The #1 Most Underrated Quality in an Entrepreneur

Get our Business Monetization Playbook: https://clickhubspot.com/monetization Episode 660: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about founders who have rage as an unfair advantage, Bill Ackman’s takedown of Harvard, and a ruthless PE rollup. — Show Notes: (0:00) Revenge businesses and other green flags (5:55) Chips on shoulders = chips in pockets (19:38) Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (34:48) Ruthless PE rollup: International schools (43:58) IDEA: $500M YouTube University (54:11) Bill Ackman Breaks down Harvard as a business — Links: • How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps - https://tinyurl.com/2x67a7jc • Nord Anglia Education - https://www.nordangliaeducation.com/ • Full Sail University - https://hello.fullsail.edu/ • University of Austin - https://www.uaustin.org/people/joe-lonsdale • Veritas? - https://pershingsquarefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Veritas.pdf — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Josh Wolf has this phrase where he says, chips on shoulders equals chips in pockets. Basically is when you meet an entrepreneur who's got an uncurable, unhealable, you know, identity wound. That ends up being somebody who ends up doing really well.

• 0:22Sam Parr?

  Let me fill you in on some things that I saw this week that I just want to get your opinion on. Sam Lessin, so Sam Lessin, I think he was like an early Facebook employee and now he's an investor. He says a lot of interesting stuff. So he did this tweet where he talked about revenge businesses. People who have started stuff because they want to get revenge. And an example of this is this guy named Parker Conrad. Basically, he started this company called Zenefits, which was a fast growing company. It kicked ass, whatever. He gets fired because it was like a bro-y culture. There was like people caught like having sex in like the stairwells, like people doing drunk dumb shit. Like there was also like some complacency issues of like, not everyone was like compliant. And so he got fired. And so he starts this new company called Rippling, which has taken off like a rocket.

• 1:08Sam Parr?

  And Sam Lessin, I guess, invested in it. Same with Palmer Lucky. Guy got fired from Facebook. He started Oculus, now starts, what's it called? Androl?

• 1:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Androl, yeah.

• 1:18Sam Parr?

  And so anyway, Sam Lessin has this really cool line. He says, if you have in your diligence checklist, is this company a form of deep revenge? The answer is yes. Cut the check. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because oftentimes you'll talk to someone and they'll say, hey, man, you got a lot of hate in your heart. You gotta let that, you gotta let that out. You can't, you know, you can't, you can't hold that in your heart. You can't like live with that. I've taken the opposite approach for like the last handful of years. I actually think that hate, if you have in your heart, it can be really useful. Like revenge and rage is like a very useful feeling. So ashamed. People will be like, why are you guilting someone into like doing this or that? I'm like, well, guilt is a wonderful emotion to improve. And I wanted to get your opinion on his take here.

• 2:02Shaan Puri?

  I mean, I think it's honestly kind of genius. And I think people don't like to say things like this, but there are a bunch of heuristics for investing that sound so stupid or sound inappropriate, but are actually true and useful. So, you know, for example,

• 2:23Shaan Puri?

  And you can frame these different ways, but I have a friend who was like, you know how Paul Graham talks about? He wants to invest in fierce nerds and a fierce nerd is basically it's a nerd who's like overly competitive.

• 2:36Sam Parr?

  And also like a little bit of a shithead.

• 2:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. You know, doesn't is looking to sort of break the system, beat the system is overly competitive. Maybe unrefined in certain other areas of their life, but that's what you want. And my friend was like, yeah, I look for fierce nerds who love money. He's explicitly the for love who love money is a multiplier on the fierce nerd concept. And, you know, we've joked on this pod before about like, you know, if in your pitch deck, I'm like, okay, went on a Mormon mission. Or like, you know, grew up in, you know, a Slavic country, Eastern Europe. I'm like, you know, little plus points are going off in my head. These are green flags in my head. It's not a for sure. Yes, but like, I'm not stupid. Like eventually you realize, goddamn, these people from Utah can sell.

• 3:23Shaan Puri?

  Or wow, these programmers from this area of the country are pretty badass. Or when somebody is, you know, it's like getting up, being a Harvard dropout is a stronger signal than being a Harvard graduate. There's all these things that sound silly, but actually end up being true. Because if you're the type of person who can get into Harvard and that has enough conviction in an idea to drop out of Harvard against the social pressures of Harvard, that actually turns out to be a pretty good filter. Now, of course, these things can be gamed if people realize that these are the signals you're looking for, right? Like people showing up to pitch meetings and like acting a little extra autistic. It's like, okay, we kind of know what you're doing here. You're trying to fit some pattern that this investor is trying to match against.

• 4:00Shaan Puri?

  So all of these things would be game, but it's great when you can figure out a signal that is not yet common. And so this one of is this person, you know, is this a revenge company is a great signal. It's a green flag signal.

• 4:19Sam Parr?

  Have you seen the Ted Turner documentary that recently came out on HBO?

• 4:23Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 4:24Sam Parr?

  Everyone should go and watch this. So Ted Turner has been one of my heroes for decades because his biography was so good. And basically, his story is that he inherited a billboard business from his father, and it was a great billboard company, like it was in the South and it was thriving. He took the money from that and he started a local TV station. He eventually bought the Braves for cheap. He bought the Atlanta Hawks for cheap. Then he parlayed all of that and bet all of his money in CNN and was constantly on the brink of bankruptcy, not because his businesses sucked, but because he was just like pushing it 100% all the time. And so there was this great line, it said, this is about one of his employees. He goes, Ted had a great sense of paranoia within the company, a sense that

• 5:06Sam Parr?

  we were the little guys fighting for our lives against some big unknown guys. And the truth is, is that we are one of the biggest billboard companies in the South, one of the biggest in the country. But it may, we wanted to make everything seem more important than it probably was. And in fact, he insisted on taking his telephone calls outside on payphones because he wanted everyone to believe that his phone was being tapped. And, and if, and if you watch his documentary, he does all these amazing things. Like, for example, he's like, I have to launch CNN because Americans, at the time CNN was the first ever 24-hour news network. He was like, we owe it to America. Like, Americans need to have an option to know what's going on in the world. Like, everything had this grand sense of like, we have to do this for America, or like, they're trying to crush us. I was like, who's they?

• 5:51Sam Parr?

  We're, we're the best. And that was a big takeaway from Ted that I loved. And this post kind of reminded me of the same lesson posted about them.

• 5:59Shaan Puri?

  There's a couple of things that come to mind on this. One, Travis Kalanick is kind of like this. So he had, he hadn't gotten screwed in his first startup, literally, I think by Michael Ovitz and others. Basically, it was like during the LimeWire

• 6:16Sam Parr?

  Well, the background is Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber. Before Uber, he started Red Swoosh, which was some type of LimeWire competitor.

• 6:22Shaan Puri?

  Like a file sharing service.

• 6:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 6:23Shaan Puri?

  Peer-to-peer file sharing service. And he ends up not making a lot of money from it. By the way, Naval, same thing. He has Naval's first hit. Naval's now like, you know, this wise, sage, you know, billionaire type of dude. But he was kind of like an angry, vengeful dude when he started Opinions back in the day. The VCs kicked him out of the company. I think Opinions ended up going public during the dot com boom or had like a kind of a big exit. He got nothing. He got screwed by his own VCs.

• 6:48Sam Parr?

  He didn't make anything from that?

• 6:50Shaan Puri?

