We hosted a slumber party with 12 billionaires (our minds are blown)

Get our Business Monetization Playbook: Episode 671: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) recap a weekend spent with billionaires in Greenville, NC. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (4:49) Fish Where The Fish Swim, Not Where The Fishermen Stand (12:45) Man Does Not Sell Chocolate, He Becomes It (18:48) Non-Obnoxious Confidence Beats IQ (22:53) I Am (24:51) Take Your Billions and Shove It (30:20) Hardwork.....maybe? (32:41) Health is the New Status Symbol (37:39) Midwit meme in full effect — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  All right, Sam, we just had an insane weekend together. We gotta talk about it.

• 0:14Shaan Puri?

  We just lived in a house for a weekend with 25 other founder entrepreneur types. Probably five to 10 of them were billionaires. A bunch of others were close and we didn't just like talk or hang out. We literally like slept under one roof, sat in sawn us together, played basketball together, went to Walmart together a bunch of times.

• 0:36Sam Parr?

  My Airbnb had bunk beds, so we bunked, we bunk bed together.

• 0:40Shaan Puri?

  It's as close as two men can get. So we had an experience and I have in front of me several sticky notes of golden lessons learned and I phrased each of them. I don't know if you do this, but I've raised each of them to make it fun because nobody wants to hear your vacation story. That's one of the great rules of storytelling is just never tell a vacation story. Cause it's so fun for you, but they weren't there. Nobody cares. But I think we should tell the biggest lessons learned with the story that backs them up. So it's real, not just a generic lesson. And I phrased all of mine like it's Confucius, like, you know, Bruce Lee whispered this into your ear.

• 1:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I dig that. And to give the background, basically, I think like three years ago, you tweeted out, I want to play basketball with interesting people. I think Mr. Beast like DM'd you and you're like, wait, is this real? You ended up phoning him and he was like, yeah, come to my place. I want to meet interesting people. The first year it was like you and Ben organized it. It was like 19 of us in an Airbnb and we were like, what are we going to do? So we played basketball. The second year you organized it a little bit more and you had like an itinerary. This year you guys killed it. It was awesome. It was an amazing event.

• 1:50Shaan Puri?

  I do like meeting interesting people when I go to conferences or events. I just hate conferences or events. Like I get a pit in my stomach when I have to go. And I know it's good for me and I know in the end I'll meet some cool people. I just hate the format. I hate the structure. So it was like, well, what's, you know, instead of just complaining about it, what's a structure I would like? It's like, well, I don't know. What if it was just doing the thing I love? It was playing basketball. With those people, we basically play ball all day and then we talk at night. And that was the, the core idea is to use basketball as the icebreaker.

• 2:22Sam Parr?

  And you broke your knee in the first two hours.

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. So this was an event where you could tear, you could tear up your knee and be done in the first hour. And I still had a good time. That means it must've been a good event because normally that's pretty brutal. I did have a little pity party for myself, but I feel better now.

• 2:38Sam Parr?

  Are we allowed to say who was there?

• 2:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think we could say some of the people that were there. Yeah, let's go for it.

• 2:43Sam Parr?

  So Mr. Beast, who like, you know, everyone knows him as the guy on YouTube with hundreds of millions of subscribers. I think he's a paper billionaire. I think that's public.

• 2:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's one of the youngest billionaires in the world. I think he's 26 years old and he's worth a few billion dollars. He's one of the most famous people also in the world, one of the most recognized entertainers in the world. And when you hang out with him, he's also one of the like most intense, fun to be around. You know, just wants to play all in. Like somebody said this once about Elon, they go, he's playing, he's playing life as if, as if the simulation theory is true. You know, Elon has a simulation theory, it's not just be one of many simulations. And so he therefore just goes all in because, okay, whatever, let's, let's make this the most entertaining version of that simulation. I think that's how Jimmy plays, plays life too.

• 3:28Sam Parr?

  So we are with him. It was the, one of the founders of Airbnb who like on paper, like according to Forbes is like the 100th or 90th richest person in the world. It was another billionaire who was one of the first investors in Tesla and SpaceX. It was the founder of Reddit. It was Jesse Itzler, who's on the podcast, you, me, Al Doan, who runs like a quilting company that does nine figures a year.

• 3:51Shaan Puri?

  Tons of people.

• 3:52Sam Parr?

  David Perel, Nick Huber. It was awesome.

• 3:57Sam Parr?

  You want to start first?

• 3:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do it. All right. I got one for you. Here's one of the lessons I picked up. And this is about the business ideas that these guys were thinking about. So if you're out there and you're wondering kind of like, where's the opportunity? What should I be working on? Here's what I picked up from some of the most successful people in America. And it says, fish where the fish swim, not where the fishermen stand. Confucius, AKA me.

• 4:22Sam Parr?

  Did you just make that up?

• 4:24Shaan Puri?

  You saw me writing these five minutes before we went live.

• 4:26Sam Parr?

  Well, I thought you'd heard that. Did you hear that somewhere else?

• 4:29Shaan Puri?

  There's a scratch out on it, right?

• 4:30Sam Parr?

  But did you get like Chinese food last week and that was like a fortune cookie?

• 4:34Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I've had my share of Kung Fu Chicken. All right, let me just tell you some of the ideas that I heard from people who were in, at this event. So you mess in, you mentioned Jesse Itzler, and I think one of the public things that he's done is, he got really into racing, like running, running endurance races. So he just followed his curiosity.

• 4:52Sam Parr?

  Hundred mile races.

• 4:54Shaan Puri?

