How to Interact with Famous People, The In-Person Event Playbook, and More

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about their interactions with famous people and how to leave a good impression, how in-person events make money (and why they're only getting bigger), and much more. ----- Links: * https://maven.com/samparr/ideation-bootcamp?ss=true * https://www.marathonranch.com * https://blippi.com/ * https://www.vstarentertainment.com/ * https://unreasonablegroup.com/ * The Bill Simmons Podcast * 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: (04:50) - How to interact with famous people (08:50) - Blippi (12:40) - Vstar Entertainment (25:15) - Building to sell (33:40) - Business Idea: Milo Again (39:40) - Drunk Idea 2: Waiting room experience for Zoom (42:15) - Drunk Idea 3: Give me a personality (46:35) - Drunk Idea 4: Discord property managers (50:10) - Drunk Idea 5: Fit furniture (52:15) - Drunk Idea 6: Bulletin board material ----- 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 Mor

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  So bakers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies. And when you sell a company for like anything north of probably 50 million, they likely have a banker. And I've been contacting bankers and my pitch to them is this, hey, I'm thinking about starting a company in this space. You've sold a few companies in this space. Tell me everything about why the this company was bought as well as what the opportunities are that the buyer, what they were looking for. And maybe in five or 10 years, I'll let you sell my company. And I've been able to line up meetings doing this.

• 0:32Shaan Puri?

  And it's genius. And I've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations. And I was like, oh, wow, these guys are like vaults filled with gold.

• 0:49Sam Parr?

  I met a famous person this weekend. I went and saw Jimmy, is it Yang or Wang, the comedian?

• 0:57Shaan Puri?

  I think Oh Yang or something.

• 0:59Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah, well, it's Jimmy. Oh, I forget his last name, but he's, what was his character in Silicon Valley? Jing Yang?

• 1:05Shaan Puri?

  Jing Yang, yeah.

• 1:06Sam Parr?

  And he's a comedian and he was an awesome guy and my friend is dating him, Bree. And Bree.

• 1:12Shaan Puri?

  Funny in person or not?

• 1:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's awesome. He was awesome.

• 1:16Shaan Puri?

  Like comedian funny, like you just talked to him or you're like, were you like, wow, this person should be a comedian if they weren't?

• 1:22Sam Parr?

  No, he was just really insightful and he had like really good, strong opinions and he told stories. I mean, I think you could actually do it if you were to sit down and write a a bit. I actually think that you have the same traits. But no, he was just a really nice, thoughtful guy, but he was like legit famous to where everywhere we went, people would talk to him. And it was pretty, pretty cool to see and I imagine quite annoying for him because the people who are fans of him. Cause he doesn't actually talk like that. You know, he's American, right?

• 1:51Shaan Puri?

  Right, right.

• 1:51Sam Parr?

  And but.

• 1:53Shaan Puri?

  They're fans of Jing Yang.

• 1:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, they are fans of him, particularly the Asian community. They love him because, uh, well, he's just like, he's like representing nicely, but basically they come up to like, like a white guy came up to him and kind of said something a little inappropriate. And it was like rooted in like the Silicon Valley show and I like, they think that he has an accent and things like that. And that's super annoying, particularly in Austin where there's tons of like white bros. So I imagine that could be annoying, but he was legit famous and it was kind of cool to see.

• 2:22Shaan Puri?

  When you're around people who are like, you know, famous in their world, uh, do you, how do you act? Do you like, do you go door A, treat them like a normal person? In fact, almost disregard their fame. B nerd out about, you know, asking them a zillion questions about, you know, the show and what blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, basically to ask them all the questions they probably heard before, but with enthusiasm or C, something else. What do you do?

• 2:49Sam Parr?

  Dude, so I do, I do B, but I do it in a very direct way, kind of like the podcasts where, where it could tell that I'm like really confident, but I'm asking questions up that everyone wants to know. So I'm like, so what's

• 3:01Shaan Puri?

  Are you like kind of nagging them?

