EXTRA: Russian Oligarchs, Putin, and Sam and Shaan's Thoughts on Ukraine

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about the little known story of the Russian oligarchs, and discuss the current situation in Ukraine and how President Zelensky is leading his country through the invasion. ----- * 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: (00:30) - The story of the Russian oligarchs (13:30) - General reactions to the invasion and the news surrounding it (28:00) - Whether you should pay attention to the news or not (34:30) - Is it worth hearing the other side? ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  This Ukrainian guy, their leader, this guy is badass. Have you seen like him just wearing like green T-shirts, giving press conferences?

• 0:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 0:08Sam Parr?

  He's amazing. This guy's amazing.

• 0:10Shaan Puri?

  This guy is, uh, I don't know much about him. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's like kind of media portrayal versus whatever else, but the guy does come across like a goddamn hero.

• 0:28Sam Parr?

  All right, let me tell you a quick story. I don't know if you're gonna like this topic, so I want to get it out of the way. If you like it, we could spend the whole time on it, but I'm not sure if you're gonna be into this.

• 0:36Shaan Puri?

  All right, I'm intrigued.

• 0:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. So it's about the most popular thing going on right now, the Ukraine-Russian conflict. It's not exactly about Ukraine, but it's about Russia. So something that I've always been interested in is the Russian oligarchs. So have you ever studied those folks?

• 0:53Shaan Puri?

  Not studied, but you know, okay, tell me about it.

• 0:56Sam Parr?

  Okay, so this starts, I'm reading a thing, so you're gonna see me look off. This starts on November 3rd, 1995, in a remote Siberian town called Surgat. Basically, what happened in this small cabin, an auction took place for the right to lend the cash-strapped Russian government tens of millions of dollars. So basically, in 95, the Russian government wasn't doing so hot, and they needed money. And so they got these banks to come to this meeting, and they said, "We need some money. We need to borrow some money, and also, as collateral, we're gonna put up shares of some of the large state-owned companies."

• 1:36Sam Parr?

  Because at this point, Russia was basically going from being a communist nation to being a private country, and so they still had some like state-owned oil companies, mineral companies. Basically, like, if you think of ExxonMobil, they, like, the government, like, owned that. And at this point, they were trying to figure out, "How do we make this so private individuals can do this?" And so, at this meeting, basically only two bidders showed up. And if more bidders wanted to come, it was kind of a pain in the ass, because conveniently, there were no more flights. The airport shut down, and you couldn't even book a flight to come into this small town. By the way, your camera's okay, you're there.

• 2:17Sam Parr?

  And so basically, what happened at this like small cabin is one company made a bid to buy a or to loan money to the government. They loaned it. They loaned something like $500 million. And that was like $100,000 above the opening bid. So people were bidding to loan money. And so this bank loaned money to the government and then the government had to pay back the loan at a certain point, like something like a year later. And if they didn't, the bank then was given the collateral, so the shares in this company to auction off and they could keep 30% of the profits. So obviously, the government didn't pay back the money.

• 2:59Sam Parr?

  And there's like a lot of like wondering why they didn't pay it back. Basically, the idea is that the current president was like, obviously, this is all like, we're all planning this. So don't pay this back and give us a little bit of whatever. So they don't pay back.

• 3:13Shaan Puri?

  You're saying it's collusion. But basically, there was a handshake, wink, wink agreement, basically of what's going to happen here.

• 3:20Sam Parr?

  Yes. And so the government doesn't pay back the loans. And so now this bank is basically now has a minority ownership in like 12 large state-owned corporations. And they basically holler at eight to 10 guys, guys who are already relatively successful. And they basically said, do you want to make a bid on this company? I'm going to make sure no one else bids on this company, but I'll give it to you. You interested? And that's exactly what happened.

• 3:51Shaan Puri?

  And why would they do that? Why would they hook up these individuals in that way?

• 3:54Sam Parr?

  They did it for three different reasons. The first reason, and a lot of this is just like hearsay. The first reason is the person who was president at the time, who was it, Ben? What was his name? It was the fat guy who had a heart attack.

• 4:06Ben?

  Boris Yeltsin.

• 4:07Sam Parr?

  Yes. He was basically said to these eight or 10 businessmen, I'm going to hook you up. You guys hook me up. When I'm, when I'm, when I'm in office, hook it up. I'm going to hook you up, whatever. So that's one theory. The second theory is that they wanted experienced managers in, in. To run these companies. And the third theory basically is even though these eight to 10 oligarchs put bids on these companies and basically they bought the equivalent of ExxonMobil. So we're talking about like a company that's worth billions of dollars. They paid a hundred million dollars for this company. And so these managers, these oligarchs, these eight to 10 folks, a lot of them were mildly successful, but they were all in on the government. They were all friends and friends, you know, they're all homies. They basically, they did take on risk. So like these companies did have debt and like they had to go and like

• 4:53Sam Parr?

  collude with other people and fire the rest of the managers of the company. So it was basically almost like a PE thing, but it was like pretty dirty.

• 5:01Shaan Puri?

  All right. And then I forgot to tell you this, but this is the most important thing. I can't believe we didn't talk about this earlier, to be honest with you. Because if you're listening to this and you like what you're hearing right now, and you haven't gone and subscribed to the My First Million Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, then that's the thing you've got to do. There's nothing more important than doing that right now. And don't do it because I said to do it. Do it because you want to do it. Do it because that's who you are.

• 5:26Sam Parr?

  And the government was like, yeah, we need, we want like these mercenaries to be in power because if they make these companies better, our, you know, our government's going to be better, the Russia's going to be better. And so they basically profits after, after this whole deal, profits to these companies grow by 50x, market caps go up by 100x. And so there's, here's an example. The reason I got interested in this is there's this guy named Robin Abramovich. What's his name? Ben, how do you say his last name?

• 5:54Ben?

  I think it's Abramovich.

