#190 - Making Billions in Coworking, the Dark Side of Confidence, and the Future of Sports Recovery

WeWork isn’t the only game in coworking. In this episode, Shaan (@ShaanVP) and Sam (@theSamParr) break down the multi-billion dollar coworking industry and identify what you need to succeed. Shaan shares an awesome story about Steve Jobs and the guys talk about the future of sports recovery and where money is to be made with athletic endorsements. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (1:24) - Episode Intro * (3:18) - Opportunities in coworking * (11:56) - The MFM co-working space? * (15:27) - The mystique of Adam Neumann * (19:34) - The duality of extreme confidence * (30:40) - You can't say no to Steve Jobs * (36:39) - Shaan's dream exercise for new hires * (38:47) - The Nike of sports recovery * (47:29) - Cryotherapy in a barrel * (51:13) - Saunas and sensory deprivation * (52:57) - Leveraging opportunities around pro athletes * (58:07) - Outro

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  I get to see how they're wired. I get to see what makes them tick. I get to see what what they're motivated by. So now, when it comes time to get great, you know, great effort out of them, I know what moves the needle for them personally.

• 0:22Sam Parr?

  So on this episode, we're talking to Dan, we're asking about him, asking about the episode. We talked about, we broke down the coworking space and we, and we found like an interesting opportunity. A founder started and sold a company in that space and he still said he would start another company in that space and thinks it could be huge, which is a good sign. We talked about this weird business called Ice Barrel. And then we talked about the Nike for recovery, the Nike of recovery, which is a really interesting company, great story. And we talked about Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork and how he's got this like crazy hypnotic personality. And I love learning about that. I actually think it's like something that you need if you're gonna ever lead anyone.

• 1:02Shaan Puri?

  And then I shared a Steve Jobs story I heard that may or may not be true. I have no idea.

• 1:08Sam Parr?

  It could be true.

• 1:08Shaan Puri?

  It could be true. And that's all I will guarantee.

• 1:11Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the episode. By the way, if there's like a follow button on your Spotify, do me a favor, click that because we're trying to grow the podcast and then click the subscribe button on iTunes. Thank you. It literally makes us like, we only need like a handful of people in order to like go up in the ratings and it's because of that, I think. So click it.

• 1:30Shaan Puri?

  What's up?

• 1:30Sam Parr?

  What's going on? Cool shirt.

• 1:32Shaan Puri?

  Thank you. Me or Dan? Dan got, Dan got a Harvard shirt also. So he's part of the crew now.

• 1:38Sam Parr?

  There you go, Dan. You look nice.

• 1:40Shaan Puri?

  Can we?

• 1:41Sam Parr?

  But I actually, Dan, did you go to Harvard? I could see that.

• 1:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he looks like a Harvard man.

• 1:46Sam Parr?

  I didn't go to Harvard, but I have been to the bookstore. Oh, all right. Same, same, same. What's going on? Anything new?

• 1:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, lots of new stuff. But let's jump in. We have a bunch of topics today. So we'll, we'll spare people the small talk.

• 2:01Sam Parr?

  All right. I think they like that, but that's fine. I'm down with getting down to business. Where do you want to go first?

• 2:07Shaan Puri?

  Um, you have something that you did a bunch of research on. I want to go, go to that first. Was it the coworking spaces you were going into? What are you looking at?

• 2:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So, oh, by the way, I see you have Ice Barrel here. Interesting.

• 2:19Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 2:19Sam Parr?

  I'm happy to discuss that. Ice coworking. So on our trip, Ben made a suggestion. He, I was, one of us was teasing like, we should do this, we should do this, we should do this. Him or you or me, one of us, but he, he was kind of nailing down the point, mentioned coworking.

• 2:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Sam Parr?

  And I was like, that's kind of cool.

• 2:38Shaan Puri?

  I think his quote was, he's like, here's my big idea for the podcast. Take the MFM, take my first million and, and create like a network of coworking spaces that already exists. Just license the name out and offer the promotion to your members to be, to be able to access them. That was his idea.

• 2:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Yes. And I started thinking about that and I've always, I wanted to get a little bit more into real estate. And I thought it was cool. And I just basically put the bat signal out there and I tweeted out, who is an expert in coworking? I want to learn. And what I love to do for this pod, I did this with this vending machine. All I do is I get someone on the phone and I don't want to bring them on the podcast because they may, they're boring or they're not good at this type of thing.

• 3:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 3:20Sam Parr?

  But I basically just want to ask them tons of questions and that's what I did and I took notes. And so I found a guy named Preston. Uh, I actually don't know how to pronounce his last name. I know, I never know how to. Peszek, P E S E K. So his Twitter handle is Preston Peszek, P E S E K. And he had this company called Spacious, which he sold for, um, he sold the WeWork. And I imagine he sold it for a lot of money because when I called him, it was like noon, East Coast time. And he was just going for a bike ride.

• 3:47Shaan Puri?

  His Butler picked up?

• 3:48Sam Parr?

  It doesn't work anymore. Yes. Well, it looked like he was in like a nice area of town in New York and he wasn't working. So I imagine it was a good deal, but have you heard of Spacious by any chance?

• 3:58Shaan Puri?

  What was it?

• 3:59Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 3:59Shaan Puri?

  Does it still exist or they shut it down?

• 4:01Sam Parr?

  They shut it down, but it was crazy interesting. So the way, so, so we're going to talk about coworking right now and we're going to talk about where the opportunities are and where this guy, where this guy thinks there's opportunities and he has an interesting perspective. He wouldn't tell me the revenue, but I bet, I would imagine it was north of eight figures a year in revenue. But Spacious, what it did originally was they would find restaurants that were only open at night or had most of their business from six to, you know, dinnertime and they would do a coworking thing where they, you would pay a little bit of money, $29, I believe, and you would get access to, to, to use this restaurant as a coworking place.

• 4:37Shaan Puri?

  So I'd heard of this before, that there are restaurants that basically have prime locations, nice interiors, and they're only going to be used during mealtimes. And so the kind of pre-dinner service, which is like your workday, they were turning into this. I, I remember thinking, oh, that's cool. And then I never heard about it again. So I sort of assumed it didn't work, but what you're saying is it started to kind of work and they got acquired.

• 4:57Sam Parr?

  No. So what he was saying that it worked wonderfully, but WeWork made him an offer so good. He's like, I can't refuse this. Um, I don't know if this guy, I, I met, he worked at a hedge fund before, but maybe like, you know, he, he, he didn't come from a, a rich background and it was a big deal. So I don't blame him. But basically it started by doing restaurants. Eventually it did retail. So what that means is, um, you have, uh, uh, some type of like ground level real estate and they would make a deal with the retail, uh, so retail, uh, real estate. So not necessarily like, it's not like a Lululemon store. It's like a store that's typically used for Lululemon. They would make deals with them for as short as 30 days, but it could be as long as six to 12 months where they would lease the place and then they would charge people $29 and you would try

• 5:42Sam Parr?

  to get people to come in. It's called a, a hot seat, basically. It's like a pop-up. Yeah. You, well, you know what that is?

• 5:48Shaan Puri?

  Hot desking. Yeah. So basically you don't have, you don't have an assigned seat. You come in and it's sort of like first come, first served type of thing for the day.

• 5:55Sam Parr?

  So if I told you about this and you didn't know anything about the business, I imagine you'd be skeptical and think like, this doesn't, this probably can't work that well, right?

• 6:02Shaan Puri?

  I'd be like, yeah, it's hard, right? Uh, you know, it's cool to have the Airbnb for, for, for coworking or for, for your, for work. And, uh, I've heard of a lot of people try this. People were trying this with your home. You could take a part of your home and turn it into a, like a cafe for people, uh, to come and sit and have wifi and, um, I just felt like I never heard from any of these companies ever again. I heard the idea and then like crickets for the next two years.

• 6:25Sam Parr?

