David Senra: Podcasts With Billion-Dollar Potential, What Separates Good From Great, and More

Episode 448: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talks with David Senra (@FoundersPodcast), Founder of Founder's podcast, about his love of podcasting, how to become a killer in business, and life lessons from successful entrepreneurs. Click here to sign up for our event in Austin, TX on Saturday April 29th: mfmpod.com/atx Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ----- Links: *Founders podcast *James Dyson's autobiography * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (02:25) - What did you do before Founders? (03:55) - How big is the podcast? (10:40) - How many books do you read? (18:50) - The difference between pretty good and killers (21:00) - Can you make yourself a killer? (28:20) - Finding good industries to get into (46:20) - Lessons from meeting Sam Zell and Charlie Munger (59:20) - What is next for you? (01:17:25) - Chuck Yeager ------ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of like how good of a business podcasting can be. And I start talking crazy and then I have some friends that have built giant businesses on the back of podcasts. I was at dinner with them last week and they literally pulled me to the side and like, "Shut the [bleep] up. Stop telling people all this shit."

• 0:30Sam Parr?

  All right, everyone. Today's podcast is special. The guy's name is David Senra. He's got a podcast called Founders. I've listened to dozens and dozens and dozens of episodes. He basically breaks down different biographies that he read about business people, artists, whatever, anyone who's, you know, the 1% of the 1% of their field. And on the pod today, we talked about the difference between people who are like somewhat successful and the people who are absolute killers and what traits they have and what the commonalities. So it's super fascinating to hear from someone who's read literally three or 400 biographies and studies this for a living. He talks about the commonalities of these killers, whether that's UFC fighters or billionaires. It's really fascinating. I think you're gonna dig it. My favorite part is when we talk about, um, he has this really cool quote from Joe

• 1:15Sam Parr?

  Rogan describing, uh, John Jones, who's this like amazing UFC fighter and the difference between like John and the rest of the people. And then somehow David weaves that in with business people and he lists out all the business people who he says are the 1%, the 1%, the killers of the killers. And he talks about what traits they have and what you can learn. I think you'll dig it. Check it out. Talk soon.

• 1:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you know, it's a, I, um, I understand why you'd live in Miami if your family's there. That I, that's, I don't love like New York, but I'm eventually gonna move there for family. So I, the family, you know, supersedes all the other stuff.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  That, that's the only reason we stay here. My wife is Colombian. So 70% of Miami Dade County is Hispanic. All her family's here. Like I've been traveling a lot more for work and like the day I leave, my kids wake up, her mom is here, her grandmother's here. So like for my kids' perspective, like Colombians are, they, with South Americans in general, what they do is like, they're very, I like their multi-generational like housing. My wife grew up in a house connected to her grandparents' house.

• 2:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I dig that too.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Oh, that's incredible. Like I had nothing like that when I was a kid. Uh, and so I was like, man, I really wanna live in California, but I'm just gonna stay here for family and then, you know, spend my summers in California.

• 2:25Sam Parr?

  What'd you do before Founder's Pod?

• 2:27Speaker 00

  I've done a shit ton of businesses like since I was like 18 years old. Like I think me and you are around the same age. I might be a few years older than you. The business I was working on right before actually started founders while I was doing it was this thing called robo DB, which is a way to track the origin, the true origination points of robo calls through the payment network. And it was just like a business that was like kind of like a clever hack, but I wasn't interested in it the way I was podcasting. So like I was obsessed with podcasting for, for years. I remember my friend Eric, he invited me over to his house one time. This is like 2010. He's like, dude, you gotta come over and watch this new podcast. Do you remember the guy from, uh, from Fear Factor? And I'm like, yeah, I watched Fear Factor when I was in like high school.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  And we went to his house and it's like when Joe Rogan was on like the white couch and he was on like Ustream and then he'd have like, there'd be like, things falling down. He'd have like, you know, the cheesy kind of, uh, like there'd be stars or sparkles and stuff like that. I'm like, what is this? He's like, oh, you can also listen to it on your phone anytime you want. And that just blew my fucking mind. I could not believe that. Yeah.

• 3:34Sam Parr?

  But were you, were you successful or were you kind of like a struggling entrepreneur? And then this is like, is this your first like breakout?

• 3:42Speaker 00

  This is the first thing that's gonna make like, I'll make a lot more money. I was like making like dentist or doctor money for like a long time. You know, like not struggling, but not nearly like, you know, what a podcast could, could do, like a successful podcast could do.

• 3:56Sam Parr?

  How big's the pod now in terms of listenership?

• 3:59Speaker 00

  It fucking crazy right now. Uh, we, a few weeks ago, I just cracked, uh, over a hundred thousand individual listeners.

• 4:08Sam Parr?

  Per episode?

• 4:10Speaker 00

  No, no, overall. Like, so when I sign into like my podcast host, it says like unique listeners last seven days. That's the only, I don't, I'm not big on metrics. Like I don't pay attention to them at all. I just try to make what I want and then put it out into the world. But the one number I want to see grow is that number because founders is also weird. We're like, you could discover it now. And because the back catalog's evergreen, evergreen, like I'll talk to people that'll listen to like the first, the latest few episodes. And then they'll go back and listen to shit that I did like six years ago, five years ago.

• 4:41Sam Parr?

  It, it's just you, right? Like, cause you're part of, uh, what colossal? Is that it?

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Colossus.

• 4:48Sam Parr?

  Colossus, sorry. Uh, and so they like sell your ads and they take a cut. And so is it just you and a producer or what?

