wanted to like, have the respect of the people I respect. I thought that sounded like a good thing to say.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:40Shaan Puri?

  And he goes, he goes, I respect. He goes, respect's one of those things, um, he goes, you want to give it, not seek it. And he goes, so he goes, two things. He goes, uh, we're not gonna do this, we're not gonna start this program from a place where you're trying to get the respect of others. He goes, whenever you feel you lack, it's time to give. So like, let's not worry about who you're, who, what respect you're trying to get from others and who you're trying to prove to yourself to and all that. Let's become a giver of respect to yourself and to others. So who, and so we started flipping the script and it just became one of my philosophies, which is whatever you feel like you lack in the moment, that's a signal, it's time to give that exact thing. And when you give it, you realize I got it, I have it in abundance. It's kind of like a

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:19Shaan Puri?

  circular way of thinking about it.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:20Shaan Puri?

  But that was the, the thought process for me at least, uh, on this, on this topic, I guess.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  That's cool.

• 36:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  That's really interesting, man. I don't know, you know, I,

• 36:32Speaker 00

  I know I called you about, uh, one of your tweets that went viral again. And it was about how, it was specifically about the metaverse and how the digital world will matter more than the physical world. And I think the reason why it so deeply philosophically rubbed me the wrong way was because the pseudonymous digital world has commodified cowardice in such a way that the real world and the game checks you. And what do I mean by that? You know, I grew up, I was a, you know, Dacey kid who'd play at 24 Fitness. You play ball at 24 Fitness, first to 12 straight up or win by two. But if you lose, get the fuck off the court.

• 37:10Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  I remember there'd be these guys.

• 37:11Shaan Puri?

  There's an honor code.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  These guys that were nice. It'd be 11 11 straight up. This dude would step back, hit it, and as he's about to hit it, he'd go get the fuck off the court.

• 37:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  And you would respect it. Cause he stood there and he's like, I beat you 12 to 11. It's over.

• 37:26Shaan Puri?

  There's no argument.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is not subjective. This is objective reality. Next.

• 37:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  And you gotta sit there and you gotta run it back. You gotta wait another one game or two games or three games and then run it back. But for the first time in history, there are people that stand on stage, that stand on the stage of business or life or comedy or art, and they use their actual government name. And then pseudonymous trolls, who don't use their government name, can launch digital drone strikes.

• 37:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  Attacking you, your character, your family, that can then potentially impose economic sanctions upon your future.

• 38:03Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  And they do it pseudonymously? Yeah, philosophically, I don't rock with that. Say that shit with your chest.

• 38:10Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Get on the court with me at 24 hour fitness. Let's cook. Like, let's play each other. That's what I, it's that feeling that fundamentally bothers me. This is a dishonorable craft.

• 38:23Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  It's not honorable. It's not a fair fight.

• 38:27Shaan Puri?

  The way I look at it.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  How do you think I should unpack that? That's the problem. I was like, why does this bother me?

• 38:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, well, that's the first good, that, that's the right question.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:35Shaan Puri?

  Which is, not, why are they doing this? Why is this allowed?

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Why does this bother me?

• 38:39Shaan Puri?

  Right? The curiosity is what will set you free. Because you gotta say, do I enjoy?

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:44Shaan Puri?

  Focusing on this? Do I enjoy this like trap? This like uncontrollable, you're not gonna stop it. We all agree on that. You're not gonna turn them all off, right? So that's not gonna happen.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  This is the world now.

• 38:53Shaan Puri?

  This is the world.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  And I'm also thinking about my children too, cause I'm trying to prepare. I got a three year old and a one year old. How do I prepare them for this new world order?

• 39:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  And in a weird way, let's, I'll, I'll keep, I'll keep riffing this out with you. Let's figure this out. In a weird way, there's times where I'm like, yo, I wish you punched me in the face, actually.

• 39:09Shaan Puri?

  Cause I've been, I would prefer that.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  How many fights have you gotten in your life? I've gotten into three. Okay, I've gotten into three. I've lost all of them.

• 39:14Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  One time some kid was trying to steal my shoes. I didn't let him and then he just beat the shit out of me. But I'm proud. Like, I, I kept my shoes. He wanted my Jordan 13s, but I kept them.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  But I, but I remember, I remember being like, I like the, the I R L nature of this. There is some level of virtue even in this fight.

• 39:32Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  That it, that it ends, and it ends today. We've resolved this here.

• 39:37Shaan Puri?

  Right. Which is why you see when people fight, it's gone. The beef is usually gone afterwards. As long as the fight was on fair terms.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:44Shaan Puri?

  Both people are like sort of mutual respect by the end of it.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's over.

• 39:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's over.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  And, um.

• 39:49Shaan Puri?

  That doesn't happen online.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is the first time where we don't really have that. And, um, the reason why I'm saying, say it with your government name. If someone says Sean is corny, or Hussin is corny. Anytime any comedian or contemporary says that, I go, cool, put up your hour against my hour. Oh, I'm corny? I'll do 10, you do 10.

• 40:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Let's see what it is. Let's play to 12.

• 40:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  Let's play to 12. Like, I love the dance of it. Straight up or win by two?

• 40:20Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's a merit-based thing.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, but when ball.

• 40:23Shaan Puri?

  It's a merit-based thing. Again, you said, you can get up on stage.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:26Shaan Puri?

  Even, no matter what your name is, you can't make them laugh.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:29Shaan Puri?

  You can't just force them to laugh.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:31Shaan Puri?

  It is merit-based. You must earn that laugh.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  It's why my favorite thing right now in pop culture is the versus.

• 40:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  I don't know if you saw Dipset versus The Locks.

• 40:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  But you could see Jadakiss go up against Dipset. And I thought Dipset was gonna win, but Jadakiss was so nice. He just buried them. And it was, it was, let's play to 12.

• 40:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  You play your records, I'll play my records. And I, and there's something so honorable in that. And this new digital world order is so not honorable.

• 40:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Because there's no reconciliation at the end either. So I quote tweet you, and by the way, shitposting is now incentivized. So actually being a Negative Nancy, and being an absolutist in your position, is now commodified and incentivized. So that you can't even recognize, yo, you won, I lost, good, good game. And there's no shake on it.

• 41:20Shaan Puri?

  Well, it even gets worse because what you say online, what you display online, the photo you take online, is so easily faked. So it's not even like 20, it's, it's like if, instead of going and playing at 24 hour fitness, we each submitted a mixtape. And it's like, here's my mixtape versus your mixtapes. It's like, well, how much editing really is going into your lifestyle, your opinion, your persona, your face? All of it is filtered, is edited, is curated, leaving out the bad shit. And the more real you are. So the way I look at this.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  And by the way, I'm not, by the way, I'm not shitting on digital skills. So if two people are competing against each other in video games, I still like that. Like, there's NPA 2K tournaments. But it's, are you better at 2K than me?

• 42:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  So I think about like the way in which I want to live my life and I want my kids to live honorable lives too. Hey, compete. And there's no, there's no, there's nothing wrong with losing. But like, be a good competitor, be an honorable competitor, say good game.

• 42:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  But when I'm using my government name and Baldrape79 is risking nothing, I'm like, this is whack. This game is whack. And in Baldrape, even you can't deny that. But I, I don't know if the people on the other side recognize that. Go ahead. I mean, I just love your analysis on this.

• 42:32Shaan Puri?

  So I guess the way I look at it is with the, the pendulum has swung. So, uh, before, and they're, you know, sort of like in the past. When everybody was online, or everybody was in real life, real name, merit-based. You had, still had people's opinions in their heads. They just couldn't broadcast it. People, if somebody, if somebody thought you were corny before, they were thinking that they weren't saying it. They, they couldn't get amplified from each other.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Or they would say it. And you're like, okay, cool. So you think I'm corny?

• 42:58Shaan Puri?

  It took a, it took a buy-in. They had to ante up.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. And let's square off in the lunchroom. So you think I'm corny? Now I can make fun of your shoes. I can make fun of your hat. I can make fun of, you know what I mean? Who you're dating. I can make fun of your mom.

• 43:10Shaan Puri?

  There was a cost to enter.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  There's a cost to enter the arena.

• 43:13Shaan Puri?

  The cost of, the barrier to enter is so low now, right? Fake name, fake handle, whatever. You could just go on there, say whatever you want.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  You know what we're analyzing right now? This is Kevin Durant syndrome. Kevin Durant is one of the greatest basketball players on planet earth. And there are people on the internet that get Kevin Durant and his feelings.

• 43:28Shaan Puri?

  Riled up, yeah. And then he says he doesn't care, but obviously, you know.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  So this actually, but because to me, I was like, yo, if, and I talk about it in the show, I'm like, yo, these memes hurt my feelings. I'm a person.

• 43:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  But I'm like, yo, if KD is getting in his feelings, seven foot two wingspan, can cross people over, built like, built like a velociraptor, but can move like a point guard and like,

• 43:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  Then just like shoot and sledgehammer on you, like, and he's getting in his feelings about these like laymans at home? We're in a big fundamental shift in society and culture in a way that it never was like that before.

• 44:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so I, I think basically the reason you get the rewards you get are because of all these things as well. So by you going out there under your real name, with your real face, with authenticity, telling your real life stories, which is what you do, right? You're talking about fertility issues, you're talking about stuff like that.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:20Shaan Puri?

  You're getting like ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. The score, the meter is just running up. Why? Because it's in such scarcity today. We don't get that from most people in most situations. So when somebody does it, you're running up the score real quick.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 44:33Shaan Puri?

  You get the benefits of being the counter to all of it.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  High level of accountability, right.

• 44:38Shaan Puri?

  You're running counter to it. You're putting it on the line. So you're getting all of the benefits and you're getting the scale of those benefits. Before, without technology, right? You'd be doing local shows and, ah, I saw this guy in North Carolina. He was amazing. The guy, you know, in Texas, I don't, I'm not a fan of that person. I've never seen them.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:54Shaan Puri?

  You do the Netflix show, you do Twitter, you do stuff like that. You're reaching everybody, everywhere, all at once.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:59Shaan Puri?

  And so you're getting the benefits of that leverage.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:02Shaan Puri?

  And so you're running up the score because that is what society lacks today. This, this real like honor code.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:09Shaan Puri?

  Of like, look, I'm gonna go try to earn it under my real name. I'm putting myself out there. I'll let you judge me. And if I'm good, I'm good. If I lose, I lose.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:17Shaan Puri?

  And I'm willing to play at those stakes.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:19Shaan Puri?

  Because you're willing to play, you're getting all this benefit. And people who are not willing to play, they're not gonna get any of the benefit. And they're gonna get a, so they get this proportional like, you know, small bit of success if they just like kinda shit on you.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, dopamine.

• 45:31Shaan Puri?

  They get a little immediate dopamine hit, but ultimately they sort of don't ever really, their score never really goes up.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  So you're talking about the capital markets.

• 45:38Shaan Puri?

  It's efficient. It's an efficient market.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  They will reward Durant or whatever. Yeah, or.

• 45:42Shaan Puri?

  You're getting rewarded for being authentic and being accountable. And you're getting, and with that power comes the trade off, which is, would you like this giant prize?

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:54Shaan Puri?

  And here's the, here's what the hair on the deal. Yeah. Here's the cost of that big reward.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:59Shaan Puri?

  Where you blow up in like, I don't know, five years or something like that. The last five years, you had this like meteor, meteor rise.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:05Shaan Puri?

  Awesome. It's because you had the right answer when society was going one way. You were an awesome counterpoint.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:11Shaan Puri?

  You're willing to say what you, what was on your mind, you're willing to say what was right. And you use technology to go viral as hell because you had something good. It went viral and spread like crazy. So you're gonna have to pay this tax, this vig along the way. And you gotta recognize there are two sides of the same coin. And so that's where it's like, the 24 hour fitness scale, where it was, everybody was being accountable.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:34Shaan Puri?

  Cool, but it was only operating at this like, small scale.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  It's not scaled, yeah.

• 46:39Shaan Puri?

  It's not scaled up.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:40Shaan Puri?

  You're getting the benefits of this thing.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:42Shaan Puri?

  And with that comes certain trade offs. And that, so I think that's just like the way I look at it. And I think that.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  That's a good framing.

• 46:48Shaan Puri?