  So according to Preston, who started and exited the company, he, he may not start this because like, I don't know if I want to start another company, but he goes, I would love to invest in this space, which is always a great sign. If someone has started and sold something and still wants to go back and do it, he goes, it crushed it. And I think that someone could still crush it. He goes, it's just like a hotel, a four seasons can exist and also like,

• 6:47Shaan Puri?

  Motel six.

• 6:47Sam Parr?

  A motel six, like a lot of different brands can exist in this space, but it's incredibly lucrative and it can work wonderfully. So for his spaces, the way it would work is they would have at least a hundred seats, which means a hundred place, a hundred areas that someone could sit. So a hundred seats and then they would have check-ins, but they would aim to have 200 to 300 seats. And a good location, the target was 15 check-ins per month. And if a location had that at $29, that comes out to be around $90,000 a month. And the profit margin on that could be about 40%. So one low, and that, and that profit margin includes the, the person manning the location and then rent. So quite lucrative. And he was like, yeah, we, we could crush it.

• 7:32Sam Parr?

  And he was like, you could definitely bootstrap this into a smaller location, but he goes, I think that there is a lot of space for this. And if you're going to do it, raise as much money as you possibly can. And I think a person could build a business that makes a hun, or makes a billion dollars a year in revenue.

• 7:46Shaan Puri?

  So how is this different than just WeWork, right? Like, isn't this just WeWork?

• 7:50Sam Parr?

  I'll explain. So the problem with WeWork, basically it's long. So, so here I've tried to break this down into a framework. And so the reason why a lot of coworking doesn't work. Now we're talking about, uh, what's it called? Hot Desk. Hot Desk is different than, quote, the traditional. When you think of traditional coworking, you probably think of like a freelancer or a small business owner who wants to spend $300 a month to have a desk all the time at a, at a, at a WeWork. So let's just call that the traditional we, uh, coworking. And the way that that worked is basically you sign an agreement for 10 years for a lease. And then you go and do arbitrage where you find, all right, if I'm paying this much in my lease per square foot, I'm going to subdivide it and I'm going to rent it.

• 8:31Sam Parr?

  For a short term, but there's, here's the issue, long-term liability, meaning your 10-year lease. With a short-term income stream, a short-term rental agreement. And so the people may only stay for two, three, four months because it's a month-to-month lease that you're renting to your... And he goes, he goes, basically, you just get churned and it's just hard to keep up with that because things can change, like a pandemic where everyone works from home.

• 8:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Sam Parr?

  And he's like, that, it just doesn't work. And so what we did was we took short-term liability, meaning a lot of their places can kick them out at any time, but they had so many of them and it was considered like a pop-up that it was okay. And so it didn't matter if a place closed for a little while because they can just go somewhere nearby in that building or in that area. And so it worked out really, really well.

• 9:16Shaan Puri?

  Hmm. Okay. I, um, I don't know if it's because I didn't talk to this guy or what, but I still feel a little bit like, yeah, you know, same shit, different toilet. As far as like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure that, I don't, I don't fully understand why this is that much better than traditional coworking. And I think traditional coworking is, you know, kind of marginal, marginally good. Or maybe I've just seen some disasters, right? Breather, Breather raised a ton of money and looked like they were the next unicorn. And I think ended up selling for $3 million.

• 9:46Sam Parr?

  What did they sell to $3 million for?

• 9:49Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, like, you know, I have like an uncle who could have bought Breather, right? So, so it didn't have like a fantastic exit. What WeWork is also running into problems that I think were not just the pandemic, but this arbitrage model was sort of thin. So, I don't know, I'm a little bit skeptical, but okay. Where do you see the opportunities beyond this?

• 10:05Sam Parr?

  That's okay, if you're skeptical. To be honest, I'm skeptical too, but I still think it's cool. But I've got another angle here.

• 10:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Sam Parr?

  So coworking, I asked him, but coworking sounds more interesting because I want that, I want that like more, I want that recurring revenue and I don't want to open up like loads of locations. How do I make that work? And he goes, well, the best way that you can make that work is you've got supply and you've got demand. And the, uh, the supply being, um, I'm probably going to screw up my supply and demand. So actually let's just skip that part. But basically you have your consumers, so your people who want to come and rent that place. He was like, that's actually not that important. What's important is that you pick good locations and you do the real estate part well. But, um, what, if you could figure that out, which is like kind of straightforward, but still a lot of work, you have to figure out how to make your consumers incredibly sticky.

• 10:54Sam Parr?

  And the only way that he could find that can make it sticky is you have to have shared interests. So, for example, do you know The Wing?

• 11:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, the female coworking space.

• 11:04Sam Parr?

  He says that that's a great business and the reason is, is that there's likely not to gonna be the reason why you need to be sticky is you need someone to be willing to stay there for over a year.

• 11:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:13Sam Parr?

  And so he goes, shared interest is the best way. And he goes, how do you come up shared interest? You go to Facebook groups or you go to meetup.com and you just find like whatever is like people have like a fan base. So it could be like, uh, women, it could be, uh, different minority groups. It could be fitness enthusiasts. He's like, I think that there's a huge opportunity for people in coworking. As long as, if you can make it sticky, uh, so people working on similar types of thing and they don't want to leave their, their office. That's where you have a, a really good business. Whereas WeWork, it didn't really have that as much. So maybe an MFN coworking business could actually work, but maybe not.

• 11:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. You know, the one interesting thing, I don't know if you saw, there's a bank that did, uh, coworking inside of it. I think Chase Bank or Wells Fargo.

• 11:56Sam Parr?

  It was awesome. I used to go there all the time.

• 11:58Shaan Puri?

  Well, which one was it?

• 12:00Sam Parr?

  Uh, Capital, Capital, Capital One, or whatever the Capital One is, the Capital One.

• 12:06Shaan Puri?

  Chase, I think is, is, is the parent there. So you used to go there. So I don't, why were they doing that? They just wanted foot traffic in the branch or what?

• 12:13Sam Parr?

  So here's the other thing is that coworking actually can actually be a great customer, customer lead gen. So another way is if you want to go into coworking business, it could actually be far more interesting. If you're a software, I, I joked with my guys at HubSpot, I was like, guys, we should do this. So if you're a software company, I actually think there's an interesting play here to have a coworking. Or if you're a bank, something that you are trying to, uh, get freelancers or business owners, and you have a super high LTV of tens of thousands of dollars, it actually, I think, could be interesting to do this.

• 12:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like I wonder why doesn't, uh, you know, every, every tech company is spending so much money recruiting engineers. And like just recruiting in general, why not just have space as your recruiting tool? So, so you basically rent out space, even if you break even or are slightly unprofitable, you would make up for it in the actual recruiting of people who are there because they're in your orbit. They, you know, they're in the Uber office and the Uber coworking ring, uh, you know, area and they get to. Eat the food and whatever else. And sure enough, you're just absorbing talent, you know, as you go as part of that. I don't know if it'd be worth it, but it is, uh, that's, I don't know. Those are my thoughts on coworking. I don't have a ton of thoughts. I think that WeWork is great as a real estate company. Um, by great, I don't, I don't mean like it's bulletproof.

• 13:29Shaan Puri?

  Obviously the pandemic was sort of the worst possible thing that could happen to any coworking, um, you know, coworking company. But I, I mean, I do believe most, most value in real estate is by a change of use. So you, um, you buy a thing that's valued at, at a warehouse, you know, uh, square footage. And you convert it into self-storage and you make more per square foot. That's what WeWork was doing. It's the same fundamental model as, as self-storage, but they were doing it with people. And, uh, and I think that that business, if not sort of managed by a lunatic, probably wouldn't have got as big as fast, but also would not have had the fall it did. And, um, and I'm curious to see how this shakes out. I would be shocked, like a lot of people love to shit on WeWork. They think it's a terrible business.