• 5:57Sam Parr?

  We're going to call him Roman. So Roman.

• 5:59Shaan Puri?

  The fact that Ben even knows what the hell you're talking about right now is impressive. And he's like, he's like a part of your brain that's like outside of your body. And you're like, uh, brain, what's that name? Oh, yeah.

• 6:09Sam Parr?

  Roman's famous. Roman owns, we're just going to call him Roman. He owns Chelsea, the soccer team. So he's like a famous guy and he owns like this, like, you know, 200 foot yacht. He's like a big deal. And basically he paid a hundred million dollars, him and his partner Boris, paid a hundred million dollars and they've just, they came up with a little bit of money and then they went and hollered at like other rich people and they said, hey, loan us some money. Let's buy this company. They paid a hundred million dollars for a company that is now like the eighth or 10th largest oil company in the world. So imagine paying in the mid 90s, imagine paying a hundred million dollars for ExxonMobil.

• 6:45Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:46Sam Parr?

  And so the these companies explode. Now, they explode partially because basically what these owners did, these eight to 10 oligarchs, what they did was they purposely tanked the company. So it sucked for a long time. And then they bought out the rest of the minority shareholders. So it's again, cronyism there. And second, these were government run companies, so they're shit. And so these private individuals, they did a pretty good job of making them better and they became far more profitable. And this created like eight to 10 guys that were worth like up to $40 billion. So at one point, one of them was worth $83 billion. And you know, things have changed, but it created so much wealth between these few folks.

• 7:25Sam Parr?

  And then also like trickled down. So here's the craziest part is that a bunch of the managers of the company. So basically there was like the, there was like the, the minister of oil or something like that as a government official. He becomes, he sets up this, these, one of these companies. He eventually becomes president of one of the companies. And now it's worth $8 billion, even though he was like a government official. So I thought it was interesting because I actually wanted to read a book about these folks. Cause I'm like, oh, who's this like rich guy that owns Chelsea football? Let me like go and learn from him. And what I realized is like, I pretty much can't learn from him. I mean, I could maybe learn some stuff, but like his process is not like replicable.

• 8:02Sam Parr?

  I can't replicate it because he was like 38 and Russia had just fallen and he basically turned $0 into, he's worth now like $20 billion. All through this cronyism, but I thought it was incredibly interesting. Have you not heard about these folks?

• 8:17Shaan Puri?

  I've never heard any of that in my life. Um, it's crazy. It's like, it's like the big bang for like Russian rich oligarchs. It's like, there was this one meeting and it kicked off this series of events that like, you know, seems kind of unfathomable how that would be allowed to happen or just happen. Um, but then they also consolidated power, right? Like, didn't Putin basically like take all their money and consolidate all their power?

• 8:44Sam Parr?

  Here's the second interesting part of the story, and I actually learned this from listening to Ben's podcast. So basically Putin was considered like the anti-corrupt guy for a minute. Like when he was elected, he was like, you know, I'm not going to stand for that nonsense. And he made an example of one of the guys, one of the billionaires, his last name starts with a K, I'm not going to try to pronounce it, it's a challenge. He put this guy in jail for 14 years. And he literally put him, and so in Russia, for some reason, they put you in these like cages and you could like take pictures of these folks. Have you ever seen that? Like a Russian serial killer picture or anything?

• 9:15Shaan Puri?

  So it's like visible from the outside, you mean?

• 9:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like the mugshot, but it's like literally a cage that sits on you and people can come and like take pictures. It's weird. And anyway, this guy was worth at the time, like $15 billion. And Putin arrested him for not paying taxes, things like that, and put him in jail for 14 years. And he goes to the other guys, he goes, you want that to happen to you? No? All right, let's play. And so a lot of people think that Putin is the richest man in the world. And he owns one of the most expensive homes in Russia in the world. It's like a billion dollar, $2 billion house. And people are like, whoa, how'd you do that?

• 9:50Shaan Puri?

  It was a billion dollar house?

• 9:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Ben was telling me all about it.

• 9:54Shaan Puri?

  There is a billion dollar house? Wow, I didn't even realize that.

• 9:56Ben?

  It's got like, it's got, yeah, it is like this whole complex. It's got private beaches, it's got like pools on pools, it's got guest houses, basically got a hotel on it. It's like, a house is maybe not the right way to think of it, but it is a house. It's a private residence for Putin.

• 10:13Sam Parr?

  And but basically, like, there's no proof of this, but a lot of people, because even when the Panama Papers released, they couldn't find Putin's accounts. But basically, a lot of people are like, well, so he made an example out of this one guy. And he went to the rest and goes, y'all want to play? Let's play. And, and, and now, Roman, by the way-

• 10:34Shaan Puri?

  I was really hoping you'd attempt a Putin accent there. Kind of disappointed, not gonna lie. The story is good, but it's just missing that little something.

• 10:40Sam Parr?

  I think Ben could do it.

• 10:42Shaan Puri?

  You are Ben giving it a shot. Ben, I think you have a little, little bit of the Russian twinge in your speaking.

• 10:47Ben?

  Yes, they say me, they tell me I speak good in Russian accent. I will try, is this like racist? Can I do this? Is this okay? I don't know. It's borderline.

• 10:56Sam Parr?

  I don't think it's a race.

• 10:57Shaan Puri?

  This, we have the cancellation vaccination. You're allowed to do a funny, funny accent here and people-

• 11:04Sam Parr?

  As long as it's Russian.

• 11:05Shaan Puri?

  If you're listening and you took that too seriously, just swipe over and delete the podcast and go on with your life.

• 11:10Sam Parr?