  Society's going in that direction, and so you're already on the right side of history here, where you're willing to play a different game, and because of that, you're gonna win a very different prize.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:56Shaan Puri?

  And you're seeing that your career basically is an example of that.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  So just so the listeners know, I called you on the phone when that thread went viral, and I said, hey Sean, like, and I'm so glad you picked up. Very few people pick up these days. Like, real talk, pick up the phone. And I go, hey man, like, this actually irks me here, and, you know, I'm such like a, I'm an artist, man, so I operate from a feeling thing, and then I start questioning, why do I feel this way?

• 47:19Shaan Puri?

  You're talking it through, yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  And I was like, I'm an I R L guy, but when you're telling me everything is gonna be on the metaverse, I don't wanna be a pseudonymous drone.

• 47:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  I don't wanna, I don't wanna throw drone strikes at people that I can't see. I wanna talk about what's real. And if you watch the show, like, I'm talking about what's real, I'm talking about me and Bina, my kids.

• 47:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  What I went through going at dictators and governments, and it's real. This is real life. I talk about lawsuits and this, just crazy shit, but I'm like, hey, it's real, it's my experience.

• 47:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  I'm being sincere and authentic in that experience, and I got the receipts. And I don't wanna live in a world where I'm a Reddit commentator, and you're a Reddit commentator, and let's just like, argue ad infinitum. That's a zero value add to society, to me.

• 48:03Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  But, I guess, I guess what you're saying is right, you're like, well, the more you double down on that, the capital markets will perhaps reward you.

• 48:11Shaan Puri?

  So you're being rewarded right now for that accountability, right? So the comedian who gets up there and just tells dick jokes, is not gonna have the same emotional resonance as you going up there and talking about fertility issues, and then you're dealing with it, and what that was like, and the tension that's loaded in that. Cause anybody, I just had two kids, anybody who's been through anything with kids and that whole process.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:29Shaan Puri?

  The uncertainty, like, we didn't even have any issues, but my wife was worried that we might have issues, and it loaded the relationship with tension.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  I'm sure you have friends that went through it too.

• 48:36Shaan Puri?

  Let's get started earlier, because it might hap, you know, like. It's a connection. So you put yourself, the real you out there. Yeah. You get the reward. Right. Comedian who just makes the dick joke. I laugh. I move on with my life. I don't feel like I'm gonna back this guy the way that I felt like. By the end of your show, I was like, I'm about what this dude's about. Oh, wow. Right? Because that's, that's what you do. You drew a line in the sand. You said, this is what I'm about. Yeah. You've told, you built your case. Yeah. And at the end of that, how could you not be like? Right, right. I'm on. And it's like, if you rock with me, cool. If you don't, cool. So it was a very different thing. It wasn't just laughing. It was like laughing, but also this is, this person just put their balls on the table and said, this is what I'm about. Yeah. And you gotta respect that, and then you gotta react to that. You gotta pick a side. You're either about that, or you're not.

• 49:21Shaan Puri?

  And that's okay. You can go either way. Yeah. But he made it very clear. And then I'm like, that guy's gonna build an army. Because he's gonna build, because there's a lot of people who are gonna hear that and be like, mhm. I rock with that. I rock with that. Yeah. Whereas if you just did a bunch, if you just did a bunch of impressions of like, what Indian aunties sound like, I would've laughed. Yeah. And then I would've been like, next time you have something, I'm not lining up for it. I'm not camping out for it. Right, right. Because I don't, I didn't connect in that way. Right. But you did it. So I think you get paid for, for doing that. So you're saying just be aware of that? Be aware of that and, and like, recognize what you're, just remember what's already working for you and why, why that bothers you is because you're the opposite of that. Yeah. But there's also a piece of it that could be you, but you've intensely driven the other way. So when you see it, you're like,

• 50:04Shaan Puri?

  I built my brand being the opposite of that. So yeah, it's like when Apple sees a poorly designed product. Steve Jobs was disgusted when he saw other products that were not thought, well thought through. He was annoyed with it in a way that no other CEO was. Right. Because he built himself as, we care about the inside of the fucking design of the, inside the case, what that looks like. These motherfuckers don't even care what the outside of it looks like. Right. You know, so like, it disgusted him in a way that it disgusts you, somebody who has no accountability sort of stands for nothing, just is trying to dunk on people on the outside, right? So I think that's, that's that part of it. To go to the metaverse side of it, I think it's not as different as you think. So let's say the world does move to where maybe these online identities, and that, that digital identity matters a lot. Yeah.

• 50:47Shaan Puri?

  You know, you have a screen name, and my first screen name was Mr. Gubapple, you know, so like, whatever, that's, that's what, that's whatever I picked when I was in fifth grade. I don't even know what that is. Yeah. But let's say that, let's say that stuck with me, right? It's so funny. You know, you know, my first screen name was Hasan Minhaj one?

• 51:02Speaker 00

  I've always been this way, yeah.

• 51:04Shaan Puri?

  Was it taken?

• 51:04Speaker 00

  It's always, yes, it was taken. And then I remember on AIM, Hussam Haddad went online. You remember the door, you hear the sound of the door open?

• 51:10Shaan Puri?

  Of course.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  Right? And then I'm like, yeah, and I messaged him and then it just immediately the door closed.

• 51:16Shaan Puri?

  So I think that whatever your screen name is, it'll be the same, like, this name you have, Hussam Haddad, that's what was given to you. It's your, it's for better or worse, it's your stage name for the world.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 51:27Shaan Puri?

  And you're building up, you're building up a reputation.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Accountability, yeah.

• 51:31Shaan Puri?

  It doesn't matter if that name was Mr. Gubapple or it was Hussam. It doesn't really matter what the real name. It's wherever you're, whatever you're gonna make accountable, you're gonna say, hey, if you like me, if you trust me, put my reputation on this name.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:45Shaan Puri?

  And then if I fuck up, that name has like lost its value.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:50Shaan Puri?

  Well, the better version, you might be able to pick a second name, but like, it, it's still gonna work the same way. Where people are still gonna have to put up or shut up under some handle. It just doesn't matter if it matches your social security number. It's kind of like my, my take on that. But I don't know, it's, it's a wild world of how that's gonna turn out. I think we're still like, it's just, we're still a ways away from that being.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  Where do you, where do you get the points of, like, the things that you do, that you're doing right now? Like, the fact that you take time to train and think, you're, you are preparing your mind as a physical corporal being with two feet on planet Earth.

• 52:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Rather than being just like this guy with like the headset, and you're just like in the matrix. You know what I mean? And your body's literally just being used as heat to fucking be a part of this.

• 52:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Ready Player One world.

• 52:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And I'm just like, yeah.

• 52:38Shaan Puri?

  I'm not gonna say I'm above that. Like, maybe when that's here, maybe I will. Like, I remember before the phone.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  My kids are gonna like tackle me and they're just gonna put it on my head and just be like, just join us. Join us, Dad. I'm like, I don't wanna do this.

• 52:50Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's like, I don't know if you remember before the phone, I remember thinking it was like batshit crazy that people, we're gonna watch movies on this tiny screen? Why would you do that? That's like, I don't wanna do that. That's no fun. I wanna, I love going to the theater. I love the feel of the newspaper.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:02Shaan Puri?

  If you had told me, hey, you're gonna check your phone like 170 times a day.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:06Shaan Puri?

  I would've been like, well, why would I do, I'm not a hamster. Like, I don't wanna live that rat lifestyle, just constantly checking for my email.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:12Shaan Puri?

  Why would I need to do that? I can just check my email once a day or whatever. You know, like,

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:16Shaan Puri?

  The things I do normally today would have seemed. Really abnormal and I could have, I would have been kinda disgusted by some of the things.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:24Shaan Puri?

  And then other things I would have been like, there's no way that, you know, like, how would I be able to do that? It's not plugged in. Where would the internet come from? Like?

• 53:30Speaker 00

  How do you now, so now you've embraced that, but then how do you eliminate noise from your life? Like, one of the things I'm genuinely curious about is like, Trung, your friend Trung, who's hilarious online.

• 53:38Shaan Puri?

  Funny shit, yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Fucking hilarious, right?

• 53:43Speaker 00

  My question is, is I was like, how much just internet garbage is going in that guy's head every day? I wanna meet him. Where is he? In like Vancouver or something there?

• 53:50Shaan Puri?

  He's in Vancouver. He's in Canada somewhere.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  I should have invited him to the show. We was just in Vancouver. But I'm like, how much just fecal matter of garbage is going in your head for him to be like, this is the meme?

• 54:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  Cause he has to sift through.

• 54:02Shaan Puri?

  Right, that's his job. It's filtering through shit.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:04Shaan Puri?

  And saying, here's one, here's a good one.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, just horseshit. Yeah. Um, and how does that affect you, just your like, your body and mind? So what I'm asking you, and I would love to ask Trung, is like, for you guys, how do you eliminate just like, this is just sheer garbage? And if eighty percent of your day is just sifting through that, which is so much of what internet discourse is? And again, the algorithm is incentivized, that just people yelling at each other, not solutions oriented thinking and conversation and dialogue? How do you then have like a high efficacy rate? Because I feel like we live in an era now where you're busy, but you're just, you're doing absolute horseshit.

• 54:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, this is where, I've heard this great quote, uh, from this guy. It's an entrepreneur, I don't remember his name, but he told me something, he goes, he was, he was talking about like, I was like, so what are you doing outside of building your startup? Like, I was, if I'm gonna invest, I first get to know, like, what do you do when you're not coding this thing?

• 54:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:56Shaan Puri?

  And he was like, I said, oh, I got some friends, he's what we do. And I go, he's, he's like, yeah, we're making music. I was like, so you're trying to like, make a band? He's like, no, we just like, we make music together, cause it's more fun than listening to music. I go, what? And he goes, he goes, yeah, we make videos. I'm like, you're trying to be a YouTuber? He's like, no, it's just better than sitting there and watching YouTube. He goes, I have this rule, which is- Good friends consume together, great friends create together.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  Ah, that's dope.

• 55:20Shaan Puri?

  He goes, so you know, you can look at all your relationships and say, what percentage of the time are we just consuming? We go to a restaurant, we just consume shit versus cooking something together.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:28Shaan Puri?

  When we go to the movies, we just consume something or binge watch a show versus like, try to make something together. Make some art, do a project together, build, build a gingerbread.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, build, yeah.

• 55:36Shaan Puri?

  Doesn't matter what the thing is.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:38Shaan Puri?

  He goes, my, the great relationships in my life, I, I recognize they're great because we create and the ones I want to be great. I create more than we consume.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:46Shaan Puri?

  So similarly, whether it's even with work, I try to create, I think most people are consuming like 99% of the time. I think they're literally just mouth open, ingesting, like whatever the hell everybody else is, you know, the few content creators are creating. They're just taking it all in and then they're hoping that their brain doesn't get like, you know, turned into like peanut butter.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:05Shaan Puri?

  And what I do is like, I know it's very addictive to just sit there and scroll the feeds.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:10Shaan Puri?

  I do it from time to time, but I try to say, all right, I need to be creating 80% of the content. I'll consume 20%.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:16Shaan Puri?

  But of my time that I'm thinking about content, that, that's like, that's like doing this, I'm not with my family, I'm not in the gym, I'm not whatever.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:23Shaan Puri?

  I'm going to be creating.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:25Shaan Puri?

  And so I can only consume to the extent it helps me create.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  How do you build community?

• 56:30Shaan Puri?

  In the startup was not hard because entrepreneur, it's like comics probably where we're all trying to do something really hard. Build a business from scratch and like, you know, works, you know, and uh, so like, you know, there's a misery loves company type of thing where it's like, it is this, there's this rapport that's built amongst people. We'll help each other out, we'll get along with each other because we're all going through the same shit. So my community became other people who were startup founders when I was doing that. And now that I'm kind of more creating content and, you know, building an audience and a brand, it's people who are trying to do that and trying to figure out like, like we have one friend, Pom, who is amazing at content, like he's great, he's building his brand, he's like the Bitcoin guy.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  He's the Bitcoin guy, yeah.

• 57:13Shaan Puri?

  But when I look at it, I say, wow, there's a lot of things I admire about what he did, but I also gotta learn that like, I would never want to do what he's doing. He does this thing, he does a daily business show on YouTube now. Every day he wakes up, five in the morning or whatever. And he's creating like a three hour live show.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's doing his squawk box every day.