• 14:13Shaan Puri?

  Well, I would be shocked if 10 years from now, there wasn't at least two or three multi-billion dollar coworking, uh, companies out there. So like, you can shit on the space, you can shit on WeWork, but in reality, I think that there are going to be winners in that space.

• 14:25Sam Parr?

  Let's talk about the, the lunatic real quick. So you just said it was run by a lunatic. If you're one of the, this is probably even more fascinating. So I went and did a lot of research on this and I talked to people, not this guy, but other people who knew Adam or worked with Adam. Um, so WeWork was run by this guy named Adam Neumann. He was like crazy, maybe not always in a bad way, probably mostly in a good way. And I talked to a bunch of people and I narrowed it down and I basically said, what makes this guy so great? So basically they are explaining to me, they're, they go, Adam was, here's like a quote from this woman I talked to. Adam, Adam was unique on a one-to-one convo. It was like looking into it. When I talked to him, it was like looking into a mirror and seeing myself, but that mirror was a megaphone of my best self.

• 15:07Sam Parr?

  He made me believe that I was the best and I could do anything. And I asked him, I was like, was, he's dyslexic, isn't he? And they go, yeah, I think he is. Does, I've noticed that dyslexic people are ranked so high on having this ability. And this sounds negative, and I don't mean this negative, to manipulate people and to manipulate them into believing that like, like to persuading and leading people. And they, and they just said he would, I would tell him stuff and he would echo it back to me. But for some reason I would believe it and I believed that I was the best that I possibly could be. And he made me feel that anything was possible. And I think that that is so fascinating and even more interesting than WeWork.

• 15:46Shaan Puri?

  Did you watch the WeWork documentary on Hulu?

• 15:48Sam Parr?

  Did you? No.

• 15:50Shaan Puri?

  I, I did. Cause you know, you get to sort of see first hand what's the guy like, cause he's on camera. It's pretty raw. It's from, you know, it's footage from when he, when WeWork was sort of still on the rise. And, and yeah, it was sort of this cult of personality around him. He didn't seem particularly charming or anything like that. But I think the thing I've seen with this is some people are so irrational in their belief, right? Like it takes some irrationality to do anything. Because if, if you're just perfectly rational, you look at your current situation and you'll say, this is what it is. And anytime something else, you know, what a goal or a vision or a dream, it will look completely irrational. And so we all have a little bit of irrationality in us. Otherwise we wouldn't have goals, we wouldn't have dreams.

• 16:32Shaan Puri?

  He, he was like sort of 90, 10, 90% irrational, maybe not even 10% rational. Maybe it was just 99, one irrational to rational where from day one, he was saying what this was going to be, how amazing it was going to be, how this investor was going to give us all, every dollar that they had, how this customer was going to have the greatest experience of their life. And he believed it with every bone in his body. And when you encounter somebody with that kind of certainty, it is very like addictive and sort of like intoxicating. Because if they believe in themselves that much, there's really two ways to go. Some people become haters because they don't have that sort of self-belief in themselves. And then other people sort of become followers and they, they, they join in because they're just like being around that level of certainty. So I thought that was pretty cool.

• 17:14Sam Parr?

  I love it.

• 17:16Shaan Puri?

  By the way, you know, when I watched that Fire Festival documentary,

• 17:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I too.

• 17:20Shaan Puri?

  I felt the same way. I was like, first of all, badass vision. Fire Festival was a great idea with

• 17:26Sam Parr?

  And it almost worked.

• 17:27Shaan Puri?

  God awful execution and it almost worked. It was so irrational that it almost overcame rationality, but it didn't. It failed in the end. But most people point and laugh. And I think that that was, you know, like kind of an amazing swing.

• 17:39Sam Parr?

  I agree.

• 17:40Shaan Puri?

  That was more impressive than that failure was more impressive than most people's successes. As far as I'm concerned, I thought there was a big, big audacious vision, got a bunch of people on board, almost pulled it off. Um, almost might be a little generous, but you know, at least

• 17:55Sam Parr?

  Well, what I mean is like, he rallied people around, like almost in the sense of like, it could have.

• 18:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Sold all the tickets, got all the big names on board, right? Like,

• 18:04Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 18:04Shaan Puri?

  You know, and, and it wasn't fraud, like it wasn't intentional fraud from what I remember. Like it wasn't like,

• 18:09Sam Parr?

  I think it was, but that's okay. But that, that, that's like not entirely important. I mean, I do think that like, there was fraud, but like there was a true belief of I can, I can pull it off.

• 18:20Shaan Puri?

  Right. There's fake it till you make it. And then there's fraud. Fake it till you make it is, hey, it's not there yet, but I, I believe I could pull this off. We're going to do it. We're going to find a way. If I just tell them this, if I tell them it's already booked, then we'll figure out a way to get it booked.

• 18:30Sam Parr?

  You know,

• 18:31Shaan Puri?

  Intention matters.

• 18:32Sam Parr?

  I actually, when we hung out this weekend, I felt not the same thing, but a little bit of that with you, where you like, you didn't say these any audacious things, but you have this sense of belief. It's like, well, yeah, why not? Like you went and met with people that I'm like, really? You're doing that? Yeah. Just talk to them. I'm gonna do this. I mean, like you, you, do you know that you have a little bit of that in you as well? You, you have a more of a, I think you, and this, this is not insulting. You are, because you're like emotionally healthy, you're not like Adam to where you have to say, I'm going to take over the world and it would feel good. Do you know what I mean?

• 19:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Sam Parr?

  So like, you're very confident. You're, you're, you do shit almost because you just like, It's more fun than it is out of a of a personality deficit of like, I have to be on top. And and so it's a little bit more healthy. But you had that same magnetism. Do you realize that, right?

• 19:25Shaan Puri?

  I do realize it because I try to do that. And, you know, once you try at something for like, five years straight, you stop having to try, you know, effort, effort is what creates effortless. So I put an effort into it. And now I don't have to try that anymore. It just happens. And the reason why, the reason I know I did it was because I was very conscious about it. The reason we both love Conor McGregor, and why I think really any fan loves Conor McGregor, is not because of the way he throws his left hand when he punches. It's because the guy had this ludicrous self belief, when he was literally on welfare, you know, as a as a failed plumber in Ireland, and he was talking about how he's going to become, you know, the largest, you know, I'm going to become a two weight world champion, the biggest sports star on earth, number one on the Forbes list. And then guess what this

• 20:10Shaan Puri?

  year where he landed? Number one on the Forbes list. He's the number one star in combat sports, you know, two weight world champion achieved. And so those of us who got to see that rise, it's, yeah, we're happy for Conor. But really, we're happy for ourselves that, holy shit, this guy with just literally nothing but self confidence, self confidence drove him to work, because he believed that he could achieve it. So he was motivated. And then when he worked, plus the self confidence, you know, overcame all the odds and had it, maybe I can have some of that, too. Put a little bit of that in my drink. That's how I felt about it. And so, you know, I don't care about becoming a two weight world champion. But I have my own versions of those that I just sort of decided, why would I, why would I doubt myself?

• 20:51Sam Parr?

  What's that?

• 20:52Shaan Puri?

  You can see what's, you can see what's written behind me. This is my, this will be one of my Sunday stories. So I don't want to, I don't want to spoil it. But the teaser is, the teaser for this Sunday's Storytime with Sean is doubt, doubt. If you're going to doubt anything, doubt, doubt. And so that's how I feel now. So how do you feel confident? Well, you start to doubt, doubt. You start to lack, lack. You start to doubt, having lack. You start to lack, having doubt. That's, that's where you want to get to in order to have that sort of unshakable self confidence.

• 21:20Sam Parr?

  What's that Conor McGregor had that Forbes thing, the two weight champion. What's yours?

• 21:28Shaan Puri?