  Hundred mile races. He started to do hundred mile races. While he's doing hundred mile races, he notices that the runners that are trying to do these amazing physical feats are drinking coconut water. And coconut water was a big, like a big part of that niche, super niche community. And he became a believer and spent time hunting down what he thought would be the best coconut water company. Ends up finding Zico Coconut Water, partners with them and Zico now is a big success. They ended up selling, I think to Coke and, you know, they're, they're in Whole Foods or they're, you know, it's one of the big coconut water brands. And he found it when he was small and just like, just exploring these uncharted territories. So here's some other ones that I heard. There was somebody there who's making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling board games.

• 5:36Shaan Puri?

  I'd never even had that on my bingo card. I didn't even know that was an option. I did not even know that you could do that. There was somebody there that was investing millions of dollars into women's sports. Like, you know, and not even just women's sports, like they're trying to do things now where you just buy a piece of a college program. I didn't even know you could do that. Like that's for sale? What the, what is, what is that for sale? Where is this listed?

• 5:59Sam Parr?

  Dude, I, I went to a talk recently with this billionaire who owned like, the Timberwolves, Mark Lasry or something. And he was talking about the Bucks. And he was talking about how he's trying to buy college. Do you buy the rights?

• 6:12Shaan Puri?

  They're going to like the University of Alabama or whatever. And they're just like, cool, we'll give you $500 million for the Alabama sports program and we want to own 51%.

• 6:20Sam Parr?

  But is it like, do they buy the future earnings? Is that what it is?

• 6:24Shaan Puri?

  They're basically, I think what's going to happen is, again, it's uncharted territory. You don't know exactly how this is going to play out, but this, I think the short version is, the college will spin out the program, their, their athletics program as its own business entity. They'll sell equity in it. They'll use that equity to finance all of their sports, like women's lacrosse, like things that aren't going to be the big revenue generators. So they use it to, to fund all their programs and maybe even school stuff. And then those and then and the costs now are are borne by the the private equity person. But now it's this asset that didn't even exist before, like these college programs can make a lot of money, media rights and all the stuff, but they weren't even for sale. Somebody was doing that. There was something that somebody there that was like, yeah, seven years ago,

• 7:05Shaan Puri?

  I just got really obsessed with water. I'm like, yeah, me too. I thought my whole life. He's like, no, no, no. Like, I got really obsessed. Like, do you know what kind of water you're drinking? And I was like, oh, no, like, is this bad with microplastics? What's going on? And he was just like, yeah, like, I got obsessed. And so I just started studying, where's the cleanest water from? Where's the healthiest water from? And I realized that water was going to become like oil, that people were going to more and more be drinking, not tap water, but they wanted, they're going to want basically bottled water, canned water, things like that. And that water's going to have to come from somewhere, and I wanted to find the best sources of water. And so I went to West Virginia and I bought this aquifer, this is this spring. I bought this giant water source.

• 7:44Sam Parr?

  What?

• 7:44Shaan Puri?

  And he was like, you see that drink you're drinking right there is like some brand, like popular brand? And he's like, that's our water and they use our water. So that's good water. And I was like, what? This was just a side quest that he went on. And again, it was curiosity driven.

• 7:56Sam Parr?

  Was this one of the billionaires?

• 7:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, basically, I mean, not not billionaire, but yeah, like, whatever, close, close enough. There's a guy there, Al, who started a quilting company with his mom in Missouri Star Quilt Company, and they sell fabrics for people who want to make quilts. His co-founder is his mom.

• 8:14Sam Parr?

  I have a planned vacation to, so he owns this thing. The the company is called Missouri Quilting Company. And he basically bought, he did a podcast three years ago with us where he explained where he bought a town. Is it Hamilton, Missouri? He bought like an 1800 person town where they own every building and they're building the Disneyland for quilting.

• 8:32Shaan Puri?

  Dude, just the thought of that. So first to go into quilting, smart guy, like, you know, could have done any business, goes into quilting.

• 8:39Sam Parr?

  It's like, what are you guys, what are you doing, man? You're throwing it all away on quilting?

• 8:42Shaan Puri?

  Does a business with his mom, right? Like, again, independent thinking, not just following the herd. So then starts the business, his mom does the YouTube channel, he does the business side of it. Business keeps growing. And then it's like, you know what we could do? We could create the Disneyland for quilting. And he literally goes and buys a town. Again, who's, is that for sale? Can you do that? How do you do that? And that that just kept happening, which was like, people who were playing games that didn't even seem popular. Another lesson, there's, there was a person there who had sold a piece of their company to churn in. And Churnin is now kinda known. I first heard about it maybe like 10 years ago. And Churnin is this really interesting.

• 9:23Sam Parr?

  They're most famous for. Yeah, they're, they're, you know, the Peter Churnin was the CEO of Fox. So he's like a big swinging dick. He's been a baller for years, but they're most famous amongst like normal people because they bought Barstool when it was nothing and helped to make it something.

• 9:37Shaan Puri?

  Correct. And they just had this, again, independent thinking where they were like, hey, I think these things that other people see as small kind of toys, things that aren't going to make a lot of money. You know, media brands, blogs, YouTube channels. I think these things are going to be big. I think basically, and they had this thesis, which was content to commerce. It's like, I think if you're kicking ass at content, you're going to be able to, instead of just making your money through ad revenue and sponsorships, you're going to be able to sell stuff to those people. And they had this content to commerce thesis and they go and they buy Barstool content and it ends up being this juggernaut with commerce. They buy, they bought Exploding Kittens and they bought Meat Eater and they bought Surfline, all these niche content brands. We had a guy on the pod, the Plant Daddy.

• 10:21Sam Parr?

  I met with them a couple of times. There was like early discussions, well, you know, three meetings with the, that I had with the hustle. And I was like, what the fuck do you guys know? Didn't get that one right.