  And to wrap this up, basically, the way that these guys all work now is a lot of these oligarchs are part of like the peace keeping, like they're, they're part of, they're helping Putin like negotiate peace. So like the inner, the way that this shit's intertwined is just bananas. It's crazy. And I was like trying to learn about these folks and I was like, oh, well, like there's nothing to learn here. I can't, I can't do this. Like this is just crazy. And these guys are so wealthy and so it's trickled down. But if you basically, a lot of them, when that happened, were in their 30s, like 35, 38 years old. And that's why I got interested in this because I was, I remember years ago, reading about these folks. I'm like, how does a 38 year old become worth $3 billion? What the hell?

• 11:53Sam Parr?

  How did a 38 year old become CEO of a diamond mining company? And it was-

• 11:58Shaan Puri?

  All right. So stupid question. What does the word oligarch actually mean?

• 12:01Sam Parr?

  Uh, I think it just means when there's a, a small group of people that are in power. But basically it-

• 12:08Shaan Puri?

  Sort of like a cartel, basically?

• 12:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Not, well, it's like, what, what do you say, Ben?

• 12:13Ben?

  It's just like the, typically the way that is classically defined is over here, you have a monarchy, which is ruled by a single man. Over here, you have democracy, which is ruled by everyone. Oligarchy sits in the middle of like rule by a few people.

• 12:24Shaan Puri?

  A handful. Right.

• 12:25Ben?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Sam Parr?

  But when we talk about Russian oligarchies, a lot of times people will say that just means like Russian rich people, uh, Russian wealthy, rich people. The way that I'm using it is that there was literally like nine guys who were given like these 12 companies. And now amongst those nine guys, there was like dozens more where like Roman was like, "Hey, I need a homie. I need a cousin to come and run this thing, hook it up." And so there's like, it's trickled down beyond that. And so now there's hundreds of them.

• 12:54Sam Parr?

  Quick interruption. Do me a favor. Scroll down and you're going to see a link to The Hustle. So if you want to stay up to date on the tech and business news you need to know, check out The Hustle. It's a daily email. I used to help write it. I love it. So check it out. Scroll down below.

• 13:08Shaan Puri?

  I'm on a Business Insider news story about Putin's wealth right now, just because I wanted to see the billion dollar house. So the house, 1.35 billion, it's a crazy palace with three helicopter landing pads and stuff like that. But the thumbnail was Putin doing basically like a Bowflex. So he's, you know, he's basically standing, he's got both cables. And he's like, clearly about to do like a peck fly. And that was the thumbnail they chose. Not one of his palace or his cars or anything like that. They chose Putin wearing 3,200, no, wearing cashmere sweats that cost $1,400 and then a matching top, which is just looks like a Hanes t-shirt for his workout outfit total, which was $3,200. And it's just like, every picture is hilarious.

• 13:53Shaan Puri?

  It's like him choosing with the champagne. It's like only power photos, which is really funny.

• 13:57Ben?

  And keep in mind, this is a guy who, before this, he was in the KGB. So it's like the CIA of America. So this is a government salaried person for the last 30 years. So

• 14:08Shaan Puri?

  This is crazy. Ben, how did you feel? So you did the How to Take With the World episodes about Putin. And, and I called you up about this. I was like, Ben, re-release the episodes. A lot of people are curious about Putin right now. Release the, like, just re-upload them as new episodes. But you kind of researched this guy a lot. What, I mean, can we talk about this, like Russia-Ukraine thing for a second? So like, what's y'all's reaction to this? And I guess like, you know, the disclaimers is, we're not experts, we're just friends talking about, like, yo, did you hear what's going on? What'd you think about this? So Ben, what did you think? Because you've spent a lot of time reading about this guy.

• 14:43Ben?

  Yeah, my reaction is probably different from most people's. I think most people who listen to my podcast view it as like an anti-Putin podcast, like, think it's pretty hard on him. And I think in some ways it is, calls him out for some of the bad things he's done, including murdering people and like, maybe doing a false flag domestic terror attack on the Russian people. So like, it's not a pro-Putin podcast. Having said that, I think a lot of people's reaction has just been like, Putin is Hitler. He's going to keep marching through countries until we stop him. Like, all he wants is more power, more territory. He's a megalomaniac who's doing

• 15:25Ben?

  this just because he's tripping. And I think that what they're missing a lot of the psychology of Putin of

• 15:36Ben?

  This is someone who was, as Sam said, a part of the KGB, right? So he's a part of the Soviet empire when it's a big empire. He watches it fall from grace and then he watches his country get looted in the, in the mid to late 90s. And kind of says to himself, all right, well, America was supposed to come in and make the situation better. I'm never trusting these guys again, right? And so then he's watching Ukraine get pulled closer and closer into

• 16:07Ben?

  the European Union and NATO orbit and American orbit. And they're basically saying, okay, yeah, they're aligning with us, but that's their prerogative and don't worry about it. This is not, we're not going to like invade Russia or anything. And he's basically saying, no, like that's his red line. I will never trust you guys again. And that doesn't make what he's doing right, but I think it is important to understand where he's coming from, so the motivation, so that we can make the right decisions.

• 16:32Shaan Puri?

  And what do you mean by America, America was supposed to come in and fix? What, what do you mean by that exactly? So you're saying post world war or something?

• 16:41Ben?

  No, so it was essentially, um, as the Soviet Union is, is coming down. Uh, I can't remember the name of it, but there was some, uh, essentially like committee, with a bunch of Harvard guys who come into Moscow and are like, hey, we're the experts. This is how you do capitalism, essentially. And initially there's like some optimism, right? Of, okay, well, America seems pretty great. Soviet Union has not been great. And so we're excited about this capitalism stuff and

• 17:12Shaan Puri?

  Turns out they just, they just wear the sweatshirts, never went to Harvard.

• 17:18Ben?

  Got them.

• 17:21Ben?

  That's right. They were, they were pulling a bend. They were wearing the Georgetown law sweatshirt, but they didn't go to Georgetown law. They, uh, and, uh, so things, um, the, the Russian economy really crashed during the 90s. And so that's, that's what I'm talking about.