  I've always said this, I want to have 1% of the world's population, consider me someone who is, you know, like they're one of their favorite teachers, somebody who they've learned from. So the version of that that I saw was that math teacher, that guy Bijju in India, who sold out a stadium. He had a stadium full of people come to watch him teach. I thought that was incredible. And, you know, you start to see it into reality, right? We just did a live show. Okay, it wasn't, it wasn't 70 million people. It was 300 people. It was 400 people showing up at our live show, right? But you start to see that come to, come to fruition of like, okay, a year ago, that didn't exist. That who's to say a year from now, that's not 3,000 people. Who's to say a year from that, it's not 30,000 people, right? Like, that seems entirely believable to me. And I've sort

• 22:13Shaan Puri?

  of envisioned it. And so when it happens, I won't be surprised. I'll be pleased, but I won't be surprised.

• 22:18Sam Parr?

  And I've actually heard stories about a lot of these people. So I've talked to a lot of the early employees. One of my good friends, his name's Will, he was like number 40 or something at Uber. And he tells me stories where he was like, uh, he's like, I just felt like anything was possible. It was, I felt like I was in, in war and my coworkers were, were my fellow troops and I loved it. I felt like there was constant action and we were in this together. That had a similar type of vibe. I've heard it. Who else have you heard that from? Um, I mean, you hear from a lot of like fraudsters, obviously, but who else?

• 22:50Shaan Puri?

  It's the sword that cuts both ways, right? You know, if you spot it, you got it. That's, that's sort of the way that most of these things work. All the extreme strengths come with a corresponding evil, right? Just like Facebook, a technology that connected everybody in the world. And then guess what? You know, like fucking chaos also from connecting everybody in the world. The spread of information has never been easier. We can spread, you know, and a student in India can, you know, has more access to like knowledge than the emperor did, you know, a hundred years ago. Well, guess what? They also have access to fake news and porn and all these other bad things, right? Like, that's why it's funny whenever somebody would criticize crypto and say, oh, it could be used for all these bad things. All that tells me is that this can be used for extremely good things also because there's a duality with all of those. And so that's how I think about.

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  You know, this extreme confidence, if I was gonna rank, I would put at the top, if you, if you think about what's the most intoxicating, desirable thing when you meet somebody? The first, number one, I would say is a sense of peace. When you meet somebody who's truly happy, like they're not like bubbling over with, with joy, but they're just happy, you know, when they're at rest, when nothing is going on, or even when, you know, quote unquote, bad things are going on. I think that is, when you see that, it's really hard to like, you just wanna be around that person. You wanna be like that person.

• 24:06Sam Parr?

  And who, have you met anyone like that?

• 24:08Shaan Puri?

  My trainer's like that, like just the other day, uh, he came, came to our house, I think at one. He trained me for eighty, ninety minutes, then he trained the next person, then he trained the next person. So he was going from one PM till seven thirty PM, which doesn't sound like a lot of hours, but when you watch what he's doing, like, he's not just sitting there like on his phone while you're, while you're working out. He's fully on motivating you, changing the ways, demonstrating the thing, bringing that excitement, talking to you, whatever. He's gotta be like switched on performing. And so it was like hour seven, he hadn't eaten anything, he hadn't had a sip of water. Uh, you know, he hadn't had a single break and it was just one person. And it wasn't even expected, by the way, it was just somebody who was like at my house was like, oh, can I get a session in? He's like, come on in. And so by

• 24:51Sam Parr?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, you just had people coming into your house?

• 24:54Shaan Puri?

  Like my mom was over and she, she wanted to work out. Normally she does it on a different day, but she, he was like, all right, yeah, jump in, I'm here. And so what happened was by the end of it, um, he, so, so I walked into the garage where he, where he was cleaning up the like, kind of like the workout stuff. And he's got this huge smile on his face. Me and my wife, we walked out because we were gonna go for a walk and we see him, he's smiling, he's laughing. I don't even know, nobody was there, I don't know what he's smiling about. He was just smiling and then he was putting things away and he just looks at me, he goes, part of time. And I don't even know what he was talking about, I have no idea what he was thinking about, but he just was like in that mood. And he was, had this huge smile and I go, man, I told my wife, I go, man, you know how I am at the end of a workday?

• 25:35Shaan Puri?

  Like when I work hard and I feel like I really exerted effort and I had to go above and beyond and do a little extra that day. I've become like such a whiny little brat, like I'm like, oh, I'm so tired, I need to eat, I need like, like I did so much now, you know, I know you need to do that work, I'm, I'm done, you know? Um, and I've become this sort of like entitled little brat about myself, uh, you know, and I'm, I'm like crashing. And I felt like this guy was just like, I mean, to come at me and be like, party time. Like, I don't know what he was even thinking about, but that's not the way I end my workday when I feel like I worked overtime.

• 26:09Sam Parr?

  So what's number two then? You said happiness.

• 26:12Shaan Puri?

  The next one is the, is the, is the sort of self-delusion. It is the like irrational confidence in self. When you meet somebody like that, that is intoxicating, even if they are not successful. So like, I intentionally have not put rich and famous people on this list yet because I've had experiences with both. You meet a really successful person. You meet a really famous person. You meet somebody who is completely happy or somebody who is, you know, truly believes in themselves. Even when you're like, dude, there's no way you're going to pull that off. And they truly believe it. They're not just boasting they're puffing their chest out. To me, that is like, you know, that's a drug to be around somebody like that. Cause I want to be like that. I want to be truly happy. I want to be truly confident. And, um, and they, they don't even have to try to show it. It's just like, it's on their face. It's in the way they walk.

• 26:57Shaan Puri?

  It's in the way they talk. And, um, and I can contrast that to the way I think. And I see, oh, that's the gap. That's where I want to be. So I think those are the two most, I guess, like intoxicating things and people. What do you think? Is that the same for you? Or is that just a me thing?

• 27:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And I know a bunch of people like that. And I'm like, in, in both ways, I'm like, I'm exhausted. I can't be around you anymore, but then I crave it constantly.

• 27:17Shaan Puri?

  I crave you when you're gone. Yeah.

• 27:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I've got, like, when my friends talk about working with Travis, they're like, are you going to go work at his new company? They're like, he's trying to recruit me and I just can't do it. I can't go to war again, but I'm just too worn out. But like, I miss it every day. So it's like a, it's a duality there. But yeah, I completely agree with you. And I'm actually, um, reading this book with, yeah, the laws of human nature. In order to like, learn a little bit more, because I used to study this stuff constantly. I would read books on influence and persuasion, because I was like, I can't build anything. So I just have to be a leader of, of people. And I'm kind of like persuade people to do this because I, I can't do it. I don't have the ability. So I, I gotta bring some attributes to the table. And so that was my thing. Oh, there you go. Dan's reading it too.

• 28:02Sam Parr?

  So what do you, so like, I read the laws of human nature by Robert Greene, which is about like, how to like influence humans a little bit and how we think. I like, uh, how to win friends that influence people. And I like thinking grow rich for self-confidence. Is there anything you like?

• 28:15Shaan Puri?

  I don't so books wise, whatever, maybe I don't know, but this you just reminded me of something I read yesterday. There's a Cora story about this guy who interviewed at Apple with Steve Jobs. Have you ever read this story?

• 28:27Sam Parr?

  No.

• 28:27Shaan Puri?

  Oh, sorry. I'm pulling it up right here. So you can you can have the link.

• 28:30Sam Parr?

  But I was shaking my head. No.

• 28:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, podcast, bro. We got to have audio.

• 28:36Sam Parr?

  I know.

• 28:37Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so there's this thing like so this guy writes this anonymous thing. This might be, by the way, this might just be straight up like fan fiction. So so like if I fell for some fan fiction, you know, my bad. Either way, it was pretty inspiring.

• 28:52Sam Parr?

  Who cares?

• 28:52Shaan Puri?