  No. And he ends up suing them. So he does the thing that normally in Silicon Valley, the founders are very afraid to fight back against the VCs. He publicly sues his own investors and ends up creating Venture Hacks, which is a blog dedicated to helping founders not get screwed by VCs. He's like, dude, I didn't know how to read these term sheets and I didn't know what these contracts meant. And they just kept telling me the dangerous words. Oh, don't worry. It's all standard. And he goes, there's nothing more dangerous than something that than when a lawyer or a VC tells you this is standard. Don't worry about it. And he goes, well, what standard ended up getting me screwed. So he starts Venture Hacks, a blog. And that leads to Angel List, which basically took the power away from, in many ways, the VCs and gave it

• 7:34Shaan Puri?

  to angel investors, the founders. It created a marketplace. So, you know, it created more transparency, more liquidity, more, more competition in that marketplace. And Angel List becomes a multi-billion dollar company. Elon is on a revenge tour right now. Literally, the Democrats were attacking him or, you know, demonizing him, suing, you know, doing, suing Tesla and SpaceX and all of his companies and adding more and more regulation. And so he just flips the script, goes all in on Trump, goes on a revenge tour. Now he's basically like a, you know, de facto president. And he's now going, now he's going in with Doge, trying to like rip out the guts of the bureaucracy, right? Like, these, these revenge tours are really, really strong. Josh

• 8:16Shaan Puri?

  Wolf has this phrase, he says, chips on shoulders equals chips in pockets. Basically, is when you meet an entrepreneur who's got a deep chip on the shoulder and it's sort of a, an uncurable, unhealable, you know, identity wound, that ends up being somebody who ends up doing really well.

• 8:32Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's a 10 out of 10 phrase, by the way.

• 8:34Shaan Puri?

  Chips and shoulders and chips and pockets?

• 8:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's a beautiful. He knocked that one out the park.

• 8:39Shaan Puri?

  It's a good one. And I've actually had trouble with this. I used to go the other way. We would meet somebody and they would say something that just sounded like, oh dude, there's a part of you that's broken inside. I like, you're really carrying this, this revenge against somebody? I used to try to A convince them that that's not, they shouldn't hold that, or be like, this person, they're not like mature, they're not wise to it. And I immediately missed out on several big opportunities. And again, in that moment, my reaction is to either A judge, which is gets you nowhere, or distance myself and say, all right, this person's not as, they're not like-minded, they're not seeing the world the way I'm seeing it. And now what I've realized is no, no, no, I need the exact opposite reaction. You go really close to that person,

• 9:24Shaan Puri?

  and you hand them a check, and you say, can I be a part of what you're doing? I'd like for your crazy psychosis to be to my financial benefit. And so like, I'll give you an example. So I'm very close to this person, and they have basically made something, they had a bankruptcy back in their twenties, late twenties, I think. So they were doing really well, got to like a $25 million net worth, but were overextended. They're in the real estate game. Were a little bit overextended. They were doing development on behalf of this person who was expanding. There's like a guy who was expanding a bunch of locations. So he's like, cool, you're gonna do 15 locations? Great, I'm in. I'll go buy these and I'll develop them for you. And then that guy got in trouble. That guy went to jail. So now he's holding the bag on these 15 locations that

• 10:06Shaan Puri?

  could only be used for one type of business. And

• 10:10Sam Parr?

  Uh, so you're saying like, it was like some guy, let's say it's like a fast food franchise, was like, I'm gonna be creating like 50 locations or whatever. Well, you go develop them and I'll meet you there.

• 10:19Shaan Puri?

  They did deal one, it was great. Deal two, it was great. Deal three is great. And so he goes, awesome, you want to do 18 more of these boxes? Great. And he goes and gets them permitted for this exact thing. He does exactly what he's supposed to do on the real, as a real estate developer. But then that guy got in trouble for tax, he hadn't been paying his taxes or whatever. He can no longer do this. So now he's on the hook for like, whatever, 18 payments for a business he can't run, and he can't use for any other purpose, and he can't really sell it because it's distressed. And it's, and this happened right in 08 when the bank crisis happens. And so nobody's investing in real estate anymore. So he gets like, basically, this series of events ends up going bankrupt. Well, he has a traumatic experience and he goes bankrupt. Not only he goes bankrupt, he was, I think he was engaged or just gotten married and all of a sudden he's back in his

• 11:04Shaan Puri?

  childhood bedroom with his wife. They've had to move back to his parents' bedroom. He's sort of ashamed of that.

• 11:10Sam Parr?

  And he had a $25 million net worth before that?

• 11:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and buying like a million dollar engagement ring, like that kind of thing. And they turn off the lights to go to bed and he's like, he's telling her, he's like, you know, I promise you, I will figure out a way. I don't care what the hell I have to do. I will fight back. I will figure out a way to make this right. Give me nine months. We're gonna be here for nine months in this room and like whatever. And he gives her this inspiring speech, this like gladiator speech, and then he turns off the lights.

• 11:36Sam Parr?

  It's like, oh shit.

• 11:37Shaan Puri?

  He had like the stars from like, you know, those like sticker stars on the ceiling? The neon ones that they start glowing and they just crack up laughing and he's like, oh my God, where am I? And so, and then he starts basically his revenge tour and he's in the 10 years since then, has built up like a billion dollar real estate portfolio using only his own money, no outside investors, probably has, you know, I don't know, something like four or five million of his own equity in these deals and has, you know, really come back strong. And so, I for years have been looking for a good way to invest in real estate. Like I looked at, should I buy my own property? Should I have some rental properties? I think, I think I kind of should take this internet money that I'm making, like I'm all in on the internet and I think I should take like, you know, 10, 20% of it, have it in like hard rock tangible assets you can go touch and feel.

• 12:19Shaan Puri?

  That seems like a smart thing to do, but I never knew how. Should I do it myself? Uh, I'm a beginner and that takes time and I don't want to go fix broken toilets. Should I give it to one of these funds or syndicators? And then you would like meet them and you realize these guys are just fee monsters. They, they make all their money on the buy. They don't make any money. You can, good luck on the sell. They make their money on the acquisition fees and management fees. So I didn't like them. And then when I met, and then when this guy was like, hey, you know, like, do you want to do a deal with me? I was like, I'm all in because the chip on this guy's shoulder of proving his dad wrong and like coming back from that bankruptcy and all of this, like, even though today he's super wealthy, he'll never stop.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  If you know, if you're a grown man who knows what it feels like to sleep with your wife in a twin bed, like, you know, that, that sticks with you, you know, like the, the feeling of like exposed ankles of blankets that don't cover your ankles, uh, stays with you.

• 13:11Shaan Puri?

  If you've ever had to call top bunk with your wife?

• 13:15Shaan Puri?

  You've experienced a trauma that I would like to invest in.

• 13:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 13:18Shaan Puri?

  When we were selling the milk road, I remember talking to, I think I could say this. I remember talking to some of the potential buyers and was like, wow, you've been really successful. And I was like, what? And I tried to get to the root. What was the motivation? Like, why did you even go this path? Was it just you had an idea and or you had, you wanted to solve this problem? And I talked to two people and one was like, no, this girl rejected me in ninth grade. And I just remember thinking like, F that, like, I'm gonna become somebody. I'm gonna be, and he's like, yeah, I know it sounds stupid and like, it was stupid, but it was effective. And the other one said the same thing. He's like, I, I was trying to live in a house. And we had six friends and we were all like, hey, let's live together next year.

• 14:01Shaan Puri?

  And then we found this awesome house, but it was a five bed house. And they were like, hey, man, um, it's only five beds. He's like, I realized I was in the bottom of my group and I was like, F those guys. Like every night they're having fun in that house. I'm going to be building an empire. And I remember just thinking like, really? First of all, that was like 20 years ago, 15 years ago, like that's still bothering, like that's still motivates you or and they're and like, don't you feel kind of silly that that that bothers you so much? Like, you know? And they were like, no, I feel they were silly for ever counting me out. And I was like, wow, okay. I am not wired like these people. I am not fueled by the same rage and like kind of revenge instincts. And I'm, I'm not saying that's the only thing that motivated them.

• 14:42Shaan Puri?

  But the fact that that was there still 15 years later was very surprising to me and I've now learned to bet on it.

• 14:49Sam Parr?

