Shaan Loses $700k In Crypto Crash And The Mentality of A Downturn

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about losing more than $700k in the crypto crash, the mentality of a downturn, and the crazy success of conferences. Also, want $5,000? Check out the My First Million Clips contest. ----- Links: * Truebill * Money 20/20 * ShopTalk * Hlth * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (02:10) - Crypto crash (04:05) - Downturn mentality (23:30) - What Sam and Shaan are doing now (31:05) - Truebill (38:25) - Success of conferences (01:00:10) - Shaan is writing a book ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  I am trying to be intentionally out of touch in the same way that I intentionally avoid the news.

• 0:10Sam Parr?

  All right, we're live. What's going on?

• 0:13Shaan Puri?

  Well.

• 0:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 0:15Shaan Puri?

  Well, Sam.

• 0:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 0:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 0:19Sam Parr?

  You're.

• 0:20Shaan Puri?

  My first million has become my first hundred thousand.

• 0:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah, your first.

• 0:26Shaan Puri?

  My last million.

• 0:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, on a good day. What, um, you took something out of the milk road. I texted you this, but you didn't reply. You, so in the milk road, my favorite part was you had, what was the starting amount, a million or 500 or what was it?

• 0:44Sam Parr?

  You had your portfolio.

• 0:45Shaan Puri?

  It was actually a little bit less. It was 950,000.

• 0:48Sam Parr?

  So $950,000 portfolio and every day you would say what it's at compared to where, what it was, you took it out. What's it at now?

• 0:55Shaan Puri?

  Correct.

• 0:57Sam Parr?

  Why'd you take it out?

• 0:58Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't even want to look. We took out the prices today because, uh, or what do we do? We, today we did a little different thing. So the crypto prices crashed over the weekend. And so we were like, okay, people are definitely going to want to know like, what's happening, why is this happening? All that stuff. So, no, not Saturday, uh, Monday, we sent it today.

• 1:17Sam Parr?

  No, you sent a weekend, a weekend version.

• 1:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that was just a different, that was just like a special edition. Yeah, that was, that was nothing. Um, today we sent like, uh, why is crypto crashing? The weekend one was about Jack Dorsey because Jack Dorsey announced something called Web 5 and we were like, which is hilarious. It's just like a hilarious thing because it's like Web 3.

• 1:39Sam Parr?

  Five minute apps.

• 1:39Shaan Puri?

  People are debating it is even a thing. And like, he just skipped Web 4 and went straight to Web 5 and like, you know, people are like, what the hell is this? So we explained what the hell is this? That's what the weekend one was. But today, uh, crypto is down like 20% or something crazy. Um, like Ethereum is, is like, I don't know, $1,000 or something like that right now. Um, so yeah, dude, it's brutal. Uh, the million dollar portfolio, we basically started this right, when I started the milk road, I was like, what will be entertaining to get people hooked to subscribe? And I was like, oh, I know. I'll put up a million dollars and I'll say, watch, I will publicly invest this money.

• 2:20Shaan Puri?

  And let's try to turn it into 10 million. It became a mission, turning 1 million into 10 million through crypto investing. And to be honest, we didn't even do that much. We didn't even make very many moves. Like it just started with a million dollars worth of ETH. And I think we made like two investments, maybe since then, just because I've been busy with the milk, like building the milk road and like the podcast and my other business and stuff like that. It's not like I've been super active, but ETH is down like 66% and all of crypto is down like that or worse. And so the portfolio is brutal. It's like, you know, a million dollars is currently 250 or $300,000 is my guess, based on where we were at.

• 2:59Sam Parr?

  Where's your head at? Are you freaking out? Or are you still calm like you always are?

• 3:04Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I'm still calm. Yeah. So, so this is, it's a funny little like story, I guess. Um, I don't know why I said it's funny. There's actually no humor at all in it. It's interesting how, how I feel about it. Ben flew in. So Ben flew in last night, not producer Ben, business partner Ben. So business partner Ben flies in last night where he's going to be here for the week. We're going to like work on a bunch of stuff. And like basically like, you know, from the time he took off, the time he landed, like our whole business has changed. And what has changed is basically like, well, aside from our own personal net worth, uh, you know, going down and the milk road public portfolio going down, like we have just entered, uh, like the whole economy has entered

• 3:44Shaan Puri?

  a recession and crypto has entered for sure, like a big downswing, bear market crash, whatever you want to call it. And it's, it's not going to like just bounce right back and all is going to be like fun and dandy again. Like, if you think about this time last year, not this time last year, but let's say like six to 12 months ago, it felt like money was raining from the skies. Like, you know, I invested in a bunch of tech stocks. Everything was up. Every day, everything was up. Zoom is tripled in price and Amazon is up because everybody's ordering all their shit online. And like, every company that we invested in private startup was like raising money at crazy valuations. And literally like, there's a phrase of money raining on fools.

• 4:27Shaan Puri?

  Money was raining on fools and like NFTs were selling, you know, NFTs were selling for ridiculous prices. And it's so crazy that like, you know, on a dime, it feels like the whole world has changed and everybody's mindset mentality has also changed, which is that like now it feels almost impossible to make money. It's like, well, where do I go make money? The stock market is down brutally. Crypto has crashed. Every business is now laying off people or freezing hiring. On top of that, you know, companies are cutting their budgets and ad spend. So if you're, if your business relied on ads, that's getting cut. And so now, you know, money was raining on fools and now money's being drained from, from smart people too.

• 5:07Sam Parr?

  You're seeing advertisers, I tweeted out like what's going on in the ad world because I'm not in it anymore. You're seeing it go away?

• 5:15Shaan Puri?

  Not this fast, but yeah, like, you know, the first shoe to drop was like, kind of like consumer brands, like D to C brands and whatnot. They were the first, I would say the last three months to start like reducing spending. Whereas before it was like, how do I spend more? And then there was like companies that are like, well, it's hard to have a big ad budget when you're laying off a bunch of people. So there, and now that they went into hiring freezes or layoffs, their ad budgets are certainly tightening up. We don't see it this month, like this month's an all time high in ad revenue, but like, I'm sure in the next three months that ad budgets are going to constrict. They'd be crazy not to. In our e-commerce business, we see sales, like this month is good, but you could see

• 5:59Shaan Puri?

  the tightening happening where it's like, you know, people just are, you know, they're not getting stimmy checks that they can go spend on, you know, you know, electronics and toys and, and clothes and, and all this good stuff. And so consumers are slowing down their, their spending. And so it's like, and all these things are interlinked, right? Like the, when the consumer spends less, the business makes less money, then it has less money to hire, less money to advertise, and then the platforms get less revenue and then they do the same thing. And it's just all just interconnected, right? So this is interesting to me because I have not lived through a bear market as a founder or investor, right? Like 2008, I was a sophomore in college or something like that, right? Like, I don't know, you were probably the same, right?

• 6:44Shaan Puri?

  You're like a freshman or sophomore in college.

• 6:46Sam Parr?

  I graduated, I graduated high school in 08. So basically this is our first time as like money earning professionals that we've experienced anything like this.

• 6:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Sam Parr?

  Dude, it is crazy.

• 6:56Shaan Puri?

  So I'll give you kind of my.

• 6:59Shaan Puri?

  My mentality, because you said like, are you freaking out? My mentality was like, definitely I've had thoughts of like, oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. But then I sort of like, well, the thought can arise, but I'm not like consumed by it. Like I definitely had like a day where I was like, kept checking prices, kept doom scrolling Twitter. But like, I don't know. If I pride myself on like, you know, my, my mental fitness, it's like, well, this is the time to be fit. It's like when stuff that's hard happens, this is the time to use all those tools you've been building up, all those muscles you've been building about like, seeing things in a way that actually serves you. And so for me, I'm like, immediately I'll show you this thing.

• 7:38Shaan Puri?