• 57:29Shaan Puri?

  Every day. And I'm like, I get it, that would work. I would never want to do that. I never want to go that path. So I'm like, trying to triangulate and learn from, but he did these other three things I thought were fucking dope. That I'm like, oh, that's a great idea. I should add that to my game.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:42Shaan Puri?

  It's just like any athlete, it's like anybody trying to get good at anything. You surround yourself with people who are in the game, trying to do the same thing as you. That's your peer group. And you commiserate and you share strategies with each other. And then you have some people who already like have done it. They're kind of your mentors and you go to them, you know, from time to time and ask them for stuff. I'm sure you have the same thing in common, I would bet.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I asked the Jedi. Yeah, yeah, there's a bunch of Jedi. And then there's other pedawan that are part of my like contemporary class that all the time, yeah.

• 58:06Shaan Puri?

  And how did you get good? Like, when did you go from suck to non-suck? Like, because everybody starts, I believe, at suck. That's like the Pixar way. I don't know if you've heard this before. Pixar has a philosophy, which is all movies start at suck. Our job is to like, remove the suck. So there's non-suck left to be in.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:22Shaan Puri?

  So I took that approach.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Man, The Daily Show changed my life, man. Seeing the way Jon Stewart worked and especially that institution. Both Daily Show and SNL, love them, hate them, they're part of, they're comedy institutions. SNL for 50 years, now Daily Show 25. You know, that are these pedigree bootcamps for understanding the process about how to think about comedy. And one of the things that I realized is what Jon taught me and Trevor showed me. You know, Jon really unlocked the code, but it's like, it's all about your take. What is your take and being able to back it up? So it's not even being funny first, it's what is the take? What am I trying to, what is the take? What am I philosophically, artistically trying to say?

• 59:07Shaan Puri?

  Let's give an example. You had on the show last night, you're like, you met this guy who's a private equity guy. You're like, what the fuck is that?

• 59:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:13Shaan Puri?

  He's like, oh yeah, we do like LBOs. You're like,

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, leverage buyout. Yeah, what is a leverage buyout? It's like, well, we use debt.

• 59:18Shaan Puri?

  As you get to, as you get to the bottom of it, you're like, so you use other people's money to buy other people's companies? And then you ruin the people's lives in them by firing them and gutting them, making them profitable, and then you flip it to somebody else.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:28Shaan Puri?

  You're like, yeah, I'm not cool with that. Like, I think that's a little bit of a fucked up way to win is to like,

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:34Shaan Puri?

  This is kind of like vulture.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  Just legal stealing?

• 59:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was never your money to be in it. Yeah. Also, it's, it's, it's stealing while it's legal. Oh, just, just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical.

• 59:44Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  You know, Bill Cosby got off legally.

• 59:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  We all know what it is. And so like, that is what the joke I would start with. That's my take around leverage buyouts and vulture funds, right?

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Then you start tagging it. You can do that Bill Cosby tag. He got off legally. It's not, we all know it's unethical, whatever, what he did or whatever.

• 1:00:00Shaan Puri?

  The glove didn't fit OJ.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Right. So you must have got it. Okay. And then you start tagging and then the funny just starts flowing from there. And then you go, that's like this. And then you can just,

• 1:00:12Shaan Puri?

  And what are you doing? You're sitting in a room with like a few people. You're just spitballing?

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  Riffing, bantering, just like that. Yeah. And then eventually you got to put pen to paper.

• 1:00:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  And you got to start writing the act one. And you start to see, when I watch Weekend Update, or when I see an act one on The Daily Show or any of those desk segments, I now see the matrix. I now see, oh, I know how to construct a seven and a half minute piece.

• 1:00:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  Last week, tonight, Patriot Act, I know how to do a 27 minute piece on it, right? I know the beats and the flow of that. And what was really cool was it just gave me that, um, that central kind of like philosophy. How do I do this? And so the first 10, 11, 12 years of my career, I was just trying to be funny. And what John in 2014 really helped me unlock was like, no, no, no, you need to have like, um, there needs to be an actual process and purpose to what you do. Now, I'm not saying this as a virtue thing. No, just, you just need to be like, even if you're doing dick jokes, or even if you're being silly, there needs to be, you need to understand the game and how to heighten it comedically.

• 1:01:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Even stupid silly jokes, you know, are, are like that. And so, um, that was the unlock for me. And then just reps, trying to get as good as possible. Now my, my next thing that I'm just working on the most,

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  Is the jazz part of it. Like, yo, just have fun. That's always been one of my weaknesses. Cause like I told you, like I'm a Kumon kid.

• 1:01:31Shaan Puri?

  You're structured.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  And so, and so we're so built around fear. And so there's these moments that I try to have on stage. I don't know if you saw, it's like, I'm just kind of unhinged. Like, the first like three or four minutes of the set, I'm just, I'm literally just riffing.

• 1:01:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  When I was making fun of the kids' shorts, there was a kid in the front row of the show, just short shorts.

• 1:01:51Shaan Puri?

  Zane.

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, Zane, the eyes were just like all up on the chair. And then like the seats in the back and, you know, seeing people come in late and then riffing off of that. It's pure jazz. Now, jazz has structure, but there's also play.

• 1:02:04Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  And then you can go back to it. And like, it's that organized chaos that I'm trying to like, start to tap into. Yeah.

• 1:02:11Shaan Puri?

  And you're doing well now. You, I don't know how you were doing before, but I'll say, let's say, when was like the, when did things start getting real good? Was it about the last four or five years?

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would say probably around like White House Correspondent's Dinner. That was my kind of big breakthrough.

• 1:02:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  National recognition moment of like, you didn't have to be a fan of The Daily Show or just a fan of comedy. Like, I penetrated, you know, front page of the news feed type fame and clout and credibility type thing, yeah.

• 1:02:41Shaan Puri?

  And you, uh, so you started doing well, started making money doing this thing, which is amazing.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Shaan Puri?

  So hard to do, so you did it.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:02:49Shaan Puri?

  And what do you do? So let's, I want to talk about the breakout, how you broke through, but now that you're here, you've arrived, you're doing really well now. Business side of things.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Shaan Puri?

  How you running the show? So what, are you just in, like, dude, I'm just fucking touring 24/7. I don't even think about the, the money just goes in an account. I don't think about it yet. Or are you like investing? What are you, what are you thinking about?

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so, you know, that's the really interesting thing is now I'm starting to think more about the business side of things. Not in so much of the, I'm a venture capitalist. I want a hundred X, I want a thousand X. The way show business works, I think like any business really, but show business specifically is extremely predatory. And it's built on this idea that, um, we provide the labor and they're kind of banking on you being desperate.

• 1:03:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Dumb and not owning your IP and.

• 1:03:41Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Content creation. They, they kind of are banking on that. And they, meaning like, the big studios, the big streamers, the powers that be, the agencies, all those sort of things. They're banking on you not knowing what it is. And I think for the first time in history, we're starting to see close groups of collaborators, starting to come together and build things themselves.

• 1:04:03Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  They can still run them through the big pipes in the studio system. But they're also like, no, no, no, we independently operate. We cook everything, we write everything completely. So like me and Prashant, we started a company. And we write, we produce, we executive produce people's projects. But we do the whole thing kit and caboodle.

• 1:04:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  And hypothetically, Sean would come to me and go, hey, listen, man, I'm hosting this 15 minute event at this thing. And I want it to fucking rip. I want it to kill. I go, cool, let's, what's your take? What do you want to say, blah, blah, blah? Come sit down with me in PV, let's break down your act one.

• 1:04:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  And we'll tag it up and do all that stuff. And that's a cool opportunity for us to collaborate and for us to brown paper bag amongst each other.

• 1:04:43Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  And I love the ethos of that, like, hey, let's build together.

• 1:04:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  You're an artist and a creative, I'm an artist and a creative. I think lawyers are important, I think agents are important, they're fine. But they're necessary evils. This brown paper bag, this honest relationship that we have as artisans together is of, you know, the paramount importance. And the more artists we can learn about just the business side of things, I think it's going to be for the, for the better. The other, the other part of it, man, is I'm just, I'm so much of my life was just trying to make it.

• 1:05:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  Now I don't even know what to do with money. I'm trying to understand what is money, what to do with it.

• 1:05:17Shaan Puri?

  Right. And what's your mindset now? So what have, where have you arrived on that?

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  To me, money represents, you know, and capital represents two things. Money will not solve all your problems, but money can take care of certain, certain problems. So if there's 10 problems, four of them, say childcare, my daughter's braces, uh, you know, being able to Uber back and forth to the airport. I can take those problems off the table.

• 1:05:42Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:05:43Speaker 00

  It will not solve my marriage. It will not make me a loving father or an attentive father. Those are problems I have to solve. It won't make me in shape, it won't help my mind. But at least taking those pain points off the table means a lot to me. But there's another data point as an artist, that money can help solve two things. It gives me the opportunity to say no to things. You have fuck you money, like, ah, you should host this game show. No, I'm not going to do that.

• 1:06:06Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  It also gives me the opportunity to imprint my worldview upon the world on my terms.

• 1:06:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  So the show you saw, I own it outright.

• 1:06:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  I, I'm not just in the comedy business.

• 1:06:18Shaan Puri?

  Bet on yourself.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  I'm in the trucking business. Like I own and operate that 18 wheel truck.

• 1:06:23Shaan Puri?

  You're like Mayweather now.

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  Those lights, those, like, there's the holodeck that I'm standing on that glows. Like, I own it. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it after the special. But there's a sense of empowerment of, yo, I wanna say this in the world, and I have the capital to imprint my worldview upon the world.

• 1:06:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  And that there's a deeply empowering feeling in that. The next thing that I'm trying to learn, and the reason why I wanna be on podcasts and meet people like you is, artists, we need to learn more about how money works. So once you make it, and you wanna buy a house and provide for your family, and, you know, hopefully have childcare in some capacity, and how do you not blow it on dumb shit to the point where it gets really sad, man? There's a lot of artists and entertainers, you'll get hit up and they'll be like, hey, so and so has cancer, we need to do a comedy benefit to pay for their medical bills. I'm like, this is sad, man. This guy was on SNL, this guy was on blah blah blah, this guy was on a sitcom. And I'm like, yeah, this has to stop.

• 1:07:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  And, um, my question to you would be, and this is the thing I'm trying to figure out is, if you were an artist and you all of a sudden, we make our money in lump sums, you all of a sudden were given $2 million, a million dollars, 500,000, you just make these lump sums, what would you do with that money? That's the fundamental question that I'm trying to figure out and answer.

• 1:07:48Shaan Puri?

  Well, the first thing is there's gonna be a bunch of people telling you what to do with your money, and you gotta avoid them at all costs.

• 1:07:52Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:07:53Shaan Puri?

  The people that are swooping in with the next great opportunity and trying to get you to buy fucking, you know, Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises and shit like that, like, you have to sort of say, alright. How do I get a trusted person who is an expert at this?

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Shaan Puri?

  That is actually good at their job? And how do we align our incentives so that they're not able to just pillage me? Uh, like it happens to a bunch of athletes.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Shaan Puri?

  Um, they're not just my homeboy, you know, from, from high school or whatever.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Shaan Puri?

  I trust them, but they're not be the experts. Like you have to find that intersection of trust and expert.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Can I tell you where, where it gets really hard? You know, I'm fortunately like, again, I grew up, I'm, I'm kind of just, you know, I'm a nerdy kid. I, I was never, I don't roll with an entourage. You know, I got pulled up in an Uber, like solo with my backpack. So I don't have all those pitfalls that other, uh, artists and entertainers have. Where they're a couple of jewelry. Yeah. Jewelry purchases, a couple of car purchases and a divorce away from just like losing it all.

• 1:08:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  You know? I'm a pretty like level-headed, you know, guy. That being said, you know, it's interesting. You, you try to do your research and it's, it's crazy. I'm 36 years old, I'm starting to read, read about, um, you know, financial literacy and stuff like that. And I'll read books, I'll read J L Collins's book, you know? And, you know, he's an advocate of VTSAX.

• 1:09:10Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:09:10Speaker 00

  Just Vanguard funds.