  This guy goes, yeah, I was at MIT and and I, you know, I was getting recruited by Apple, and I didn't want to work at Apple. I wanted to go do something else. I don't know, stay in school or like go to a different job. He's like, but you know, people told me like, okay, just go Apple, go interview, see if you get the job, see if you get an offer like that's good for you. So he goes to Apple and he's he's sitting in the interview and sure enough, like you're asking a bunch of questions that just make him be like, if this is your question, I just definitely don't want to work here. And then he's like, then I heard this sort of like, sound on the other side of the like, kind of the glass door or whatever, the mirror and and, you know, Steve Jobs walks in and Steve Jobs walks in and he kind of like dismisses the VP who was like doing the interview. And

• 29:37Shaan Puri?

  he looks, he's like, he sits down, he doesn't look at me. He looks at the sheet of questions and he's just reading them. He's like, like, I don't know, five, six, seven minutes go by. He hasn't introduced himself. He hasn't said a word to me. He hasn't looked up and made eye contact. He is just reading this list of interview questions. And he's like kind of scoffing at them as he's reading them. And he's just like, you know, muttering kind of like, like, you know, stupid. And so he basically, you know, sort of the long story short is he goes, you know, how would we ever expect somebody interesting to to work with us when we ask the most uninteresting questions? And so he's like muttering that.

• 30:17Shaan Puri?

  And so he he he puts the paper down and he looks at the guy and he goes, who are you? And he goes, the guy kind of like answers like most people would or whatever. He's like, you know, I'm, I'm Tom. I don't know his name. Let's pretend he's Tom. You know, I'm Tom. You know, I'm, you know, I'm interviewing for the job here. Yeah, I know what you're doing. I said, who are you? Who are you? He's like, ah, you know, honestly, I don't even really want this job. Like, you know, like, I'm not that interested in working at Apple. He's like, he's like, I'm not asking if you're interested in the job. I'm asking you who are, right? So he's like going back and forth and the guy's like, look, you know, whatever. He tries to answer the question. And then Steve's like, why don't you want to work at Apple?

• 31:00Shaan Puri?

  And he goes, ah, honestly, you know, I just blah, blah, blah. Steve goes, like, take a walk with me. Right? And Steve Jobs famous for like these walking meetings. So he, he's like, okay, like, I guess so, you know? And he says, takes a walk with him. And so they, they walk around the, the sort of campus and he's like, you can literally see like, it's like he's got a, a like a gravity field around him. Like everywhere he walks, people just clear the path. Uh, cause they don't want to like talk to him. They don't want to like get in his way, bother him or anything like that. He's like, we're talking and he's giving me the whole spiel of like, you know, we're making some really great stuff here. Like we're really, really great. Like you won't believe, or just like kind of the, like Steve in the keynote, he's doing the, the kind of like buildup. He's not telling him anything yet. Uh, what he's telling him is really great. He's like, you gotta meet John, Johnny Ive, right?

• 31:45Shaan Puri?

  You can come meet Johnny. And they go into Johnny Ive's office and he's showing them cool stuff or whatever. Anyways, the story ends with, with the guy sort of like getting wrapped up in the like intoxication of Steve Jobs. He's like, dude, I told you, I don't want to work here. I don't want to work here. And Steve Jobs is like, um, give me a month. It'll be the best month of your life. Um, I will, you know, I'll pay you three times what your normal rate would be for the month. You know, for one month, I'll make you, I'll pay you triple. We'll get you a car or an apartment and whatever else. Um, just say yes and like, say yes, and we're, we're, it's done. The guy's like, okay. And he's like, fantastic. And he's like, Jennifer, Jennifer will help you from here. And like Jennifer, you know, like whatever he like goes and introduces or he, he, he leaves the guy for a second.

• 32:29Shaan Puri?

  He's like, okay, Jennifer's gonna help you. Jennifer now knows all the details about this whole situation, asks no questions. You know, has him sign a thing. He's like, what's my job title? It's like, you're a Steve hire. He's like, uh, who do I report to? I guess you report to Steve. We don't know. Don't ask those questions. Those are not questions you want to ask Steve. And he's like, um, okay, cool. But like, uh, I don't live here. I live in Pittsburgh, so I gotta like move my stuff. It's like, um, or no, no, he's like, he's like, you know, I, I just have kind of my suitcase with me. They're like, no, no, Steve's arranging all of your stuff to be moved here. He's like, well, I don't know if I'm gonna stay the month. He's like, that's okay. We'll move it back if you decide not to. Steve prefers, Steve wants you to have your stuff here. And your apartment is across the street. Here's your keys and a car will be there waiting for you.

• 33:10Shaan Puri?

  He's like, this was like an hour of total time had elapsed and somehow like the world had moved to make Steve's like wish come true. And so, I don't know. Again, this might just be

• 33:19Sam Parr?

  That's true. Do you think that's

• 33:20Shaan Puri?

  This might just be fanfiction and even if it is, I fucking love it. It's a great, like, you know, random ass tech fanfiction.

• 33:26Sam Parr?

  God, I love that.

• 33:27Shaan Puri?

  But if it's true, how fucking cool is that?

• 33:30Sam Parr?

  I, I find it hard to believe it's so cool.

• 33:34Shaan Puri?

  And also, there's no fucking point to the story, right? Like, I read the story. I was like, what's the point of this story? I didn't know. It's stuck in my head and I told you now and, you know, tens of thousands of listeners. I still don't know what the point of the story is, except for how fucking cool is that if that happened?

• 33:50Sam Parr?

  I think it's sick and I've, and, and to bring it back to like these personality things.

• 33:55Shaan Puri?

  Cult of personality.

• 33:57Sam Parr?

  To wrap it up, any, I mean, you've got a good personality. Uh, what do you, any resources for like improving that?

• 34:03Shaan Puri?

  I'll tell you one thing I do. I think that the whole cult of personality ego thing, that might work for some people where they're like, I'm great. This place is great. We're gonna do great work. I think that works. I find that to be really hard in practice to like, uh, execute with a straight face. And so the thing that I use as like maybe my stepping stone towards being more like that is I, I do this exercise with anybody I work with. And in fact, you know, we met Dan in Miami. This was the one, Dan wanted to chat about ideas for the podcast because he's trying to do his job. He's like, hey, I have a bunch of ideas for how we can grow the pod and make it work better. And we did that. Normally what I would do when I first bring anyone on to the team is I basically do like a dream exercise with them. I'm like, okay, come to this office, come to the, come to the whiteboard room.

• 34:46Shaan Puri?

  Go to the whiteboard and they expect me to like kind of outline their role or talk about the project. I'm like, no, no, no. Like same sort of thing. Who are you? Who are you trying to be by the time you're done here? This, this job, this, this job is like getting into a car. Right? You're gonna have a bunch of, it's going on a road trip. You're gonna have a bunch of other people in the car with you. We, you know, we're cool. It's gonna be a fun hang. The music is good. The vibe is nice. Roll up the window. You're gonna feel, feel the air going through, you know, through your hair. Okay. We're trying to get to some destination. And your job is not to be like focused on the car, making the car as great as it can be. Uh, you're, you recognize that every business, every experience is just a vehicle to get you to some other, like destination for yourself. And so like, what is that for

• 35:29Shaan Puri?

  you? Who are you today? And who do you want to walk out of here as? And I start getting them pumped, talking about themselves. And, um, usually people have a very hard time even having a vision for themselves. Right? It's like, it's, it's normal to have a vision for the company and a mission for the company. Uh, nine out of 10 people, maybe 99 out of 100 people don't have a vision for themselves or a mission for themselves. Right? And, uh, and, and how crazy is that? Like yourself is a lot more important than, than the, the corporation you work for. And so I try to like sketch that with them. And that does two things. One is, um, they realize that I care about them as a person. Uh, and I'm here to like, I'm gonna help them get where they want to go. Right? And then the second thing is, I get to see how they're wired. I get to see what makes them tick. I get

• 36:13Shaan Puri?

  to see what, what they're motivated by. So now, when it comes time to get great, you know, great effort out of them, I know what moves the needle for them personally. Um, so that's the thing, that's a thing I do. That's like kind of in this realm.