  So Ben flies in and last night at midnight, we're basically, he, we're sitting in my office and we, we wrote this thing at the top. I don't know if you can see this, it's like unfocused, but it says like, how a loser's brain would work right now. Loser brain. It's like loser brain says this, we all like, you know, like rich dad, poor dad. In my head, I have this thing called loser brain, winner brain. It's like a loser's brain will bring these thoughts up and bring its attention to these things. And a winner's brain will have these, like, so we basically wrote down all the scary thoughts. It's like, uh, and so I was like, Ben, just rattle them off. So I'll read you some of these if you're interested, but like, uh, but we did this exercise in order to reframe our thinking.

• 8:15Sam Parr?

  Everything that I think about right now, and I've been, I'm calm about it because I, I've always, I'm, you, everyone gives me a hard time that I'm conservative and it's kind of working out right now. But even still, I'm down a, a huge amount. Um, and my fear is always rooted in like, I'm gonna run out. I'm like, I'm, I'm homeless. Do you have those fears of like, I'm, I'm gonna run out?

• 8:40Shaan Puri?

  No. Because if I act, if I asked you, do you actually think you're gonna run out?

• 8:46Sam Parr?

  No, but I wake up.

• 8:48Shaan Puri?

  There's no way you, Sam Parr, think you're gonna go broke. Which is a combination of you got a lot of money still. And secondly, you always have like your core skill is the ability to make and sell products that people are going to want.

• 9:04Sam Parr?

  Well, I'm not saying that it's logical. I'm not saying it's logical. I'm saying like it's like my fear of flying. I understand that like I'm far more likely to fall off like a set of stairs or to get hit in the car going to the plane. But I'm still like, it's such a deep rooted issue. And I think it's actually deep rooted in a lot of people of like, I just, fuck, I worked so long for this thing and it's going to run out. Joseph Kennedy, the JFK's dad, I read his biography. He was like the eighth or ninth richest person in America when he was alive. And I think he was worth a hundred million dollars. And he said, I would give away half of my money now if it meant I would be guaranteed to have the other half forever and grow at a very conservative but consistent rate because he was like, I'm just so afraid of losing everything that I worked for.

• 9:50Sam Parr?

  And that loss aversion is often like, it's like way harder.

• 9:54Shaan Puri?

  Would you do that? By the way, would you take that trade?

• 9:58Sam Parr?

  No, no, I wouldn't. But no, no, I think that the world, so he said that probably in 1920. I think like, I think that I still embullish on America and I still think that over the next hundred years, like I'm gonna, it's gonna average seven or eight percent a year and I'll be okay. So I'm okay with, no, I wouldn't do it. I still think, and everyone talks about America like, like, oh, like empires only last 250 years and we're there. And in my head, I'm like, but do you think that we're going to go to zero? Like England like has been around for 2000 years. And they're not number one or number two, but like being number seven is pretty good too. Do you know what I mean? And so whatever people talk about like America is going to collapse. I'm like, well, like.

• 10:42Shaan Puri?

  They still got like a dude standing in front of a building all day like a statue. You can go take pictures of them, right? So like, life can't be that bad there. They got the guy with a fuzzy black hat on.

• 10:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like it's not that bad. Like, I wouldn't mind being Germany or France and like they, they like were the best for 2000 years and now they're not number one or number two, but like, you know, I'll be the Red Sox. It's okay. Like, it's not a big deal. So anyway, I'm pretty like long-term bullish on America. So no, I wouldn't give away half.

• 11:08Shaan Puri?

  Are Italians, Italians still eating pasta? Are the Span, are the Spaniards still taking naps in the middle of the day? Like, you don't need to be number one to live a very sweet life.

• 11:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, it's not like, I'm, I'm happy.

• 11:24Shaan Puri?

  So I want to describe, because I think this is the main topic, right? Like, I had a bunch of like, you know, random ideas and stuff like that. And we can get to those. But I do think the main topic is probably where most people are at is our audience is, I would say, heavily entrepreneurial and/or work in tech. If you, let's just go through both scenarios. If you work in tech, you're likely, you know, have a lot of your net worth invested in either the stock of the company that you're being paid in, or you, you know, you might be invested in the crypto, the crypto markets or the stock markets. And most likely you are, you've taken a bath of like, you know, something between 30 and 60% of your net worth in like the span of five months has evaporated.

• 12:08Shaan Puri?

  And like, whatever plan you had for buying a house, you know, you're like, oh, wait, you know, the, my money is sort of, you know, a lot of my money is gone and the interest rate has gone up and like, you know, or like, you know, I wanted to have that kid and another kid and like, now I need to like, think twice before I do that. And like, shit, I've been ordering groceries like three days, you know, ordering DoorDash three days a week. Like, do I really need to pay like, you know, $32 for, you know, a burrito and chips? Like, you know, you start to reassess a bunch of things in your life.

• 12:38Shaan Puri?

  Especially because the last 10 years, like if you're around our age, we're like, you know, kind of like early 30s, like all you've seen since you graduated was numbers go up. And so it's kind of jarring to suddenly see numbers go down. At least that's my perspective. Did you think I accurately like labeled one part of our audience?

• 12:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah, in particular, the last two years, like it's been like up, up, up, up, up, like crazy. Yes, and that is our audience.

• 13:07Shaan Puri?

  And then you have business owners who are like, great, this thing I've been, you know, working so hard at every day for the last X years. Like, here's the, here's the good news. Long silence. Okay, here's the bad news now. Your valuation is like cut in half. Your customers are likely going to, you know, start tightening up and paying you less money. You're probably gonna have to do some layoffs, trimming somewhere in your business and your cost structure. And like, there's a, I don't know, 30 to 40% chance you go out of business in the next year and a half, on top of whatever your normal risk of going out of business was. And so like, great, you know, we have, you have risk of going to zero. And so that's a kind of stressful thought.

• 13:51Shaan Puri?

  And so on both sides, you have this kind of stressful, kind of depressing thought. And I would say, and if you're an investor, you know, all the same thoughts, you know, times two. So, where does that leave you? You know, you're either in a puddle of despair, or you're gonna be like, okay, I need to kind of like giddy up and real, and I have to realize, the environment has changed. And if that changed, what needs to change in my world? And so I think there's like a pretty healthy exercise to go down of like, what needs to change in my world? And I would say like, that's the productive conversation. So it's not enough to just be like, I'm just gonna close my eyes and think happy thoughts and be positive. It's like, well, I need to be

• 14:36Shaan Puri?

  realistic. A lot of shit's changed. I probably need to change with it. But also, like, do I want to sit here and feel depressed or hopeless? No. And so therefore, I gotta like, you might have that thought of like, I could lose it all, or this is all gonna zero, or like, all my hard work is gone, or like, whatever, all those thoughts. But in my mind, it's like, I need to reprogram my brain to operate in this new world. And I need to like, basically, I need to like consciously reprogram my brain, so that I have

• 15:04Sam Parr?

  Well, what I'm, my point is, I do believe, like, or I do have that fear of it's all gonna go away. And my reaction is not quit, my reaction isn't even spend less, my reaction is Yeah, it might go although it might go away. Let's get after it like let's go get more or let's go. You know, like it to me, it's a very stressful period, but it's a period and it's not actually stressful. When I actually like logically think about it, I'm like, it's not that big a deal. But it is a I think that whenever I look back at the shit that I've made that's been successful. It typically is when there's not a lot of alternatives. Um, and it's like, oh, man, this needs to work. So.

• 15:44Shaan Puri?

  Right. I do my best work when when back against the wall. That's a that's a one thing that a lot of people believe, and that's a belief that can serve you well when things get hard.

• 15:54Sam Parr?

  So it is stressful, but uh, you you I think I said this a while ago. I go, you're, I think I'm more likely to be like a slow and steady like success. Whereas you're more likely to become a billionaire in like five years or lose it all. And so because you take you take, well, you take a lot of risk or both. You'll become a billionaire then lose it all. You take way more your risk on.

• 16:21Sam Parr?

  So that's why I'm interested in hearing your perspective on this right now, because you're like, you're you're all in on a couple of things that that just so happen are getting hit the worst.