• 3:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. So it's like, so what's it like? Here's a tiny example. I've got a friend of a friend who had cancer and he lost his leg. And when I first saw him, I was like, what's going on, man? Um, are you crushing it at pull ups because you're lighter now? Like, how many pounds did you lose off that leg? And he like really quickly opened up because he was like, oh, you just got that out. You got it. We got it all the way.

• 3:24Shaan Puri?

  You're not acting like it's not here, but you're also, um, not making a huge deal out of it.

• 3:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. And so that's like how I usually when I'm with famous people. So I'm like, so what's it like? You're pretty famous. Is that cool or is it bad? Like just very direct. And I typically find that it makes people lighten up and they, and they'll, and you, you are nagging them in a sense, but you're also like congratulating them and they really will just open up.

• 3:47Shaan Puri?

  You're like, you're better looking in person. I watched the show.

• 3:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you're way taller than I thought. Yeah. You're not nearly as slight of build that I, as I was expecting.

• 3:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you're actually funny.

• 4:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Sam Parr?

  I don't know. Yeah, you're it's like, uh, you know, I don't care what people say. I think you're great.

• 4:09Shaan Puri?

  Dude, my brother in law has the best celebrity move. Um, he, if he sees a celebrity, he greets them like a long lost friend. So he'll see like, we saw Mike Tyson and he'll be like, Mike, what's up, man? How you been? And he'll go dap them up and be like, Ben, good seeing you. He'll just like, keep going. And they're just like, do I know this guy? Where did I be like, be like, George, yo, how's Houston? Ah, George. And then he'll like, just keep going. Like just, he'll just make it seem like they are, they're just reconnecting rather than meeting for the first time. And I thought, what a hack. What an amazing hack. Cause these people meet tons of people. So they don't, they don't remember. And so they'll automatically go with your assumption

• 4:53Shaan Puri?

  that you like, sort of know each other, or you're equals in some way, peers in some way.

• 4:58Sam Parr?

  You ever, uh, have you ever been to a restaurant and the owner walks around just greeting people and asking how things are?

• 5:04Shaan Puri?

  Of course, yeah.

• 5:05Sam Parr?

  That is, I had a friend that told me he used to pick up women that way, where he was just like, I would approach this with the attitude, like, I wouldn't act like I was the owner, but in my head, I would act like the owner.

• 5:15Shaan Puri?

  How's everybody doing here?

• 5:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And I would just, and I had that energy and I was able to meet so many people with that energy.

• 5:22Shaan Puri?

  Restaurant owner energy, dude, that's so good.

• 5:25Sam Parr?

  It's a good one. And so I like at HustleCon, when we're hosted HustleCon, or you and I are hosting one of our events, like you, you kind of know, everyone knows who you are. And, and so you kind of know that you have the feeling where you could just walk up to talk to anyone and they'll know what's up.

• 5:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 5:39Sam Parr?

  You have that energy when you're trying to meet girls and it's the best.

• 5:43Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that's so good. Like, I'm just gonna start wearing like a small dish towel at my waist and go to restaurants and then just, yeah, just, just walk around, just have a drink and just be walking around, you know, greeting each table, making sure everything's going smoothly for them.

• 6:00Sam Parr?

  And you're not lying. You're not telling them.

• 6:02Shaan Puri?

  I never said it. Never said it. You assumed based on my big restaurant energy.

• 6:08Sam Parr?

  All right, bro. I got a few interesting things to run by you. You had a, did you have a lot left over from last time?

• 6:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I kind of do. Can I tell you about one?

• 6:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, like business slash idea, this niche that's I got my attention right now. So I, did I talk about this the other day? I went to that, the Blippi show. Did I tell you about this?

• 6:26Sam Parr?

  No.

• 6:27Shaan Puri?

  All right. So, so do you know who Blippi is? Have you ever heard of Blippi?

• 6:30Sam Parr?

  I don't know what that is. No.

• 6:31Shaan Puri?