  Uh, I think that I'm not surprised that you've never had issues because you're, I've said this a bunch of times. You're, you're very emotionally healthy. Dude, I use rage and like guilt and um, like I want to.

• 15:01Shaan Puri?

  Nicotine.

• 15:02Sam Parr?

  I want to end it, you know, and I want to get back against some like, there's times that I remember my big brother, like saying something smart aleck to me and I, and I still feel that like, oh, I'm going to prove you wrong. Like I still feel it. Uh, yeah, that shit runs deep, but it is pretty helpful. Uh, it, it, it is, it makes you pretty miserable at life, but it makes you like fairly productive.

• 15:25Shaan Puri?

  I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of jealous about it. Like I, I think on the whole is probably good. I don't have that, but. It does seem kind of badass when I hear it.

• 15:33Sam Parr?

  It takes, like, it's crazy what happens. So you know how I hate flying? I went through like 10 years of therapy to figure out why I don't, like, I'm so claustrophobic. It comes down to when I was like in second grade, my brother put me in a full Nelson, you know, like a full Nelson with like a big rose. And he dipped me underwater in our pool and he was like, you know, like teasing me, but I sucked in a little bit of water. And I legitimately felt like I was drowning. I distinctly remember like, I'm dying right now. I'm about to die. And he kept dunking me and I was like, you fucking asshole, like I'm dying right now. And like, it's crazy how little moments, like, since then, by the way, I cannot stand elevators. I don't like take the subways.

• 16:12Shaan Puri?

  You'll swim. You just don't, you're like, I won't fly.

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  I don't like anything where I'm constricted and I can't escape. Uh, that, it's rooted in like, I can't escape. So if it's like a boat that like you're gonna go on and you can't see the shore, it's like, no, I'm not doing that shit.

• 16:25Shaan Puri?

  Is this what the hypnotist unlocked in you or you're saying you figured this out through therapy or something else?

• 16:29Sam Parr?

  Therapy and hypnotherapy. Yeah, like I've spent so much time and money to like figure out the root cause and how to overcome this. Uh, all from like a, a 60 second interaction with my brother where he was a kid too, where he was being innocent and just messing with me. Isn't that crazy how like the things that happen as a kid can like impact everything?

• 16:48Shaan Puri?

  By the way, does it help when you figure out the wa- the root cause or?

• 16:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 16:52Shaan Puri?

  Like, does it go away a little bit?

• 16:53Sam Parr?

  No, uh, a little bit. Like, I guess like, uh, there's this like idea of like, uh, getting over this stuff. It's called like walking to the gallows where like when you get panicky, it feels like you're dying. And in order to overcome that, you just gotta be like, fuck it, I'm gonna go die. Like, I'm gonna like experience this thing that I'm fearful of. And, uh, and you just have to do it. And it's like, it's pretty, it's pretty bad. And like, so you have to tell yourself all these stories to help get over it. And one of them is like, I only feel this way because John did this to me long ago and I was fine. Okay, I was fine. I will make it through this. Uh, and so you gotta like walk to the gallows. You gotta like tell yourself all these stories. And so that's like one of the many coping mechanisms, but it's just all happens because of a small thing when you're a kid. So it could have been like some girl said this, some guy said this to you.

• 17:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:37Sam Parr?

  And it like, it's crazy. It just shapes like 50 years of your life.

• 17:40Shaan Puri?

  Dude, what a sick phrase, walk to the gallows. Wow. What a, what is a gallow even?

• 17:45Sam Parr?

  Like, uh, that's where you get hung. Is it from a pirate? I think it's, it's where you get hung. It's like, so the gallow is like the structure where you have to get hung. And so like, by the way, I tried to break this the other day. I went on the subway for the first time ever in New York. I was like deathly afraid to go on the subway and I'm like, we're just gonna go one stop. And I was like, fuck it, we're walking to the gallow.

• 18:05Shaan Puri?

  There's also, this isn't just for business. This is also like, you know, revenge body is a thing. And remember that, that medium post we both love, how to lose weight in four easy steps? And it's like portion control, um, you know, avoid beer. And then it's like, have your heart broken. And not just broken, shattered into, into a million itsy bitsy pieces. It talks about basically, it's the heartbreak that's like the, the fuel for the gym. Like, and in the same way that like, you know, if you want Adele to go triple platinum, she just needs a bad heartbreak, right? It's, it fuels artists, it fuels fitness, it fuels business. And, um, I think it's sort of undeniable. I don't know if it's healthy, but it's definitely effective.

• 18:43Sam Parr?

  Taylor Swift wouldn't write hits if she had a successful, wonderful relationship.

• 18:48Shaan Puri?

  Well, we'll see. Travis Kelsey.

• 18:50Sam Parr?

  She hasn't, she hasn't had any new hits yet.

• 18:55Sam Parr?

  She's, she's, you know, she's, she has hits for a reason.

• 19:02Shaan Puri?

  All right. What else you got?

• 19:03Sam Parr?

  Um, all right. So something a little bit happier. Uh, I saw this on 60 Minutes, uh, I think two weeks ago. I cannot stop thinking about this. So let me fill you, fill you in on this story. So there's a small country called Bhutan. Bhutan is in between India and China. So it's, it's between these, uh, behemoth countries. And because of that, a lot of people don't know about it.

• 19:27Shaan Puri?

  And it's tiny, half the size of Indiana.

• 19:29Sam Parr?

  It's tiny. I think their stock market is 18 companies and the total market cap of their stock market is $800 million, which is 1/70,000 the size of the US stock market. So it's like this super small country. In fact, I read that in 1999, that was the first year they got TV. So it's like this tiny country. Well, in the seventies, the king of Bhutan did a diplomatic trip to India. And, uh, according to the story, this Indian reporter goes, hey, King, um, you know, we're neighbors, but I don't know anything about you. Like, what's your deal? What, what are you about? In fact, what's your gross national product? Like, like, tell me, what are you guys known for? He goes, Gross national product? What? What are you talking about? GDP? What are you saying?

• 20:14Sam Parr?

  Uh, in Bhutan, gross national happiness is more important than gross national product. And it was this like offhanded comment that he made saying their biggest export is happiness. We care about happiness. And that totally hit. It went viral. Everyone was like, this little country is apparent. They must be the happiest place on earth. The king says that they care more about gross national happiness than money. And the king was like, oh, people like really resonate with that. Let's make that our thing. And so over the next five, 10 years, they actually implement this and make this it's their thing. And so in this country, Bhutan, to this day, uh, every five years, surveyors travel the country

• 20:56Sam Parr?

  and they ask the people about, uh, education level, salary and material possessions. So like a lot of like normal stuff. And then they also say like, do you have negative thoughts? Do you have positive thoughts? How much time do you spend working? How much time do you spend praying and sleeping? And the decision, and the data that they get is factor in, uh, to a lot of their, um, a lot of the rules and things like that that they make. And I thought it was like a great story, uh, about how you can care about things that aren't seemingly important, like happiness. And I had, well, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, you know, we care about like money and like. Yeah, the touchy feely. Yeah. And there is a few critiques, which is like, according to the World Happiness Report,

• 21:39Sam Parr?

  uh, Bhutan is like average, like it's like not kicking ass, but, but like, you know, I don't know if that's a matter of like different ways of measuring, things like that. Cause happiness is like a way, like it's kind of hard to measure happiness. Is it like that fleeting moment that you feel like the 30 seconds after you've eaten a good meal? Or is it like, I feel contentment, whatever. But I thought it was cool for three reasons. One. The king just said some shit and it hit and he ran with it.

• 22:06Sam Parr?

  Like.

• 22:08Shaan Puri?

  Been there, bro. I feel that. Yeah. It becomes your thing, right?

• 22:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like wearing a certain outfit in fourth grade and you're like, I guess this is my identity.

• 22:17Shaan Puri?

  Guess I'm a high sock guy.