• 10:36Sam Parr?

  Turns out they know a lot. They, they know a lot.

• 10:38Shaan Puri?

  Did he just like slide a P and L across the table? And he's like, I'll leave you three minutes alone with this.

• 10:42Sam Parr?

  Like they told me this story and I was like, you're full of shit. You don't know what you're talking about. Like, you, you know, you're talking about my company, right? I was like, you know, like,

• 10:54Sam Parr?

  like, but they were right. I think what the, the premise was correct. Uh, but I, yeah, I, I, I didn't have that confidence that we're talking about now.

• 11:03Shaan Puri?

  And dude, they're made a fortune because the market overlooked these brands. These brands were not valued like high flying tech companies, but they became, you know, multi hundred million, billion dollar brands. I really admire what TCG did because.

• 11:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're the best.

• 11:17Shaan Puri?

  There's so many investors that all love to sound like they're smart and contrarian and they're all just, what's your thesis? AI, AI is going to be the future of everything, right? It's like, okay, you're not wrong in that, but like, there's something really impressive about somebody who looked at just like this magazine, or this blog, or this YouTube channel.

• 11:35Sam Parr?

  They did it with Doug Demora, who was on our pod. We've had a bunch, we've actually probably had three or four people who sold their company on the pod to those guys.

• 11:41Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. And, and they've been right, and they've been right in a very, very big way. So I'm very impressed by them. So to me, that, that's the principle. Fish where the fish swim. So fish where the real opportunity is, not where the fish are understanding, not where everybody, all the entrepreneurs are huddled up. This, this fortune cookie says, man does not sell chocolate, he must become chocolate. Okay, so what does this mean? Three years ago, when we did the first version of this event, Jimmy, AKA Mr. Beast, had launched his chocolate brand, Feastables. And it was like, okay, selling chocolate to little kids. I had the opportunity to invest, I think at a $40 million valuation was like the, the series A, and I passed.

• 12:22Sam Parr?

  In, uh, in like the Beast Empire, or chocolate?

• 12:25Shaan Puri?

  In Feastables itself. So, um, just kind of thought about it. I was like, I don't really get it. I didn't really know much about the chocolate industry. I thought his involvement was going to be like this. Normal influencer brand is, I'm doing my thing, I create my content, oh, my manager hands me this, hey, uh, buy this, smile, ding, yeah, put it down, move on with life. So I thought he's just going to influence it. I thought he's just going to hold it up and buy it. I didn't, what I didn't realize is that this guy was going to go so deep into the world of chocolate and end up knowing everything about chocolate and end up running this company like an absolute maniac founder. If I had known that, if I had known he was going to bring his, his full intensity at this, I probably would have thought about it differently. I thought he was just going to hold up the chocolate bar and see how many people clicked the link.

• 13:10Shaan Puri?

  I was dead wrong. So I want to tell a, a quick story. You were there for, for one of the Walmart runs, right?

• 13:15Sam Parr?

  No, but I have a bunch of Walmart stories.

• 13:17Shaan Puri?

  So. We're sitting there, we're about to record. He walks in, he's like, hey, before we do this, you guys want to go to Walmart? Which I realized like at the time sounded like a sort of a strange request. Nobody's ever asked me on a, on a mandate to Walmart. We walk in and um, he takes us to the chocolate aisle and basically gives a like 10 minute masterclass on the chocolate industry right there in the aisle. And while he's doing it, he's not just like explaining like, well, this is how it works. This is how we do. This is our revenues. This is whatever. He's also simultaneously restocking the entire aisle. Like he pulled the cartons up to the front because they were like three inches recessed. They were pushed back too far. Some of the bars had fallen over. They were crooked. He straightens every single one of them out. He puts the right flavors in the right spots. If a bar was crinkly or broken, he's like, he'd throw it to a chief of staff, like, hey, can you buy this?

• 14:02Shaan Puri?

  I want to have like, we should only have good bars, no broken bars up front. And he would basically restock the thing, but his hands were moving at a speed which showed you this is not the first time this guy's done this. So he, he restocks it and one of the popular flavors was out. And so he takes out his phone and he's like, oh, I have a badge. And so he just badges into the back of Walmart and goes and gets the box himself and restocks it. And I was like, does any vendor get to do that? And he's like, no, not exactly. But they know like I, like I just do this. I care. I really care. And it kind of two things stood out to me. The first was obvious, which was when high intensity obsessive people want to win, they do the same things that the rest of us do with the knob dialed up to 12. Like they just, they just take the knob and they just crank it past even where you think it could go. And, and for example,

• 14:47Shaan Puri?

  he was like, I think you were there. He was telling the story about like missing a flight or something like this.

• 14:52Sam Parr?

  He like told the story about how apparently he flew to DC and had a connecting flight to North Carolina or something, wherever he lived. And he was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm driving from DC to Greenville, North Carolina. It's normally like, I don't know, a three hour drive or something, but I noticed that there's 14 Walmarts in between on that route. I'm going to stop at every single one of them to learn. And it turned like a three hour drive into like, you know, a 20 hour drive. And he told me at one point, he goes, I have scanned, I guess he's got some app where you scan things in Walmart and it teaches you about each SKU. He said he scanned every single product in Walmart. And I don't know if he was like, if someone said, oh no, I've scanned all of them. You'd be like, oh, so it's like saying it's a thousand degrees outside. You're just exaggerating. But with him, I was like, oh, I bet you you literally have scanned every single one of them.

• 15:37Shaan Puri?

  In the podcast we did, he was like, yeah, like, you know, we want to do a thing where you buy every item in Walmart for somebody in a video. And he's like, you know, but it's 16.2 million dollars. It's like, he knew the actual cost of the total, total inventory. If you bought one of everything in Walmart, like what it costs. I forgot what the number was. But so, but I don't want to make this just a Jimmy love fest, because there was another guy who was a top seller in Target.