• 1:09:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  But when I go on the internet and I start looking through your mentions and I go through your page or Sam's page. And nobody trying to fuck with VTSAX. Like you old man, you're not on the Solana tip? How do I?

• 1:09:25Shaan Puri?

  How do you navigate that?

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  Discern truth, ontological truth, reality and light from just this banter? This, this just never ending.

• 1:09:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  Up, down nature of noise.

• 1:09:37Shaan Puri?

  So here's how I would do it. All right. So here, here's how I would break it down. I'd say, what do I want? So there's some people who are saying, I'm trying to become Diddy. I'm trying to become Kevin Hart. I'm trying to do whatever. I'm trying to have this mega, mega empire, billion dollar status. Some people who say, look, I came from nothing and I got this thing now. I'm not, I, I need a certain level of security and safety. That's what makes me happy is knowing I could never go down to zero. Knowing that I can never fuck up and lose it all. It is, it is safety for life, for me and for my kids. What is that number?

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Shaan Puri?

  So you start to play with these numbers. You start to say, what does life cost? And what do I want?

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, your burn.

• 1:10:09Shaan Puri?

  What are my goals with this? What's my burn right now? You first gotta take that layer to land. I don't need any strategy without an objective. So any strategy is meant to get you to some objective. And what most people do wrong is they're just picking strategies without really curating the objectives.

• 1:10:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, and why?

• 1:10:24Shaan Puri?

  Why? Why is that thing? Can I stand and defend why I believe that this is what I'm going for? That this is my strategy? Um, like, how do I get to the point where I know what I want and I can defend what I want to myself? Not to, you know, like, I can articulate it.

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Shaan Puri?

  Actually, why I've decided that and why I said no to these other plausible paths? That might be right for others, but they're not for me.

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Shaan Puri?

  So you set your goal that way. So that's the first most important step.

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  My goal is two things, and I've identified them, because I think about these things a long time. You know, being on tour is really good, because you just start to, planes are great. You just have.

• 1:10:55Shaan Puri?

  A lot of time. It's like a shower in the air.

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  To think, yeah. And one of the things that I thought about was like, it's two things. It's like, to me, being a father and a husband means providing financial safety and security for my kids, you know? I grew up in a family, I don't want to give away, I don't want to talk about this too much, but money was always a thing that people in my family argued about, and I never wanted that to be a thing here. And it's a tough thing to do if you're an artist. Are you kidding me? That's, why did you pick that path? But it was, it's what's honest to me. But to me, what money and business represents is, okay, if I can earn enough, so that, God forbid, this goes to shit, but I have enough runway room, and this is gonna sound crazy, but for 10 years, because I do deep work. Like, it took me two and a half, three years to write this show.

• 1:11:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  Took me a long time to put it together.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  And I hope the depth of that resonated with you and to the audience. That's my dream.

• 1:11:44Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  Yo, do you, do you feel what this meant to me and what this, I hope, I hope you see me, I hope you see it. I hope you feel it too.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  But in order to do that, I have to have runway room.

• 1:11:54Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  I have to have two years to be able to hole up and write this movie, write this thing. I have a couple of projects that are now lined up after we shoot this Netflix special, but they've required a ton of time.

• 1:12:04Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:12:04Speaker 00

  Time, you need financial capital to cover your burn.

• 1:12:08Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  To cover, like I said, you know, my daughter, baby girl, she has glasses now.

• 1:12:12Shaan Puri?

  An escalating burn, yeah.

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, and now there's all these additional things. My mom, her knees are going. She needs knee replacement surgery, you know? I'm the eldest. These are real things. And I, I put it as like, no, I need that burn for, you know, 10 years.

• 1:12:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  But now we live in a world where we're not even gonna be able to retire.

• 1:12:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  So I have to start thinking, no, I gotta be Rocky. I want to be Mel Brooks. I want to be doing this. You know, hopefully Dick Gregory. I'm doing this until I die.

• 1:12:35Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  I love that. Dick Gregory died with dates on the books. He was gonna do Rooster Teeth Feathers in Sunnyvale, California, bro. Living legend, man. And I'm, and I'm like, what an inspired life.

• 1:12:45Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  So many people are like, well, he wasn't the biggest comedian. I'm like, bro, you lost the plot.

• 1:12:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  He's still playing the game. What a beautiful thing in his eighties.

• 1:12:53Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:12:54Speaker 00

  God, God, give, please give me life so I can continue to do that. So that's, it's that burn. What's that number? Ten, maybe 10 years, five years. And I've told my accountant this, right? Then the other thing is, is what is the financial capital that I need? To then continue to imprint my vision upon the world? So the show that you saw, the burn to run it. Man, is almost 40 grand a week just in labor costs, trucking costs, getting it to venue to venue. It's a lot.

• 1:13:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:13:26Speaker 00

  Now do that at scale. I'm touring for six months, eight months, nine months, a year. Got to take it over to Europe, to Asia, to Australia. All of those things. It's like, I want to be able to count on.

• 1:13:37Shaan Puri?

  Creative capital.

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, only on myself. I'm not asking for a network. You know, so funny, like, one of the things that artists now complain about is like, the studio said this. And I'm like, hey, man, we got to shift.

• 1:13:47Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  To now being like, no, no, no, we have that. Now, in order to do that. I gotta be able to make money not at a one X, two X, five X. I have to start making moves that can potentially 10 X it. Because it can then cover that burn. So those are my two missions.

• 1:14:02Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  How do I continue to do King's jesters and take care of my family? I'm not trying to be a billionaire. It's just those two things.

• 1:14:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so that, that will give you a number or settle our range.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Shaan Puri?

  Then you say, all right, what are the strategies that could be, that get me to that? And you, you're not going to know them yourself because you're like, well, I spent 10 years getting fucking amazing at comedy, not the money game, right? The money game is its own game. I'm going to respect that the same way when I'm like, dude, I want to do comedy. But I know comedy means, it's a game that I, I know what it was like to be an absolute beginner in business. Like, I might ass kick for eight years straight.

• 1:14:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Shaan Puri?

  It's probably going to feel very similar if I ever wanted to like, even just like, have the experience of going and doing a five minute comedy set. I'm probably going to have to get my ass kicked for like a year or two.

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Shaan Puri?

  To just be able to go do that.

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Shaan Puri?

  So you gotta say, all right, how do I find somebody that's going to do that? And I need somebody who, I need them more than they need me.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Shaan Puri?

  That'd be a great thing to have, right? Because a lot of people who need you, they need you for the clout, they need you for the money, they need you for many things. So you need to find somebody who doesn't really need you. They're happy to help. They're happy to offer. They get something of it. It has to be a mutual exchange.

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Shaan Puri?

  But they're good already. And so that's why I like hanging out with people who are good already. So when I go to them, they're not trying to dig into, oh yeah, here's a business idea, you know, here's what you should do. By the way, can I get some advisor shares? Can I get some equity? It's like, well, you don't, they don't need that because they're already playing the game at a higher level in the money game. So they don't need me for money when it comes to that. So I can trust their advice from that sense because they're not looking for that. So then you get a bunch of strategies. You say, all right, here's my, my safety playbook. I want this amount of money that's in something like Vanguard low cost ETFs. That's expected to grow seven percent. I could chart that out and say, all right, that's what that looks like over 10 years. Then I need my high risk, high reward part of the portfolio. That's, that's the.

• 1:15:42Speaker 00

  And I've read those books, like Jason Calcanis has a book where he's just like, hey, take a hundred thousand dollars and turn it into a hundred. Let me ask you this, is that real?

• 1:15:48Shaan Puri?

  That part I do not believe is real. I think that would be very misguided.

• 1:15:52Speaker 00

  And I don't know, you know, my whole thing is, you know,

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  and you can like it, not like my comedy, whatever, but I'm trying to meet people where they're at.

• 1:16:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  I love people, bro. Like, I never want to lose, I call it the cost of milk energy. If you ask my dad, how much is milk? My dad will be like, in Manhattan, at the bodega or at Costco over in New Jersey, if we go over the bridge. He'll tell you the cost of milk. I love that. Like knowing how much gas is, knowing how much it is to like lease or buy a Corolla. It's why I drive an Odyssey. It's like, man, I want to fuck with people. I love people. So for me, one of the biggest things that I'm trying to do also is like, if I can learn, perhaps even through my comedy, through my gift, I can help meet the people where they're at. I'm never going to run with the A16Zs. Maybe, who knows? They may, they want me to, they may want me to like perform at their birthday party or something with Drake, you know?

• 1:16:44Shaan Puri?

  The kid's 12th birthday party.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  They're just like, oh, they really like Hassan. Come, come do 10 minutes. But I'm talking about like, man, that, I'm speaking to that. It's funny. I had this joke that I did on Patriot Act where I made fun of Bitcoin, the dudes who like tell me to invest in Bitcoin. I said, I believe in Bitcoin. I just don't believe in the people that tell me to get Bitcoin. Cause it's all my homies that told me to take out a subprime mortgage in 2008. I'm like Travis, you wanted me to, you wanted me to take out a second mortgage in 2008? And why are you just like all like diamond hands now? You're diamond hands in me to death or whatever. And they're like, you dumb motherfucker. Look, it's at 60K now. And the comic in me is like, bro, keep it a hundred. Keep it a hundred with me. Use your government. Look me in the eye. Tell me honestly.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  The reality is, is you have 10K in the bank. The cost of living in Milipitas is too high and you need that shit to fucking 200x.

• 1:17:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  And so you are betting everything on this and that's why my jokes are getting to you. Now look me in the eye and use your government name and tell me, am I lying?

• 1:17:47Shaan Puri?

  So I think that-

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  Am I being real? Check me. If I'm wrong, check me, Sean.

• 1:17:51Shaan Puri?

  Uh, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. What I would say is-

• 1:17:56Speaker 00

  But maybe I'm misguided, maybe what-

• 1:17:58Shaan Puri?

  There's a certain level of skepticism you have that is absolutely needed.

• 1:18:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:01Shaan Puri?

  And you're try- you have to get to the root of-

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Shaan Puri?

  Why are you saying this? Do you know what you're talking about? What is in it for you if I do this? You know, you know, you don't want to be blind following the blind.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Shaan Puri?

  What I do, one thing that works for me that's like a hack, a cheat code. When I was doing that sushi restaurant thing I told you about, we were trying to find the perfect location. They said in restaurants, location is everything. So we're like, oh, we're gonna be location experts. We're scouting, we're doing all this real estate shit. We're looking up and then we just realized, hey, Chipotle puts like, you know, billions of dollars into picking the right location. Why don't we just go right next to where every Chipotle is? And we're, and that's actually the strategy that's, uh, that Quiznos and a whole bunch of other brands had used.

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 1:18:37Shaan Puri?

  Noodles and Company. If you go look next to a Chipotle, there'll be a Noodles and Company there or there'll be a Subway there. They all just, they're like, well, they do all the research and they're an attraction. So like-

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Shaan Puri?

  We just go next to them. We could piggyback because they're putting their skin in the game. They're not just telling us this is a good location.

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:51Shaan Puri?

  They are putting down their roots. They're investing money.

• 1:18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Shaan Puri?

  Which means this is probably a good idea.

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Shaan Puri?

  So I have a couple buddies who I'm like, look, uh, you've been successful in this game. What are you putting your money into now? And in what ratios are you putting, how much of your money are you putting into these things? And how do you think about them? I triangulate between four people like that.

• 1:19:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Shaan Puri?

  I say, okay, now I have a base understanding of like where they are putting their skin in the game. They're not telling me to do it because they get something out of it. They are put themselves investing in this and they're doing a certain amount of diligence that like they are in a space that they understand. And so you're able to get, there's an intelligent way to copy and then that follow.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Shaan Puri?

  There's an intelligent way to follow and then there's an unintelligent way to follow as well.

• 1:19:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Shaan Puri?

  The unintelligent way to follow is I heard some shit from some guy who's got an incentive to sell me this thing.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Shaan Puri?

  And I don't really understand why he's telling me to do this and I can't really ask him. I don't know what percentage of his portfolio is in this, you know, so I can- Some random cryptocurrency I'm excited about.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Shaan Puri?

  People, oh, you said that was great. Yeah, I put a half a percent of my net worth into it. Because I understood it in this way and I thought had this risk reward. You put thirty percent of your net worth into it. I never told you to do that.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I never told you to do anything. Uh, but you interpreted X as Y.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Shaan Puri?