• 16:31Shaan Puri?

  So what would be fun to talk about? What would be interesting to talk about? Like, you know, we can go into like why we think it's happening. We can go into like, what are you going to do about it? We can go to well, shit, how do you feel, man? Like, where do you want to go?

• 16:41Sam Parr?

  I don't want to go into why it's happening. And I was thinking about this, we're in this text group with all those guys and they're all like, it's just a bunch of like supposedly smart people. No, they actually are smart, but like they they're what's crazy is that like, America has been around for hundreds of years. Capitalism has been around for thousands of years, and yet the smartest people don't agree on the cause or the solution, and they can't predict what happens. And that's kind of interesting to me because at your business, at a business, like you have a pipeline and you have a funnel. And when you build a good business, you're like, all right, there's a 90% chance that blank is going to happen. And I understand that business.

• 17:24Sam Parr?

  America is kind of like a business, just with 330 million people and like a weird govern, a weird corporate structure where like, you can't really like do whatever you got to get all these checks and balances and all this shit done. But what isn't it kind of fascinating that we still don't entirely understand the cause or the solution to a lot of these different problems?

• 17:46Shaan Puri?

  That's always been very unsatisfying. It's like, stock market goes up or down, then there's like this race to make up the cause. And it's like, um, okay, so you're saying every time that happens, this will happen? No. Okay. So you're saying that you could have foreseen this? Well, it's like, and what it is, is like, you know, sort of this backwards application of narratives. And it's not that there was no cause, or there is no true narrative. It's just that it's not easy or clear to see what is this true cause and what are the true narratives amongst the many possible explanations and reasonings you could have, right? Like, did it rain today because I did this dance? Or did it rain today because, you know, the clouds have, you know, heavy, whatever precipitation? And why do they have that? Well, because of the

• 18:31Shaan Puri?

  changes in weather and whatever else. Like, you know, it's very, it's very hard to separate the people who think things are happening because they did the, they think it's raining because they did a funny dance.

• 18:40Sam Parr?

  It's just that we can predict certain human behavior relatively reliably. Um, like, you know, the whole Pavlov's dog thing. Like, I know that if I do this, this, and this, most of the time, a creature is going to react by doing X, Y, and Z. And I was, and it just kind of has always baffled me. I'm like, well, why can't we just take all of this input and put it together and figure out what the solution or what the cause is? And that's always baffled me. And it also freaks me out that, uh, so many people who I view as smart say opposite things. Do you follow, uh, Zero Hedge on Twitter?

• 19:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Sam Parr?

  So Zero Hedge is like this pretty hardcore, I don't know if it's like libert- libertarian's the best way to describe it, but like, they're pretty much always like doom and gloom. And every article is written by the guy from Fight Club. What's his name? Tyler Durden?

• 19:26Shaan Puri?

  Tyler Durden, yeah.

• 19:27Sam Parr?

  And every article is written, uh, by that guy. Uh, and their Twitter profile, they only tweet in caps. Every tweet is a, is a caps lock. And they tweet, they tweet the scariest stuff all the time. And it's incredibly easy to believe and trust for some reason, because I don't know what it is about emotion that I just automatically assume that the worst is actually the truth. And I, I've had to like unfollow that. Did you, have you ever, do you follow that handle?

• 19:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, for sure. And I would not unfollow it, but I totally get what you mean, which is that like, if you follow Zero Hedge, you're just like, wow, all of the big people in charge are sort of idiots. And all of the stuff that's going up is, you know, overvalued and overinflated and over everything. And like, you know, no matter how bad it is, it could get worse. Don't think that this is the end of the pain. Right. And, and that, you know, like, people have said this about like, you know, people who predict crashes and recessions, it's sort of like, this guy's predicted, you know, a recession 13 out of the last three times it's happened. And it's like, you know, if you're, every year

• 20:37Shaan Puri?

  you predict a crash, you know, you'll be seen as a genius, because you predicted for three straight years, like, then it happens, like, well, you weren't wrong, you were just a little early. And then, like, you know, all those years where things are going up, you know, you're, again, you're just sort of like, you're just early. And so it kind of pays. Somebody said this the other day, like, I would say, in general, like, in a bear market, you know, it pays to be a pessimist. And in a bull market, it sort of pays to be an optimist. And somebody who's always a pessimist, or somebody's always an optimist, is not going to have like, long term success. The ability to shift gears between like, optimism and pessimism, and knowing when to do what, is a like, highly underrated trait

• 21:22Shaan Puri?

  that very few people have.

• 21:24Sam Parr?

  Let me tell you what I'm doing with the, I don't exactly have a biz, I don't really have like, a business business, but I have a, a, a small version of that, that might become a proper business. Let me tell you what I'm doing, and then you tell me what you're gonna do. But basically, my reasoning, and keep in mind, I'm like, I feel so stupid when it comes to this finance and economy stuff. I don't know, I really don't, don't understand anything. But my belief is basically like, well, now's the bottom. And I actually discovered this with the hustle, where I was like, I was creating something that people kind of dismissed, or thought it couldn't work. But then it takes like, four, five, six years to get to like, a substantial business. And by that point, people took it seriously, and I was the biggest and the best, and therefore could

• 22:08Sam Parr?

  Get acquired or was making a lot of the revenue. So with my, the thing I'm working on now, my, my logic is, well, now's the time to work really, really hard. And it might suck for one or two or three years, but when things start changing a little bit, that's actually around the time where I'm going to have a team. I'm going to have process, I'll have systems, I'll have product market fit, and then we could accelerate really hard then, because we've already done the, the hard work during the hard times. Is that, is that kind of how you're looking at it too, a little bit?

• 22:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, definitely. I think that's, um, that's definitely the case. So what, what I'd said was, I said, kind of three things to myself. I said, number one,

• 22:45Shaan Puri?

  this is a good chance to remember what I truly believe. It's like, and this is like, first, I needed to calm my nerves because if I'm in a sort of fight or flight, if I'm in a state of like panic, anxiety and stress, I already know my decision making is not very good. My decision making is at best rushed and at worst, it's, uh, you know, like operating from a place of fear and therefore all I'm trying to do is like, you know, like minimize pain and never like get any, any advantage out of it. Just like minimize the amount of disadvantage I'm having in the short term. And so our, my first step for me is get out of a fight or flight mindset.

• 23:26Shaan Puri?

  And so that's where I first just checked myself. I'm like, well, what do I really believe? I truly believe this in the bottom of my heart. I don't mean this in an arrogant way, but I truly believe that like, if I look at my life over like a 10 to 20 year period from here, right? I'm in my early 30s. By the time I'm 40 or 50, like I think I'm going to have more money than I'll ever know what to do with. To me, that's like the spoiler of my life. It's like, if I flipped to the end of the book, I'm like, oh, it ends happily ever after. Yeah. Like I, I truly believe that. I truly believe that. Like I'm just going to keep doing business projects. I'm going to keep investing in things and like, on the whole, I'm going to end up so far ahead, even if any individual investment or any individual business project doesn't work out in a 10 to 20 year period, when I check the score at the end of the game,

• 24:07Shaan Puri?

  like I'm going to be ahead. I'm going to have more money than I know what to do with in my personal life. I truly believe that about myself. So if I knew that was the ending. There's no real reason to panic. Like if I know that's what the score is at the end of the fourth quarter, then like, it doesn't really matter what happens in the first quarter. Like I should, I should for sure be playing and doing my best, but like, it doesn't matter if I fall behind, or if I lose a little bit money here. If the score doesn't go my way for this next 12 to 18 months, that's okay. So that, it's like, I gotta remember, do I believe that or not? All right, I do believe that, then chill first, chill the fuck out. Okay, that's, that's like

• 24:39Sam Parr?

  Wait, let me, let me tell you something though, really quick. Let me be the huge pessimist here.

• 24:46Sam Parr?