• 36:24Sam Parr?

  I, I, I feel like I'm taking notes. Good. I dig this shit. Do you wanna, um, just bang out a few quick ideas? You wanna start with, you wanna do ice barrels?

• 36:35Shaan Puri?

  Let's do, yeah. Can I tell the story about hyper ice? And then we'll talk about the ice barrels.

• 36:39Sam Parr?

  Go for it.

• 36:40Shaan Puri?

  Had you heard about hyper ice before? Do you know this?

• 36:43Sam Parr?

  What is it?

• 36:44Shaan Puri?

  So it's this thing you might've seen. If you've ever seen anybody who's an athlete and, um, after they work out or whatever, they're wearing, they're not like going in an ice tub anymore. They're wearing this giant black thing that's wrapped around their legs that like is pumping some air or compression or cooling into their, like on, onto their body.

• 37:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:02Shaan Puri?

  Um, you know, the first time you see it, they, it looks weird, right? They're like, kind of like, it's like they're the Michelin man. They have this like-

• 37:07Sam Parr?

  Did you discover this from the guy who tweeted at us?

• 37:10Shaan Puri?

  No, who tweeted ass?

• 37:11Sam Parr?

  Oh, someone was like, I want to send you guys hyper ice stuff.

• 37:14Shaan Puri?

  Oh, no way. Uh, maybe he listens to the pod. That would be amazing. But, uh, I don't know. I just saw this because, um, uh, random, random story, but like, I saw it because in the NBA games now, you always see NBA players all of a sudden for the first time ever. When they go to the bench to rest, they don't just sit there and rest, right? Like it used to be, you go sit down and rest. The camera doesn't even show you. Then the camera started showing you because they want to show your facial reaction. And then what happened in the Jordan era was, oh, he's always drinking Gatorade, right? He's a sponsored athlete. Gatorade, Gatorade, Gatorade. Inside the cup of Gatorade is probably water, but like he's holding a Gatorade cup always, right? Because Gatorade wanted to be the way you refuel your body, uh, you know, as a, as a drink, right?

• 37:54Shaan Puri?

  They wanted that, that, that niche. And by partnering with all the sports team, it was sort of a genius thing, right? Uh, when the Super Bowl ends, they dump the Gatorade on the coach, right? They created these, uh, branding moments. And so now every year at the Super Bowl, hundreds of millions of people see the Gatorade's, uh, you know, canister. How genius is that? So I saw a new thing that caught my attention and it was LeBron went to the bench and he took this Theragun looking thing out. He started, you know, like self-massaging using this gun on his leg to like recover while he was resting. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And it wasn't a Theragun. It was like a different device. So I went and looked it up. It's a thing called Hypervolt and Hypervolt is made by Hyperice. So what is this company?

• 38:35Shaan Puri?

  So it's the same company that makes those, those cooling like, uh, straps or I don't know what you would call it, like this giant black thing. Put this sleeve you put on your leg, around your leg, and it's like a way to ice your legs after you work out. And so here's the backstory. There's a guy who's like a teacher and a high school basketball coach. And, um, he was, you know, sort of, uh, always, he was just a coach and he was sort of thinking about recovery. Cause you know, you get into your thirties and now when you're after you work out or after you play basketball, you're gonna like not be able to walk great the next day. And, uh, so he was sort of experimenting like, is there anything better than just icing your, like basically he thought to himself, what do the pro athletes do? He's like, they ice, they ice their knees, they ice their ankles. And if you watch them do it, it always looked the same.

• 39:18Shaan Puri?

  It was like a giant bag of ice.

• 39:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Shaan Puri?

  With an ice bandage around the, the top of it. And it literally looks like a wounded person, right? Like it looked like you're hurt. If, if, if somebody was to draw a cartoon of somebody with a bum shoulder, they would draw this giant ice bag on the top. And, um, and that, you know, a, and, and basically, uh, bandage wrapped around it. So he's like, that sucks. Like, you're not like broken, uh, you're recovering. Could we make recovery look cool and be more efficient? So he starts trying to design a ice wrap that's less inconvenient and looks cooler. So he's like, oh, it'd be cool if it just like, you know, strapped on to you. And it wasn't a bag of ice that was like, you know, getting wet everywhere. If it was just cold. And, um, you know, so he starts working on it and his friend is a guy who trains with Kobe

• 40:03Shaan Puri?

  or is like a, a, the coach of a, of a little college that Kobe used to train at, at, uh, Irvine in the summers. And so his friend sees his thing and goes, dude, you gotta show this to Kobe. And he's like, oh, okay. Yeah, sure. And he's like, you know, a week later, he's like, dude, I told Kobe, Kobe was icing his knees after, after we did a workout and I told him about your thing. He wants to see it. Can you come? So he goes, he shows Kobe and Kobe says two things. He's like, first, you know, some product feedback, like when we're icing, uh, you know, the pressure keeps escaping out of the top. So like, it's not working, it's not compressing tight enough. So can you fix that? The guy's like, got his notepad out. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And Kobe's like, also, um, the name fucking sucks. He's like, oh, uh, okay. Uh, hyper ice, you know, actually I named it after you, your favorite shoe.

• 40:48Shaan Puri?

  And my favorite shoe was like the hyper dunks, uh, by Nike. So I thought hyper ice. And Kobe was like, name sucks. And, uh, but he keep, he ended up keeping it. And so he ended up doing product development with Kobe and Kobe made him a deal. Kobe goes, look, if you can make it better than my current thing, I'll wear it on the bench. So you'll get free kind of exposure, you know, from this thing. You see these pictures of Kobe with icing his shoulder using hyper ice. So. Kobe does it. People see it on the bench. More athletes started asking more Lakers started asking for it. Now other teams players start asking for it. He builds a brand around this. And what he's building is Nike for recovery. So

• 41:22Sam Parr?

  Which is like the greatest. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Because that calm, he says that he wants to be the Nike for meditation or Nike for

• 41:31Shaan Puri?

  Nike for the mind.

• 41:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and that makes sense. I get that. I think that's cool. I think this is even better.

• 41:37Shaan Puri?

  It's even better. Exactly. Because what is Nike? Nike was all about the performance. When you're on the court, when you're on the field, wear this, you can run faster, jump higher, blah, blah, blah. And then that became a super competitive space. How do we get you to perform better? Right? Wear this, wear this Under Armour, you know, you know, use these cleats, whatever it is. But nobody was really, he's like, you would see them wear all this gear, sell billions of dollars of merchandise by wearing it on the court. And then when they got off the court, they were using ice bandages and plastic bags of ice.

• 42:07Sam Parr?

  What a brilliant insight.

• 42:09Shaan Puri?

  Brilliant, right? Fuck. And he's like, dude, I had no idea, no intention to go into business. I was a happy teacher and coach, but like, you know, I just sort of stumbled on this path, really. And so now, Hyperice, they do, they have the ice product, they have the Theragun type product.

• 42:23Sam Parr?

  I'm looking at it. And, and I like this company because their shit's expensive. And I would consider, we're going to talk about another thing that's expensive. I would consider buying this because I think expensive, good, health.

• 42:34Shaan Puri?

  Expensive equals good.

• 42:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like when I see, like it looks

• 42:38Shaan Puri?

  Always use it equals good. Expensive equals good, right?

• 42:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like everything, their branding is tight. It's a well executed thing.

• 42:45Shaan Puri?