• 22:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I'm a, the chain wall is my guy, like I'm a chain wall guy, like that's just my thing. Cause a teacher said that. The second thing is that, um, I do think it's like pretty fascinating that in a culture that you and I are part of and, and America's particularly because we're such hard workers. It's all about work, work, work, but that's not really like the point of all this. It's like to be happy. So I thought it was cool that they're measuring that. But another third and final thing that this makes this interesting. Have you ever heard of a pairing metric?

• 22:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, basically like two metrics that, let's say you have revenue on one side, but you might have profitability on the other in order to make sure that like, if you over optimize on just revenue, you might totally nuke your profits or if it's about, uh, growth, you want, you know, NPS score, make sure your customers are happy. Is that what you mean?

• 23:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And so when Tim Ferriss invested in the hustle, we, I got to hang out with him for an hour or so, and I was telling him about how many subscribers that we were growing by. He's like, well, you need like a pairing metric. You need, uh, you know, not just top line, like subscribers, email subscribers, but like, are they engaging? Are they opening? Whatever? You have to have a pairing metric, otherwise, uh, it kind of ruins the whole thing. And, and that was like, kind of fascinating to me. I, I never heard that phrase. And I didn't think about having a pairing metric with like government policy or, you know, like anything other than business. And this is like a really great example of a pairing metric where it's about GDP, traditional metrics, but also, you know, make sure that your, your people are, are happy along the way. So I thought it was pretty cool.

• 23:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I, I love this story. I, I think I was telling you before this, I think we both somehow, the odds of us both having Bhutan on our list are so weirdly low. I think maybe we both saw the same thing. I saw the 60 minutes thing a few weeks ago.

• 23:57Sam Parr?

  What did you think?

• 23:57Shaan Puri?

  First of all, it's so funny. When you watch 60 minutes, 60 minutes looks so old, dude. It looks, and is 60 minutes is basically just a YouTube channel.

• 24:05Sam Parr?

  It's great though, right?

• 24:07Shaan Puri?

  It's great, but why does it look so old? Like I, it's like literally the person on there is old. The clock they use for the 60 minutes thing is so old. All of the editing is so old. They don't know like, what like a jump cut is, it's insane.

• 24:19Sam Parr?

  I think it's a fun fact. I'm almost positive it's the only TV show without a theme song. It's literally just tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic.

• 24:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. It's crazy. So when you watch 60 Minutes, it's interesting to just look at it and be like, what is this dude? Anyways, here's a couple of the things that stood out to me about this. So first, why do I, I'm interested in a country. I'm interested in a country because in the same way I'm interested in companies that are run in interesting ways, or if a company had a unique mission or business model, or a unique way of doing things that'd be interesting to me. Countries are just big companies. And I found this pretty interesting. If you looked at it like a company, where it was like, oh, what's our main metric? It's not revenue, it's happiness. So it's like, instead of the GMV, they're looking at how much happiness they're producing in their own economy. And I like that they measure their own. And like, did you look at their happiness index, kind of zero to one, and how that all works?

• 25:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like a weighted score, right? And what were all the metrics?

• 25:17Shaan Puri?

  It's basically, it's a weighted score, then they sort of, they ask people a bunch of questions about their, you know, psychological well-being, their health, their time, you know, their education, all these different things. And they end up with like, you know, basically, they're a 7.781 on their scale, which is pretty good. And they measure, oh, that's up 3.3% since last year. And basically, 9.5% of Bhutanese people are deeply happy, 38% are extensively happy, 45% are narrowly happy, and 6.4% were unhappy, according to them. And, and what I thought was cool was that, a couple of things. Number one, it's one of the very few cases where someone in power gives it up. So they had a king, and he voluntarily is like, you know what?

• 26:01Shaan Puri?

  This could just go to my son, but we need a democracy. And, and the funny thing is, the people there were like, no, no, king, stay king. And he's like, no, no, we need a democracy. They're like, democracy, you see, India's a democracy, Pakistan's a democracy. Look at those places. They're always at war, it's violent. Forget democracy, we don't want it, we're happy. And he was like, well, if I just keep giving this power down by birth, this won't end well. So I thought, seeing somebody relinquish power in their crime is so rare.

• 26:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Shaan Puri?

  That you just overlook it when you're on the surface. But if you actually think about that deeply, that actually is like a really noble and very cool and very unique thing. How few Biden didn't want to give up power and Trump doesn't want to give up power. Nobody wants to give up power. Power is one of the most addictive things in the world. And so I just thought that was really noble and really cool of him to voluntarily go to democracy at a time of peace, which is, which is not usually what happens. Usually if a democracy happens, it's after a time of violence or war, people need change, or the Western country comes in and helps and tries to force a democracy on them. So I thought that was cool.

• 27:02Sam Parr?

  Did they say that was the only time that's ever happened that way?

• 27:06Shaan Puri?

  It's the only one I know of. They kind of referenced that that's, that's never really happened before, that a democracy happened in a time of peace voluntarily. Also crazy that just like, you know, until 19, until the seventies, like in 1974, there's people listening to this podcast that are born before 1974. They didn't have a currency. It was barter even up until 1974.

• 27:27Sam Parr?

  That's crazy.

• 27:27Shaan Puri?

  And the crazy thing was even though there was barter, they still had to pay taxes. And it was like, you could pay your tax with like giving them, giving the government like a cow. Or if it's like, oh, you don't have livestock. All right, do labor then. And so then they built these amazing buildings because your taxes was basically community service. It's like, hey, I'll go donate like, you know, a hundred hours of labor to pay my tax for the year. And then because of that, they built these really cool buildings. Side weird note, you know, our friend, Sheil, friend of the pod, Sheil.

• 27:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he went there.

• 27:56Shaan Puri?

  I think he posted this thread. It's a thread of him going there. He like meets the king because he's like, it sounds crazy to meet the king, but like, he's like, I was at a bar and I was talking to this guy and that guy was the former, like, whatever. He was the former like prime minister or whatever. He's like, now he's a surgeon and he's just drinking at this bar. And he's like, oh, you want to meet the king? Yeah, I can introduce you. And so he meets the king. And so he's like, he's talking about his experience there. One of the crazy things he points out is like, a lot of the buildings have penises painted on them in like artful ways. So, you know, a little bit of super bad mixed in there. I like that. The other crazy thing is the Bitcoin stuff. Did you see their Bitcoin stuff?

• 28:33Sam Parr?

  I know they have, they, they own more Bitcoin than the total market value of their stock, stock market. It's like a billion dollars in Bitcoin.

• 28:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they basically have made themselves wealthy for life. They use their, like their vast nature. So like, you know, they use hydroelectric mining to mine Bitcoin and it's, it's believed that they have a billion dollars of Bitcoin.

• 28:55Sam Parr?

  But that was like, I think that was reported like, you know, eight months ago. So I, it's as if they have double that now. You know what I mean? Like it's been, they've had a great run.

• 29:07Shaan Puri?

  The US has it because they seized the Silk Road, right? So they have, you know, the, the, the US has 20 billion. China has 20 billion, UK has 6 billion, El Salvador, which has been buying and holding Bitcoin. Um, has.

• 29:22Sam Parr?

  And, and, and the guy on that 60 Minutes show, he did a great job of saying, he was like, we're human, we still want to be rich and we want stuff and we want all this other stuff. We also want to be happy. And so, because people were like, well, so if you're just about happiness, why are you buying Bitcoin? And all this is like, well, I still want nice shit.

• 29:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, more prosperous we are, happier we'll be. The other thing that I thought was cool, you know, they do free education, free healthcare, all that good stuff. Uh, but they also were like, hey, 60% of the land is going to be like dedicated to nature. And, but there's no, I think you, they don't allow mountain climbing. They like have these amazing mountains because they're in the Himalayas.

• 29:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Shaan Puri?