• 17:34Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. Okay. So he's like, I've, I, you know, fool me once, you know, shame, shame on whoever the fuck. Okay. So that was your reaction to this, as you were sort of thinking about that. Sam, what was your reaction as you kind of saw this all play out?

• 17:47Sam Parr?

  My reaction, let's talk about this from a, I mean, first of all, I was like, you know, screw Putin, not a fan, but let's talk about from a business or like a management perspective. When I saw, when I've seen all this go through or happen, I've been watching a lot of videos on Reddit and admittedly like that's a USA, that's an American website. So I'm trying to figure out like what the truth is. I'm seeing these, I'm seeing two things. One, I'm seeing videos of like POWs, Russian POWs, and there's like, I didn't want to be here. They go, we don't want to be here. We, we were tricked. We don't, we thought we were going to practice. We didn't know what was going on. And they also say, we thought you guys were gonna open us, welcome us with open arms. We thought that you were gonna love us. What are you, what are you doing? Like, why are you being angry at us? And so I see, and they also

• 18:32Sam Parr?

  show the tanks and the tanks are shit. They're like from the eighties and nineties. They're bad, like, and their weapons suck. And so I'm seeing, A, I, like, they're, they just, and, and like, and they were a little chubby and like, people don't have like nice haircuts like they do in the milit, like in American, like, they're just like undisciplined. Like, it just doesn't seem like it's like a well-oiled machine. That's what I'm seeing. And second,

• 18:54Shaan Puri?

  These are the most random observations about this whole thing. It's like Reddit videos of guys being like, I thought this was a practice war.

• 19:01Sam Parr?

  That's what they've been saying, dude.

• 19:02Shaan Puri?

  Chubby face soldiers in 1980s tanks, like, what?

• 19:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, look, like, when you see that, you're like, oh, this, you're like, like, I was afraid of you, but like, maybe I shouldn't be, like, you're out of shape. And the second thing is this guy, this Ukrainian guy, their, their leader, this guy is badass. Have you seen like him just wearing like green t-shirts, giving press conferences?

• 19:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Sam Parr?

  He, he's amazing. This guy's amazing.

• 19:25Shaan Puri?

  This guy is a, I don't know much about him. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's like, kind of media portrayal versus whatever else. But the guy does come across like a goddamn hero.

• 19:35Sam Parr?

  Hero.

• 19:36Shaan Puri?

  When you think of the word a hero, what do you think of? It's like, You know, the president who says, you know, not, I'm not just ordering you to war. I'm going to the front lines. And by the way, this guy's the finance minister. He's here. This guy's, you know, this is my press secretary. He, here, hold this gun. You don't know how to do it. You have it backwards. Doesn't matter. Stand here. And like, basically sending out a video being like, you know, hey Putin, you know, go fuck yourself. Or like, bring it on, basically. Like, the only thing cooler he could have done is if he was like, Putin, meet me at the border. You and me, unarmed, hand to hand combat. You win, you get my country. I win, I get your country. That's the only one level up this guy could have done as far as being, you know, the real life Macho Man Randy Savage, which is kind of the way he was coming across as a, when I, a real hero, brave, like, very brave.

• 20:22Sam Parr?

  Incredibly. And what I'm learning, what I'm trying to, you know, when I watch the news, I try to figure out beyond like, this is bad and I want to help. Uh, the, the thought is like, how can I use this to improve? And my takeaway here is what Putin has done, they, they say like, he's like, uh, they showed him with, uh, giving a press conference and he was on this huge table. And his generals were like literally 20 feet down on this table and he was kind of by himself. And that was kind of a, a represent, representation of him, him being a little distant.

• 20:50Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 20:51Sam Parr?

  And whereas this guy was like literally on the streets toasting coffee in the morning. And my takeaway is you, in order to get someone to do something, you have to make them want to do it. You can't force them to do it because if you force them to do it, it's good. It's a short-lived, short-term thing.

• 21:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 21:08Sam Parr?

  And with the Ukrainians, I, there was a poll where 90% of them support this guy. And they are all in the streets. They're all like pouring styrofoam into bottles with gasoline. Cause that's how you make napalm and they're using it for Molotov cocktails.

• 21:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Sam Parr?

  And they like, it sounds weird, but it seems like they're happy in the sense of like, they have a sense of purpose and they have a community and they have a mission. And maybe not happy is the right word, but like, uh, purpose driven. And that's the takeaway that I have from this is if I'm going to convince people to do stuff, like run a, work at a company or whatever, you need to make them want to do it, not force them to do it.

• 21:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a great point. They definitely have like sort of the, the spirit right now, um, and the morale in the rally, there's sort of like a rally going on right now. And, you know, especially under these circumstances, you know, it definitely like adversity is something that pulls people together. So, you know, it's definitely done that for them, or it'll break you apart depending on what your sense of purpose is. And

• 22:05Sam Parr?

  So this guy's killing it, man. This guy's, it's been, it's been, it's a, it's a really good, I don't think we've had that in America for a while. It's been, it's a really good example of wonderful leadership. This guy is killing it. And he also uses really cute phrases, like, he says something like, uh, at least sound bites. He's like, I don't need, he goes, he goes, "America offered me a, a lift to get out of here. I don't need a lift. I need armor piercing bullets." Yeah. And I'm like, "Oh, my God, dude, you are Rambo. You are wonderful." He's saying all the great stuff. And that shit's important. And there's a reason why, like, have you ever heard about, um, where they describe old Roman emperors as, uh, orders, you know, people who could speak well? Like, now I understand why.

• 22:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, totally. There, dude, I've been, uh, so I don't normally read the news or watch the news at all. Uh, I like never, never turn it on. Don't read the newspaper. Don't go to CNN. I don't do any of it. And, uh, and people sometimes like, I don't know, make fun of me or sort of tell me I'm an idiot for that. Uh, just yesterday, some guy was like, you know, terrible life choice. You know, you gotta, you gotta be in tune with the world's realities.