  So let me give you some numbers. Last year, 100 million in revenue is what they said. They were projecting 200 million this year. It raised last year at a $700 million valuation. So this is going to be, you know, if this continues to work, this will be a billion dollar plus company that was started in the way that I just described. How fucking cool is that story? I love that story. And I love this concept. And we have an, you have an idea, and I have a couple other ideas about what else you could do here. But here's the framework. The framework is Athletes are the, one of the greatest marketing vehicles of all time. Go look at the shoe companies if you want proof of that. Uh, go look at Gatorade, go look at who McDonald's and Coke will sponsor. It's the top athletes, uh, even though they're obviously not eating McDonald's and drinking Coke in order to perform their best, but that's, that's, they're the best marketing

• 43:30Shaan Puri?

  vehicle. And the native placement is what matters. So it's one thing to say, you know, I'm holding a Coke and, or, you know, McDonald's in a, in a commercial. It's another thing to watch them actually drinking, you know, from a Gatorade cup during the thing or wearing hyper ice after they train because that's feels real. It feels like this is what the pros, this is what top performers actually do. So looking at the pregame and the postgame, how much more is there? If you walked into a locker room before and after a game, what are all the other things you'll see them doing? And then how could you turn those from unbranded moments into branded moments, right? Beats by Dre is a perfect example of this. Beats by Dre is sold to Apple for $3 billion. One of the reasons why is they made headphones. Well, all right, there's already a bunch of

• 44:14Shaan Puri?

  headphones out there. There's Sonos, there's Sennheiser, there's all these other ones. And, um, what Beats by Dre did was they gave it to all the athletes that they, you know, Dre was, had the kind of hip hop roots. And then all their commercials, if you remember was Colin Kaepernick showing up to the game, the fans are booing him. He puts the Beats by Dre on, he goes into the zone. He can't hear the noise. All he hears is his music and then he goes to the game, right? They intentionally always put it in the lockers of all the players. So when they're doing their interviews, they have headphones around their neck. They have headphones hanging right behind them, right? They're walking into the arena. That has become like, before every NBA game, you, they show the walk-in, what is LeBron wearing, uh, when he walks in? So those become branded moments where maybe you can build products around that.

• 44:54Sam Parr?

  And he obviously got all the right people to invest. I'm looking at the crunch base. It's all athletes. Fernando Tatis, Ricky Fowler, Doc Rivers, DeAndre Jordan, uh, what's that?

• 45:02Shaan Puri?

  Kevin Durant.

• 45:04Sam Parr?

  Naomi Osaka.

• 45:05Shaan Puri?

  Osaka, yeah.

• 45:07Sam Parr?

  This guy is gonna crush it. This is the greatest thing ever.

• 45:10Shaan Puri?

  And so tell me about this ice barrel thing, because I think you have a cool story around this.

• 45:15Sam Parr?

  So I was at a friend's house. I've talked about him. He lives a few doors down from me and his name's Andy. And he started this company called Student Loan Here, I believe. And he sold it for a lot of money, 60 million bucks. And I was at his house for lunch, my wife and I, and he had this huge barrel. And I was like, what the fuck is this thing? He goes, it's his company that I just bought a large stake in and I'm helping them get their shit right. And it's this barrel that you hop into and it's just an ice barrel. That's all it is, is an ice barrel. But there's one pretty shocking thing about it. It's $2,000. So like I'm in this text group with you.

• 45:49Shaan Puri?

  Well, set this up in the way that you're, you were an athlete, right? People saw the quads. They saw Quadzilla in the Twitter photo.

• 45:56Sam Parr?

  Isn't that funny, that picture?

• 45:59Shaan Puri?

  Right? They saw the quads. You were a track athlete. When you were done training, did you ever ice?

• 46:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 46:06Shaan Puri?

  Did you do ice baths?

• 46:07Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 46:08Shaan Puri?

  And what did you do for in your post game? If I had walked in the locker room looking for startup ideas, what would I have seen you doing?

• 46:14Sam Parr?

  I mean, you're just sitting in the ice bath. You're just sitting there.

• 46:16Shaan Puri?

  What is the ice bath made of? It's not a barrel. It's what?

• 46:18Sam Parr?

  Well, they use like trash cans typically, like you'll use like a shitty trash can or you'll use these massive plastic buckets, but typically like a trash can.

• 46:29Shaan Puri?

  Right. So it's this unbranded thing that the athletes are doing to recover. And it's like this literally like a 64 gallon black trash can, which is kind of gross of an idea that that's, what do I do to recover? I get in a fucking trash can, right? So like, that was the opportunity to make that sexy and cool in a branded moment. And that's what these guys did. It's a giant, cool looking like barrel. So, you know, it's like, like a, like where you would store like whiskey or something like that.

• 46:55Sam Parr?

  And there's actually a few reasons why I think this is going to be big. So the best example I could think of is Yeti. There's two examples, Yeti and WeatherTech. WeatherTech makes floor mats, boring, silly thing. I buy, whenever I buy a car, I immediately buy WeatherTech mats.

• 47:10Shaan Puri?

  Swap them out. Yeah.

• 47:11Sam Parr?

  Right away. And they like, you think that these are like kind of forgotten things. Same with Yeti. Yeti was just, you know, everyone has the Coleman cooler growing up. They just made it cool. And they like are four X more expensive than the nearest competitor. And yet we all do it. And this, what's it called? Icebarrel dot?

• 47:28Shaan Puri?

  Basically, if I was going to distill their formula, it's like. Double the value, quadruple the price, right? Like, that's the way I would, I would describe.

• 47:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and it's like massive plastic thing. But the reason why it's cool is those trash cans. If you're like a, a big guy, like I kinda am, like you can't like push down on the thing. Otherwise it's gonna like collapse.

• 47:48Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 47:48Sam Parr?

  And so you gotta like step out of it.

• 47:49Shaan Puri?

  Getting in and out sucks.

• 47:50Sam Parr?

  And it's, and it's inconvenient. It's not that inconvenient, but it's inconvenient. But, but the type of person that ice baths, like if you're gonna like make it a little bit more convenient and it's two grand, I'm like, oh, fuck it, whatever. I don't care. Like, like $500 and $2,000 is like, kind of like the same thing to me a little bit when it comes to like health and fitness.

• 48:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:09Sam Parr?

  So I'll buy it if I, if I'm into that. And so it doesn't really look that spectacular, but when your shit's two grand, you don't need to sell that many of them. I mean, if you're selling 40 a day, what's that? 40 a day is 80K a day in revenue, times 30, uh, that's, uh, 2.4 million dollars a month, which is 36 million dollars a year. You gotta sell very little and that's kinda why I like this business. I think, and, and I think I talked to him about it. I, I, he says it costs a lot of money, uh, because it, they, it costs them a lot of money.

• 48:43Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:43Sam Parr?

  So like, it's a pretty interesting business. Are you bullish on that?

• 48:47Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I love that idea. I wouldn't have been as bullish until I looked at it through this, through this lens. Now I see, now I see the value. The other ideas that I think are like this, so if I was gonna be like, okay, what else? What else can I do? We've talked before about saunas. I think saunas are going.

• 49:02Sam Parr?

  Agreed.

• 49:03Shaan Puri?

  Saunas are just gonna keep exploding in popularity.

• 49:05Sam Parr?

  100% agree.

• 49:06Shaan Puri?

  Joe Rogan is kinda like the LeBron in this case, who's been touting them, but a lot of athletes use saunas.

• 49:12Sam Parr?

  I had one.

• 49:13Shaan Puri?

  A lot of, it's kinda like.

• 49:14Sam Parr?

  I had a cheap one on Amazon for a grand. It was called the Barcelona.

• 49:17Shaan Puri?

  Yes, exactly. So, uh, I wa, you know, like where is our sauna sponsorship? I'm waiting for my home sauna sponsorship. You know, I think a lot of people are gonna install home saunas. There's also like other like technologies like that, like. I forgot like red, red light therapy and some other shit like that. I don't know what they are, but all you gotta do is educate me and then sell me, right? That's what you gotta do if you're.