  But you're not allowed, and he said a great line, he goes, he goes, uh, nature is, he goes, nature is not meant to be conquered. He's like, man has this thirst to just conquer everything. Oh, there's a mountain I gotta climb it, put my flag on the top. And they just had a different attitude. It's like, nature is beautiful, it's meant to be enjoyed, meant to be, it's sacred, it's meant to be sort of revered and not conquered. And I just thought, man, these people roll to a, a different, a different beat. And I respect it. I'm glad that these little experiments live.

• 30:25Sam Parr?

  I had the exact same feeling, which is I saw him talk and, and they sort of fit a lot of the stereotypes that you would have with like a Nepal, uh, the Dalai Lama, like this like lies, because, and I think they're like, uh, they have like a national outfit or something like that. And it looks like the boot, and they are Buddhists, but it looks like that, uh, like whatever the Dalai Lama, uh, like the shawl or whatever he wears.

• 30:46Shaan Puri?

  Jinko jeans?

• 30:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Shaan Puri?

  We love Jinko.

• 30:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the national sport is grinding.

• 30:56Sam Parr?

  Uh, they had this like cool vibe of like wisdom and shit. And it was very shocking to see that because I'm like, just watching this on a Sunday night as I'm gearing up to talk about money and gearing up to, to get after it, crush the week. And then I see this guy who was like, uh, talk about happiness and shit. And I was like, this is incredibly refreshing. It was pretty cool. It, it seemed like a, a great country. I think, by the way, there's all these like other downsides. I think Sheil even said, he was like, it's a pain in the ass to get there. Like, I don't even think they have an international airport.

• 31:26Shaan Puri?

  The roads are not very developed. Like there's, you know, there's, there's other thing, when you prioritize happiness above all, maybe your, maybe your roads kind of suck.

• 31:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so like, it was pretty sick, dude. I thought it was great. I was very inspired. So I wanted to bring up Bhutan.

• 31:37Shaan Puri?

  Well, there is one other piece to it, which I guess a bunch of young people are leaving the country. Um, did you see that part? I didn't follow that, but they were then going to build a new city in Bhutan, the mindfulness city. And it was going to be like they'd launched like a hundred, a hundred million dollar bond. And then they're basically trying to make it a city where it's like walking and cycling and green spaces for meditation and mindfulness based education and eco tourism, like all the shit Balaji talks about with like a network state. Or like the Praxis guys are trying to do, these got, you know, Bhutan is building a new city with like its own cultural values, trying to use that to attract people to the country.

• 32:15Sam Parr?

  Well, you want to hear a funny story is, um, Balaji is, and a lot of these crypto guys are in on this new thing called American Colossus. It's that, uh, monument that they are proposing that they build in the Bay Area. I don't know if it's, it will never get built, very likely, but the same architect who's on board with that is doing there is that was the guy in the 60 Minutes episode. He's the guy who's building Bhutan's new city. And so there is this like weird, um, crossover of the crypto guys and these people who are like, let's, what's in it? What would a new city look like and Bhutan?

• 32:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's pretty inspiring. Honestly, it makes you think bigger, right? It makes you think about things that you just take for granted. They just seem set in stone. They seem like they were just, they were already here. They'll always be here. It always was this way. It'll always be this way. And then you hear about somebody, you know, these people who are trying to like shake that and you realize, oh, wow, it's all, the whole world is more malleable than you thought.

• 33:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And they also were approaching it in an interesting way. With their new city. I forget the quotes, but he said something about how he's like, we know that this is like a 50 year project, like we're going to go slow because we don't want to hurt the environment. And it was, and the guy was like, but you're going to be dead when they like do that. And he was like, isn't that awesome? That's something will like outlive me. Like they had a very, so if you're, if you're listening to this, uh, this on YouTube for free. So Google Bhutan 60 Minutes. It was an awesome segment.

• 33:42Shaan Puri?

  All right. Now that we talked about Bhutan and happiness and how there's more to life than money, can I tell you about one of the most ruthless capitalist, bloodthirsty moves that I've seen in a while?

• 33:55Sam Parr?

  You know how in boxing, they say steal the round because like in the last 10 seconds, that's what judges remember. They don't remember the first 100, they don't remember the first 120 seconds, but they remember the last 10 seconds.

• 34:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Sam Parr?

  Whenever you, whatever you say last is what I'm going to be most inspired by. So let's, we skipped.

• 34:12Shaan Puri?

  So sit down Bhutan, you had your moment.

• 34:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Now tell me how I can go cut some fuckers.

• 34:16Shaan Puri?

  All right. This is a private equity roll up in the education space that I found pretty interesting. All right. What is, what does that mean? So I went to high school in Texas for the first two years and then my mom and dad came to me one day and they were like, hey, check this out. Doesn't this look like a cool house? I'm like, yeah, it looks pretty cool. And they're like, we're going to live there. And I was like, okay, we're, and they're like, it's in Beijing. And then my family moved me to Beijing in 10th grade. And so.

• 34:42Sam Parr?

  They went to?

• 34:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Shaan Puri?

  That would have been super cool.

• 34:48Sam Parr?

  They moved me there and they moved themselves.

• 34:51Shaan Puri?

  So they, so they were like, hey, you know, all those friends you've had, you're not going to see them anymore. And so they also lied to me and said my dog couldn't come and told me that China doesn't allow dogs. And later life found out that was a huge lie. So, you know, that's maybe that'll be my revenge tour, dude. That's it. That's the thing.

• 35:09Sam Parr?

  Wait, so they leave the dog?

• 35:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we sold our dog because, oh, dogs can't go to China. I was like, what?

• 35:15Sam Parr?

  Oh my God.

• 35:17Shaan Puri?

  Stupid. There's no Google at the time.

• 35:18Sam Parr?

  They got to.

• 35:19Shaan Puri?

  This is pre-Google. So, um, so I finished high school in China and I went to this school called the International School of Beijing. And it was actually an awesome school and it turned out to be great for me to move and all these awesome things happened to me there. But as one of these things, again, I just, I go to the school, I just take it for granted. There's a school here. I don't know. Schools are part of. The government, they're just like from the land. I don't know. God put it here. I don't know what puts these international schools here. And now I'm like in my 30s and I'm reading up and I realize, oh shit. These international schools are an absolute juggernaut of a business. And so I'd like to tell you about this roll up that happened called Nord Anglia. Have you ever heard of this?

• 35:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, my friend Anand from CB Insights is obsessed with it.

• 36:02Shaan Puri?

  And so here's what these guys did. So the founding story is back in the seventies, you know, things like 50 years old. There was one school in the UK, or there wasn't even a school. It was like making materials for other schools to teach English as a foreign language to people who are trying to learn English in the UK. And then they expand that into Eastern Europe, whatever. And then they start their own school. They're like, oh, we'll do our own school for teaching international people and we'll teach them in a sort of English second language kind of way. And over time, the thing grows and it goes from one school to multiple schools. And they create this like business that eventually becomes

• 36:41Shaan Puri?

  a $14 billion conglomerate of 80 plus international private schools.

• 36:49Sam Parr?

  Can you say the name one more time?

• 36:51Shaan Puri?

  Nord Anglia, N O R D, and then Anglia is A N G L I A. So what do they do? And by the way, remember, remember when IMG sold IMG, which is like the sports prep academy and it sold for a billion dollars? We're like, wow, Nord Anglia bought it. So this bought IMG. And the reason they bought IMG, they're like, IMG is a really cool sports focused brand, but it's all in the US. We are, we know how to basically create international schools that the richest, wealthiest or expats living overseas want their kids to go to, to be able to get into, you know, maybe US, US colleges. So they bought it for a billion dollars, being like, cool, we're just going to take the IMG brand and we're going to pop it up in China and India and

• 37:34Shaan Puri?

  in all these different countries in order to, to get those types of students who are sports focused, whereas their schools are more, you know, teaching the IB curriculum, which is like the kind of international baccalaureate, the equivalent of AP in the United States is IB. So like I took the IB program. And so, but the cool thing about this business is actually for the first 10 years, it was just a slow burn. And these businesses fascinate me. Like, I don't even really fully understand how you can go from kind of like a consultant selling teaching materials. At one point, they had a daycare, like a nursery built in. It was like this slow sleepy business for like 10 years.