  I believe that that is true about you as well. I believe that that is true about a bunch of people who we know. But here's the thing that I think about all the time. It's like, I don't want to be, I don't want to have more money than I know what to do with when I'm 70. I want to fuck it now when I'm young and again, experience all this crazy stuff and like enjoy life. I don't want it then. I want it now. By, by then, I don't care. Like I'll, I'm okay with having way less. I want it today. I want the freedom now when I'm healthy and can go do whatever I want. That's why I freak out. Like

• 25:16Shaan Puri?

  I'm with you, but it's sooner the better. It's not now or never. So sooner the better is very different than now or never. And so, okay, we got a sooner than better mindset. So we're going to take a bunch of shots. We'll take a bunch of action now to increase the odds that it comes sooner rather than later. The second thing is, does it matter? Did my day to day actually change? Because my stock portfolio, my crypto portfolio, my net worth changed, right? Like your net worth, it's not a figment of your imagination, but it's sort of like a figment of your like ego, or sort of like a figment of your like perceived sense of safety. And so like, in reality, the stock market go down, the crypto market go down, it doesn't actually change my like day to day lifestyle or comfort based on where I'm at. For some people, it's going to change that. But for

• 25:59Shaan Puri?

  me, it's not going to change that. So that also helps take the edge off, which allows me to think with a clear head. Then I start thinking, all right,

• 26:06Sam Parr?

  You're not changing, you're not changing your spending pattern?

• 26:10Shaan Puri?

  Oh, like in a small way, but nothing that like my happiness on a day to day level doesn't change whether I, you know, like, uh, like, you know, have a chef or not, you know, like, oh, cool. It's cooking season then, right? Okay, cool. I'm buying, I'm going to like, I went to Trader Joe's yesterday instead of Whole Foods. Yeah, I shift some, I shift some small decisions, but like, that's cool. Trader Joe's is sick. Like, you know, who cares? Like, those sorts of things don't actually like sway how I feel. Wait, I was gonna get another car. Did you actually do that? I guess I'll hold off on that.

• 26:39Sam Parr?

  You're doing Trader Joe's now?

• 26:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like literally, literally. Yeah. Like, but again, I like Trader Joe's. This is not a big problem for me because I drove four extra blocks and went to the Trader Joe's. Um, you know, like, cool. So, you know, and again, not everybody is fortunate where like, these are like their situations. I get that. Uh, but like, I'd like to believe that in general, my, my day to day, like kind of happiness quotient is not so, so weak that it's like dependent on these like material or like, you know, like frivolous things. It's like, you know, sometimes I get stuck in traffic. Well, guess what?

• 27:13Sam Parr?

  I don't know, man.

• 27:14Shaan Puri?

  The radio, baby. It's a concert, right? Like,

• 27:16Sam Parr?

  A big ass Honeycrisp apple from Whole Foods. It's not trivial if you ask me.

• 27:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but I don't know. I've always had this feeling of like, I, I've always kept myself honest, which is what I want is to have, uh, you know, a fat mansion and be eating a feast with all the people. I, my friends and, you know, family, like all at the table. We're laughing and joking. That's my ideal. But what's even better than that? What's even better than having the sick mansion with the feast with all your friends and family all around you and you're laughing at the great joke you just cracked. Okay, that's what I thought was the peak, but the actual peak of the peak is you're the type of person that you can get stuck in an elevator and have fun. Cause then you're invincible. What's better than invincible mode is like, you can put me in the shittiest situation and I'm still gonna be laughing. Okay. So now, now what? Now I don't

• 28:04Shaan Puri?

  really have anything to fear because my, my, my situation, my, my feelings weren't dependent on having all those, those items. All right. Even though I prefer them. So, So yeah, I think that I guess like, yeah, I do make some shifts in my like lifestyle, but it's not like, to me, I'm like, oh, cool. It's a new season. Like it's tightening up season. It's like, you know, it's like getting shredded for the summer for, you know, your body. It's like, cool. I'm also going to go and cancel a bunch of subscriptions. I don't care about because it'll make me feel good. Like I'm, I'm, I'm putting a healthy amount of discipline in. Like I kind of accrued a bunch of excess fat when it was one season and now it's time to cleanse. And like, good. Like, you know, where, where am I spending that I don't really want to be spending? You know, where are we, where are we advertising? That's inefficient. You know, who's on our payroll?

• 28:48Shaan Puri?

  That's not really pulling their weight. Good. Let's get rid of all that weight. Now is a spring cleaning, baby. Right? So it's like, that's the next step for me is like, you do an actual spring cleaning and be excited about it.

• 28:58Sam Parr?

  I've been using True Bill. This is not an ad, but have you seen, yeah, it's called True Bill. I bought like the hundred dollar subscription. Have you ever used that?

• 29:07Sam Parr?

  You know what that is?

• 29:07Shaan Puri?

  I haven't used it, but I've used stuff like it. Yeah. It basically like looks at your subscriptions and like suggests, how does it know what you're not using? It suggests what to cut, right?

• 29:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like, like I didn't realize that me and Sarah both had Amazon Prime subscriptions. Like apparently I thought I canceled one of them and so it catches that. And it also like, I just see how much I'm spending every month and I'll say, you have an upcoming $300 subscription coming up. And it's like, oh, that's my trainer. But there's been times where I'm like, oh damn, I thought, I didn't know I had Xbox Live or whatever the hell that thing's called. Uh, it's a $29 thing and it's coming up. And so you can like cancel it. But then what they do is if you need to cancel something that you want to call, they'll like do it for you.

• 29:50Shaan Puri?

  They'll do it for you.

• 29:51Sam Parr?

  It's pretty cool.

• 29:52Shaan Puri?

  Um, yeah. And so, so that's another piece of this, which is, uh, me, me, Ben and Safon, we were hanging out this morning and so we, you know, we all hung out together and we're getting our coffee for, that's the Milk Road team. And we're like, uh, or like part of it. And we were like, okay, let's just make a real list real quick. Let's assume for a second, assume this market condition, these market conditions last for the next, let's call it 18 months. So let's assume the stock market, yeah, it'll bounce back from like whatever, it'll find some low and it'll bounce back a little bit, but it's not going to be like, all right, baby, we're back to, you know, everything's just keeps going up. We all printed money, right? That's not going to happen. Let's say for, for the next cycle. Um, same thing with crypto. Let's say that, you know, companies, you know, they're not giving out raises or hiring as much.

• 30:34Shaan Puri?

  Let's say that customers tighten up their spending. So revenues go down across the board. Like, cool. Let's assume all that to be true.

• 30:42Shaan Puri?

  Do we also believe that like, like first, some things are gonna die, some things are gonna survive, and some things are gonna thrive. True Bill is something that thrives during a time like this, right? Because it's helping you bring some austerity or like, you know, financial discipline into your life. So people are gonna want that product more. So they're gonna thrive. What else is gonna thrive? Maybe short sellers are gonna thrive right now because they've been betting that the market's gonna go down. And sure enough, it has. Who else is gonna thrive? You know, the guy who's been sitting on a bunch of cash on the sidelines is like, oh, actually, like, there's things that I think are valuable businesses, like Facebook and Amazon that are trading at all times, sort of like, you know, lows in the last decade. Like, now's the time to dollar-cost average into these companies into these assets.

• 31:24Sam Parr?

  Dude, how about, how about Mois Ali saying he had, in the interview you did with him, saying he had 50 million in cash? And he was like, I just am waiting. It's like, oh, okay. Now, uh,

• 31:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 31:34Sam Parr?

  I understand what you, now I understand your, yeah.

• 31:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. I remember, just as like a small anecdote, like, I remember maybe seven years ago, six years ago, something like that, I don't know. I bought Bitcoin for the first, I think I bought 10 grand of Bitcoin, back when Bitcoin was like at 600, $700, 600, 700 bucks. And the next week, it goes up to 800. And I'm like, there we go, baby. Just as I wanted. Buy the thing, price goes up. Love it when they stick to the script. And, uh, like, I think two weeks later, or something like that, I don't make it up timelines here, but very soon after that, Bitcoin crashed to like $200. So my, like, what was 800 was now, you know, I lost, you know, whatever, 75%. I don't do public math, but you get the idea. Lost a bunch of money

• 32:17Shaan Puri?

  in that process. And at that time, $10,000, like, I was making 150K a year, I think was like my salary, 100. Actually, definitely not 100. I made either 120 or 160. So.