  So there's an intelligent and unintelligent way to do it. But that's kind of my approach of like how I would do this. I would say, all right, this is a money game you gotta learn. I'm gonna learn along the way.

• 1:20:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:07Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna speed up my learning curve by partnering with people who already are playing this game at a higher level than me. That don't need any, they don't need the money from me. They're not getting a cut of me.

• 1:20:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:15Shaan Puri?

  But they're happy to do it because it's cool to know a comedian. And you know, it's like

• 1:20:19Speaker 00

  I, I, I respect your work.

• 1:20:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like, it's just, it's fun, right? And so like, there's, that's how I would approach it if I was him. The other thing you said, which is important, which is the artists have to get leverage. So like people were, last night when we were leaving the show, I was talking to my sister and I said, oh, it's amazing this. My dad was like, I can't, my dad, the whole time, I told you, I bought the beer. He's like, I can't believe you bought that beer. At the show, so expensive. That beer's a dollar at Costco. I was like, I know, I understand that.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Shaan Puri?

  I'm having an experience at the show here. I wanted to have a beer and enjoy the show.

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Shaan Puri?

  Uh, that was worth thirteen dollars to me. I know the beer only costs

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  Which is crazy, thirteen dollars.

• 1:20:52Shaan Puri?

  And so he's like, he's like, I can't believe so many people pay to come to the show. How can they afford a show like this? And I said, well, people care about like, they're having fun. Like this, this is their budget. I understand you don't allocate your budget to that, they do. And he was like, he's like, he was like, you know, this guy must be doing amazing. Because he's, he did eight shows or whatever in Bay Area. He's got a Netflix show. I say, yeah, he's doing, I'm sure he's doing great. I said, but also think about like, I don't know what your Netflix deal is, but I know that if I was offered a Netflix deal, I'd have to do it for zero, essentially, right? Like Netflix kinda knows that I have to say yes to have a Netflix show.

• 1:21:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:24Shaan Puri?

  So my bargaining power is probably very low.

• 1:21:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Shaan Puri?

  So even though it's a big deal and it might do well.

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Shaan Puri?

  My negotiating power in that situation, my leverage is low.

• 1:21:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:21:33Shaan Puri?

  Versus this show that you own, your leverage is higher, right?

• 1:21:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Shaan Puri?

  So it's like, I say, you know, just because somebody has certain things you do for distribution and fame and so things you do to monetize.

• 1:21:43Speaker 00

  And that was the Comedy Central deal. Like you're on The Daily Show, you're on SNL.

• 1:21:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:21:46Speaker 00

  To be on a cultural institution.

• 1:21:48Shaan Puri?

  Exactly, to get your name built.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Shaan Puri?

  They know, like you can, they can pay you whatever.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Shaan Puri?

  And so, how do you get the leverage back? And so that's where, there's this idea, by the way, that like, who said this, somebody said this, I'm stealing it, but. Why wouldn't comedians create, like, oh, so everybody's getting big, big checks from Netflix and others to go do a special now?

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Shaan Puri?

  And, okay, here's, you know, I think Chappelle, whatever, something like 30 million bucks, 20 million bucks, I don't know what the numbers are.

• 1:22:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Shaan Puri?

  It's on that range, very big upfront payday.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:14Shaan Puri?

  They know they're making the money on the back end, otherwise they wouldn't offer that kind of money.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. But also, a key data point you need to know is, it's just like, you cannot use Ronaldo's deal, LeBron's deal, Steph Curry's ultra max deal, or Chappelle's ultra max deal. Because the delta between who the capital markets are paying number one, man, you gotta see what Buddy Heald on the Sacramento Kings is making.

• 1:22:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:22:37Speaker 00

  No, because Buddy's solid, but what is he, but is he top 10 in the league?

• 1:22:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  Is he top 15 in the league? That's the real, again, I talk about the Costco milk thing, that's the real working class artist. If you can't be Kevin Hart, if you can't be Jeff Bezos, if you can't be Chamath or whatever, and you can't ball out at a bill, then what do you, what are the moves you make?

• 1:22:58Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  That's the way I'm trying to operate my life. Hey, assume you won't be Will Smith.

• 1:23:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:23:01Speaker 00

  You won't be the biggest movie star in the world, and the capital markets are gonna pay you at 1,000x. Say they pay you at 10x, what moves do you then do to have a healthy, happy artistic career for the rest of your life?

• 1:23:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:23:13Speaker 00

  That's my mission, I wanna continue to make art as honest for the rest of my life.

• 1:23:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:23:17Shaan Puri?

  I think, well, I'll answer your question.

• 1:23:19Speaker 00

  But, but let's, but.

• 1:23:20Shaan Puri?

  But, but the idea, real quick, is, the idea is, if the artists got together and created, the streaming technology now is actually like, pretty standardized, off the shelf, you can, you can have a white labeled version of Netflix.

• 1:23:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:23:32Shaan Puri?

  In six months.

• 1:23:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:23:34Shaan Puri?

  The thing is, you need draws, and so like, if somehow, and this is always the coordination problem.

• 1:23:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Shaan Puri?

  If you could somehow coordinate the key artists to say, hey, we can own this motherfucker. We can actually create our own platform, that's a comedy streaming service.

• 1:23:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:47Shaan Puri?

  That people pay for.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Shaan Puri?

  And we're gonna share the, the dividends, sort of like meritocratically, meaning if I come to watch your show, if I subscribe to the service.

• 1:23:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:55Shaan Puri?

  Because of Hudson's show.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Shaan Puri?

  You're gonna get the bounty of my, my joining.

• 1:24:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Shaan Puri?

  And then if I also watch, you know, three other artists.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03Shaan Puri?

  They're gonna get some, some cut of the subscription. It can be what, what crypto and other things are enabling is a basically creator owned platform.

• 1:24:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Shaan Puri?

  Somebody's gonna do this. I don't know if it's in comedy or if it's in some other.

• 1:24:14Speaker 00

  Music or something.

• 1:24:15Shaan Puri?

  Music.

• 1:24:15Speaker 00

  What's Triller? Triller's kinda like that, right?

• 1:24:17Shaan Puri?

  No, it's the same thing. It's a company, then they, they cut checks, they get the artist to come on board and then

• 1:24:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Shaan Puri?

  They pimp out the artist to go get customers.

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:24Shaan Puri?

  And the artist feels like they're getting a good deal because they're cash rich, but they're equity poor.

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Shaan Puri?

  They're getting, and, and you know, they might cut a deal with Jake Paul or something because Triller has nothing to lose. So they're like, yeah, you got 2%.

• 1:24:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Shaan Puri?

  You know, they'll cut that to one person.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Shaan Puri?

  What I'm talking about is if Chappelle, Evan Hart, if you could somehow coordinate the forces that be.

• 1:24:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:41Shaan Puri?

  To say, let's create a platform, let's only put our art on this platform. Comedy is one of those things where the fans will pay to jump the fence to get the thing.

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:49Shaan Puri?

  And they're willing to pay to also support their, their favorite artists.

• 1:24:52Speaker 00

  I have the answer to that.

• 1:24:53Shaan Puri?

  So, so that would be a platform that would be valued, it could eventually be valued, you know, easily single digit billions of dollars that would be creator owned. And then as you cycle out and the next comedian comes up, they would just basically join the syndicate.

• 1:25:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Shaan Puri?

  They'd be pumping their fan base into it and they would be getting their proportionate share based on how much, how much audience they're bringing to the platform.

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  So I'm presenting, and I love your analysis on this. Again, I don't know, I'm trying to learn. But I'll, I'll just share the things that I've learned from just being in the circle. Um, you know, shout out to my man AZ. AZ was, you know, Chappelle's doing all these summer camps, uh, in, in Ohio. And, and one of my comedian friends, AZ, I think he's, you've met with him.

• 1:25:29Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:30Speaker 00

  He was saying, he asked Dave, he goes, and, and I love AZ, AZ is like, he's always been a futurist.

• 1:25:35Shaan Puri?

  He's the writer of Remy, right?

• 1:25:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he's, but he's always been a futurist. He's always been 20 years ahead. And I tell AZ, I go, AZ, you got the Al Gore problem in 2000. He's like, the internet. Everyone's like, shut up.

• 1:25:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you look like an idiot and then 20 years later.

• 1:25:46Speaker 00

  You don't wanna be 20 years ahead. You wanna be maybe like three, three to five years ahead.

• 1:25:48Shaan Puri?

  Four.

• 1:25:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you wanna be that guy with the Oculus and you're like, bro, this sucks. That's always my thing. I was like, I don't wanna be the Oculus dude.

• 1:25:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:56Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? You're gonna, you're gonna watch Jungle Book on Oculus. I'm like, it's giving me a headache. Like, cut this shit out. Anyways, he goes, he goes up to Dave and he goes, Dave, man, you, come on, bro, you're the GOAT. You're number one. You could just put it up on davechappelle.com and everybody would pay you five or 10 bucks, 15 bucks, 20 bucks, maybe a Radiohead style. A hundred dollars. Nipsey Hussle, right? Proud to pay.

• 1:26:16Shaan Puri?

  And Louis did that.

• 1:26:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, Dave's like this. He goes like this. He goes.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  New fans.

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  What about new fans? What that Netflix billboard gives you is it pumps that tile out in front of you.

• 1:26:31Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 1:26:31Speaker 00

  Whether you like it or not. I don't know Sam Parr.

• 1:26:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Speaker 00

  I slid in Sam's DMs. Sam's, I slid in your DMs. You didn't hit me back. But when he's with his wife and they open up the dum dum.

• 1:26:42Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  And they see my tile and they see my like, uh, my raccoon on Adderall face. Sam now has to reckon with that.

• 1:26:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  Then Sam, he's sitting on the couch, he pulls out his phone. And then he sees you retweet my thing and he's like, man, this Indian dude, what's up with this guy? Let me see this guy. Boom. I've now picked up Sam Parr.

• 1:27:01Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  I know I'm gonna convert with you. Your cousins are gonna talk about me, your sister's gonna talk about me, whatever. But I'm talking about new fans.

• 1:27:08Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:08Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And the distribution they do to get new fans on board. That's what this Proud to Pay movement doesn't have.

• 1:27:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  So everybody's told me, hey, start an online shop. I'm like, cool. I'll do Homecoming King, Low Kya King, get shirts. Cool. What about your three other coworkers, the dude in that room? I want them to know who I am.

• 1:27:29Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:27:30Speaker 00

  So that's what, you know, Louis put out his last special, Sincerely Louis CK. Did you see it?

• 1:27:35Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 1:27:36Speaker 00

  Why didn't you see it? Because it was just a closed network between him and his direct fans.

• 1:27:41Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  People couldn't get outraged about it. They couldn't write about it, which would then get you to. It would titillate you and you'd be like, I'm gonna watch it.

• 1:27:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:27:48Speaker 00

  Which would then get you to watch it and he'd pick you up as a new fan.

• 1:27:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. It had, yeah, exactly. That's a hundred percent true.

• 1:27:54Speaker 00

  It's closed pipes.

• 1:27:55Shaan Puri?

  It'd have to be paired with a pretty aggressive clips strategy, right? So like one of the ways you grew was not because I watched a hundred, sixty minutes of the correspondence, like speech, forty-five minute, uh, it was a long speech, right?

• 1:28:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, twenty-seven minutes.

• 1:28:08Shaan Puri?

  Twenty-seven minutes. It's because a couple of those clips get on Instagram, they get shared, they're TikTok, they go viral.

• 1:28:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:13Shaan Puri?

  And Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, that's where you'd have to basically pair it with that. That'd be the only way that you could get the exposure is to say, there's great shit, we're gonna use YouTube, we're gonna use TikTok, we're gonna use whatever, and we're actually gonna. They're gonna take the best stuff.

• 1:28:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:27Shaan Puri?

  We're gonna dangle it over there. We're gonna let that be shareable.

• 1:28:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Shaan Puri?

  It still may not work to actually like simulate the new fan. Like, that's why.

• 1:28:34Speaker 00

  That's the.

• 1:28:34Shaan Puri?

  There's that and the coordination problem, which is the biggest people you want, they're getting overpaid by the networks.