• 38:10Sam Parr?

  Was it like a family run thing?

• 38:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was like privately owned. And then they hired the CEO and then they start expand. They start their own schools, they start expanding. Then they start buying other school, like chains. So they bought like a six school chain that had like a presence in, let's say, France. And then they buy another one that has a presence in Latin America. And they're just rolling up as many international schools as they can buy. They buy five schools in India for $200 million. And so now they got five, five international schools in India. And basically, this company ended up going public. A, and then had to take private offer. And now is valued at $14 billion, which is pretty, pretty wild. And there's one PE firm, this Swedish private equity firm, that has just made an absolute killing.

• 38:57Shaan Puri?

  It's called EQT on this entire like 20 year run of this business. So, you know, let's say 90, here's the timeline. 1970s, it's teacher training, language programs. 1990s, so now this is like, you know, 20 years into the business. They pivot to owning and operating their own international schools. 2008, now another 18 years goes by. The Swedish PE firm comes in, gives them a bunch of money to rapidly go expand and acquire schools. 2014, they go public. 2017, they go private again for $4 billion. 2024, it's acquired $14.5 billion. And 2008, when they did the, the private equity round, they were at $40 million in EBITDA. And, you know, about $200 million in revenue.

• 39:40Shaan Puri?

  And so these things trade at like 8.5x EBITDA, basically. And they only own like 10% of the international school market. Still, 90% of the international school market is fragmented and not owned by, by anybody.

• 39:52Sam Parr?

  Well, now they do a billion in revenue, it said.

• 39:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, now they do a billion in revenue with, you know, hundreds of millions in EBITDA. And actually, I think it's even, I think it might even be even more than that. But like, just to give you an example, here's a slide. But like, this is like one of their schools. So they show like the profitability of a school. This is one of their case studies. So it's like Dubai. They opened an international school in Dubai. They opened it in 2014. It took seven and a half million dollars to build it and open it. And then basically they break even in year, uh, year two slash year three. And then it's basically making 55% net, you know, cash on cash. Once it's at that mature level, once they get the enrollment up to like 1,400, 1,500 students. And so you could see like the enrollment, basically by year three, they're at almost 1,400 students. So almost at capacity.

• 40:42Sam Parr?

  How do they convince parents that they're worth it? Cause like, uh, with school, it's tradition usually is what like, uh, you know, gets people to buy in.

• 40:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So it's kind of the same thing. So if you go look at their pitch, it's basically that, um, you know, we have, we have the best run schools. Our kids get into top tier colleges and, you know, X percent of them, you know, huge, like 90 something percent of them graduate. They do better than their peers on, um, you know, the standardized testing, things like that.

• 41:14Sam Parr?

  It's basically like when Chick-fil-A started expanding to New York and all the New Yorkers were like, finally. You know what I mean? Like people like know this, know this brand.

• 41:22Shaan Puri?

  Beijing, the school I went to, right? Like, we probably had like a hundred percent graduation rate. Like there's like no dropouts. Everybody graduates and then like 98% went to college. So there's like, it's like, uh, compared to like a normal school, the whole school I was going to in Houston before that. Probably was like 75% graduation and less than 50% would, would enroll in college the next year. And so, and then the school I went to, you know, that's a, that's like a first grade through 12th grade school. And every year you're basically paying college tuition. It was like 40 grand a year to go there as a first grader and as a second grader and as a third grader, as a fourth grader. But like, the way my parents afforded to go there was the same way that many students did, which is when companies bring you overseas. Cause come, you know, let's say, you know, my dad worked for a company. They wanted him to relocate to like build up their business in China.

• 42:08Shaan Puri?

  Then the company basically pays for your kid's education as part of the relocation package.

• 42:12Sam Parr?

  And that's like a really good perk.

• 42:14Shaan Puri?

  That's the perk. It's all, you know, and so these schools, basically, it's kind of like US schools, how they make their money is because the government will give like student loans to anybody. Like anybody can get a student loan. So you can get like, you know, $200,000 a debt to go to the school. Whether you're going to be able to pay that off or not, doesn't matter. So the schools are like, great. That's why tuitions keep going up because they're like, awesome. The government will just keep paying for this. This is amazing. International schools work largely the same way, which is it's either very wealthy people there who want their kids to go abroad. Like if you're very wealthy in Indonesia or China or India, you want your kids to study in the United States. And you're probably, you know, like very, very rich. And so you're, you're happy to pay, you know, 40K a year for like elite, your elite education, or the companies are paying for it. So this is a beautiful business model where you're only catering to that top kind of 1%.

• 42:59Sam Parr?

  And interestingly, I think that there's actually a blue zone in America because when you think of a for-profit university, I think of University of Phoenix.

• 43:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Sam Parr?

  I think bad. I think they're the ones who let everyone in. And they just buy all the Facebook ads and Google ads and it's slimy. But for some reason, when I look at these schools, I think prestige. I think like, like it can be done well. Do you know what I mean?

• 43:26Shaan Puri?

  You know, the one I want to do, or like I've been very like tempted to do is the modern day film school. So like film schools exist in the States and that, you know, you can go to USC or UCLA. These are like the famous ones that you can go to. But like, media and content has changed dramatically from when those schools were founded, right?

• 43:47Sam Parr?

  And credentials are less important, I would think.

• 43:49Shaan Puri?

  And credentials are way less important. And back then, you know, let's say you were a student in the eighties and you wanted to work in film someday. Well, when you were in school, you really had no shot. You could go be an intern somewhere, maybe hold up, you know, you're holding the lamp, you know, in the back and you're holding the light. And that's like, all you would be qualified to do. Today. Let's say you want to be good at creating films or content or music or whatever. You could literally be publishing on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Spotify. You can be publishing everywhere and actually like you could be in the market. You can be a player.

• 44:20Sam Parr?

  The day you have the idea to do it, you could be published that night.

• 44:23Shaan Puri?

  You could be 14 years old and maybe you could be the best in the world at doing Twitch streams or whatever it is, right? Like, and so what and the number one dream of young kids is to be a content creator. It's the number one aspirational profession, which you could judge and say that's stupid or whatever you want. The dream is the dream. That means there's a lot of demand for people who want to learn this. Why don't I go to Mr. Beast? Why don't I go to Jimmy and say, hey, why don't you create with your brand a university that is the modern day like content creation skill stack? So it's all the things you need to know, right? Videography, photography, script writing, editing, sound production, you know, music production, all the creative arts, basically. But do them in a way where it's like a two-year program.

• 45:08Shaan Puri?

  It's like, like a business school. So it's two years and it's all project based. So you go there and you have access to all the equipment, which you normally can't afford as a young person, like the best cameras, the best recording studios, the best editors, terminals, all that stuff, animators. And then there's people who have different disciplines. One guy wants to be an animator. One guy wants to be an editor. The other person wants to be a talent, whatever it is. And you work together on projects, you create content, you actually put it out on the networks and you get judged based on the number of projects you create, the quality of the projects you create, you're getting real feedback along the way. And then you have mentors or teachers like a Mr. Beast or like others who are going to like drop in and basically teach you some of the fundamentals of maybe storytelling or different things that actually you need to do. And I think if you did this, I mean, just the math of this stuff is pretty crazy, right?

• 45:53Shaan Puri?

  Like you get 5,000 or 10,000 people coming to your school and it's, you know, 25K a year for two years. That, that's that one batch of kids, 10,000 people in a, in a, in a class, if they're paying 25K a year for two years, that's 500 million in revenue.