• 23:09Sam Parr?

  I actually think you don't.

• 23:10Shaan Puri?

  In my head, I'm like, if you think the news is the world's reality, like, you know, you're watching the world's worst reality show. And, um, but I, you know, I didn't say anything to him because, you know, let him do his thing. Obviously, you know, the news is, is making him a happy, cheerful person. So, so I've always had this mindset, which is like, don't get pulled, like, basically, I find that when people get really into government and politics, the, the phrase that my trainer said to me that makes more sense, he's like, "These people can't govern themselves, but they want to talk about, you know, what the government can do." And it's like, "Most people fail to even govern themselves. You can't get yourself to do what you should do." "Why are you so worried about what everybody else should do if you can't even get yourself to do it?" And I've always sort of taken that as like, a way to not get sucked into, like, 2016, I had friends who were crying about Trump and all this stuff. And, you know, I said, like,

• 23:55Shaan Puri?

  "I get it. It's not who I would have voted for, but, um,

• 24:00Shaan Puri?

  I just don't worry about that. Like this is not, I don't worry about the government. I worry about government myself. The exceptions being, oh, there's a pandemic. I should probably like figure out what's actually going on. What is the recommended course of action? Although that basically, you know, was, was not really paid off because we got a bunch of bad information. You know, at first, the second thing was, okay, there's a war going on. And this was my first experience really like watching a war break out. Like there's been wars that have just been going on forever, like India and Pakistan at the border, like, you know, Israel, Palestine, there's skirmishes all the time and Afghanistan, like, you know, I didn't even realize we were in it till we pulled out, you know, like as ignorant as that sounds like it just wasn't top of mind and I didn't.

• 24:42Shaan Puri?

  You didn't see it play out day by day. This is the first time I've really seen it play out day by day. So there's definitely like a kind of a crazy thing to see. I mean, just to see like, just to see people basically take a stand was like, kind of like inspirational. Then to see like experts coming out like on the internet, like being like, hey, civilians, this is how you like do urban warfare from your, your bedroom window. And like, there's this guy that's an urban warfare expert. He's like, you need to drag all your furniture out into the streets into this S pattern. Your goal is to make it so that their vehicles cannot easily like roam your streets. They need to be making all these different turns.

• 25:19Shaan Puri?

  Everything, desks, lamps, toss it all into the middle of the street. Secondly, you know, drink water because you know, you can't go three days without water. So make sure you're hydrating. Otherwise you can't fight anybody. Third, here's how you make a Molotov cocktail. Fourth, and he just had this like checklist. I was like, holy shit, is this real life? And then you see like,

• 25:36Sam Parr?

  Crazy man.

• 25:38Shaan Puri?

  You see like, you know, there's like what you see in the news versus I'm in these like telegram channels where people are posting videos from like on the ground. And so you see like totally different perspectives.

• 25:49Sam Parr?

  How'd you get in those?

• 25:51Shaan Puri?

  Uh, Ben had linked me to two. I was, I was sharing some links to them. He's like, check this out. There's a telegram group where you could just get it. It's all in Ukrainian. Like I can't understand. I don't read. I can't read the text. I can only watch the videos. Um, or just like the heartbreak. Like there's a video that was going viral of this dad. Just like, cause you know, they did a conscription, right? Like everybody between the ages of 18 and 60, all men, like you're now in the army and. There's a dad saying goodbye to his daughter, like knowing he may not, it may not ever see her again. And she doesn't understand. She's like a four year old kid. And like, I have a two year old daughter. So that was just like, you know, I was just like shattered by that. It just, that was like, you see that and you're like, this is wrong. This is so wrong. What's going on? Like it just hit in a different way.

• 26:33Shaan Puri?

  Um, and I had heard on the all in podcast, they were talking about this. They go, they go, yeah, like right now, the US sentiment is like, no, don't, don't go fight other people's wars. Like, don't send our human lives into that. And then the guy, Dave Freeburg had said something. He was like, you know, I wonder how that'll change as the like, sort of media starts to come out. As you start to see videos of like atrocities and kids and women and people are going to have a different reaction when they see that. And that's exactly like, literally the first video I saw that was such a heartbreak. I was like, we gotta do something. I gotta donate some money. I gotta, I gotta do something here. And so it's just been crazy to see kind of how it's all playing out. Like crazy is really the only way I could describe it. Like it's crazy that this is happening.

• 27:15Shaan Puri?

  It's crazy. The way it happens is crazy that like life gets turned upside down for people. Like all the things I care about on a day to day basis, instantly would be out the window. If something like this happened, then you see the financial side. Like this is crazy that this war is like, I forgot. Somebody said this, like, um, banks, not tanks. It's like, we're basically fighting Russia with financial warfare.

• 27:36Sam Parr?

  It's, it's crazy. It's way worse. Like, because I was, I was telling Ben, I'm like Putin screwed has, uh, is he's gonna, he screwed up the only thing that really matters. Rule number one, don't fuck with the money.

• 27:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Sam Parr?

  Like if you mess with the money.

• 27:48Shaan Puri?

  Paper Putin.

• 27:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Like, cause, cause money is like the, the most important, money is more important than lives often. Uh, or at least, you know, that's a perception. And so like, yeah, it's screwed up. And I want to tell you a point. I want to pump your ego. So do you know who, you, you said something, you didn't say it as eloquently as I'm about to explain, but Nassim, how do you say his name? God, I'm so bad at names. Talib. Okay. So he tweeted something really good. So basically he is the guy who, uh, anti fragile. I forget what else he did. Black swan.

• 28:16Shaan Puri?

  Black swan. Yeah.

• 28:17Sam Parr?

  And he's kind of an oddball, but he's eccentric is a better word. And he, uh, basically says like, don't read the news. That's like what he said, has said that. He said that for a long time. And he's like, don't read things. He, he says like, don't, don't, uh, don't read the news. Only read things if it's like 50 years old. That's his whole point. And he tweeted out this yesterday.