  All right. So like, remember like back there, we had Barney or like, you know, like Pee Wee Herman or whatever. He's like, it's like, it's a dude. So he kind of looks like Pee Wee Herman or whatever, but he's more like a Barney or, you know, Sesame Street style show. So basically there's a guy who went on YouTube, created this brand called Blippi and he, um, he's entertaining. So he'd be like, oh, and by the way, the funny thing that he does is there's no like set. He just goes into like, um, hey, we're at the aquarium, but they just go in like after nine PM. It's like closed down. And so it's just, they have it all to themselves. Like, hey, we're here in Las Vegas at this rock climbing studio. And so he just uses that to film his thing, but he gives it a shout out at the beginning of the video. The video gets like 40 million views. So it's like, oh, you know, it's, it's worth it to let these guys film there.

• 7:15Shaan Puri?

  And he just like goes around and he'll basically just play with toys. He'll be like, I'm at an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese and he'll go play with a bunch of toys. And there's like music and whatever overlaid.

• 7:23Sam Parr?

  And it's the same guy. I'm looking at him now. It's the same guy every single time.

• 7:27Shaan Puri?

  It is, except for as he blew up and got famous, then they switched him out with just a stunt double for a bit. And so like that guy's like a substitute teacher sometimes. And then sometimes Blippi comes back. But like, the main guy is the main guy. He wears his outfits, like this blue outfit with his orange glasses. He like always looks the same. So anyways, my daughter loved Blippi. We used to watch a ton of Blippi and all of a sudden we see this ad that says, um, Blippi, like the live show is coming to Oakland. And so we were like, oh shit. And so instantly my wife buys tickets for, for all of us at the family. We go to this thing last weekend. And it's it's at the same place you did HustleCon, so it's at the Paramount Theater. And it is packed like, you know, HustleCon was like, you know, sold out ish.

• 8:11Shaan Puri?

  This was like, sold out, sold out, like all the, even the back shitty seat is like, sold out. And it's full of parents and their kids. And then there's this like, they basically just created like a little play, like a little mini musical, one hour, because kids don't have that long of an attention span. And it's just kind of like music and like, you know, lights and colors. And he's, oh, dinosaurs, oh, rocks, oh.

• 8:32Sam Parr?

  How much did it cost?

• 8:34Shaan Puri?

  So every ticket, I want to say, was.

• 8:37Sam Parr?

  That venue's seats.

• 8:38Shaan Puri?

  Maybe like sixty bucks a seat, something like that.

• 8:40Sam Parr?

  So that venue's seats between twenty five hundred and three thousand, I believe.

• 8:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so I think there was two thousand there. And I believe the tickets were were something like, something like fifty, sixty, seventy bucks, something like that.

• 8:54Sam Parr?

  So we're in like a hundred and twenty thousand.

• 8:56Shaan Puri?

  And then he played four shows in a row that weekend, and then he went to the next city. So it was our like, no, he had done eight shows, or he was doing something like that. So it was like, some crazy like, thing where I was like, oh, wow, this weekend, they made whatever, eight hundred grand. And yeah, the tickets, tickets basically range from like sixty bucks to ninety bucks. And and the place is lit, by the way. So like, you know, he comes on stage, kids go crazy. He's like, you know, he'd be like, you know, what does the bubble do? And everyone's like, pop. And he's like, when I say pop, can you say pop? And like, so it's like, not like a quiet show, like, because kids are loud anyways. So some kids are just not paying attention, have to like, my daughter during intermission was like, I want to watch Blippi on YouTube. And so we like, had to open up YouTube on our phone and give it to her during intermission because she couldn't like,

• 9:41Shaan Puri?

  go five minutes without stimulation. And so is, and then they have like the merch and the like, the concessions, they have like all that shit, right? So it's like, pretty dope, actually. And I was like, wow, this is kind of genius. They just took YouTube IP. And this is, this guy who was there was not Blippi. The guy on stage was just some. You know, theater kid who like didn't make it. And so he's like, all right, plan B, I'll be, I'll be blippy. And, um, and so it was like, they, they took the IP, but they made their own show out of it. And so I started looking into this and there's a company that does this called V-Star Entertainment.

• 10:15Sam Parr?

  Awesome.

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  So V-Star, what they do is they go license these kids brands and then they put on kids Broadway, basically, and they tour around the country.

• 10:23Sam Parr?

  Awesome.