• 15:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, man, I heard him nerding out. It was wild.

• 16:01Shaan Puri?

  He took us to this shelf and he was like, this shelf right here. He's giving us a tour of Target and it shows you how the store works. He's like, this shelf right here is the high, most profitable shelf in Target is the highest profit per square inch, which is how Target measures, you know, success. And he's giving us this Target Masterclass and we were like, are you also in Walmart? He's like, yeah, we're in Walmart, but we're not doing so well. And I asked him, what's exciting for you coming up? And this guy runs a billion dollar plus company. I assumed he was just gonna say, I've got some board meetings to line up. I'm going, I'm taking the family to Aspen. And he goes, actually, I'm working the next three weeks as a Walmart associate. I was like, what? And he goes, yeah, I'm gonna be, he goes, our sales in Walmart are not the same as in Target.

• 16:45Shaan Puri?

  And I've been trying to figure out why. What I found remarkable is that you expect the people who are the most busy, the most accomplished, the most high net worth to be above these tasks. Jimmy restocking the SKUs himself. This other guy going to be a Walmart associate for three weeks. You know, they don't have to do any of this, but they're gonna do it anyways. They're not just doing it now, now that they're successful. That's how they got here. And so that was the first really big takeaway from this whole thing was the intensity with which certain people play the game of business and how that leads to success.

• 17:18Sam Parr?

  That guy who you're referring to was the quietest person there, or one of. And there was a point where I was hanging out with him. He goes, can I get your guys' opinion? You know, I think, and I'm thinking about potentially like making some type of business move, which would value us at this valuation. And we were like, what valuation? And it was like in the billions. And we were like, Do you know who we are? Why are you asking us this question? Like, what are you, what are you talking about, man? Like, you, I don't know who you asked this question to, but that, like, he was the most, like, humble person there, and he was crazy successful. It was pretty wild, that guy who you're talking about. All right, I have one. Confidence beats IQ.

• 18:02Sam Parr?

  So, you know, there are a lot of, like, really successful people out there. Like, when I read Warren Buffett's biography, he does the opposite, where he is like, oh, you know, I'm just this guy. It's like, dude, you're, you're a bona fide.

• 18:14Shaan Puri?

  Aw shucks, downplaying them.

• 18:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like, you're a baby genius. Like, he was like, when he was like four, he was like, making 10 grand a month selling Pepsi. But in general, the group of people who we had there, there were some people, for sure, who are genius. I think Jimmy is one of them, actually. I think when you talk to him, you know, he's like brilliant. But, and like Mario from Oscar was one of them. Mario co-founded a company called Oscar, which is a health insurance company, which is one of the hardest things ever to do. It's worth, publicly traded, $4 billion. So, he's like the man, and he doesn't even speak English, or he does, that's a second language. So, like, you know, he's from Germany.

• 18:51Shaan Puri?

  He speaks genius.

• 18:52Sam Parr?

  Dude, imagine going to Germany and revolutionizing the German healthcare bar. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's pretty wild.

• 18:58Shaan Puri?

  Extra degree of difficulty.

• 18:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Shaan Puri?

  Just go to someone else's motherland and fix their shit.

• 19:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, which is wild. But, you know, he was a genius. But in general, dude, the wealthiest people there, I noticed, were not even close to the smartest. And here's an example. One of the billionaire guys was there. He goes, "Man, AI is just gonna change the world. You guys, I don't think you guys get it. Like, I use it every day." And I was like, "How do you, how do you use it?" He goes, "I could show you right now." And he pulls out his phone, and he talks to ChatGPT, and he goes, "Hey, ChatGPT, you know, I have a question." And he like, starts like, reading a question to it, and then he's like, "Now, watch how amazing it is." And he like, it repeats the answer, and I'm like, "Oh, so you're saying that you just use ChatGPT, like, all the time?" Like, yeah. And I was like, "Well, like, have you, like, trained it?" He goes,

• 19:45Sam Parr?

  Trade, you could trade it? Like, like, he didn't know that you could do these things. And this particular guy ran a company doing billions a year in revenue. I guess what I mean is like this, the, the, the percentage of intelligence greater than me or you or someone else there versus impact or net worth was not like that. It wasn't.

• 20:03Shaan Puri?

  Totally. Totally, totally agree with that, which is that when you sit in a room like this, two things happen. One, you just get to sample like it's Costco and it's noon at Costco and you're just getting to sample different lifestyles. Oh, what do you do? Oh, wow, you seem kind of stressed out. Gotcha. Like not interested in going down that aisle.

• 20:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Shaan Puri?

  You seem like you're having a lot of fun. What do you do? How do you think about this? You've got kids too. How are you doing both? Right? And you get to sample people's lifestyle when you hang out with them like this for like, you know, 48 hours straight. On top of that, you also get to do the measuring stick thing, which kind of sucks because you're measuring yourself against like some of the most creative, successful, ambitious people in the world. But a big part of it is you're trying to figure out the diff, right? It's like, go see, there's little children's games. It's two pictures. What's the difference between these two pictures? And on one side is me and the other side is them. And I'm always looking at what's the difference? And sometimes if it's like Amari or whatever, it's like, oh, cool. Like his brain has an extra library in it. There's an extra wing that somebody donated to that brain. All right, cool. Like, I can, I can live with that. I can sleep easy.

• 21:06Shaan Puri?

  But there were other people where it was like, oh, it just seems like they didn't limit themselves.

• 21:10Sam Parr?

  That's what I mean.

• 21:11Shaan Puri?