• 28:38Shaan Puri?

  He's like, except my book coming this March. Buy pre-order now.

• 28:41Sam Parr?

  Yes. And he tweeted this out yesterday and he goes, most days, 99.9% of the news is noise. The last few days, it's all signal. Newspaper reading is useless, except in crisis. And I actually totally agree with that. And that's what you said. I read the news every day, but I actually think it's kind of pointless until it's like an urgent, urgent thing. And that bar, the threshold of what's considered urgent is actually really high.

• 29:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And also there's a way to like, you can use the news to inform yourself, to gather information to, like in my case, it's just like have empathy for what's going on and just not think about this intellectually. But the news can also use you and you have to like, figure out where that line is. Are you, are you using the news right now to gather what you want to gather? Or is the news using you as like eyeballs that they're going to drain for the, like, you bet your ass, like, you know, Fox and CNN, every news channel, like, this is their, like, I'm not saying they don't care about what's going on, but this is their payday. Right? This is when they get their spikes. This is when they say, we have 24/7 news coverage. Stay here. Don't move. Don't change the channel. We

• 29:53Shaan Puri?

  are going to send you drip by drip, play by play updates. And it's like, that's actually not the healthiest, you know, like, most productive way that you can live your life is by like, getting hooked onto their 24/7, you know, play by play update of this war. So, you know, that's the kind of like caveat.

• 30:09Sam Parr?

  So this is the last point I'll make, but basically, one of my heroes, he's on my wall here, you can't see him, is Ted Turner. And Ted Turner started CNN. I think he started it in like, 1981, but it was kind of a failure. It lost a lot of money until 1989, 1990, when America, or sorry, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. And the reason why is he sent over a bunch of news stations, news reporters, and it was one of the first times that a news reporter could, because of technology, could film something and it be aired live. And so it was one of the first war that was viewed live. And it changed people's sentiment of the war and it made CNN a huge company that one year. And that's kind of like what's going to happen now, except instead of a news, instead of like a publisher, it's going

• 30:54Sam Parr?

  to be Facebook and Twitter. They're just going to crush for like, the next couple of years because we're glued to it.

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  And dude, there's a, can I give you the kind of like the finance or crypto angle of what's going on here? So, so basically the West is doing this like financial warfare. And they're like, okay, economic sanctions. So we're going to make it hard to trade. We're going to make it hard to buy and sell goods. And then they're doing a form of like, um, you know, they froze, they froze them out of Swift or kicked them off of Swift. Okay. So now you can't, now you can't do international transfers. And then they froze the central bank assets, which was like the craziest move. That was the financial nuke. So that was where all of a sudden, you know, they had $650 billion of reserves and they needed those reserves. Why? Because their local currency is crashing.

• 31:40Shaan Puri?

  So I think the ruble lost, what, what was it like 40% in the last day?

• 31:45Sam Parr?

  It's crazy.

• 31:45Shaan Puri?

  So, so, you know, the average citizen is the one who's paying the price, right? Putin basically attacked his own citizens here because the currency is crashing. Nobody wants to hold this currency anymore. There's a bank, you know, people are lined up to get money out of the bank. So normally the way the government props up their currency to prevent it from spiraling to zero is they will buy it back using their reserve assets. They hold dollars, they hold euros, they hold gold, they hold some crypto and they'll use that to buy back the ruble. But because it got frozen, they can't do that. And so that's going to cause the currency to go downfall. So I think this time crypto is not going to play as much big of a story, but you kind of have to bet that any country out there who's watching this is probably going to say, well, we probably don't want the US to be able to just freeze all our assets.

• 32:29Shaan Puri?

  So why are we holding the dollar as reserve? Why are we holding any currency that one country can, uh, one country or an alliance can basically freeze our assets or cut us off or take us out of the banking system? So I think you're going to see a pretty big move first by, you know, the quote unquote bad guys, basically quote first by the folks that are afraid of the West to get out of the dollar and get more, get more heavily into crypto because this is a wake up call. Oh, wow. They can just cut, they would do this, they'll cut us off completely, they'll freeze our accounts. And so I think in the next few years, you're going to see, uh, different regimes like switch over to digital currencies that can't be controlled by any one country.

• 33:07Sam Parr?

  For a bunch of uneducated dumbasses, I think we did pretty good with this one.

• 33:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we probably just said one thing, or maybe it's Ben's Russian accent. Like that'll be where everyone just decides, you know, we're assholes and cancels us. But, uh, other than that, you know, whatever, I think it was good.

• 33:20Sam Parr?

  So I thought the Ukraine stuff was awesome. Did you, do you agree, Ben?

• 33:26Ben?

  Yeah, I thought it was really interesting.

• 33:27Sam Parr?

  I thought this is the most interesting news story. This is all I want to talk about. So I thought it was interesting and and I think it's cool. I think it's cool that we could actually talk about it on this channel.

• 33:37Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I so, you know, people don't want it either way. So you I didn't if you don't talk about it. It's like, dude, how are you not talking about this? What do you you know, why you you think your thing is important? There's a war going on. Like I tweeted something else out. I was like, oh, this is really cool. How this is happening. Some tech thing. And somebody this guy's like, bro, kind of insensitive. Don't you think so? War happening? I was like, oh, am I just supposed to not speak about anything else? Okay. And then you talk about the war. It's like, oh, now you're now you're a war expert.

• 34:06Sam Parr?

  Well, you you you wrote something in the milk road that was great. You said, um, I think the opening line was, uh, we're not going to mention the Bitcoin price today because it's not really that important. And I know what you guys are thinking, like, stay in your lane, Milk Road. And the truth is, we know our purpose. But we want to talk about, and I forget, you went into like the the a bunch of different stuff, but I thought that was a really good line. What did people say about the Milk Road writing about this?