• 49:39Sam Parr?

  I tried buying a sensory deprivation tank. So I used to go to this place in the Mission in San Francisco and I'd pay $50. And you like sit in this thing that kind of looks like a tanning bed and it's filled with water and salt and you just float for uh like an hour and it was quite nice. I loved it. I tried to buy one. I was like, I was like, you know, I've got space. What I'll put one in my garage. How much is it? It's like $20,000 or I mean, it's like a fuck ton and it doesn't have to cost that much money.

• 50:06Shaan Puri?

  So here's the, why, why is it? I don't need a full body tank. That, that works, but if somebody made a dope helmet that was like, go to the place of silence. It's like, what? You go in this thing and you're not going to hear a fucking thing or you're going to hear a specific sounds like, you know, like calming sounds, whatever it is. I think somebody could sell a helmet that is going to like basically change your state. It's sort of like the sensory deprivation idea. As just a helmet. I think that would be kind of cool as a random idea.

• 50:33Sam Parr?

  All right. Ice barrel. What else?

• 50:35Shaan Puri?

  So we got sauna. We got ice barrel. We got sensory deprivation. Here's another one. I bought these little things. Oh man, I could go pick them up, but they're basically these little inflatable pods. So it's like a little inflatable, uh, plastic thing. That I saw LeBron using. So LeBron has his like warmups. That's become part of the television programming is they show LeBron before the game. What is he doing to get ready? And I saw he was always standing on or kneeling on these two little clear plastic things. And one time when, when he was recovering from injury, the reporter kind of showed LeBron's been using this thing. It's this instability ball. And the idea is like a Bosu ball. Basically you, when you stand on it, it gives you an uneven, like uneven surface, right?

• 51:19Shaan Puri?

  Because most of our weight training, we are on flat, you know, hard, stable surfaces. But then when you do athletic things, you're not always landing at the exact angle as that. So he does his training on top of that. He does all his warmups there and it like warmups all his sort of like little micro muscles and micro fibers. They all get activated when he just spends time squatting on this hand, standing on this, balancing on this. Same thing with Steph Curry for his ankles. He does the same thing. And so I think that uh little products like that can work. Uh, Ben sent me another one of these. That's like a medicine ball that's filled with water. So you take a traditional piece of equipment, like a medicine ball. It's just, it's just, you know, solid and heavy. When you put water in it and you move it from side to side, the water, you know, your arms move and then the water sloshes

• 52:03Shaan Puri?

  in that direction. And then if you're trying to move back, the water is moving one way, you're moving the other. So it's a good resistance training. And so I think water-based, water-based training things, if the athletes are doing that, I think that's kind of interesting and people will want to buy what the athletes buy. The other is braces, knee braces, ankle braces, shoulder wraps, wrist wraps, you know, like anything that is like injury prevention, I think could be sexed up because they are usually pretty like basic stuff right now.

• 52:30Sam Parr?

  There's a, when you're talking, I'll keep Googling, but there's a, so you know how when you get surgery, you, have you ever had like a, you've never had this, but you know, like if you've ever seen your parents or friends get like a shoulder surgery, you have to keep your shoulder in this like particular type of cast where your arm stays up high.

• 52:46Shaan Puri?

  The L, yes.

• 52:47Sam Parr?

  So there's this brand that is a startup that is like remaking those. And it's called like, what was it called? It's like Champion Sports or something, where they did a whole thing around these soft casts. So like when you have like a walking boot, they made like cool walking boots. And that's actually a great one. It's like a cooler walking boot. And they built this business all around this. And that's actually really interesting as well.

• 53:10Shaan Puri?

  There was a woman who, I don't remember the name of it, but I'll try to find it. Maybe we'll put it in the show notes. There's a woman who was like a designer of some kind and she got like paralyzed and went in a wheelchair and then she like changed her life mission. She designed herself like the coolest looking wheelchair that didn't look like, you know, you're, you know, if you're younger, like what, how do you make a wheelchair look slick? It had like cup holders, a place for your phone. It was just like nice looking. It wasn't the kind of like blue and metal, like kind of look that you see at a hospital. And she just made like an awesome looking wheelchair. And it's like, hey, look, if you're in a wheelchair, like, okay, but let's make it as good as we can. And I, and she was like, this is my new life mission. I thought that was pretty great, too.

• 53:49Sam Parr?

  By the way, it's called Game Ready. Check it out. Go to gameready.com. It looks like they're acquired. They were doing $35 million a year when they got acquired.

• 53:58Shaan Puri?

  This is the ICE thing?

• 54:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, wow, it only got acquired for $65 million. But yeah, go to Game Ready. They it's they have ice up, but they also have like post-surgery equipment. Uh, kind of interesting, right?

• 54:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So anyways, I think that I think there's an opportunity. The brainstorm would be go hang out with an athlete. Follow them pregame, postgame, during the game, during timeouts, and just look for what are all the things that everybody's doing that's unbranded? And then can you make a higher quality branded version of this? Can you create, uh, you know, can you? And then you you use that marketing strategy of the trickle down. You give the athletes the coolest shit. Other people see it and you sell it to the wannabe athletes. You're not making the money from the athletes themselves. You're ma- making the money off of, right? Like Ice Barrel, what they need is they need they need you to see this in pro locker rooms. And then he then they need every high school to be like, oh, that's what, you know, that's what the Lakers used when they were covering, or that's what the, you know, the, um, the Patriots use in their locker room.

• 54:58Sam Parr?

  Dude, I feel like, um, I gotta email this guy and be like, hey, we just give you a shout out. We're we're definitely gonna get this guy's sales. It it's a small company. I don't think they I think it's only like two employees. They're definitely gonna see a bump from this. And we're gonna have to ask them how many people bought? Because IceBarrel.com, uh, just go there right now and buy their shit. And and actually, by the way, it's not two grand. I got it wrong. It's a 1,200.

• 55:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's $1,200. Yeah, they're like, thanks for the shout out asshole. You, uh, you made it seem even more expensive than it is.

• 55:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I thought it was two grand. It's 1,200, or maybe the big one is 2,000. Anyway, it's cool. It's a cool thing. I'm excited to actually see how this works. Their their website looks pretty slick. What is this?

• 55:37Shaan Puri?

  I know.

• 55:38Sam Parr?

  This looks great.

• 55:39Shaan Puri?

  So tho- those are some ideas. Uh, yeah.

• 55:42Sam Parr?

  I think that might be it.

• 55:43Shaan Puri?

  Peace out.

• 55:44Sam Parr?

  We actually have like way more, but we're gonna have to save those for later.

• 55:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Dan, what'd you think?

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I like the episode. I like the coworking section. I think you guys bring a unique perspective to that. And having worked in a WeWork, it's exciting to know that there are some, I guess, new opportunities. And that whole concept isn't gonna die, uh, with WeWork.

• 56:04Shaan Puri?

  What was the what was the absolute best part of the episode?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  The best part of the episode?

• 56:10Speaker 02

  I like the recovery stuff. I have one of the the knockoff like a hypervolt or whatever. I like using that. I haven't done a an ice barrel before. But I have some friends that have done like those like cold chambers or whatever. You do like the two minutes inside.

• 56:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you know what else blows that up? By the way, Wim Hof. Wim Hof has gotten really popular in like, you know, some niche circles, I guess, but he's all about cold, cold.

• 56:36Sam Parr?

  Would you pay?

• 56:37Shaan Puri?

  Submerging yourself in cold.

• 56:38Sam Parr?

  Would you pay $3,500 to go to his house and train with him?

• 56:42Shaan Puri?

  Wim Hof?

• 56:43Sam Parr?

  You can do it. Maybe it's something like $2,000 or $3,000 or $4,000. I think I would do that.

• 56:48Shaan Puri?

  It's not the money. It's more the time. Like, yeah, if I had a little bit of time, yeah, I would love to do that. That'd be great.