• 46:14Sam Parr?

  What stopped you from doing this? You seem pretty hyped up on it and it seems like a very logical thing.

• 46:19Shaan Puri?

  Um, well, I had the idea for like four days ago. So, you know, that's probably

• 46:23Sam Parr?

  No, you've been talking about

• 46:26Shaan Puri?

  No, specifically the media thing. Like, I've always been interested, like, what would you do if you did a new school? I always thought of it in terms of entrepreneurship, but I actually think a more like trade school style school is better.

• 46:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 46:36Shaan Puri?

  Because you can only, you know, teaching entrepreneurship is hard because A, there's not a class for business, really. Business school doesn't teach you business. It teaches you management. Like, what you think of as Harvard Business School is actually a, you know, middle management to senior management training program, right? That's what that is. So I think when you actually learn a skill and learn a trade, that's good. The skill of business takes a lot of time and it's not one skill. It's like 15, it's a bundle of like 15 skills. You gotta know a little bit about strategy and negotiation and marketing and building and managing all these things. So I think this trade school style is much better. There's an interesting example of this, by the way. Do you know what Full Sail University is?

• 47:14Sam Parr?

  Yes. So I'm looking up IT tech, but I'm also looking at Full Sail. I know a few people that went to Full Sail and they had great things to say.

• 47:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so Full Sail is kind of, it's at that scale. So 25,000 undergrads, it's $26,000 a year. It's a private for-profit college. So you just do the math, by the way. 25,000 undergrads, 26,000 a year. So that's, that's like the annual revenue. Let's, let's do some public math, because big numbers are in exception. That's $600 million, $650 million a year of revenue that they're generating from like a four-year cohort.

• 47:49Sam Parr?

  My friend Chris, have you heard of the company Linode?

• 47:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:54Sam Parr?

  He bootstrapped and sold it for, I don't know, like 800 million dollars. He's, he's from Nashville and I knew him when I was younger and he went to Full Sail and he, and he's, that's kind of how I learned about Full Sail. But they have, like, if you look at

• 48:06Shaan Puri?

  You know Jason Sutron, the founder of Discord? He's one of the alums.

• 48:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And so I think they do more than just, like, I knew it as, that's where you'd go to get like a, like, if you want to become a music engineer.

• 48:20Shaan Puri?

  Yes. It was like game design was one. That's why Jason went there because he wanted to build video games. They have music and then they have the Dan Patrick School of Sports Broadcasting.

• 48:30Sam Parr?

  So he wanted to be like that much?

• 48:31Shaan Puri?

  A TV broadcaster. They had their own little program, a degree, a sportscaster degree program.

• 48:37Sam Parr?

  But how does it work? Since it's not a normal, it's a for-profit university. Does Dan Patrick actually get paid to use his name or keyed and donate?

• 48:44Shaan Puri?

  A licensing, a royalty.

• 48:46Sam Parr?

  That's crazy. That's great.

• 48:47Shaan Puri?

  That's what I'm saying for like, if you're Jimmy or Mr. Beast, like, why are you selling chocolate? Like, we should do this. And we just need to find like an operator and do it with a physical campus and like, do the whole thing, right? Make the whole thing happen. And there's like an enormous talent economy that needs to be made, not just for people who themselves want to be a famous YouTuber, but every single company has to create content. Content is marketing. And so any company that needs, and go look at every corporation from, you know, like Nestle down to your, you know, nearby eyebrow waxing place. They're all got an Instagram. They all got a TikTok. They're all posting content on there. And so every company needs media creation talents. And nobody teaches you that. It's today. It's something you learn on your own outside of school,

• 49:32Shaan Puri?

  using your own social media as a testing ground. And I think that's a little bit crazy, given the value of this thing. And so I think, you know, it's the type of thing that could be built and be a, you know, multi-billion dollar business within three or four years easily. You know, getting 5,000 or 10,000 people to enroll is not hard for something like this because it has tangible value too. Like when you walk out, not only will you have these hard skills on, you know, actual content creation, all the bucket of content creation skills, but you're highly employable. So whether you become a creator or you go get a job, like you're highly employable with a set of skills, especially if you make it elite, like, don't make it University of Phoenix. Make it more like Harvard where it's like, oh, where do the talented people go, right? What's it like Juilliard?

• 50:18Shaan Puri?

  It's like, make it more like Juilliard. This is where the most talented people go and build that reputation. I think that's the key to get this right.

• 50:25Sam Parr?

  This is an incredibly compelling pitch.

• 50:27Shaan Puri?

  Thank you.

• 50:28Sam Parr?

  I want to know what the downsides are, which I don't even know if you know at the moment, because you're 72 hours into this new career transition.

• 50:37Shaan Puri?

  Accreditation can matter. So if you want accreditation, you can do that.

• 50:40Sam Parr?

  Does that matter? Does accreditation matter? I guess it does for optics, right?

• 50:45Shaan Puri?

  No, it matters for funding. So how do you get funding from the government? How do your students get loans? If you're an unaccredited school, students can't get loans. They got to pay for it out of pocket.

• 50:54Sam Parr?

  Understood.

• 50:55Shaan Puri?

  And so you want accreditation so that you're eligible for loans, which would let students go there, you know, who don't already have the money. Plus, you know, it's much easier to spend money the government gives you when you're 20, 18, 20 years old. So, you know, you want to be eligible for that. But you can get accredited or you could buy a school with existing accreditation. So that's not a blocker. It's just like a thing you got to do. The hard part is actually running it and like doing it well and like actually providing quality education, right? You don't want to be University of Phoenix. So you got to have some soul. You got to have some, some energy. You got to have the entrepreneurial energy. So why am I not personally doing this? Because I personally am not going to be the guy running this. I want to kind of make it happen and find an operator who wants to create something like this. And I can connect all the dots of how do we get the capital?

• 51:39Shaan Puri?

  Because this takes a lot of capital, you know, like Joe Lonsdale started a school in Austin. I don't know how much he, how much that cost, but I think it's like a, I wouldn't be surprised if that's like a 50 million to $100 million project of like investment required.

• 51:51Sam Parr?

  What is it called? University of, University of Austin? Austin University? That's crazy. I mean, yeah, that's pretty wild. And if you look at like,

• 52:00Shaan Puri?

  So billionaires have put 200 million into funding that, that school. So yeah, you know, it's, it's a big CapEx lift to do it when you have a physical campus. And I wouldn't do it remote. I would do it legit. I would do it with a physical campus and I would just try to make it like awesome. And it's the same thing like we talked about the Baton thing. It's a 50 year play. Like you want to build prestige and legacy like a Harvard or a Stanford, where it's the reputation, the reputation and the brand is the value. You want the best people to pay top dollar to come to this thing and get the best education. Then you want all the companies who want to hire to value the label that you have. So to do that, you have to assume you're going to be, you know, you want to do something that peaks, you know, like 50 years later in terms of brand prestige.

• 52:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's like an interesting thing, by the way. So there's like been a lot of times where. Uh, people will sign up to for a university and the goal is that after 10 or 15 years, the brand name has elevated. So you bought the price before it was full.

• 52:57Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 52:58Sam Parr?

  It's just like investing in a stock. And then there's other times when a university

• 53:02Shaan Puri?

  Or 30 and a 30.

• 53:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, where a university will have a protest or something will happen and it hurts the brand. And you're like, for example, uh, let's say you graduated from Columbia. You're like, shit, like it's a controversial place right now. Is my, I bought this brand. Is that now worth less than what I was anticipating? And so there's this weird, that is like an interesting way to look at, uh, building a university brand. Like I have to increase the value for, you know, so I can, I can justify the people buying. They actually bought it when it was cheaper as opposed to what it is worth in 20 years.

• 53:40Shaan Puri?

  Dude, did you see Bill Ackman did a presentation about Harvard? Did you, did you see this?