• 32:30Sam Parr?

  Dude, I remember when that was. And I remember you told me you made 150 grand a year in salary. And I was like, oh, my God, you're the richest person I know.

• 32:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was the richest person I knew at that time. So I was like, and you know, and actually like in reality, I was underpaid for, you know, what I was doing. But in my head, I was, I was like, wow, don't say anything. They might realize how much money they're paying you. You know, like that was like, I was so honored to be making that kind of money. So, um, and like, I feel good that I was honored. Like, it feels, it's, it's great to feel honored at what you're getting. That's actually an awesome feeling to be in versus consistently dissatisfied. Um, but like, I remember it went down to 200. I walk into the office and I was like, bitching about the like, the crash of, I was like, my Bitcoin. Cause like, you know, I'm very public when I invest in things, which makes me often look like a dummy, but occasionally makes me look very smart. And I was like, oh, guys, my Bitcoin purchase, my, my, my, I forgot what I put in 10 or 20 grand, something like that. I was

• 33:21Shaan Puri?

  like, it's, uh, it's like all gone now. And Furcon was like, um, he was like, this is great, right? Like, you know, do you like, do you believe less in Bitcoin, just like than you did two weeks ago? Like, did you learn some new information? Like, besides the price changing? Like, did you learn any new information about Bitcoin that makes you less bullish on Bitcoin? I was like, no, like, barely knew anything to begin with. And like, you know, nothing changed. And he's like, cool. So like, if you bought now, you could bring your average cost basis down to like 400. And I was like, oh, like, yes, that's true. And I went home and I did it. And I was like, I, I remember going from like, just what I thought was the only response. I thought the only response is bitch

• 34:02Shaan Puri?

  and moan. And then he kind of pointed out, well, like, did your actual conviction change or just the valuation? I was like, right. Well, I don't know, my conviction didn't change. Not, not to say I had a ton of like, very well thought through conviction at the time, but like, it didn't change. And so I did, I lowered my cost basis to 400. Now, as Bitcoin, Bitcoin today, trading at like, I don't know, 2300 or 23,000, something like that. But like, let's say on the average last year, it's been like 30K. So that, that's the difference between basically like an 8X and a Forex in your return, was that one conversation during that one time. And I've heard this many, many times before, which is like, you know, fortunes are built during these bear market times. And it's really for two reasons. Number one, if you start a company, you're going to be

• 34:44Shaan Puri?

  like the lean mean cockroach. You're not going to have too much competition. And you're going to build up your, your kind of team and consumer base now. Um, so that as, you know, as the tide lifts all the boats, you're the biggest fucking boat. That's what happened to you with the hustle. And like, that's what happened to many companies that started during, you know, let's say the recessions or bear markets. The same thing happens with investing. It's like, well, The goal, if your strategy with investing is to only buy in when things are going up, and then like sell or do nothing when prices go down, like you have inadvertently subscribed to a buy high, sell low strategy. And like, you know, I think we know that that's not a winning strategy. And so like, um, you know, well, then what's the opposite of that? The

• 35:29Shaan Puri?

  opposite of that is to, if you have conviction, or if there are good assets that are underpriced temporarily, like there's a dislocation because of panic and fear, like those are the times where you're supposed to buy in. Very hard to do so because your mentality is like, like, I just lost a ton of money. I don't feel like going and putting more at risk. But in reality, we kind of know that is the right thing to do for the, if you could pick assets properly.

• 35:52Sam Parr?

  Dude, what I've been learning about this, and I tweeted this out, was like, I'd rather just earn more income and build more companies than worry about these losses. So let me, can I, let's, let's shift a little bit. Can I tell you about a company or this, you remember how you said I find these things that are kind of interesting and weird? I found another one. And I want to tell you about it. All right. Have you heard of this conference called Shop Talk?

• 36:22Shaan Puri?

  Shop Talk? No. Uh, but the name sounds familiar. One second. Let me go to this. Just start to describe it. Let me see if I have heard of this.

• 36:29Sam Parr?

  All right. So it's a conference that I think you would have been involved in because it's for e-commerce people. But it's not just like, it's not like D to C entrepreneurs. It's like Shopify, as well as like every Shopify plugin, as well as like, uh, retail brands, like, like the founder of, or the CEO of J. Crew might go and talk to like, the, see, talk on a panel with like, the, someone at Stripe. I don't know. Just like, it's like online commerce, but like for retail stuff. Does that make sense? But it's like B to B.

• 36:56Shaan Puri?

  Sorry, give me the use case. So who goes? I'm a, I'm an e-comm store. So should I go to this?

• 37:01Sam Parr?

  Uh, probably not, but if you're like, you would go and speak and like executives at Gap would be like, "Oh, like these young startups, here's what they're doing. Maybe we should like, consider changing our strategy to X, Y, and Z." Or, "We're making apps for this, we're making software for this ecosystem. Let's go and talk to other apps and maybe we could do business together." Does that make sense?

• 37:24Shaan Puri?

  Let me ask you slightly, slightly differently. There's like, kind of like trade shows or like

• 37:28Sam Parr?

  It's a trade show.

• 37:28Shaan Puri?

  conferences where it's, okay, it's more like a trade show. Gotcha.

• 37:31Sam Parr?

  It's a trade show. All right. But here's where things get interesting. So the guy who started it, I linked to his, his LinkedIn down there in the document. And I think his name's Jonathan Weiner. And he has this co-founder, he's an Indian guy named, I forget the Indian guy's name. But, uh, so listen to their background and let me tell you what they're doing now and why this is so fascinating. So I linked, linked an article from Vox and it said, "The guys behind Money 2020 Conference want to do the same thing, but for commerce." So what that's, what that will explain is basically this guy Jonathan and his partner, they started a company, by the way, I saw you smirk when I said the guy's last name. That was hilarious.

• 38:13Shaan Puri?

  I was trying so hard to come up with a good joke. Uh, and I just, you know, my filter in my brain was like, you know what? Not worth the risk.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  This data is wrong every freaking time.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Whoa, I can see the client's whole history. Calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  HubSpot, grow better.

• 38:43Sam Parr?

  So this guy and his partner, Jonathan Weiner and his Indian partner, it's like you and, you and me, like Weiner and the brown guy.

• 38:53Sam Parr?

  So this guy, they had an ad tech company as well as a payment software business that they sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. And then oddly, they went and started a conference and it was called Money 2020, which was like a fintech payment processors trade show business. And within two years, they scaled it to like 30 or 25 million in revenue with 10 million in profit and they sold it for a hundred million dollars. Right when they sold it, they went and started the same thing and they called it Shop Talk and they did it for commerce and they sold that for over a hundred million dollars. And they sold both Money 2020 and Shop Talk to two different publicly traded companies. So all these numbers that I'm saying, you can actually go and

• 39:33Sam Parr?

  look at the numbers and like verify the acquisition price as well as the revenue. Now, I noticed that one of the founders spun off and he's doing a different thing called like the fintech meetup or something involving fintech. And then the other guy is doing one called Health. It's pronounced Health. It's spelled H L T H dot com. And he's doing this trade show business for healthcare. And they're basically doing the same strategy every single time. And if you go to all three of their of their conference websites and you click the about page, they have these really cool cartoons about cartoons instead of like headshots of each employee. They just do cartoons. They've done that for every single about page. So they're more likely than not like hiring like

• 40:15Sam Parr?

  the same people, the same graphic designers, because they're not compete. Yeah, they're not compete probably says like, look, you can't create anything in the fintech space anymore. You can't create a thing in the commerce space anymore. And they're like, all right, let's do health. Let's do this. Let's do that. And it's so interesting that they're getting into conference and trade show businesses as opposed to software. And they've crushed it. They are crushing it and they don't raise money. And they just like, it's like every three years, they start something and sell it for a hundred million dollars. And it's the same thing. And they've done it two or three times now. Isn't that crazy?