• 10:24Shaan Puri?

  And so.

• 10:24Sam Parr?

  And Blippi is just a guy with a guitar, right? Or were there more instruments?

• 10:28Shaan Puri?

  No guitar. He's just, just him. He just walks around.

• 10:30Sam Parr?

  Were there any instruments or was it just like a soundtrack?

• 10:33Shaan Puri?

  Just soundtrack and like lights and like, uh, stage props.

• 10:36Sam Parr?

  So like, wow. So he, he only had like his crew.

• 10:39Shaan Puri?

  Like, you know, they came out as sharks, like a bunch of like little backup dancers came out as sharks. And then they whatever, like.

• 10:44Sam Parr?

  That's awesome.

• 10:44Shaan Puri?

  So many theater show, right? And so V-Star Entertainment, they do another brand that you've probably heard of called, or you may have heard of called Paw Patrol. It's basically another kids cartoon. So guess how much? This is my like kind of triangulation. Guess how much they sold in Paw Patrol tickets last year? Just take a, take a guess.

• 11:00Sam Parr?

  20, 20 mil?

• 11:02Shaan Puri?

  Forty million dollars.

• 11:04Sam Parr?

  Forty million dollars in event tickets?

• 11:05Shaan Puri?

  In event tickets for, and that's just the tickets, not the merch.

• 11:08Sam Parr?

  And that was just last year in 22?

• 11:10Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know. It's like, this is like the just before COVID numbers. So like, I don't know, 2019, 2020, something like that.

• 11:16Sam Parr?

  Wow.

• 11:16Shaan Puri?

  They got bought by Cirque du Soleil. So first, so the backstory is some guy decides, oh, you know what? Like he's watching Sesame Street. He's like, Sesame Street should do a live show. And he goes and he basically raises 500 grand from this guy. He mortgages his house, gets an extra 25 grand out of his home equity. So he's got $525,000. He goes and he gets the license to Sesame Street. He started with the Sesame Street show and then Muppets and like, you know, did.

• 11:41Sam Parr?

  But that must've been years ago.

• 11:43Shaan Puri?

  This was in the like 1980, something like that.

• 11:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Shaan Puri?

  And then, um, this other guy was doing it. They merged and then that whole thing gets bought by Cirque du Soleil last year. Is it Cirque du Soleil? By the way, like, guess how much Cirque du Soleil revenue was? Have you ever been to a Cirque show?

• 11:57Sam Parr?

  No, I've not, but I do know that the guy who started it, uh, is a Canadian guy. He's a billionaire. I read Dan Blazarian's book and they talk about that guy a lot. I think he's like, I mean, he started a circus, so he's like. Yeah, he's really eccentric and wild and everything. So it made him a billionaire. How much revenue does it make?

• 12:14Shaan Puri?

  Ben, have you been to a Cirque du Soleil show? Cirque du Soleil did a billion, does a billion dollars a year in revenue.

• 12:20Sam Parr?

  Wow.

• 12:21Shaan Puri?

  Which is insane. 10% of, five or 10% of all Las Vegas tourists go to a Cirque show when they're in town.

• 12:29Sam Parr?

  Is that why, what's that Cirque? Is that the, is that like the name?

• 12:32Shaan Puri?

  Well, they have like 10 shows, right? It'll be like, they have, oh, and then they have Zoo Manity, they have like, whatever.

• 12:38Sam Parr?

  And the Beatles, yeah, I know all about it and I'm into it. And it's publicly traded, or at least it was before it was acquired by private equity, right?

• 12:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, private equity owns it now. And, um, and it's a pretty badass business. The idea was do a circus, but no animals. So it was like only human performers. And to do that, they did like crazy acrobats and like great costumes.

• 12:57Sam Parr?

  It's basically its own genre at this point, though.

• 12:59Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so he built that thing into a real juggernaut. And so Cirque then bought Blue Man Group and V-Star Entertainment. And so they got Blue Man, which is like, what they had said was like, we do 10 million in ticket sales a year for Cirque du Soleil. Blue Man adds another 2 million and then, um, and then V-Star adds another 2 million. But they're all like different ticket prices, but like, they do 14 million in tickets sold per year. And so this, this like live entertainment thing really has caught my attention because I think as the world moves more and more digital, that the, like the demand for like these one-off experiences, like, hey, let's get out of the house and go do something. I think it's just going to keep going up. Music festivals, that's a winner.