• 34:30Shaan Puri?

  Uh, let's see, I'm gonna I'll open up the this thing is the like feedback thing is so helpful, but also, you know, like daunting at the same time.

• 34:40Sam Parr?

  Did you see while you're pulling this up? I'll say something. Did you see when I tweeted out? Are there any pro Putin people here? What is your opinion? I want to hear your perspective because everyone I know is is is anti Putin. And a lot of people got pissed at me for asking that. And I thought that was crazy.

• 34:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I tweeted something else similar like that. I was like, hey, so you know, just trying to like, you know, educate myself like,

• 35:04Shaan Puri?

  what would be? And I think I said it something like,

• 35:08Shaan Puri?

  I forgot exactly what I said, but I was basically asking like, what's the what would be the most kind of like pro Russian reason for the invasion? At first I was like, do do the average people in Russia? Does average person in Russia support this? Right? And then I was like, you know, second question is, is basically like, what would uh, what would be the like strongest justification for doing this? You know, or you know, if you're if you're like in Russia's camp? And, um,

• 35:37Shaan Puri?

  you know, I didn't get too much flack for it because I like had to like hedge it like crazy, but it's so crazy that you have to like really, um,

• 35:45Shaan Puri?

  Like soften everything so much.

• 35:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 35:48Shaan Puri?

  I guess you don't have to, but if you don't, you know, you're definitely gonna like the, the discussion becomes about you rather than just being able to be intellectually curious and say, I'm trying to understand, I'm trying to learn, trying to think for myself. And I'm not saying I disagree with anything. I just want to actually like, understand all the perspectives that, you know, that exist. So I said,

• 36:06Sam Parr?

  Steel manning.

• 36:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Sam Parr?

  Steel, steel man this shit for me, dog.

• 36:10Shaan Puri?

  I wrote, what would be the most pro, pro Russian invasion reason? Basically, if you tried really hard to think about why this is justified, what would you come up with? And, uh, you know, then I got a bunch of answers. I got 26 answers to that. And I was like, okay, that's cool. That's helpful to, uh, to hear.

• 36:25Sam Parr?

  And what about the milk road? What were the replies? Did anyone tell you to F off?

• 36:29Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I'm hoping.

• 36:31Sam Parr?

  What do they, what do they say to LeBron James? When LeBron James gave his opinion on some stuff, everyone's like,

• 36:36Shaan Puri?

  Shut up and dribble.

• 36:36Sam Parr?

  Just shut up and dribble LeBron. What did anyone?

• 36:39Shaan Puri?

  They won't even know what to, shut up and podcast. What are they gonna tell me to do?

• 36:42Sam Parr?

  Shut up and type shot or I don't know.

• 36:44Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna read the first, I'm gonna read the first three good, like, good reviews. Like, we have a system. It's like one, one milk cup, like the emoji, like one milk is terrible. Three milks is average or five milks is, is great. So, uh, the tone, the analysis, the new war insights, humor, this is, this has it all. That's five. Another five one. I like the insight into the conflict going on right now. Another one, I think you wrote this, struck absolutely the right tone. Sam, is that you? Or is that a different Sam?

• 37:10Sam Parr?

  That's not me. I, I replied, I said, this is really good.

• 37:12Shaan Puri?

  Okay, great. Uh, great newsletter day. Way to have a perspective and a sense of humanity. I'm glad you avoided the businesses usable and dove into how crypto is involved in this. Uh, and then they complain about one, uh, like, I made this analogy because I, I'd said this thing, which was like, I love crypto when it's like helping the underdog, right? Like when it banks the unbanked or when people's currency is inflating and they could move into this to preserve their wealth. But like, there's an idea that, oh, Russia could use crypto to get around these sanctions.

• 37:39Sam Parr?

  That sucks.

• 37:40Shaan Puri?

  And then I was like, oh shit. Uh, how do I feel? It's a moral dilemma in a way. And, um, and I was like, then I realized, you know, like, technology is neutral. It's neither good nor evil. Uh, it's just used. I was like, you know, the example of a car, like, you can use a car to, you know, drop off your mother at the hospital when she needs help, or you could use a car as a getaway vehicle to get away from the, you know, crime scene. It doesn't make a car good or evil in either case. It's sort of like amoral.

• 38:06Shaan Puri?

  And so some people were, some guys like disagree with that. All right, let me see if there's a one star review.

• 38:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, was there any negativity?

• 38:11Shaan Puri?

  I literally, wow, this might be the highest rated one we've had. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Here's one. You should effing stick to crypto and stay out of politics. Okay. Number one, awful.

• 38:22Sam Parr?

  Shut up and dribble.

• 38:23Shaan Puri?

  Not, not this one. Not one, one milk awful. Oh, I can't miss the opportunity to suck on some political ass.

• 38:33Sam Parr?

  You think you, you typically hear someone say you, you'd kiss it, not suck on it.

• 38:40Sam Parr?

  That's kinda gross.

• 38:42Shaan Puri?

  I don't even know. I don't even know what to make of that.

• 38:46Shaan Puri?

  And they did the thing where every other letter is capitalized, you know?

• 38:49Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 38:50Shaan Puri?

  Oh, man, reading your own comments. I'm not sure this is even useful. I might just, uh, leave this up so people have an outlet. But it's like, here, go yell into this shoebox. I'm not reading this stuff anymore.

• 39:01Sam Parr?

  I check all of it.

• 39:02Shaan Puri?

  We have a VA, but right now we check it all because it's new. But like, we have VA who basically will just summarize the like, here was your score. And here's like the, the like kind of valid criticism and the valid like compliments. So I'm just gonna read that from now on and not the like, the raw stuff unless I really need to go hate my life.