• 40:47Shaan Puri?

  This is amazing. You've done it again, Sam. You have done it again, dude. I love these. In fact, I remember you telling me about Money 2020 a little while back because you've always been interested in conferences, trade shows, businesses from the HustleCon days. And I remember every time you told me about these, I was like, sort of consistently blown away as to how much money these make. Now, what do you think is the playbook to do this? Because like, for example, well, this is kind of intransparency. We've talked about this with the milk road of like, dude, there's a lot of like, there's a lot of money and there's a lot of moving parts to like, people who are, you know, have some interest in this, whether it's like, Wall Street people kind of want to get educated on this stuff, you know, insurance, you know, let's call it like mutual funds, hedge funds, bankers, whatever. And then there's

• 41:31Shaan Puri?

  like crypto people, there's VCs, like all these different people who are like professionals. And there are tons of conferences, right? So it's not like some uncompetitive space. But what are these guys doing that's better or different? Because I don't believe most conferences, businesses are scaling this fast or selling for this much. So what are the, what's this guy, what are their, what's their playbook compared to how most people do it? Do you know?

• 41:54Sam Parr?

  A little bit. So the misconception with a lot of these-

• 41:57Shaan Puri?

  Make some conjecture, make some guesses, because of course we don't know exactly.

• 42:00Sam Parr?

  And I've tried to like, deconstruct it just based on the outside. But so the misconception about conferences is that you need cool speakers and people come to watch content. And as I've studied these guys and read their quotes and figured out exactly how they do it, and I ran a conference business that made millions of dollars a year, I've realized that the real money, like the 20, 30, 40 million dollar a year money, it's not necessarily a conference. It's a three-day transactional event. It's you're creating eBay, or you're creating a Main Street with stores on the, on the street and renting it out. You're creating that, but it just so happens that's going to happen in three days. So a year's where the business is going to happen in three days. And so what you have to think about is your,

• 42:40Sam Parr?

  your speakers are just the bait to get the right people to come. And then once a certain right people are coming, the rest of the right people will come. And they're justifying all of it in the, they're justifying all of it by a couple of things. The first thing, they're justifying it because they say, shit, our competitor is there. We have to be there. So that's like a really big thing. And so I've talked to my friend- Uh, who runs Blockworks, that other crypto media site and they have this huge crypto business. And he was like, man, it's pretty crazy. Like if blank company is coming, other company is like, oh, we gotta come. And can we like get a better booth than them? And so that's like a really common thing. But the second thing and more logical thing is, all right, look, if we're gonna buy this hundred thousand dollar booth,

• 43:25Sam Parr?

  we gotta close all these deals. Who's, you know, what shot callers are gonna be there? And we have to do a really good job of making transactions happen. So that's the really big thing is you have to realize that this, so there's this guy named Sheldon Adelson. Do you know who that is?

• 43:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's like the Vegas casino guy, right? Or is that his cousin?

• 43:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's a mean as fuck old billionaire. He's like known for being like a huge asshole and he's worth like 20 or 40 billion dollars.

• 43:50Shaan Puri?

  Jabba the Hutt looking guy?

• 43:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like he's like, looks like this and he like thinks that like weed is like the end of the world. And so he like buys all these ads about how like weed is, you remember like those commercials like, Julie used to care about stuff. Now she just smokes weed all day. And then, you know, like, it's like, it's like someone like melting on a couch.

• 44:08Shaan Puri?

  This is your egg, this is your egg, this is your brain on weed and it's like cracks in it.

• 44:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was, it was like, it was like, they used to have these commercials with like these, someone like melting into the couch. And they're like, she used to go for runs all the time. Now she just sits and watch TV. And like, anyway, he's like this huge anti-weed guy. And so, but he's just like 90 year old guy. I think, I forget what he owns, but it's like the largest, he basically.

• 44:30Shaan Puri?

  This guy definitely just had like a bad weed experience. He like definitely smoked weed in college and like Peter's pants got made fun of for it. Like, there's gotta be some deep rooted, like personal angst. What is it?

• 44:41Sam Parr?

  So it is serious. His kid, I think, became a drug addict and he like thought, and this guy like grouped weed and into the same as all that other bullshit, which is not, which I think is crazy. But he basically started this event called Comdex, which eventually was acquired for a billion dollars by SoftBank. And it be, and it became, uh, what's that thing? The Consumer Electronic CES. And I read, I would read all these old articles about him and he goes, you know, you're in the conference business and now you're in the real estate business, building up Las Vegas Strip. What are you doing? And he goes, well, the conference business. This is the real estate business. What I learned early on was I gotta get people in foot traffic to my event and then I'm just selling real estate at a crazy high square footage.

• 45:23Sam Parr?

  And it's the same thing. And so that's why I'm into real estate now. And he basically built up all these hotels. I forget all the casinos he owns. There's like three big Vegas casinos and he owns one of the biggest ones. And anyway, so these events are rooted in like real estate and foot traffic. And so that's really how you do it. The second thing is, it's gotta be B to B. Of course, a fucking TED Talk is like the coolest thing out there. But like, you know, people coming to like hear a talk about why sleep matters or like how to cure malaria, that's unfortunately not where the money is if your name is anything but TED. So if you're anyone else but TED, don't do these like sexy things. Do boring ass B to B. We're here to get some deals done and we're gonna sell you some shit. You know, it's a bunch of a bunch of white dudes

• 46:08Sam Parr?

  with tight blue jeans and like those brown leather shoes and tucked in collar shirts. Just like, you know, sales bros. That's what that's like where the money is.

• 46:18Shaan Puri?

  At least 40% of participants must have a tucked in button up shirt or polo. And you know, like, half the jokes need to be about their wife. You know, like something something complaining about their wife. And then like, if you said the old ball and chain, you'd get like a default smirk from anybody. You know, like their badge needs to be like, you know, semi tucked in under the belly. Like, that's who you need at these conferences for this to work.

• 46:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And if you don't have a Tucker in your crew, you're out. You're just you're not part of this. You have to have a Tucker in your crew.

• 46:49Shaan Puri?

  Right. There's like a dog, like a bomb sniffing dog that's just looking for Tuckers in line.

• 46:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Shaan Puri?

  It's like, guys, there's not enough Tuckers in this in this queue. Shut it down.

• 47:00Sam Parr?

  So that's what it seems like.

• 47:01Shaan Puri?

  It's a German shepherd.

• 47:05Sam Parr?

  That's, that's where it seems the money is. It's like joining these industries that are fast growing and making it a real estate, you thinking like a real estate person.

• 47:16Shaan Puri?

  And how do you, how do they go get people to go buy these tickets? So like, I'm assuming they're basically selling, or is their model, you sell tickets for a couple thousand each? And then you sell sponsored booths for, you know, tens of thousands each, something like that? Is that the model?

• 47:33Sam Parr?

  I think what they do, so I went and looked at their revenue. And so their revenue in year one is like two or three million. And then in year two, it's like 12, and then year three, it's like 30. So based off of that, and it's a bunch of marketing materials and as well as their headcount on their about page. I think what they do is they A, just give away a bunch in the first year. In the first year, you're just trying not to lose your shirt. And I also think that they, when they sell sponsorships, which are actually, can be easier to sell for these things. They like only give away X amount of tickets. And for the rest of the people to come, you have to purchase it. And once you get a certain amount of sponsors, it's kind of like, we used to host, we used to host events

• 48:17Sam Parr?

  and we would purposely have like as many speakers as possible because each speaker would bring like 10 people. And so I think it's kind of like that where each sponsored company automatically brings a small crew. And that is how they actually do it. And because they don't, they spend a lot in marketing though, and they, based on their team, they have digital marketing folks.

• 48:35Shaan Puri?