• 13:40Shaan Puri?

  And then there's like, I think plays and musicals are going to be a winner. I think they're going to be bigger than they were before, even though the world moves digital. And in fact, because the world moves digital, what do you think about all this?

• 13:51Sam Parr?

  I 100% agree. And so earlier today, I sent you a Notion doc of some of my notes on, I'm interested in peer businesses, which is basically like you pay money and you're part of a club and you meet up with them. And I, I can't talk too much about what the names of the companies were, but they were doing like, uh, one of them does 100 million a year in profit and they, it's basically two or three meetups a year. And there's executives paying $50,000 a year to be part of them. And I think actually these are going to completely boom. I think conferences right now are interesting, but those are really hard. This actually seems way easier to pull off. All types of meetups, Airbnbs, I'm 100% on board that I think that in person is, is the move.

• 14:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And I think that, so then I started thinking like, what are the other opportunities? And so I think A, you could just like go compete with these guys on like either the same brands or other brands. So like what they did was, The V-Star guy took TV IP, turned it into a live show. The bl- what the blippy guy is doing is taking YouTube IP and turning it into a live show. And I think you could just even do this for more. So like, I think you could even do like, we've talked about religion, which is the greatest free IP in the world. So I think if somebody could do this for religion, which would make a extremely kid friendly, in fact, kid focused, like Christianity show, basically. I think you could do this for dinosaurs or science as a generic genre. Cause like, if kids love trucks and dinosaurs, whatever, and you could just basically create the like,

• 15:17Shaan Puri?

  the, the show, you know, day with dinosaurs or something like that. And it, once you get like, if you have a certain level of quality, moms will spread this and they will talk about it. And they will like, in their mommy groups, they will help you sell these tickets. And, um, and I just feel like there's a, like, it's not that hard. Like you build one show and then you sell that one show a thousand times, right? Like the show goes on tour. Mamma Mia has made like, I don't know, some stupid amount of money, just being the same show on tour with replacing the, the low cost actors.

• 15:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And I'm trying, while we're talking, I'm trying to find the numbers. So we used to, so we did events, but we would do like these, this thing called HustleCon, which was like the, our big one where like thousands of people would come. But then we do this thing called 2X. And 2X was basically from like 7:00 PM to like 10:00 PM. And it was basically, we got 15 or 10 women, all who were in tech and business. Not that many of them were like well-known, but they would have 10 minutes to like tell a story and we would charge like $25. But then we would get tens of thousands of dollars in sponsors. But we got to the point where we could pull this off like, kind of like almost weekly in other cities.

• 16:26Sam Parr?

  And when we started doing this, the hustle wasn't that popular, but we were making like, I think like 30 grand a night when we were doing it. And we had one employee running it. And she would use a team of contractors and then we wouldn't supply anything. Like I think we had free wine, but I don't know, I don't even think it was free. I, like, we wouldn't supply anything, but then when we have corporate sponsors and we crushed it. And in my head, I'm like, I can always fall back on this to make a living because it was so much easier than people thought.

• 16:57Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Shaan Puri?

  Wow, that's pretty good for a tech bro, a tech bro business like all of you. You were running one of the best like women's entrepreneurship events.

• 17:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Shaan Puri?

  In the country, you got labeled wrong, dude.

• 17:12Sam Parr?

  I, yeah, there, I'm like an onion man, there's layers. So, but basically like we used to do this thing called pizza and 40s, where we would do a meetup and I would interview someone and they would drink a 40 ounce. And when the 40 ounce beer was done, the talk was done. But then like women were like, this is like, there's all dudes here. And so we created like a, like a wine version and that had like way better. It was like called like cheese and wine. I don't even remember, but that had way better engagement. And so we're like, oh, like, let's pursue this vein like this. There's clearly an opportunity here. And so we created 2X, which comes, it's like 2X chromosomes, which I thought was clever. I stole it from Reddit. But anyway, we would do, I think we did 10 or 12 in one year.