  They just kind of went for it. Or they have, their courage was just on a little bit higher supply than mine. And you're right that when you look at the diff, very, very rarely was the diff, these people are smarter than me. Or they had some advantages I didn't have coming up. Right? It's like, in fact, it was usually the opposite. It's like, damn, they had this huge chip on their shoulder because their dad wasn't around and because of this happened and they were dyslexic. There's a bunch of people over there that were dyslexic.

• 21:31Sam Parr?

  Dude, I wish I was dyslexic.

• 21:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I thought autistic was the goal. It's dyslexic.

• 21:36Sam Parr?

  Dude, every dyslexic guy there somehow was a good freestyle rapper. Did you know?

• 21:42Shaan Puri?

  Like not only rich, but also cool in a group of men held around together, right?

• 21:47Sam Parr?

  Like, yeah. I wish I was charismatic, like a dyslexic guy. Like, that's crazy. It's like if you're, if you're, it's like if you're blind, you're a good like piano player and if you're dyslexic, you're like the most charismatic guy on earth.

• 22:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:06Shaan Puri?

  I have a related point, which is I just wrote these two words. I don't know if you can read this.

• 22:09Sam Parr?

  I am.

• 22:10Shaan Puri?

  I am. So my trainer has a like a clothing brand that he creates. It's called Super Conscious Go. So one of the shirts he gave me from Super Conscious Go, my favorite shirt, it just on the side, it just says, I am. And then it's after and underneath it says, the two most important words in the English language, for whatever comes after them will define your life. If you think you are destined for greatness, if you think you belong at that table, you will make different decisions along the way. And then it becomes sort of self fulfilling, right? You'll work at a different speed. You'll take different risks. You will, you will go for it in a different way. Several conversations I had at this event where I realized, damn, a lot of the, a lot of the downstream decisions start with the little voice in your head, the

• 22:52Shaan Puri?

  little director of your movie who's deciding like, what kind of movie is this? Is this like an indie budget? Is this a tragedy? Is this a comedy? Are you a joke? Or is this a hero? Is this a Marvel movie? Are you the hero saving the world? Right? And like, I'm not saying one is better than the other, but you get to decide what that little voice in your head is going to tell you because the director says, you know, what happens in the story, where you stand, what you say, all of those things. And I thought, damn, a lot of what I'm seeing in how people are living their lives and what they're doing differently, comes from the little voice in their head just has a different script in mind for that, what their life is all about, that I am statement.

• 23:28Sam Parr?

  Or like, here's a small example. How about Jesse bringing his sauna? Jesse Isler brought his sauna and he had two guys and I was like, what do you guys do? He's like, oh, we bring these saunas, like whenever he wants to go.

• 23:38Shaan Puri?

  To keep the sauna hot.

• 23:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah. He's like, whenever we go, when he wants to go to like a conference or something, like this sauna is like a really cool way to like create a bonding experience, which it was, by the way, just chilling in the sauna was fricking awesome. And I was like, wait, Jesse, you got these two guys who's just like jobs, like trail around this like sauna, like across the country to bring to events. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard of. He's like, yeah, isn't it great? We get to hang in the sauna. I was like, yes. And that's like another example of like intensity, but like on a more relatable scale.

• 24:04Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:05Sam Parr?

  All right. I have one. You could take your billions and shove it up your ass.

• 24:12Shaan Puri?

  The Seneca?

• 24:12Sam Parr?

  Put, yeah, put that on a, on one of those inspirational posters that you see in your office. There is this one guy who was one of the first investors in a variety of Elon companies. And presumably a billionaire, like, you know, investing in Tesla at a $60 million valuation, or $100 million valuation, you know, I don't know what that, is that like, is that like 100,000 times? So something like that.

• 24:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we don't do public math.

• 24:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like a lot.

• 24:41Shaan Puri?

  It's now, it's now a trillion dollar company.

• 24:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so it's a big deal. You know, there was this funny story where this guy was telling a story about working really hard. And like, he was grinding and his kid was sick and he's like, I had to take a week off to like, go and help my kid. And, you know, that was a big deal because I was working so hard. And then this other guy came and he goes, you know how you guys are all talking about working 16 hours weeks, 16 hours a day on your companies? Right now, I'm doing that as well, but my company is my family. And I have retired from business and I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family. And when he said that, I was like, this is awesome. And I imagine he was exaggerating a little

• 25:28Sam Parr?

  bit because I imagine he still does some type of deal making or something like that. You know, I don't know him well enough to know. But I thought it was so cool when he said that. And I thought like, you have it figured out. Same with Jesse Itzler. These two guys, I don't want, I can't say the first guy's name, but Jesse also had the same energy where I was like, this is, this is the way. And this is all personal preference. You know, Jimmy wanted to be Elon, cool, go do that. But when I heard these, this other way of talking, I was like, you know, after, this is easy to say because everyone was wealthy. But after some number, I don't know what that number is, 10, 20, 30, some millions of numbers, none of, a lot of it really matters. And just like, having a good time with your

• 26:12Sam Parr?

  family is something I really admired. And I, and I thought it was really cool that that guy said that. And it made me. Realize that I was getting sucked into this vortex of like money, money, money and achievement, achievement, whatever. But when I saw these guys talk and their energy, I was more drawn to that than anyone else there. Do you agree?

• 26:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, 100%. I think when I go to events like this, my instinct is to figure out, oh, how do you win? Oh, how do you win? How do you win? What tactics? What techniques? What strategies? What approaches work? And instead, the better question almost every single time is what game are you even playing? And picking the right game matters way more than figuring out how to win the wrong game.

• 26:53Sam Parr?