• 1:28:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Shaan Puri?

  Because. That's the strategy of the network.

• 1:28:44Speaker 00

  Lock them in.

• 1:28:45Shaan Puri?

  Lock them in, and then every other artist has to follow. At a almost below market rate because this is where all the headliners are. You want to be where they are. That's what feels like a first-class thing as an artist.

• 1:28:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, if I'm in the airport and people are like, "What do you do? You're a comedian?" I go, "Yeah, yeah." And then I go, "Yeah, um, how do I see you?" I go...

• 1:29:00Shaan Puri?

  Go download Dzone.

• 1:29:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm just like Netflix. They go, "Netflix?" Because Netflix has that the-dum factor. Just like, damn, I, man, my kids watch Cocoon Melon. I watch Netflix. I watch blah, blah, blah. So the thing is, Amazon Disney and Netflix right now, they're running it. And I'm trying to think, to me, I'm trying to have a barbell approach to it. So if you follow me on Instagram, I put out content, I put out videos. Tyler, my videographer, we put out stuff, but I'm trying to barbell it. And I'm trying to figure out, yeah, how do we start to monetize those things? Now, the most, the most, the clearest sign of that that I've seen, which has a low cost of entry, has been podcasting. Comedians podcasting, and people like Tom Segura, people like Joe Rogan,

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  people like Andrew Schultz, those guys have been able to, call me, um, call, call your daddy, you know. People in that podcast, Dax Shepard, people in that space, have been able to build up their own independent platforms and have more leverage. Here's my issue with it. I find it very risky to put up every single thought and idea that I have in real time on the internet. I'm be candid with everybody listening, I have no hidden thing here. I'm just be transparent. The reason why, I'm honest, is I love what you do. I think what you do is honest and sincere. And I think artists need to start to talk to people in your space to be like, "You understand business, we understand art, how can we work together?

• 1:30:27Speaker 00

  How does this all, how do these, these two worlds now merge?"

• 1:30:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  Without being part of a, a multinational conglomerate. And then have business affairs and lawyers and all that stuff muck it up. That's the interesting new world that I'm really excited about. And, um, that's what I'm trying to figure out.

• 1:30:46Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:30:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Shaan Puri?

  I love it.

• 1:30:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know how much time you got.

• 1:30:49Speaker 00

  I got time, bro.

• 1:30:50Shaan Puri?

  I want to be respectful.

• 1:30:51Speaker 00

  No, I got time.

• 1:30:51Shaan Puri?

  Are the cameras still rolling, are they? Perfect.

• 1:30:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:55Shaan Puri?

  Uh, let's finish up with a couple of things. You, uh, do you listen to the pod? I don't know if you actually listen to the pod.

• 1:31:00Speaker 00

  I listen to the pod, yeah.

• 1:31:01Shaan Puri?

  Amazing.

• 1:31:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:01Shaan Puri?

  Um, when you listen to it, you, there's always, the, the beautiful part when a guest listens to the show, cause most, honestly, most guests don't, but they, if they do, the best part is there's a moment on podcasting when you're at home and you're hearing people talk about stuff and you're screaming either like, you don't get it, uh, talk about this instead, or no, I disagree. And like, they normally never get the mic, they just have to sit there and sort of punch air as, as we just drone on about whatever the hell we're talking about.

• 1:31:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:27Shaan Puri?

  What are those things that when you're listening, you're like, I would say this, or I want to know about this, or I want to talk about this? What are those things for you as, you know, now you, you broke through the wall and you're here?

• 1:31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. For me, I'll tell you the moment that I loved.

• 1:31:40Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  Um, and by the way, this is, this has been my ethos with comedy writing, and I learned this at The Daily Show.

• 1:31:47Speaker 00

  You can only tear something down, and this also works with movie writing and script writing. If you tear something down, you gotta pitch an alt.

• 1:31:53Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:54Speaker 00

  Don't just shit on the idea, pitch an alt.

• 1:31:56Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:31:57Speaker 00

  And what's the alt joke? What's the alt take? Otherwise, sit down, like, sit on the sideline, you're not in the game. So if, I'll tell you what I love. Um, actually, there's, I, I don't have a, a ton of criticism, I've actually asked those questions. The one that I loved is you guys had this run that you and Sam did. There was two things that I sincerely loved. You guys had this thing up, if you had a million dollars, what would you do with it today?

• 1:32:21Shaan Puri?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:21Speaker 00

  I loved that. Then there was another thing that you did that was really cool, it was vulnerable, and it, again, the reason why it resonated with me is it had a, had a level of honesty and transparency in it. You guys were candid about your asset portfolio distributions.

• 1:32:35Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:32:36Speaker 00

  And Sam was like, I'm a little bit more.

• 1:32:38Shaan Puri?

  Conservative.

• 1:32:38Speaker 00

  Risk, conservative, and you're like, I'm more risky.

• 1:32:41Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:32:42Speaker 00

  And there's two moments I love. It was the thing, what'd I do with a million dollars? And there's a moment that you did where you were like, I want to move through the world in a way, what if I was worth a hundred million dollars? And I want to build my days around that.

• 1:32:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  But where did you get that from? So there's two things I love, those are just two things I love. But I want to actually just tag that with a question. Where did you get that attitude, that like, that BDE? That's a, that's a, that's, that's Big Dick energy.

• 1:33:04Shaan Puri?

  I had a thing, uh, I was talking to the, uh, when I got, when we got acquired, we went to Twitch.

• 1:33:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:10Shaan Puri?

  And they brought in this guy. Who became like I initially reported straight to the CEO and they brought in this guy who became the chief product officer and he was like Twitch is like this gamer, young, Gen Z, millennial type of product. This guy comes in gray hair, doesn't play video games, you know, was like at Google in 2003 or some shit like that. And he's obviously smart and accomplished in the tech world, but seemed like so out of touch with the product.

• 1:33:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:37Shaan Puri?

  So people were like, ah, why do we have this guy? Like internally, like rumblings in the engineering ranks were just sort of like, this guy didn't get it. Like the people already hate upper management in general. They always think that out of touch, making bad, bad decisions.

• 1:33:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Shaan Puri?

  So there was this like skepticism. Is this guy gonna get it? And he would ask questions in meetings that were like, oh, like you don't like you, do you know what Fortnite is? Like, wait, wait, how are you, how do you have this job if you don't know like?

• 1:34:00Speaker 00

  He didn't know what Minecraft was.

• 1:34:01Shaan Puri?

  What we use Discord for exactly. But he was, he didn't, he was like, I'm asking questions to learn. Why would I ask? Obviously, if I'm asking the question, I don't know. I think it's important to know. You think I should know this, so I'm just gonna learn it right here. Like instantly, he didn't care. He asked a bunch of questions. When I, he asked me, he sat down with me, he was like, uh, let's do like a one on one. He's like, all right, it's career, career planning or whatever. And he's like, so what do you want to do? And I basically, when you, when you sell your company of this deal, this vesting structure. So it's like, you basically get some cash upfront and then it's like, after one year, you're gonna get your next big check. And after two years, you're gonna get the next big check. And if you make it to year three, you get the last bit. I didn't make it to year three. I only got two. But at somewhere-

• 1:34:38Speaker 00

  Self imposed? Or you guys kind of-

• 1:34:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was just like, this is enough. I want to go do other shit. I'm surprised I even got to two. Like one, I knew I would do because one locked in my family security. So I was like, I'm gonna suck this up and I don't care how bad this sucks. I'm gonna get that year. I'm gonna lock in like-

• 1:34:52Speaker 00

  I'll get the bag.

• 1:34:53Shaan Puri?

  Family is good. I'm gonna get the bag. And so I was there and he was like-

• 1:34:56Speaker 00

  What is the number, if you don't mind me asking? What is that number in the Bay Area?

• 1:34:59Shaan Puri?

  I had always said, I had always said, six million. I said, six million is where your money works for you. Every up till then, you're working for money. Your money works for you at six million. Why did, why did I say?

• 1:35:10Speaker 00

  Why six?

• 1:35:11Shaan Puri?

  Cause I said, all right, you work backwards. So I said, all right. My burn rate, I think at the time I calculated it, I was like, we're spending like $20,000 a month.

• 1:35:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:35:21Shaan Puri?

  Was my like monthly expenses. And I said, okay, well, I don't know if this is going to go up or down. I'm sorry. No, it's not going to go down. It's probably only going to go up.

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:35:27Shaan Puri?

  Cause it's very hard to give things up. Once you have certain services or certain lifestyles, certain size house, whatever. You don't want to plan to downsize. I wanted to plan to buffer in some growth. I said, okay, so that gets you to $240,000 a year. Okay. So let's say two hundred, how do I make it so that just the interest on the money I own? So just the gains on that money being invested in, in the market and I don't need like a home run. Just like if I'm making, yeah, if I'm making seven percent or let's call it four or five percent is like four or five percent is a target.

• 1:35:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:57Shaan Puri?

  So then you just do the math like, as the rule is, I don't do public math, but you take 240,000, you divide it by the five percent or whatever. And that gives you some numbers. So I forgot what the calculus were, but I know the number came out to about six million.

• 1:36:07Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:36:08Shaan Puri?

  I'll say, all right, at six million, six million dollars invested would yield an amount of money that will pay for our lifestyle. Rather than me going and working a job or doing something that requires income to pay for our lifestyle.

• 1:36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19Shaan Puri?

  So I came up with this number and some people were like, that's too low. Some people were like, you're, why is your monthly expenses so high? I said, look, I, I like to live a certain way. I'm going to try to live that way. Like I'm not telling you, you need to spend this much money.

• 1:36:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to get your pollo with avocado. I like avocado.

• 1:36:32Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. The guac's extra. I said, give me two servings. That's what I wanted to be able to, not have any weight on that.

• 1:36:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:36:38Shaan Puri?

  And so I was like, all right, well, that's the, I'm trying to live that guac life. And so, so that became a number, a target number.

• 1:36:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:36:45Shaan Puri?

  And I said, all right, I want to hit that number. And so, okay. So, you know, I was trying to secure that back. So winding back to this, this question of how did I get this, this mindset? So I talked to the guy, uh, he takes me in, he says, what are your career plans?

• 1:36:56Speaker 00

  So you got the six though.

• 1:36:57Shaan Puri?

  I got to the six and I said, all right, well, how do I?

• 1:37:00Speaker 00

  Post tax, right?

• 1:37:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You have to have it. You have to have it. Exactly.

• 1:37:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Shaan Puri?

  So I said, all right, well. He goes, when you, when you think about your career, what are you gonna do? And I knew that the right answer is to say, oh, you know, I love to, yeah, I love it here at Twitch and I would love to stay here forever and I could see myself being you someday. But the reality was, I couldn't. I didn't. I was having fun because I made it my way, but I was like, this is not where I want to be forever. Yeah. And I was like, I'm just gonna be honest with this guy. I'm not gonna tell him. And it's a weird conversation. You're basically telling your boss, I don't plan to be here for very long. Which is in a way saying, Right. Don't invest in me, you know, like, don't promote me, don't give me opportunities, give it to the next guy because he cares. It's kind of like a weird thing, but I decided I'm gonna be honest. So I told him. And he goes, Aris, what do you want to do? He's like, then we don't need to talk about this Twitch shit. Like, tell me what you want to do. I said, well, first I'm doing this so that then I can go do this thing I want to do. He goes, I don't believe all that.

• 1:37:50Shaan Puri?

  I go, what, you don't believe I want to do this? He goes, no, I don't believe that strategy of life. I don't believe in this life plan of, I'm gonna do all this stuff I don't want to do so that then I could do all these things I do want to do. You're mortgaging for a future that may not happen. Exactly. This, this is never gonna come. He's like, I've been around the block. People who have that plan. He's like, very rarely do you ever do the thing you want to do. He's, he's much better just do the thing you want to do. Start that now. Don't spend five years doing the thing you don't want to do because it's a means to an end. But then, but then what you're talking about is that if you had approached that, you would have never perhaps gotten that six. Exactly. So, so he had a different mindset. So I said, all right, well, what does that look like? And so, so he, he goes, why don't you just, like, figure out what you want to do? Yeah.

• 1:38:31Shaan Puri?