• 17:55Sam Parr?

  And every single time it was like 20 and 30 grand and the cost, the cost was nothing. The cost was renting the venue, which costs like $3,000 and we would make like 20 grand.

• 18:04Shaan Puri?

  And you also, you had readers in every city, right? So that's how you sold the tickets?

• 18:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, but we weren't, basically the speakers sold the tickets. The reason why we had 15 speakers was, was I was like, I bet each 15 will get 25 people to come. Plus our like little bit of our engine, like this is easy.

• 18:22Shaan Puri?

  And you weren't making the money off the tickets, you're making it off the sponsors really anyways.

• 18:25Sam Parr?

  The tickets, the, the business model was the tickets paid for the event. And then the conference was all, or the sponsors were all the profit. But when it's, there's two things going on, one, like women. So whenever you have like an underserved community, like sponsors definitely are willing to pay more. And two, it was like a B to B component. So it wasn't kids component, which I think would alter the economics. But my point of it is that I think that it was far easier than people thought. And it was way more rudimentary and raw than people thought and it worked. We just used splash that. I think if you Google like 2X, the hustle, you'll like see like the splash is basically Eventbrite. It was nothing special and it freaking worked.

• 19:07Shaan Puri?

  That's dope. All right. What else we got?

• 19:09Sam Parr?

  All right. Let me, I just got kicked out of the document. All right. I got it. So one thing, tell me what you, what you think about this. One thing that I've been doing as I'm now starting to like get back into the game or thinking about it. So I've been setting up calls with bankers. So bankers, which I didn't even know what those were bankers. When someone, when like Sarah, my wife went to Penn.

• 19:32Shaan Puri?

  Works at a bank.

• 19:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And she had like, I would always make her friends were like, yeah, like I, you know, I'm a banker. I work at a bank. I'm like, oh, which branch? And so bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies. And when you sell a company for like anything north of probably 50 million, they likely have a banker. And I've been contacting bankers and my pitch to them is this, hey, I'm thinking about starting a company in this space. You've sold a few companies in this space. Tell me everything about why the, this company was bought as well as what the opportunities are that the buyer, what they were looking for. And maybe in five or 10 years, I'll let you sell my company. And I've been able to line up meetings doing this.

• 20:13Shaan Puri?

  And it's genius. And I've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations. And I was like, oh, wow. These guys are like vaults filled with gold.

• 20:24Sam Parr?

  Dude, so much.

• 20:25Shaan Puri?

  Bakers need podcasts. Like, why are they, why are these guys not talking?

• 20:29Sam Parr?

  Well, they can't.

• 20:30Shaan Puri?

  So much info. No, but they can talk like generally speaking, they don't, they can't talk about any specific deal, but like, they know a lot, dude. And they actually know everything. It's like your, your accountant. It's like accountants and bankers.

• 20:41Sam Parr?

  They know everything. Yeah. They know everything. And they've been telling me so much information. So I like, they'll like, basically they'll say, here's why this company was doing well. Here's why it was succeeding. Here's why they bought it. And I'm like, all right, great. What, uh, what other companies was that buyer trying to buy and why? And they're like, well, they always struggled with blank. And I'm like, boom, thank you. And then I'll say like, um, you sold three businesses in the same space. Which one was more fun to run? And so like, for example, I'll give you, I'll give you a concrete example. The business that I'm interested in now, we've talked about a bunch. It's like a vestige. So which is.

• 21:16Sam Parr?

  Basically a peer group. So companies that it's like a group of 10 or 40 people who all have a similar job title and they meet together and they discuss their problems and it's like a safe space to discuss shit you can't talk about on the internet. And some of them do huge. One of them, I can't say which, does over a hundred million in profit a year. And they're just like meetups in real life. And I'll just be like, well, what job titles was uh Gartner or whoever buys these companies? What job titles are they trying to get to and they're really struggling to uh to to reach? And they'll just tell me. I'm like, oh, great. I can create a community around that and I think I could build it to sell it. Which what I want to know from your perspective, is that even a good plan, building to sell?