  Dude, there was people there who were like mini Genghis Khans, where it's like they want to dominate, like they get joy out of war and domination.

• 27:03Shaan Puri?

  They want to build cities. They want to dominate industries. They want to do that. That's one game you could play. And by the way, no judgment. Great. Do whatever game you want to play. I just want to know what the games are so I can pick. And then other people were like, I want to be CEO of my family full time. And I'm like, eh, I've done a four hour stretch with my kids. Like, I think I'm more of a 45 minutes a day, 45 minutes at a time, four times a day. That's, that's my ideal. So, okay, I'm not going to be CEO of my family because I would actually be miserable if I was a full time stay at home dad personally. But, but okay, that's a game I could play. Then I talked to Jesse and I was like, Jesse, what do you do? Like, what do you do every day now? I'm training for races and I'm coaching my kids' sports things. I do public speaking because I feel like it keeps me sharp and I get excited to get up on stage and say some shit that

• 27:46Shaan Puri?

  lights people up. He's like, I'm selling calendars. He's like, it's not gonna, he's like, I'm not making a fortune. Like, these guys, you know, they'll do that in a, in a day or two, a week, or we'll do in a year. But I, I don't know. I like doing it. I'm doing what I want to be doing. And he was very at ease with that. He's at peace with that. And I think, obviously, some of that comes from maturity, but a lot of it comes from, it's easy to be at peace when you're actually doing the thing that puts you at peace, when you're doing the thing you like. And if you're kind of, I don't know, like masquerading around trying to just do what you think you should be doing, I think that becomes very exhausting. And so, I'm with you that figuring out what game to play seems like the much, much more important question at every phase of your life. And the game I wanted to play in my twenties is different than the one I'm playing currently in my

• 28:28Shaan Puri?

  thirties. It's probably gonna be different than what I play in my forties and fifties. And I just got to kind of reinvent myself.

• 28:34Sam Parr?

  Dude, there was one guy there. He said he worked with Elon and apparently he had to do a meeting or something with Elon and like the secretary told him like, all right, you're going to do this meeting, but I need you to know that Elon makes his companies make $20 million every one hour. So this better be a $20 million meeting.

• 28:56Shaan Puri?

  I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with them that he was like Elon would have a meeting, but he would, there would be like 40 or 50 people in the meeting. And the reason why was not because that makes for a more effective meeting, but because it was like if the right, if the person who we need to talk to is not in this room, it's such a colossal waste of his time that we'll just fly everybody here. And we're going to have this, you know, 45 minute block and that way everybody's here because all of your time collectively is not worth as much as his, his hour. Which is like such a

• 29:31Sam Parr?

  Like it's hard to, it's hard to fathom this. Uh, let me tell you a really quick one, which is hard work amongst this group, not universal. So there was one guy, I, you weren't there, you were, Sean like busted his knee in the second hour or something like that and had to stay at home for like this whole, one whole session. And there was this guy there who was explaining how hard he grinds. And then there was this other guy who was, uh, one of the more successful guys there. He was like, I work like 20 hours a week. He's like, once my companies got to be like some type of like predictable, stable, like, all right, if we just keep doing this for 10 years, we're going to grow 50% a year, hopefully like it's gonna, whatever. He was like, I started working 20 hours a week.

• 30:14Sam Parr?

  And he's like, I wouldn't work Fridays. Uh, and it was really interesting to see that not everyone worked hard. Did you get that sense from people?

• 30:22Shaan Puri?

  The thing I pulled from it was some people were basically operating like monopolies and other people were not, uh, meaning there were some people playing a game where the competition is so vicious. Like, you know, like an easy example is YouTube. If you stop uploading.

• 30:41Shaan Puri?

  The game stop, the music stops.

• 30:42Sam Parr?

  There's literally a million other businesses in that same exact space do the same exact thing. Who are already eating lunch.

• 30:48Shaan Puri?

  And every idea you put out there in a video, somebody else is going to copy. And a lot of people do copy the, the exact videos that he does and the exact script. It's all public information. It's all super competitive. There's no gatekeeping. And then there's other people who were like, yeah, all we had to do was get to this. Like, we just had to get this shelf space. Like, there was one guy who was showing us a shelf at Target. And he was like, basically, seven years of the company was just dedicated, was just like hard work dedicated to getting on the shelf. But once you're on the shelf, it's almost impossible for anybody else to get on the shelf. All we have to do now is stay on the shelf. By the way, this shelf right here, like this little rack you're looking at, this is $300 million a year.

• 31:27Shaan Puri?

  And you're just looking at it, you're like, oh damn, like, wow, one shelf in Walmart, one shelf in, in Target is a, is like the entire revenue streams of like these online only companies. But you're extremely defensible compared to other businesses where the moment you take us, take a break, you have the entire internet competing with you on that same thing. You know what I mean?

• 31:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. That, that was an interesting thing. Do you have?

• 31:53Shaan Puri?

  I have a quick one. Health is wealth. In a room full of very wealthy people, how many fancy clothes did you see? How many fancy watches did you see? How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about?

• 32:06Sam Parr?

  Everyone but Joe Gebbia looks schleppy. Joe Gebbia looked great, even in.

• 32:11Shaan Puri?

  Fantastic style.

• 32:11Sam Parr?

  Even in workout gear, he was wearing some nice shit.

• 32:14Shaan Puri?

  Dude, he looks like he should be in like a Taylor Sheridan show. Like, if he, if he made it, if he made an appearance on Landman, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even blink.

• 32:21Sam Parr?

  Everyone besides him, dude, you know, he's on the board of Tesla? I didn't know that either. Like, he, he does a lot of interesting stuff. Everyone besides him looked like we're like, we are like at a slumber party.