  Figure out what it require, what, what amount of money, what skills, what you'd require and start accumulating those. Yeah. So that's actually where the six came in. Where I said, oh, I want to be able to wake up every day and do a certain amount, do a certain thing, which is basically wake up and just work on whatever I was most interested in. Right. Like I told you, dude, I want to like, I want to do comedy sometime. Yeah, let's do it. I want to do, I have these other things. I'm like, dude, why don't I make a song that like, just slaps? Like, why don't I just make a catchy ass song? Yeah, I want to produce. I want to produce a record. Yeah, like, I don't know anything about it, but like, wouldn't that be fun if I just made a catchy ass song that kind of hit? Yeah. And like, it's not to, I'm not trying to be the best musician, but like, why not? Like, why, why not write a book? Why not do all these things? Like, that'd be a fun way to spend a career. That's kind of how I thought about it. Yeah. So I said, all right, well, if I want to be able to do that, um, I gotta have this. You need time.

• 1:39:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I gotta have time. That's deep work. So I said, let me start accumulating time. Comedy, stand up, DJing. How do you do that? So that was kind of my mindset. And so, along the way, um, again, I talked to my trainer and he goes, If you wanna have a certain thing, carry yourself like the guy who has that thing. Very simple.

• 1:39:33Speaker 00

  Really the fake it till you make it thing?

• 1:39:35Shaan Puri?

  Not even fake it till you make it.

• 1:39:38Shaan Puri?

  You believe you will feel a certain way when you have it.

• 1:39:40Speaker 00

  Right, right, right.

• 1:39:41Shaan Puri?

  That's why you want, let's say you want a hundred million dollars. You want a billion dollars, whatever your number is, five million dollars, one million dollars. You believe you want that because you think you're gonna feel a certain way when you have it.

• 1:39:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Shaan Puri?

  So let's skip all the middle shit and let's just believe that we have, let's believe that we're gonna have that, let's carry ourselves like that, let's have that feeling now, don't pump the feeling until the end when you're sixty.

• 1:40:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:40:03Shaan Puri?

  And maybe you've achieved your goal.

• 1:40:04Speaker 00

  So what he's basically saying is a level of confidence, right? And confidence is security and not playing scared.

• 1:40:09Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 1:40:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:10Shaan Puri?

  Then the byproduct of that.

• 1:40:12Speaker 00

  You know the comedy take I had on this, by the way? This is the way my brain works. The extremely wealthy and the homeless actually operate the same way.

• 1:40:19Shaan Puri?

  Which is what, delusion?

• 1:40:20Speaker 00

  Which is what, which is what? Anything I do isn't gonna affect my life anyways. What are you gonna do? The incredibly rich.

• 1:40:29Shaan Puri?

  That's funny.

• 1:40:29Speaker 00

  And people who are like.

• 1:40:31Shaan Puri?

  They had the same mindset.

• 1:40:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, are just like, hey, what are you gonna do to me? What can you take from me?

• 1:40:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:40:38Speaker 00

  They both actually operate that same way. Sometimes it's people that are in that vast middle that fear either direction that are like, oh, I cannot fuck this up.

• 1:40:50Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 1:40:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:51Shaan Puri?

  So that's the, the mindset is basically, don't wait. Waiting is the enemy. So when you're waiting to feel good until you've achieved certain things, anytime you hear the word wait, run. That's not the right strategy. And so it's like, anytime you're waiting to do the thing you wanna do, don't wait. That's kind of became my mindset, I just realized.

• 1:41:10Speaker 00

  Got it, you mean don't put it off?

• 1:41:11Shaan Puri?

  Don't put it off.

• 1:41:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:41:12Shaan Puri?

  Don't wait till X in order to have Y that you really want.

• 1:41:15Speaker 00

  Gotcha.

• 1:41:16Shaan Puri?

  So if I want this feeling of security, of relaxation, of confidence, whatever, why am I waiting? Let me tap into that now. So that became both, had two benefits. There's the benefit, which is you feel better today, that's already, already a win.

• 1:41:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Shaan Puri?

  Instead of feeling anxious and stressed and worried, you're already feeling good. But there's also a strategy to it, which is when you carry yourself like that dude, when you carry yourself that way. You'd be surprised what kind of doors are sort of open for you, how people treat you differently. They treat you with the assumption of what you treat yourself. Why do you dress the way you dress? Why do you carry yourself the way you carry yourself? Because people will treat you differently. Life will give to you what you're putting.

• 1:41:58Speaker 00

  But I also feel it too. Like, I like being fitted. I like wearing like Jordans.

• 1:42:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and it makes me feel differently. Immediate feeling, which is already good.

• 1:42:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:05Shaan Puri?

  And then you get the actual, like, I think this Harvard guy called it the happiness, uh, happiness effect. He basically said, most people wait till they achieve a thing, then they're gonna feel happy. And then what happens is you achieve that thing and you just move the goalposts. Well, this is not enough. When I, when I really have it, then I can do it. You know, and so they keep moving the goalposts and everything. He's like, not only is that obviously deferring the thing you want, which is bad. Two, he said, there's studies that will show that the person goes into the situation already feeling happy will perform better on the test. Will be better in the professional setting, will have a higher likelihood of success. Will have more lucky breaks. That was one of the things they tested. They basically, they gave you a test. And like, you know, the third line of the, of the instructions said like, just go to the end, just type, write the letter five in and you're done.

• 1:42:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Shaan Puri?

  And the people who went in with a stress mindset, they were just trying to solve all the problems and they had to do the whole test. The people who went in relaxed and confident, they're more likely to observe that little line and say, oh, another, another break that goes my way.

• 1:43:02Speaker 00

  Oh, great.

• 1:43:03Shaan Puri?

  You know, like, so I'm gonna skip to the end, hand the test in, I'm done.

• 1:43:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:07Shaan Puri?

  And so that's called, when I, when I started to learn about this sort of like happiness effect, this, this idea that if you bring the future feeling you're chasing into the now, not only do you feel good now, but you actually have better results. I was like, that's just the thing I want.

• 1:43:19Speaker 00

  But it's also a mindset shift where you're operating different than Sam. Sam's like, I'm not gonna take those crazy bets.

• 1:43:24Shaan Puri?

  Sam's the opposite.

• 1:43:25Speaker 00

  But why?

• 1:43:27Shaan Puri?

  Why is he the opposite?

• 1:43:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, so what I'm, what I'm saying is, Sam may look objectively at, or it's his subjective experience, at your financial situation and be like, you can't afford that? You can't afford to start this like one million dollar fund and just with randos off the internet and just start betting things?

• 1:43:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:43Speaker 00

  Why are you doing that? You could lose it.

• 1:43:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:47Shaan Puri?

  It served him well. Like, I think, you know, there are many ways to win.

• 1:43:50Speaker 00

  What I'm trying to do is get you guys to beef. I'm trying to get you.

• 1:43:53Shaan Puri?

  I'm choosing.

• 1:43:54Speaker 00

  I'm actually curious.

• 1:43:55Shaan Puri?

  Play style. Like, there's this great Conor McGregor quote where he goes, "Look, you're gonna feel some kind of way anyways." Right? Like, any moment, you're feeling some kind of way. So he's just like, he's like, "Why not feel unstoppable? Why not feel, why not feel super confident?"

• 1:44:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:08Shaan Puri?

  It's the same sort of thing, which is that there's many ways to win, but you do get to choose. And Sam's way to win, and many successful entrepreneurs the same way, which is, "Chip on my shoulder, my dad never loved me, you know, uh, I, uh, people doubted me and that drives me and that's why I'm successful." And they'll tell you this proudly. And I hear it, and I'm just like, "Man, you sound like you've been suffering for a long ass time. You know, you didn't have to do all that, right?"

• 1:44:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:34Shaan Puri?

  I'm, I'm glad it worked for you, but also, like, the toll was high on that highway.

• 1:44:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:44:39Shaan Puri?

  You paid an expensive vig, which was every day you were focusing on, like,

• 1:44:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:43Shaan Puri?

  the grind, grindset mindset, and you're, you're focusing on proving people wrong and how,

• 1:44:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:44:49Shaan Puri?

  how, you know, the doubters and how you had to, like, kill yourself to make this work. I know people who did it the other way. So let's agree that, let's agree that both can happen.

• 1:44:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. Let's, let's also do a quick delineation, though, when you said you're moving like you, you're worth a hundred mil. So, you're not...

• 1:45:03Shaan Puri?

  I don't make size bets, like, obviously, there's a laws of gravity.

• 1:45:07Speaker 00

  No, but there's a way to move to be like, hey, because I'm serious, because there's people that may be listening that, that are just like, "Let me get that, let me get that Rolex Daytona."

• 1:45:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:45:15Speaker 00

  "Let me feel that way."

• 1:45:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:45:17Speaker 00

  If it's a hundred mil, then that, it's probably a Rolls Royce Phantom. It's probably a, you know what I mean? You could, a Maserati, a Ducati, whatever that thing may be. You're not making those things, are you?

• 1:45:26Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yes and no. So, in the things that matter, like, I hired a personal chef.

• 1:45:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:45:30Shaan Puri?

  That's something that really the only, like, the old true wealthy typically do.

• 1:45:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:45:33Shaan Puri?

  I was like, "No, I, this matters to me. I want, this is the number one want I have. I think it helps me and my family be healthy. We don't have to stress out about making food all the time for our daughter, who's real picky and she keeps throwing it away. We gotta remake dinner."

• 1:45:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:45:45Shaan Puri?

  I said, "This will improve the quality of my life. I don't care if we can afford it. I'm gonna get it, and I'm gonna, then I'm gonna afford it," right? Because I'm not, like... I know, I believe in my ability to go get that money.

• 1:45:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:45:56Shaan Puri?

  So I will not limit myself in the things that I really care about.

• 1:45:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's a true belief. It's something that you really want for you and your family.

• 1:46:03Shaan Puri?

  I truly wanted it and I'm not gonna wait. Again, I was waiting. I said, oh, I identified all the spots in my life I was waiting. I said, I gotta get rid of waiting. That's the thing I really want and I'm waiting for it. No more. I'm gonna do it now.

• 1:46:14Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 1:46:15Shaan Puri?

  But do I go and just spend outside of like, outside of what I care about and what I have like? No, I, I don't and I, I don't because I also don't wanna be owned by those things. Every time you buy something, you know, it now owns you as much as you own it.

• 1:46:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:32Shaan Puri?

  Because that bill owns you in a way. It owns a piece of your time because you gotta pay for it. I'm very selective about, do I want this enough where I'm willing to let it own me a little bit? And so then I don't need a lot of those things and I also have this like, this is, you're good at these questions, man. The last thing I do is I wanna be able to have as much fun, whether I'm in a mansion having a feast with celebrities as if I'm stuck in an elevator by myself. Which means I don't want to have to, I don't want to have to have some nice shit in order to feel good. I don't wanna have to have the circumstances be going my way for me to feel good.

• 1:47:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's self-satisfaction. That's you training.

• 1:47:11Shaan Puri?

  I wanna train my brain.

• 1:47:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's you doing what? You're training your brain, you're meditating, you're boxing, whatever that thing is. So you feel a self, sense of self-satisfaction. That's zero dollars. It's not a hundred million dollars. That's not a hundred million dollars or a hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:47:22Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Cause the ultimate goal, the ultimate way to carry myself isn't that I had the hundred million. It's, I just remind myself of that if I ever start to feel lack.

• 1:47:30Speaker 00

  Cause when I heard that, what I, what resonated with me as an artist is play big.

• 1:47:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, play big.

• 1:47:34Speaker 00

  Why are you playing scared? Cook, you're on the court, cook. Let it fly, launch, like be loose. Do the impressions, do characters. That's what my thing is like, that's my goal. Like I wanna be loose. I wanna have fun. I wanna be really, get on the floor.

• 1:47:48Shaan Puri?

  Use a basketball analogy. Cause I know you, you love basketball.

• 1:47:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Shaan Puri?

  And researching for this, I saw your celebrity game, got a nice left hand. Go with the left.

• 1:47:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:57Shaan Puri?

  You're not lefty, right?

• 1:47:57Speaker 00

  No, I'm left, I'm right.

• 1:47:58Shaan Puri?

  But you were very nice with the left. Um, the analogy is this. Steph Curry is not afraid to shoot a shot.

• 1:48:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:05Shaan Puri?