• 39:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, there's a bunch of, I'm actually, for this Maven thing I'm doing, I'm talking about feedback. I'm like, not all feedback's important. Like, for example, if people complain about pricing, I'm like, I don't really listen to that. I don't care what they say about price because I'm not gonna change. Another thing is like, if they say like, well, I wish you would have sent that email. This is what we used to get in the hustle. Like, send that email earlier. Sometimes I'm like, all right, I'll, we'll do it. But then once we started sending at 6 a.m. and I would get complaints, I'd be like, I'm not listening to this anymore. We're, I'm not, we're not doing it. And so it is hard to figure out what is actually important and what's not. And for a lot of feedback is actually not important.

• 39:55Shaan Puri?

  Totally. It's all noise or it'll whiplash you. You do one thing and then they'll say one thing. You do the other. I remember at Twitch, this happened. We went to an exec offsite and they're like, all right, so the feedback amongst the execs to the CEO, the COO was like, you didn't listen to our input enough. Like, we felt out of the loop. You guys just decided it was too top down. And then the next offsite was three months. So they spent that whole offsite gathering like, what do you guys think? What are your opinions? What would you do? Like trying to get like the bottoms up. Three months later, it was like, okay, let's read out the feedback from last time, you know, what's happened the last three months. Like, God, can you guys just make a decision already? You're the leader. You're supposed to just make a call. Like, why do you keep asking us? You're supposed to have the answers. It's like, wow, it's like, really extreme whiplash of like,

• 40:39Shaan Puri?

  you know, you're never happy one way or the other. And the best answer I got was like, if you take 10 pieces of feedback, they're all informative. Nine will inform you. They'll, like, they'll tell you about the person. It's not about you. It'll tell you about them. And then one will tell you something interesting or insightful about you. You have to figure out, what's the one out of 10? And what's the nine that's just about this person? Like, some guy tweeted some feedback about my course, like saying, oh, it's going great. Like, you know, it's been awesome, blah, blah, blah. He was talking about like, I love the energy. Like Sean, just, it's like a performance. It's not just like, here's some slides. And the guy, and so some guy replies, he goes, oh, it's a performance. So all about energy. So basically, you, you know, nothing insightful, probably just a big motivational talk, huh? Stuff you could have just found on the internet. And then the guy, the original guy responds, he's like, well, yeah, like, you know,

• 41:23Shaan Puri?

  80% of anything, you could just go Google and find. But reality is, most people are not going to know what to Google, even if they're not going to go take the time to Google. So it's great to like, have it all packed in. And the guy's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. All I heard is, I'm paying $950 just to hear Sean pump me up. It's like, all right, so that's, that's about him. That's not about, it's not about the course.

• 41:44Sam Parr?

  The biggest thing, when, when the hustle, when we first, I remember we, we hired two, it was just me and another guy, and we hired two or three interns. And so these weren't even full-time employees. And we used to, from the beginning, we did this thing where every, I think, Wednesday, we would go out to lunch. And I remember, I remember the first time we had other people in that office, I said, all right, well, what do you guys want to do for lunch? And I got three or four different answers. And I was like, oh, lesson learned, never ask. And so from that point on, it was, and I said, here's what we'll do. Every week, someone else, there's a decision maker. But you can't ask. You just, you decide. And I found that people are just happier that way, and life's easier. And oftentimes, it's like that with feedback, where it's just like, I'll

• 42:28Sam Parr?

  listen to sometimes, but most of the time, I'm just doing what I want to do, and I'm just going to deal with the consequences.

• 42:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:35Ben?

  Can I ask you a random question about Milk Road? Is who designed the, the like milk jar? Who did that little graphic?

• 42:43Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know. Ben got that made, uh, or he found that somewhere. I think he got it made from, there's a guy who we featured their, um, their Dow. So it's pretty cool. There's a bunch of designers that got together in this Dow. I think it's called Vector Dow. And it's basically like high level designers and they basically created like a, like a ad hoc agency. So companies come to them, they pay them and then like anybody in the Dow can like take the project and like form a little guild, like a five people that form a team and they'll go design the thing. And basically it's like an agency that was like, they don't have a hiring and firing process. You just sort of join and you can either contribute or not contribute at the end of the day. And so, uh, the thing is cool, but it's pretty expensive. It's pretty pricey. So I think when we were featuring it, we talked to some guy, Ben met some guy.

• 43:26Shaan Puri?

  And then one of the people in Vector, I was like, yo, I just liked, like, I like the Milk Road and your thing's so ugly. Like I gotta, I gotta improve it.

• 43:33Ben?

  So are they Indian Sean? Are they Indian?

• 43:35Shaan Puri?

  I don't think they're Indian, no. They, uh, and then, and then Ben, every, what Ben does is he's like, he'll just post something. He'll be like, hey, what do you, I made this design. What do you think of this? And the guy's like, Ben, I know what you're doing. You just keep showing me stuff that's so ugly that like, I can't help myself, but go fix it. Like, fine, I'll fix it again. And he's done that twice now.

• 43:52Ben?

  So I just did a reverse Google image search and there's an article written in the India Times and it's using your logo. So.

• 44:00Shaan Puri?

  So maybe, so maybe that one is, maybe that icon is one that had been found instead of the design. But the guy designed like all the like banners and the, the breaks in the like, in the, in the email itself, like the format of the design of the email.

• 44:13Ben?

  Wow. And look, one lady. Cause I really liked the formatting and, uh, and the design. And it's really simple. Like it's basically just that little milk jar and like that color blue.

• 44:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Ben?

  And I, I find it really simple, but attractive and memorable.

• 44:27Shaan Puri?

  Oh, thank you. Wow.

• 44:28Ben?

  That's, are you describing Sean or the logo?

• 44:31Shaan Puri?

  Why am I blushing right now?

• 44:36Ben?

  Katie's gotta watch out. She's gotta watch her back.

• 44:39Ben?

  All right. That's the episode, I think, right?

• 44:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we're 17 minutes. Sam's like, I got a hard stop at the hour. And then I'm like, we just keep talking about random useless stuff.