• 53:45Sam Parr?

  No. What did he say?

• 53:46Shaan Puri?

  Oh my God. All right. Well, I know we're supposed to wrap up, but this is honestly incredible. Jim Grant asked me to give a talk on Harvard, buy, sell or hold in the same way you would do with a stock. I think the, the Harvard motto or slogan is veritas. And the, the title is veritas? Question mark. Cause you know, he's on this like anti Harvard crusade right now.

• 54:03Sam Parr?

  What's veritas mean forever?

• 54:04Shaan Puri?

  Truth, I think.

• 54:05Sam Parr?

  Truth.

• 54:05Shaan Puri?

  Uh, and so he breaks it down like it's a company. Yeah. The business of Harvard College is providing education to students. And then he has like a graph. It's like enrollment has been flat over the last 20 years. Faculty growth has been modest, you know, growing a half a percent, but administration growth has grown by 40% in 20 years. So he's like, basically like, oh, you're not growing students, but you're growing your admin, your OpEx on the backend, right? And analyzing it like a business.

• 54:29Sam Parr?

  This is amazing.

• 54:30Shaan Puri?

  And the cost has grown. Basically the cost has doubled in 20 years.

• 54:33Sam Parr?

  He says, you're growing by increasing prices, not by increasing the number of customers served.

• 54:38Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And then it talks, and so he breaks down the P and L. He breaks down, where's the revenue stream? So how much is coming from donations versus tuition? Um, how much of your faculty has diverse viewpoints? I mean, really, obviously his agenda in this whole thing was to basically be like Harvard has gone too woke and the administration has gone like rogue and you're, you're ruining the, the brand and the mission of Harvard.

• 54:58Sam Parr?

  He says the, the operating margin would be a negative 40% without distributions from its endowment.

• 55:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and it says in 1643, that's how old Harvard is. In 1643 Harvard's first mission was set up simply as veritas or truth. And he's got this old screenshot of like a hand drawn logo of the shield. And then he reads like the laws, liberties and orders of Harvard College. And it's like this handwritten document about, you know, the goal was to encourage Harvard students to seek wisdom. And he's basically saying like, you know, then he shows how the mission charter has changed. So in 2020, it was instead of about seeking truth, it was like, it removed a bunch of references to the 1650 charter and basically left it as more of like a DEI style mission. And he's like, you know, paying attention to that. So, you know, he's like, what, you know, what happened to new ideas? What happened to the

• 55:48Shaan Puri?

  truth? And then he goes and he just breaks down like faculty, also like even in the faculty growth, he's like, cool, is it growth in computer science teachers? Or is it growth in African American studies? Which, you know, he basically shows like African studies grew like crazy compared to economics, computer science. But then he's looking at the number of degrees that people are getting, and that's not growing. So he's like, you're not meeting, your supply is not meeting the demand of the consumer. You're just, your supply is growing arbitrarily, not, not to match, not to match demand. Like, I think there was only,

• 56:20Shaan Puri?

  what was it? Like, there was one degree recipient in 2023 in African American Studies and 57 faculty.

• 56:28Sam Parr?

  This is wild. And you know, in here, if you go down all the way to the last slide, his verdict, he says, is Harvard a buy, sell, or hold? And his verdict as of now is Harvard is a hold. It still has many positive attributes. It has a strong brand, 400 year operating history, $51 billion endowment, and huge real estate. But it has many challenges. The quality of the education has deteriorated. There's so many competitors, many talented people aren't going to traditional universities, they've misallocated resources, and the endowment has been a chronic underperformer. This is a very interesting way to look at many, many, many different decisions in life that are beyond just money.

• 57:08Shaan Puri?

  How awesome is this?

• 57:09Sam Parr?

  This is the greatest. This is, this is a fantastic way to think.

• 57:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, this is so cool.

• 57:14Sam Parr?

  Is this, all decisions, I think, I should, every big decision I have in life, I need to put together a PowerPoint like this. We did this with our child's name, by the way. We put three names in a PowerPoint. And like Sarah presented them and like argued like in her favor which name we were going to choose.

• 57:29Shaan Puri?

  What is that, what is even in the slot? What do you say?

• 57:32Sam Parr?

  So the way that we make decisions in our house, oftentimes, it's like one person will present three options. And then the other person can select the one option that they want. And so if it's like.

• 57:45Shaan Puri?

  Cheesecake Factory, Chipotle.

• 57:49Sam Parr?

  So it's like, if I'm selecting the three, I will select three that I'm at least okay with. And then she could select the one that is of most interest to her. For baby names, it was like, she was like, you, I want to select a three and then you could select the one. And so she made a PowerPoint and it explained, here's the three names, here's the background of the name. And I had like parameters. I was like, I want something somewhat traditional. I prefer it be in the Bible because everyone in my family was named for someone in the Bible, whatever. And she's like, all right, here's the three that I like. I'm cool with all of them. Here's the background of each name. Here's what it means. Here's famous people named that. Here's where it ranks on the popularity list.

• 58:31Shaan Puri?

  Is she trying to persuade you towards one or it's a completely neutral, like pros and cons of each?

• 58:37Sam Parr?

  In that case, it was neutral, but yeah, oftentimes there, there is an underlying persuasion bit. But the, if you're the person who selects the three, you should select three things that you're, you like. You should, because that's like what you could do is you could select three things that I, that you like. And then I, as the final decision maker, will select something and you're happy no matter what. It's a great way to make decisions, I think. And so she did this big presentation on three different names and I selected the winner. And that's how we got our baby's name.

• 59:08Sam Parr?

  Last podcast, you said every month, we sit down at the end of the month at our table, and we review the month's budget, financial decisions, key financial decisions that were made. We discuss unresolved issues that might be lingering. I'm kind of into the Par Corporation. ParCorp is probably one of my favorite corporations to learn from. And I think the way you run your marriage like a business partnership is both effective and hilarious. We did that. Great combo. Before we got married, we did that, by the way. We said, you know, this is going great. Like, we really love each other. We like each other. It appears as though like marriage is in the cards. You know, we said it was like six months into dating. Write down where you want to be in 10 years. Like, what do you want to do? Like, let's,

• 59:51Sam Parr?

  how do you want to raise a family? Where do you want to live? And we like made sure that like are once in our interest. Like, we're like, all right, like, we disagree here, but like, that's okay, I'm malleable there. But here's like a deal breaker. What do you feel about that? So for hers, it was like, I want to raise children in the New York area so I can be around my family. That's a deal breaker. And I was like, no, that's cool. I could, I could, I could fuck with that. And so, yeah, we do this type of stuff. It feels cold. I don't even like talking about it because people think, because like, it feels cold. But dude, this shit works. These type of like discussions where it's like, all right, now's the period to discuss this. You have the floor. That stuff is so effective, I think. Yeah, it's great. Before you guys go to bed, you just shake hands instead of kiss.

• 1:00:32Sam Parr?

  It's just nice like to, to just keep everything, you know, on the up and up. And as calculated as can be. That's why I hate talking about it because people think that everything's like systematic. It's like, no, like, there's like, two hours a month where like, this is set aside to like, have these like relatively formal discussions. But it's freaking awesome. I think that, I think if you like have a lot of kids, don't people do like family meetings? I know I saw it in like TV shows growing up, but it's not a thing. Yeah, family meetings are a thing. I think you guys just really take it to that next level. You guys are the McKinsey of family meetings, right? Like vows.pdf before your wedding. You had it all set up. It's good. I like it. It works. I suggest everyone at least try it. It definitely works, I think.

• 1:01:17Shaan Puri?

  All right, I think that's a, I think that's a killer episode, to be honest.

• 1:01:22Sam Parr?

  I feel hyped up. I have energy.

• 1:01:24Shaan Puri?

  To be perfectly honest with a hard H, that was a great episode.

• 1:01:27Sam Parr?

  All right, that's it. That's the pod.