• 21:57Sam Parr?

  So part of me is like, yes, it's clear path to make money. Another part is like, it's kind of lame though.

• 22:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Well, I think where you're at now, let's take three, three options. Build to sell that which is basically optimizing for like, oh, is there a sort of like a flip? Is there a, is there a buyer on the other side of the, of a business like this? Another one is build to win, which is basically like, um, for example, when I talk to these bankers, what I'm trying to figure out is what, which of these businesses is like not a special snowflake? Where it's like, oh, that's actually like a rinse and repeatable model. Like I didn't like that founder didn't like catch lightning in a bottle at the perfect time. And it's their perfect background and they got really lucky about this one thing. It's like, oh, those I don't want to emulate.

• 22:44Shaan Puri?

  I want to emulate the one where it's like, I think somebody could start that same business today and do equally well or do, do just as well in this one adjacent space. And like, you don't need to be a genius uh with that. And so that's the second part of it, which is I build to win. It's like optimizing for something that's going to work. And then there's the last one, which is sort of like, you know, build for fun or build for mission, which is like, go for something that like you, something you would never want to sell, that you're willing to do, even if it's low likelihood of success. I think we all know the answer is to do that bucket, right? Like, I think the question is like, How many, how much security do you need before you go do the thing you know you should do?

• 23:24Sam Parr?

  Well, or it could be a combination of all three. Like it could be like you enjoy winning or you enjoy this space and you want to make it successful. But there's a great clip from you and what's, what's, what's all in David Friedberg. There's a great clip that I shared that you and him had where he basically said that founders always sell themselves short and they go for these small ideas because they, because they think it's more reasonable. But when doing that, they kind of screwed themselves because it's actually easier sometimes to do much grander, bigger ideas. Because that attracts the crazy types of people who you want to work with.

• 24:01Shaan Puri?

  You're the least competitive because nobody else, not, not every Joe is going to try to, you know, do it like, you know, going and trying to, you know, start a railroad business or whatever versus an FBA business. It's like, oh, they're both going to take all your time. So that's equal. Money? Well, you're going to go have to go raise money from investors. One will let you just raise, you're still going to get the money you need from investors. Just one, you may maybe raise more at a higher valuation and the other one you'll raise less at a lower valuation, right? Like,

• 24:30Sam Parr?

  But did you agree? Do you agree with him?

• 24:33Shaan Puri?

  I do agree with him and I've thought this for a very long time. I remember back in the day, did you ever hear about this thing called the unreasonable institute? I don't even think this is around anymore.

• 24:41Sam Parr?

  That's a great name.

• 24:42Shaan Puri?

  It's sort of like the same guys who did summit. It's not, it's not actually the same guys, but it's the same, it was like the same idea. It was like, right. The unreasonable institute was basically this, like, it was based on this one word unreasonable and the way that the hustle is built on this one word hustle and trends is built on one word trends. And so the unreasonable, so it was exactly that. It was like, it's going to take unreasonable people to do unreasonable things for the world to move forward. And it was like very inspiring and then they met with all a bunch, you know, a bunch of people who did that. The sort of Elon Musk types who went and did unreasonable things. And then you start to look at it and you're like, You know, all things equal, um, you know, I guess like your inputs are sort of the same. It's just your time and energy. And then like the outputs can be very, very different because

• 25:26Sam Parr?

  The inputs aren't the same because it is possible to build something pretty cool and not work that hard, but it's kind of impossible to build something huge and not work very hard.

• 25:37Shaan Puri?

  All right, who do we know? And let's do real examples. I'm not saying it's not true, but who do we know that's building successful, awesome businesses without working too hard?

• 25:51Sam Parr?

  Well, how about Suli? I actually don't know. What's his schedule? Does he grind constantly?

• 25:57Shaan Puri?

  He works hard. Yes, he works hard.

• 26:00Sam Parr?

  So then no one, you don't, we don't know anyone, but you and me, like maybe

• 26:05Shaan Puri?