  You know that Spider-Man meme? The Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other, like, I'm Spider-Man. It's that, but just sponsors at the booth being like, buy my, buy my thing. No, buy, you buy my thing. I'm here to sell, not to buy.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a circular economy of just like, you know, buying, buying one another's crap. But anyway, it's kind of cool what they're doing. And I think this business, I think events can be a headache, but there's a way that you can build it. What?

• 49:08Shaan Puri?

  What I would do, by the way, if I was international, I would study these guys and I would do the exact same thing in Europe, then I would do the exact same thing in Australia, I would do the exact same thing in India and in China and in South Africa. Like wherever you are, there is a version of this that can be built locally that is not going to be competitive with these guys. Basically, like this is a clonable template, in my opinion. I'm sure it takes good execution. I'm not saying that, but I think this is a business that can like generically work in other markets and either other verticals or other countries.

• 49:39Sam Parr?

  There can be more than one winner, you know, like you can go to more than one conference a year. And so it's not a winner take all business. So it's kind of interesting. And interestingly, all the companies that have bought these guys' companies have been European. And I looked online about what they were doing. And one of the big things that they are doing was, first of all, they've gotten really good at selling. So they host the event in 2022 and at the end of 2022, they already have 90% of the revenue for 2023, because you sell the, you upsell the people like right away for the next year and you could sell multiple years. The second thing that they're doing is they're starting to charge money for online communities. So like, all right, you met at the conference, you can keep this up and like, and so they're doing online communities.

• 50:23Sam Parr?

  And that's one of the reasons, that's the business, one of the business I'm interested in. And that's why I've been studying this and figuring this out. It's, this is a super fascinating thing, I think.

• 50:32Shaan Puri?

  It is. This is great. I really like this one. Anything else on this? Otherwise, we could do another topic.

• 50:38Sam Parr?

  No, I don't. I fucking, I just.

• 50:41Shaan Puri?

  So I have, I have so much stuff backloaded, by the way. And I know I spent like half of 40 minutes of this podcast, just being like, the mentality of a downturn. But again, I think it's the most, whether you're an employee, you're an employer, or you're an investor, like, nobody is going to be spared from the economy going into a recession, the stock market tanking, and the crypto markets tanking, and global inflation. Like, this is like a.

• 51:06Shaan Puri?

  You know, like you like Oprah comes out and she's like, you know, you get a disaster. You get a disaster. You get a disaster to everybody, right? Like, nobody is going to be untouched by the effects of this. Some people are going to get hit to the point where their business goes under. They declare bankruptcy personally or in the business, whatever, right? That's going to happen, but I don't see anybody getting untouched by like a stack of problems like that.

• 51:30Sam Parr?

  Man, when I remember when Biden was saying that Putin was gonna evade invade Ukraine. And I was like, reading about Putin and listening to Ben's podcast, How to Take Over the World. And I was like, hey, Putin, why do you, why do you want to fuck this up for everyone? Like, things are pretty awesome right now. Like, what are you thinking? Like, this, I, that, that's just the conversation I wanted to have. Like, you know, like Putin, like, everything's pretty, pretty good. What, what, what, like, you're gonna blow this for everyone. We're all gonna get screwed. And that's like a conversation that I've, that I've been wanting to have.

• 52:05Shaan Puri?

  The kid in class, he's, the kid in class who raises his hand is just like, hey, miss, you forgot to collect the homework. And it's like, dude, what are you doing?

• 52:16Shaan Puri?

  Are you joking? We are seven minutes away from getting out of here.

• 52:21Sam Parr?

  Dude, do you buy? Okay, so this is like, sounds like a very like yuppie asshole thing to say, but I don't really look at gas prices because they don't, I drive that much. But, you know, it's just like, it's, I gotta buy gas and it's not gonna hurt me. However much it costs, I'll buy it. And I was driving up here from Austin to Brooklyn where I'm living now. And I was listening to the news and they're talking about gas prices. And I was like, oh shit, I haven't even looked at the gas prices while I've been driving up here. I wonder what it is. And it was like 550 and it was crazy. Again, I know like what the news was saying, but I just wasn't looking because I don't drive that much. What's the gas in California where you are? Are you paying like 650?

• 52:59Shaan Puri?

  Seven dollars a gallon.

• 53:01Sam Parr?

  How the fuck are normal people doing this? That is crazy. That is crazy. Seven dollars?

• 53:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, when you said 550, I was like, wait, you're saying you found a good deal? You were trying to say that's a bad deal, right?

• 53:16Sam Parr?

  I thought that was real. I mean, I haven't lived in California in two years. I remember in California it was $5, but.

• 53:21Shaan Puri?

  What is it in Austin?

• 53:23Sam Parr?

  Dude, I don't even know. I just looked in like West Virginia when I was driving up here. I don't pay attention to the gas prices. I don't drive that much and I just don't, I'm buying it no matter what it says. Uh, but like seven dollars, this is, we sound like such fucking fools right now. How much gas does a car take? I don't even know. Like, I mean, it would cost like a hundred and fifty dollars, I guess, to fill like, how big is a tank?

• 53:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I drive an SUV, so it's like, you know, twenty gallons, basically. All right, Jonathan says it's about four fifty in Austin.

• 53:52Sam Parr?

  Dude, so you're spending a hundred and fifty dollars to get gas?

• 53:57Shaan Puri?

  Yes. Um, yeah, it's bad, but you know, asking for a friend, you know, like, okay, I got like a, you know, a card that says like, you should use the good, you know, pay the most when you go to the gas station, like pick the, pick the top of the, of the three options. Um, like, let's just say-

• 54:13Sam Parr?

  What do you drive? What's your SUV?

• 54:16Shaan Puri?

  I got a BMW X5. And so it's like, let's say your boy's been, uh, putting the shitty one in for a while, like, you know, does this matter? Is this, is this like marketing or, uh, you know, like, do I pay some price later in life or do I pay some price now? Like, I actually never really knew how big of a deal that is. Like, is it pretty strict?

• 54:34Sam Parr?

  I don't know. Uh, but you're pay-

• 54:37Shaan Puri?

  Ben, I feel like you know, Ben.

• 54:40Sam Parr?

  I don't know, but I'm gonna be honest, it doesn't sound great. It doesn't sound like that's what you want to be doing.

• 54:46Shaan Puri?

  To me, I'm like, you know, is this, this seems like a recommendation, not a rule. And, uh, you know, so I've been going with the eighty seven, whatever that stands for, instead of the like ninety or whatever the, the top end gas is. And I've just been like, you know, okay, so-

• 55:02Sam Parr?

  The most expensive thing is seven fifty?

• 55:03Shaan Puri?

  Is this like eating McDonald's?

• 55:06Shaan Puri?

  Uh, the most, yeah, I don't even know what the, yeah, it's basically around seven bucks, uh, seven bucks a gallon. I think it's, I think that's kind of the top.

• 55:13Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 55:16Sam Parr?

  That's crazy. That's, that's wild. So every 18 miles is $7 for you, basically.

• 55:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't even think about it. Like, it is what it is. I need to get places and like, that's the cost of cash right now. Like, what am I gonna do?

• 55:32Shaan Puri?

  I'm not gonna drive to West Virginia and get gas. I'm not gonna not drive around, you know, like I do need to go places. And so, you know, it is what it is.

• 55:40Sam Parr?

  Of course, it's not the big deal for you, but you remember how we were talking, we were talking about how the economy was crushing for years and years? And I've got so many friends that they're like, man, I've got, I've been in my apartment for a year and a half, for two years. I've got a money burning hole in my pocket. Like, I haven't bought anything out. I have, I have all time high savings. I'm ready to save. And all these people are quitting their jobs because they're like, F that. Like, I get these checks. I've saved up money. Like, I'm not taking this thing. At $7 a gallon, like, people are just gonna run out, I guess. Right? I mean, like, you're just gonna run out of savings.

• 56:14Sam Parr?

  A huge amount of people.

• 56:15Shaan Puri?