  Anywhere on the court, when it's past half court, he is willing to let it fly. That doesn't mean every time he steps across half court, he just lets it fly because he knows like the ultimate goal is to win.

• 1:48:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:48:16Shaan Puri?

  But he's not afraid to shoot his shot. He's not thinking about missing. He's thinking about making. His confidence in that make.

• 1:48:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:21Shaan Puri?

  So I would say a very similar thing on the business side, which is I don't just spend like a drunken sailor. Or invest in the most wild shit possible all the time. I'm not trying to take every risk possible.

• 1:48:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:32Shaan Puri?

  I'm not trying to shoot every shot at half court. But I am confident if I pulled.

• 1:48:36Speaker 00

  But you're not afraid to let it fly.

• 1:48:38Shaan Puri?

  If I pulled or if I'm feeling it.

• 1:48:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:39Shaan Puri?

  Or if I believe I can make the shot, I'm gonna pull.

• 1:48:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:41Shaan Puri?

  Even if I miss the last three. Even if this is not what other people do.

• 1:48:44Speaker 00

  This feels right.

• 1:48:45Shaan Puri?

  This feels right.

• 1:48:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:46Shaan Puri?

  I put in the time and I have the confidence of myself and I'm not gonna second guess it.

• 1:48:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Shaan Puri?

  So that's where I'll make

• 1:48:50Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 1:48:51Shaan Puri?

  Some, take some risks.

• 1:48:52Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 1:48:52Shaan Puri?

  That feel right to me in the moment, but the overall objective is to win. It's not to take maximum risk possible.

• 1:48:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:58Shaan Puri?

  It's also not to minimize risk. It's to win. And you gotta define what that win is for yourself.

• 1:49:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:49:03Shaan Puri?

  My definition of the win for myself is I wanna have the lifestyle where I'm at the mansion with my best friends, we're at the table, we're feasting, we're toasting. That's what I want.

• 1:49:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:12Shaan Puri?

  But I wanna be able to have as much fun if I'm alone stuck in an elevator. That is my ultimate win, where my mind has created that situation where I can have all those things.

• 1:49:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:22Shaan Puri?

  But I'm I am impervious to the environment.

• 1:49:25Speaker 00

  Great.

• 1:49:25Shaan Puri?

  I will have just, so that's my ultimate win.

• 1:49:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:27Shaan Puri?

  I'll take enough risks along the way to get to that, you know, as I go.

• 1:49:30Speaker 00

  That's great. Last question. This is from, this is from me to you.

• 1:49:33Shaan Puri?

  People are gonna be pissed, by the way. They're like, dude, you had us on, you just talked about your own fucking philosophy the whole time?

• 1:49:37Speaker 00

  You know what I'm afraid of? No, no, I'm not, I'm not saying this right now for the listeners and the watchers. People are gonna be like, he interrupted Sean too much and why is he talking like this about Bitcoin?

• 1:49:45Shaan Puri?

  People are gonna be like, Sean, you know you're not the star of this.

• 1:49:47Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. I'm coming from, I humble myself before all you, my first million people. So listen. I love this. Again, this is what I love most about IRL experiences, about being on stage, doing material in front of people, hearing the applause break, knowing that that joke is right, because I've corroborated it with the people.

• 1:50:08Speaker 00

  Sometimes comics, when a joke doesn't work, they'll be like, "Fuck you, I know better." And sometimes that works, but there's a lot of times where it's like, "No, no, no, hear them, listen to them, see them. You want to be seen, but you gotta see them."

• 1:50:20Speaker 00

  For you as an outsider, you know, we don't know each other well, this is our first time actually meeting, when you watch the show and you see me, what would be your advice for somebody like me that's at this point in my career, I'm at an inflection point in my career, I represent a certain period of time, me, my contemporaries, me, John Mulaney, Ali Wong, we're entering that new era that the Bill Burr's and the Chappelles are, those are the elder statesmen of the art form. What is your, what was your advice to someone like me, looking at it from the outside, because you have such a great business mind?

• 1:50:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:56Shaan Puri?

  I think what's, what's worked for you is gonna keep working. That's why I said before, I think you have zagged when everybody zigged. Uh, so everybody was going in one direction, which was, which is low accountability, low risk.

• 1:51:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51:10Shaan Puri?

  Um, doing things under, uh, you know, worried about cancel, cancel culture and things like that. I think you have built a niche where you're not afraid to call out the Saudi prince, you're not afraid to call out the president, but you're calling out not from a place of getting a reaction, you're calling out when you see a truth, you're putting your finger on it and saying, "I don't care if this hurts, I don't care if this is a nerve, I'm gonna have my take on this, I'm gonna stand by my take regardless of what's happening." And that's when, all, those are the things that have hit for you. You talked about that in the show.

• 1:51:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Shaan Puri?

  So I think it's not that you have to keep doing that same exact thing, you have to keep in the mindset that got you to do that in the first place. You gotta self-assess, what got me to, to, to, to observe those things? What made me curious where I observed those things, where I asked the question that got me to that truth?

• 1:51:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:51:57Shaan Puri?

  What gave me the guts to do this? Oh, I felt like I had nothing to lose, I was trying to make a name for myself. Now I got a name for myself, now every tweet I'm kinda worried, how are people gonna react? Well, now, now you're not playing the game the way you did at that time.

• 1:52:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Shaan Puri?

  So I would say, first and foremost, don't lose what got you to the dance. Second is the stuff you talked about, which is you're betting on yourself, which is you're owning your own production, you're owning your IP, you're owning your- Own as much of that pipeline as you can from a business perspective. It's what gets you leverage, it gets you capture the value you're creating. You create a bunch of value, you gotta capture it. You gotta look at the supply chain and say, who's capturing all this value? Why is Ticketmaster taking this much of my fees? Why is, you know, when I go put this special online, what do I really make out of this? First is, what do they make? How do I get their numbers? And how do I understand how to capture value on the distribution side and not just this side? I'll try to think about those types of things. And it seems like you're building, like, for example, my mom saw you on the morning show. I watch the morning show too. Oh shit.

• 1:52:50Shaan Puri?

  He's getting into these mainstream areas, building the name, building the face there. And then you're gonna, almost like, that's how you go get the new fans? And you take them back, you build this funnel. The bottom of the funnel is people who are gonna know your life story. They're gonna know what you stand for.

• 1:53:03Speaker 00

  Totally, yeah, yeah. They know me.

• 1:53:04Shaan Puri?

  Just like any product in Silicon Valley, you create a funnel. Top of funnel is new fans, new eyeballs. How are you gonna go get them? You need a strategy. Middle of the funnel, how are you gonna get them to get their first taste of you? Their first real experience? Get them to their first show? Get them to watch, you know, the first 20 minutes of something that's your best work? How do I get that? And how do we get them bottom of the funnel, which is, how do we create maximum value? Like, oh, a bunch of artists are doing NFTs. What does that look like for comedy? You know? Let them play with these ideas. I'm not gonna do all of them. But I'm gonna have brainstorming sessions with guys like Sean to say, what would I do with NFT? What could a comedian do with NFTs? And I would start to think about, because that's bottom of the funnel, more like optimization. I would think about that funnel, I would say, alright, I am a product.

• 1:53:47Shaan Puri?

  And I'm gonna build my brand around that product, you know? And it's a long, you know, it's a long series of optimizations.

• 1:53:53Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:53:53Shaan Puri?

  But that's how I would think about it. That's how I would view my craft, which is like, you know, it's easy to just get into the art world, which is like, you know, I'm trying to build myself and, you know, tell jokes, make people laugh. Yes. But like, ultimately, you're a product and you're an experience. From the mo- like, when I showed up at the show yesterday, there was an hour-long line. We got to skip it luckily, because you hooked it up with the nice VIP stuff. But- Everybody, their experience, end to end, isn't just when you step on the stage. It's like from before the show.

• 1:54:22Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:54:22Shaan Puri?

  The line, the rest, and I would say, alright.

• 1:54:24Speaker 00

  Playlist, when you sit down.

• 1:54:25Shaan Puri?

  That's some friction.

• 1:54:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54:26Shaan Puri?

  We talked about the, the interface where you go buy the tickets. How much friction is there? I will go look at that whole funnel and I would say, alright. I'm trying to grease this funnel. I'm trying to get them to these magic moments with me. The first magic moment, when I first made you laugh on that clip on Instagram. Second magic moment, your friend takes you to a show. You have a great time.

• 1:54:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54:43Shaan Puri?

  Third magic moment is the follow-up of that. You know, fourth is when, when you buy the merch and actually the merch stands for something.

• 1:54:49Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:54:49Shaan Puri?

  You know, whatever.

• 1:54:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's cool. I've always, um, I appreciate that because the eye cannot see itself. Sometimes we're so in our, especially as artists. It's what, it's what requires to be, do deep, meaningful work. But we remove ourselves from, like what you said, the line four blocks down the street from the Masonic Theater. How much you had to pay for parking, then what the show experience is like, all that stuff. Yeah.

• 1:55:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:17Shaan Puri?

  But I think you're doing great, man.

• 1:55:18Speaker 00

  Thanks, man.

• 1:55:18Shaan Puri?

  I don't think you need advice from me, to be honest with you. I think you're doing a great job.

• 1:55:20Speaker 00

  No, man, hey, this is, this is my, this is my two cents for the space y'all are working in. I think, um, uh, just continuing to try to be a source of light amongst just all this heat that's out there. It's really important, man. There's just a lot of garbage and trying to actually represent ontological truth and reality for what it is.

• 1:55:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:55:42Speaker 00

  Because you're playing with people's money. People are listening to My First Million for that thing. I just want to like, let you know.

• 1:55:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, don't forget.

• 1:55:48Speaker 00

  It's that, but it's that titillating feature.

• 1:55:50Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 1:55:50Speaker 00

  It's like, when you hear that title, you're like, but I wanna.

• 1:55:53Shaan Puri?

  It's, but it's just like.

• 1:55:54Speaker 00

  I wanna make a million.

• 1:55:54Shaan Puri?

  With your show, I came to laugh. I came to laugh at you making fun of our Indian parents and the goofy things that they do.

• 1:56:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Shaan Puri?

  Why did I, that's what I, that's what I came for. That's not what I, what I loved. What I loved was the stuff you're saying at the end, the stories about your daughter, the stories about the, the jerk parent at the, at the.

• 1:56:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:11Shaan Puri?

  Library or the book fair, whatever. Those were where I was like, oh man, I attached. Same thing. We have My First Million and the hook is, idea is I'll help you make money and get you, get you to your first million. And what do you do with that when you get there?

• 1:56:24Shaan Puri?

  I know that the people who are really gonna love this, cuz that's gonna fade. Like, you get that hit, you get that hit, you get that hit, what are you gonna be here a year from now? You should've already got that million, you know, by a couple of years in or whatever.

• 1:56:35Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:56:36Shaan Puri?

  The people are gonna stay because, damn, these are just great conversations. I wanna hang with these guys.

• 1:56:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:40Shaan Puri?

  That's the only thing we do is we create a fun conversation where people wish they were hang- I hope that like, there's a third seat in this studio. My goal is that somebody listening to this was like, damn, I feel like I was in that third seat. That was listened to a real ass conversation between two people. Not you talking your book and me talking my book, but like-

• 1:56:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:56:59Shaan Puri?

  A real conversation by two people, you were curious, and so I answered questions. I asked you a bunch of questions of stuff I was curious about.

• 1:57:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57:04Shaan Puri?

  They feel like they got to be a part of a conversation that was a little bit more entertaining than whatever's going on in their world that day.

• 1:57:09Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:09Shaan Puri?

  Like, maybe their, their real life conversations that day weren't as interesting.

• 1:57:12Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:57:13Shaan Puri?

  My hope is that this one is, that they feel like they're in that third seat. That's like a win for me with this, and so, hope people enjoy this.

• 1:57:19Speaker 00

  No, this is super fun, man. No, thanks for having me, man, and thanks for doing it in person. Cuz I remember you reached out and you're like, let's do it via Zoom, and I was like, no, we're doing this.

• 1:57:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, sorry to Sam, Sam couldn't join, we pulled one out for him.

• 1:57:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, Sam, check your DMs, bro. I'm in your DMs, dawg. Okay. Cool, thank you, man.