  I'll give you one nuance on it. He got there faster than the normal person. So like it looked like it came easier, but that's just because he was better. It wasn't because he worked, like he wasn't putting in a tenth of the hours. He was putting in the same number of hours and getting there 10 times faster, which is

• 26:18Sam Parr?

  I just think that like, there's a world where you have business A and it doesn't grow nearly as fast and you're working 40 hours a week. And then you have business B that's growing significantly faster and you have to work a hundred hours a week. Like that, that is a reality.

• 26:32Shaan Puri?

  Yes, that's true.

• 26:33Sam Parr?

  That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about like very little. I'm talking about normal versus not normal.

• 26:39Shaan Puri?

  There's also things like this podcast or like people who have like newsletters or blogs or something like that where it's like, or they teach a course. It's like, you know, like, like let's take your buddy Neville, right? So Neville, I don't think

• 26:49Sam Parr?

  You and me.

• 26:51Shaan Puri?

  Well, but because I'm doing multiple things, right? So it's like on each one, I'm not putting in as much time, but like overall I'm working harder. And if I didn't do those other things, that one thing would just expand in time. I would just do more. I would spend

• 27:04Sam Parr?

  Wait, how often are you working now a day? Normal work hours?

• 27:09Shaan Puri?

  Not normal hours, but I work like a, the equivalent of eight hours a day.

• 27:15Sam Parr?

  Got it.

• 27:15Shaan Puri?

  Just not all to you, not, not all continuously.

• 27:18Sam Parr?

  All right, but back to what was the original point?

• 27:20Shaan Puri?

  So my, my, my point was like, uh, is it, is this really true that you can kind of like chill and win?

• 27:28Sam Parr?

  And like, I didn't mean, I didn't mean to say chill, but I mean chill less or sorry, chill more, work less.

• 27:36Sam Parr?

  Wait, so then, bro, if you agree with Friedberg, which I think I do, why are you not going after like one big grand thing? Like, I started a newsletter, that's not exactly like, you know, that's not like world changing entirely, it's neat, but I would, I would put it on a six out of 10 in terms of like, maybe a five in terms of like, big ideas.

• 28:00Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, I, I agree with you. The reason why is because to me, it's not a bigness contest. It's a, do I have a clear picture of what I want to, like, my life to be? And then, can I, like, do I have a crystal clear picture? And then can I make that happen? And it's like, knowing what I want and then getting what I want. And so what I wanted was not to work the 100 hours, right? Even though I, even though I agree, like, that's cool, it's fun, and if I did do it, um, I do think there's all these extra benefits. You would get amazing talent to come join you, you'd make a bunch of money, you'd have a bunch of fun, like, there's, there's great benefits if I did the big one, the, the, the big, big, big one. But I decided that, like, what I wanted-

• 28:43Sam Parr?

  That's what you wanted, yeah.

• 28:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what I wanted more was more like the 40 hour a week, but hours spent on doing these types of things. Like, I love teaching, teaching's not the most, it's not the most like, world-changing, unreasonable institute style, you know, like, let's go land a rocket on Mars type of idea, but I have the most fun doing it. So I'm just optimizing for like, a different thing rather than bigness. I'm optimizing for like, you know, my own enjoyment. And so, that's why I'm not going after that. So I need things that are sufficiently interesting, so that I'm interested, and big enough, so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time, but like, it's not maximally big.

• 29:23Sam Parr?

  Right, I feel you. Well, to wrap up the bank thing, I think it's, it was, it's, it's been kind of interesting. I'm gonna continue doing it, maybe I'll, uh, I, I didn't ask these people who I spoke with today, if I could talk about what we discussed, so I'm not gonna bring it up, but, uh, very useful, I sent you the notes, they were cool.

• 29:41Shaan Puri?

  They're great, and also this technique, whether it's a specific technique or a similar technique, it's like, there are people who just know a lot of things. You know, people who invest other people's money, accountants, bankers, people like, um-

• 29:58Shaan Puri?

  You know, VCs are like this. They see, they see hundreds and hundreds of businesses a year. And so it's like, those people, if you want to like, speed dial your learning, you can go to them and you can get basically free learning off of, off of them. That's it. That's the episode.