  Again, you, again, you gotta cut back, right? So, you know, I cut back down to that low end gas so I could, you know, save the 30, 40 cents a gallon. Other people are just gonna drive less. They're gonna take public transport, or they're gonna carpool, or they're gonna find something like, people will find a way, is, you know, my general mentality. And like, I don't know, I spent a lot of my life living in like Jakarta or like Beijing. And you just see people like, in Beijing, right next to our house, there's just people just shucking corn, like, all day. In a, they're just sitting in a squat, just like removing husks from corn for like 10 hours straight in the heat. And they were just like, you know, and then they would like take their break, smoke a cigarette and play some mahjong and like, you know, like, that's what they did and they were fine.

• 56:58Shaan Puri?

  And then like, you know, your driver had different set of problems and like in Jakarta, like in India, people just burn trash on the side of the road because there's no like waste removal thing. So they're like, you burn it and then it's gone. I said, yeah, but like, it smells awful all day. And like, what are you talking about? This is like how air smells. I was like, no, no, no, man, that's not how air has to smell. But like, you know, I don't know, you, the, the range of how humans can live, survive and thrive is so much wider than like, you know, the average person thinks. And so, I don't know, like. I don't know. I just don't really pay too much attention. It's just like, you have to like, I don't know. You just have to like, kind of figure out how to govern yourself in a new world. It's like, are you a self governing individual or not?

• 57:42Shaan Puri?

  Cause like, if you are not a self governing individual, every day you're going to get punched in the face with bad news right now. And like, you gotta learn how to parry a punch. Otherwise, you are going to get like knocked out by just taking these jabs to the nose every day.

• 57:56Sam Parr?

  Like, I just got done, I was in Missouri for two weeks. Most people aren't like that. They're just like, they're, most people are not that resourceful. That's what I've, I've learned. I actually think that our audience is like that. Most are not like, oh, I gotta go start something. I gotta do this. I gotta, I think most people will just, are, are just gonna be fucked. That's, I mean, that's really what I think.

• 58:20Shaan Puri?

  So, so I'm writing a book right now. I don't know if I tell you this. I've written, write a book. I'm using that like scribe media thing where you, they like write the book for you or whatever.

• 58:27Sam Parr?

  Is it awesome?

• 58:27Shaan Puri?

  Your content. They just, they write the words after you say it to the guy on the phone for like two hours every like week or something. I don't know if it's awesome. I'm loving doing it because I'm like, oh, cool. I get to like put something down on paper. Like, I don't know, this is fun. And I'm not gonna like sell the book. I'm gonna do something different with it, but whatever. So basically, point is, the start of my book is that everybody wants the same things. Like, everybody wants to be like wealthy. Everybody wants to be like in great relationships, great family, and everybody wants to be like in, you know, great shape. And you look at like, okay, cool. So like, if everybody wants that, and that's all achievable, then certainly, you know, like, most people are doing that? No? Okay. Half people are, it's like, most people

• 59:11Shaan Puri?

  have the exact opposite of that result. Most marriages are ending in, you know, unhappy or ending a divorce. Most people in America are, you know, overweight or obese. And most people don't have like, you know, more than $10,000 of savings in the bank or whatever for like a rainy day. And so, everybody wants the same things. Everybody wants to be, you know, Uh, you know, rich, fit, madly in love. And in fact, everybody has the opposite. And so like, if, if you think like most people think you're going to do what most people do, and you're going to get the result most people get. And the sad truth is that the results most people are getting are not very good. And like, I, so that's the start of my, like, that's the premise of my book. And that's the start. And then the, the, the second part

• 59:53Shaan Puri?

  of, of, I guess, like, I would say a controversial thing about me is, um, I am totally okay not taking into consideration, most people's situation. I am totally, so like, for example, I always, I, it sounds like an asshole thing. I understand. I said it in a purposely provocative way. Right? I did not want to soften that. Um, what do I mean by that? Like, I always talked about like, oh, I love to teach and I want to be a teacher. Um, so most people see that as like some like Mother Teresa, you know, like, sort of like save the world, like be the educator who helps all. I'm like, no, no, no, I do not want to try to educate everybody or teach everybody. I'm like, most people are horrible students. They don't want to learn anything. They're not going to learn anything. They're not going to do anything

• 1:00:38Shaan Puri?

  with, even if you told them the exact right answer, or how to think, they're just not going to do it. So like, why would I waste my energy doing that? Like, no, no, no. My preference is like, in a, in a population of 100% of people, there's like 3% that like really want to know the answer. And of them, maybe like 20% of them are going to be able to actually take action on it. Like, I'm only going to try to teach the driven and motivated and capable. Like, and that is not a like society, like socially acceptable point of view. Um, but it is my like, operating philosophy is to like, uh, myself, I focus on the controlling the things I can control and not other things. And secondly, like, even when I'm like, talking about what most people should do, I know that most people are not going to be able to do that, or want to do that, or choose to do that. That's okay. I'm not talking to

• 1:01:23Shaan Puri?

  most people. I'm talking to the 1 to 3% of the population who like, wants to thrive in those ways. And, uh, I hope everybody else said, listens to it and says, this guy's a jerk and like, does so out of touch. It's like, and they leave. Uh, they leave my orbit. And they unfollow me completely because I'm like, uh, I, I am trying to be intentionally out of touch, in the same way that I intentionally avoid the news.

• 1:01:51Sam Parr?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:01:52Shaan Puri?

  It is. Part of my core strategy is to be out of touch and avoid the news. And like, not, not, not learn from or speak to the common denominator of the population. And I, I know that all of that sounds completely awful to some people. And, uh, but you know, I'm okay with that. Like, I, I do believe, even if you disagree with that, I hope you agree that like, I'm allowed to have that choice to, to do that. And if you don't think I have the choice to do that, um, like, you know, then I disagree with you and all of your, your ways of living.

• 1:02:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you're like, if you, I get that. If, if you don't, if you don't think that my opinion's good, I get that and you're fine, but you're wrong and I hate you. That's basically what it is.

• 1:02:35Shaan Puri?

  If you think my opinion's wrong, if you think my opinion's wrong, uh, I understand. And I, I would expect that from a lot of people. If you think I shouldn't be allowed to have my opinion or to act on my opinion, that's where, uh, like, there's a difference between I disagree and that's not allowed, or that's not okay, or no, you can't do that. Or, you know, uh, lynch him, you know, like, there's a, there's a difference in like, being able to disagree and disallow. And I would say you're, you're, you know, like, I totally agree.

• 1:03:07Sam Parr?

  You're taking it a little far with the lynch. Yeah, they're gonna kill him. Yeah, lynch him.

• 1:03:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, um, yeah, yeah, that's, that's probably a bit, bit harsh.

• 1:03:17Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the pod. We'll see if people, uh, dig it. I, uh, dude, what if tomorrow it just goes back to normal?

• 1:03:25Sam Parr?

  That would be nice.

• 1:03:25Shaan Puri?

  By the way, if, if you want to cancel me, uh, I hope people get our voices mixed up. And this has been Sam talking that whole time.

• 1:03:33Shaan Puri?

  This voice you hear is Sam.

• 1:03:36Sam Parr?

  I think they're saying that you.

• 1:03:38Shaan Puri?

  P A R R, uh, you could find him, he's a, he's affiliated with HubSpot if you want to go get them. Like, that's the guy to go get if you didn't like what was just said.

• 1:03:48Sam Parr?

  Dude, I still get people messaging me saying that they, they, they confuse us still. I don't understand that. I guess, I think they're.

• 1:03:56Shaan Puri?

  People go watch the YouTube video and they're like, shit, I've been, had you guys oppos- mixed up for like a year.

• 1:04:02Sam Parr?

  I, I think what they're saying is I look beefier, but I talk nerdier and you look nerdier and you talk beefier. So it is what it is.

• 1:04:12Shaan Puri?

  You, you look dumb and you talk smart and I look smart and I talk dumb.

• 1:04:19Sam Parr?

  All right, we'll talk soon.

• 1:04:20Shaan Puri?

  Peanut butter and jelly, baby. It's a perfect combo. Yeah, all right, I'm proud of you.