• 32:34Shaan Puri?

  Well, we were also.

• 32:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but during the day.

• 32:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that should be the title of Slumber Party with Billionaires.

• 32:43Shaan Puri?

  So the, but the health is wealth thing was very real. There was a lot of flexing on stuff you're doing for your health, what you're eating and not eating, how much, who's your doctor? Who's your, what's your protocol?

• 32:55Sam Parr?

  But dude, no one was like that jacked or ripped or anything, were they? Other than Joe?

• 33:01Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, I thought people were in pretty good shape. If you go to other industries, non, kind of like tech, internet, not our bubble, right? But like, go to like a conference with the wealthiest people in finance or oil or whatever, like pick any industry, their body shape looks a lot different.

• 33:16Sam Parr?

  No, everyone, they looked like a healthy 55 year old.

• 33:20Shaan Puri?

  Dude, after, basically our day was go play basketball for three hours, like an intense basketball game. Come home, go into a 250 degree sauna. Then when you're tired of the sauna, go into this pond that was like freezing cold in North Carolina and go plunge for three minutes. Then go back into the sauna, then go back into the plunge. Then there's like a masseuse doing body work and myofascial release for you. Then you're eating and everybody's eating clean. Every single person's eating clean while we're there, right? Like, it's like, dude, that was the norm. Like, that is not normal. You know, if you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle, it's like basically doing heroin at this event.

• 33:54Sam Parr?

  Dude, me and Nick Huber got Taco Bell at midnight.

• 33:57Shaan Puri?

  It's secrecy.

• 33:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like we didn't want to tell anyone.

• 34:03Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I took like a feastable bar in my, like, I like hid it in my hoodie and it crunched over to my bedroom and ate it like in shame over there because what am I gonna do? Sit here? I need a chocolate bar in front of these men. He's just 52 years old and ripped.

• 34:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Shaan Puri?

  I was like, wow, this guy is, you know, on the Forbes, you know, self-made billionaires list. And also, also just ripped for fun as a side quest.

• 34:25Sam Parr?

  Dude, yeah, yeah. I mean, he looked great. Uh, and then-

• 34:28Shaan Puri?

  Jesse's 56 and runs 100 mile, 100 mile races. How many 50 year olds are ripped and run 100 mile races? Nobody does that shit, especially successful guys.

• 34:36Sam Parr?

  Jimmy wanted to do like a taste test. He had everyone like gather around to do a taste test of like Hershey's versus his stuff. And like, I like pretended like, oh, wow, Jimmy, your stuff is great. I've never had this before, but like at every Airbnb in the kitchen, did you see this? At every Airbnb, it was like literally 100 candy bars and-

• 34:59Sam Parr?

  I've literally had 2,000 calories per night of his candy. I ate so much of it. I could tell you about all of it. Like I could, I could, I did, I didn't need a taste test. I could tell, I'm already an expert on, I could tell you about all, all the flavors, the peanut butter ones, the dark chocolate ones.

• 35:15Shaan Puri?

  You don't have to lick the wrapper for the taste test. Like, no, no, this is just how, I'm thorough.

• 35:19Sam Parr?

  Like I've already, I'm like Jimmy, like I already know, like I've eaten all of them and I, I had M and M's and Hershey bars on the plane on the way here. Like I could tell you about all

• 35:28Shaan Puri?

  of them. Thing is when he's, when he's like hanging out with like the, like the, the, the upper echelon of the group, he's just like, just try a piece of this one. You don't have to eat the whole thing, but like, you know, it's more for younger people, but like whatever.

• 35:38Sam Parr?

  That's what he's going to say. It's for kids.

• 35:40Shaan Puri?

  It's for kids. And he's like, he gives you, he'll give you like the dark chocolate flavor.

• 35:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Shaan Puri?

  And I'm sitting there with like cookies and cream all over my face. And I'm like, I like it. I like the cookies and cream one.

• 35:51Sam Parr?

  It's like my daughter just learned.

• 35:52Shaan Puri?

  This is my favorite, Jimmy. Do you have more of this one?

• 35:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, my daughter just learned how to say more and, but I feel like this more, more.

• 36:00Shaan Puri?

  More, more, more of this one.

• 36:01Sam Parr?

  I was doing this all the time. More, more, more.

• 36:06Shaan Puri?

  Can I give you some, some of the negative ones?

• 36:09Sam Parr?

  How about the guy who goes, at that point I was broke. I think I only had like $20 million.

• 36:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. He's telling some story. Well, there's, there was a hilarious conversation about prenups, which is, you know, nothing more can be said except for there was an incredible conversation about prenups.

• 36:24Sam Parr?

  I was about to go outside, me and, uh, me and someone else were gonna go outside of the sauna and someone said, hey, can I ask you guys about pre-dup? And we were like, oh, oh, let's just sit right here. I just want to listen. Let's just listen.

• 36:36Shaan Puri?

  It was one of the most, that like next three hours was one of the most entertaining three hours of my life. Like I don't think I've laughed that hard in five, 10 years. Like I was literally belly laugh crying.

• 36:45Sam Parr?

  Some shocking setups. People are, billionaires are not like you and me. If you're listening to this, billionaires exist and they're not like you. They're not like you.

• 36:56Shaan Puri?

  I would say is the mid-wit meme was in full effect. I'll give you one example. So the way we played our basketball tournament was three teams and we played and then it was supposed to be the, you know, the top two teams play for the finals, but ever, but all the teams finished the same record. One, like we all had one win, one loss after everybody played each other. So it was like, okay, well, which two teams advanced to the finals? And so I But everybody's getting tired. So I had to make something up. So I was like, all right, we're gonna do like a penalty kick shootout. So what's the most exciting, you know, like thing in sports is in hockey or soccer where they do the shootout. And it's not going to take up a bunch of energy because like we're old guys and people are getting hurt. We gotta like, we can't play an extra game to figure out who's gonna go. So we said, all right, everybody step up to pick every each team pick five guys. They're gonna shoot a free

• 37:38Shaan Puri?

  throw and then the team that makes the least like pressures on everybody's watching you. So it was interesting. One team, my team was like, this is a dictatorship. Like y'all are the five best to the other guys. They're they're better than you. These five are shooting.

• 37:53Sam Parr?

  Who was the dictator?

• 37:54Shaan Puri?

  What? I was a dictator. I didn't even think there was another way. I was like, of course, we're just gonna pick our five best and do this. Like, honestly, I didn't even consider another method. And I was the coach of my team because I had gotten injured. I'm on crutches. So I was like, doing that. The second guy, the second team did it merit based. And the third was like, kind of like a volunteer voting system or whatever. And in the merit based thing, a funny thing that happened was one of the guys was probably less good at basketball overall, made it in the practice shot. And one of the guys who was one of their better players on his team just happened to miss. So I was like, damn, are y'all really gonna not have one of your best players shoot and have this other guy shoot? I was just watching. I'm like, I just want to see what happens here. I want to see what happened with the egos. I just need to know. I need to see this. The guy was like, you sure? You want

• 38:36Shaan Puri?

  to do it? He's like, no, no, you should do it. You made it. If you want to, I'll do it. And then the guy's like, no, I mean, I don't know. I think I'm gonna do it. He's like, okay, go ahead and do it. So, so the guy steps up and he shoots. And he makes it. The guy who's probably like, you know, a little weaker basketball players makes it clutched it up and has this awesome moment and his team advances to the finals. And I feel so happy for this guy. And I'm like, that was amazing. I'm like, I'm glad that they kind of

• 39:01Sam Parr?

  Rudy moment.

• 39:02Shaan Puri?

  He had a Rudy moment. He honored it. He made it. Good for him. That was awesome. Under pressure. I love, I wanted everybody have like golden moments during the during the event. But then, after the final, and this their team goes on wins the finals, happy, they're holding the trophy. It's all good. Afterwards, we're all like packing up to leave. And he's like, he goes up to that guy, the other guy who sat out. He's like, hey, I want, can you and me go shoot free throws? I want to know if that was the correct like EV decision statistically. And the guy's like, oh, man, you already made it. Like you already made it. We already won like you're good, dude. You did it. He's like, no, no, no, I need to know. I need to know. And he's like, no, like it's like, honestly, it's done. I'm glad you did it. You made it. He's like, I need to know.

• 39:46Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, all right, so they go and they shoot. And of course, the guy who's played basketball his whole life makes more of the free throws in like the, with the larger sample size. And then the other guy was like, kind of head down for like, he's kind of bummed out about it for a second. And I was like, what a, what an intelligently stupid thing to do. Right? Like, he wanted to know, like, was this a positive EV decision? Was this statistically the correct move?

• 40:09Sam Parr?

  What does EV mean?

• 40:10Shaan Puri?

  Expected value. It's like if you're playing poker, you can, you bet your chips. And even if you lose, you're still happy because you made the right decision, even if the result didn't pan out.

• 40:18Sam Parr?

  So funny.

• 40:19Shaan Puri?

  There's chances. And so I was like, way to snatch, like way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And there was so many of these little moments where like, there's this guy there who's like, he's a total catch. He's like smart, he's good looking, he's ripped, he's successful, all these things. And he, I just thought that a guy like this could walk into a coffee shop and like the cute barista would want him to talk to her. There's a, I've always wanted to be that guy. You know, like this guy could have been that guy. He could have been, it could be so easy for him to just meet someone amazing. And instead, you want to describe like?

• 40:53Sam Parr?

  So, all right. I think what he did was did he scrape? He built a program that scraped LinkedIn.

• 41:00Shaan Puri?

  Start with the desired result. He's like, I want a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman or something like that. I wasn't there for the whole thing.

• 41:06Sam Parr?

  Someone who fit his like heritage.

• 41:08Shaan Puri?

  And so he was like, cool. So he built an AI bot to crawl LinkedIn to then scrape all the like successful, beautiful, like trained on images of women that he thought were beautiful.

• 41:18Sam Parr?

  Like every woman who was like of a certain like look in New York. Who was between, you know, whatever, 22 and 30 or whatever. He had like a database. He had binders of women.

• 41:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, binders of women. It was hilarious. And then he had this like whole system for how we could reach out to them with like, it was amazing. I don't want to go into all the details, but like.

• 41:38Sam Parr?

  He had a dedicated iPhone there. He goes, this is my iPhone. And I, he goes, I have two full-time engineers who have built this program that auto DMs them, this particular DM on Instagram. Let me send her a voice note. I go, you send a voice notes? He goes, I have found that voice notes convert better. And like, he like showed me the voice note.

• 41:59Shaan Puri?

  As he told this whole system is like, what's that thing called? The Rochek test or whatever? Where you see the blot and it's like, you either see like, you know, a killer or an angel or whatever. His, it was like, some people were like, this is the most impressive thing I've ever seen. And then some people like the married guys who are like, you know, 50, 40s, 50s were like, brother, you're, you're, it's too much. You're doing too much here. You gotta just like, just see a cute girl and go talk to her. It's okay. Let it, let it roll organically, baby. It's gonna work better that way. And I just thought it was hilarious. Um, I'm really late. I gotta go. I'm supposed to be speaking at something right now. I gotta, I gotta jet. I just realized I'm way over.

• 42:31Sam Parr?

  That's it. That's the pod.