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Nothing. Just me. So, um, Patrick, I love, we were talking a little bit about this yesterday. Like, um, the one thing I love about podcasting industry is how positive some everybody is. So I listened to Pat, Patrick's podcast for years. Like, uh, I was taking notes on his podcast and went back and looked since like 2019. And last year in May, uh, my podcast is a subscription podcast, right? You could listen to the first 30 minutes, you don't want to listen to all of it. For the first six years of its existence, you had to pay to upgrade, right? I had no

• 5:26Sam Parr?

  Yours?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:27Sam Parr?

  Wait, oh, I didn't know you. So you've been doing this for six years?

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, starting in 2016.

• 5:32Sam Parr?

  Oh, wow, that's crazy. I, to, to me, like, you just got on my radar like a year ago, maybe.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Everybody was like that. So Patrick played, played a big role in that. Uh, David and Ben from Acquire, they played a big role that was just on your, uh, your podcast. Um, but what happened was, um, Patrick just randomly tweeted it out. You know, he's got, you know, this massive, very valuable audience, like in size, in terms of size and then average net worth. Like, he's got one of the most, I would argue, he's got the most valuable business podcast audience in the world. Right? If you, if you keep, if you, uh, like the fact, the, the average net worth of his audience is [bleep] stream. And, uh, he just randomly tweeted out like last May, hey, um, I never find new podcasts to listen to. I think David Center's founder's podcast is excellent. You should listen. And I was like, what the [bleep]? Like, I know you, dude. Like, I watch, listen to your podcast. Like, this is crazy.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  And so I had become friends with this guy named Sam Hinky. Sam Hinky is the former general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. Now he's an investor in Silicon Valley. And I knew he knew Patrick. And so I screenshotted that. I was like, oh shit, look what your friend Patrick said. And then Sam immediately put me in a group chat with Patrick. He's like, you two should know each other. And so Patrick, we, the first time we talked, we talked for like an hour and a half. We had like the same interests for addicted podcasts, addicted history, addicted entrepreneurship, all sorts of stuff. And so we were just friends for a long time. And then, uh, I had several people, Rob Moore being one of them, we should probably talk about, uh,

• 6:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Rob and I, uh, Rob's been hooking me up constantly. Like, I'll talk to him and we'll email back and forth. He's always helping me.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is the positive some nature of podcasting.

• 7:06Sam Parr?

  And for those who don't know, Rob Moore, Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman are partners, are partners on the pod.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Rob, Rob is the co-founder of the Huberman Live Podcast. So, okay. There is, this is the interesting thing. One of my favorite quotes, I've read every single thing I could find on Steve Jobs, right? And one of my favorite quotes that really describe Steve's, one of his superpowers was that Steve was gifted at finding markets full of secondary products. And what you, what you guys realize, I think as well is like, people, people have essentially like when you're inside podcasting, the perception inside of it is completely different than when it's outside of it. It's like, everybody's like, there's too many of them. Uh, it's too late to get in and like, you need to start a long time ago. And what happens is like, everybody starts a podcast quits, right? And when you get in there, podcasts in general are full of secondary products.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman, uh, and I put David and Ben up here as well. It's like, they're first, they have first-class products and a first-class approach to building their business. So, Rob, I've never talked to Rob less than two hours. Every single time we talk, he, dude, look what I have on my desk.

• 8:16Sam Parr?

  Like, what's that? Oh, Rob, is that a Huberman tweet?

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, Rob and Andrew have been so relentless with supporting me for no, like, they have no benefit, right? They just, they keep, like, every time Andrew tweets about me, the fact that he was, one of his favorite podcast is founders, he sends me up to church just from his tweets.

• 8:37Sam Parr?

  It's crazy, right?

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Rob's like, hey, um, we have this new studio. Next time you're in Califor, uh, next time you're in California, come out and like, I'd love to give you a tour. And our mutual friend Andrew Wilkinson had invited me to Victoria. So I was like, oh, I'm actually flying to Victoria like next week. That's a pain in the ass to get to from Miami. I'll just stop in California for a few days and see you. We, I meet up with Rob, we talk-

• 8:58Sam Parr?

  Is Rob in LA? Is Rob in LA?

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Rob's in Malibu. I met up with Rob, we talked podcasting for seven straight hours.

• 9:06Sam Parr?

  That's crazy.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Literally, we meet up to have lunch. We stay at the same spot. They're like, uh, it's dinner now. We're like, let's have dinner. And then we stayed there the whole time. And then he's like, let's go to the studio. They are- Like to me, I think not only is he ruins the size of his audience crazy, but if you break down on how they think about the quality of the product, how they think about the quality of the business model. Like there's ideas I got from Rob that I told Andrew or I told Ben and David that they're now using that's going to wind up making them millions of dollars. Like the, the way they set up their business, their ads, everything. They're just fucking first class dudes.

• 9:37Sam Parr?

  Are you, I see that you're always tweeting out, it looks like a screenshot from Kindle. How many books a month are you reading to, to pull this off?

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Okay. So I think this is, um, me and you were talking about the advantage, I think you have at Hampton, which is really fucking special. And it's an echo of what Bloomberg used to build his very unique business. Like your business is going to produce a lot of proprietary information. It's extremely valuable to other founders and then you can repurpose them. Dude, you know how many fucking people I've had dinner with that tell me about the Hampton blog? And you guys just, just launched it.

• 10:11Sam Parr?

  Oh, really? We, I think we just, we just, we just like, I threw it together like, I think two weeks ago.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  I heard about some guy doing concrete or some shit or like gravel or something. He was like searching, they told me that he was like searching through like, uh,

• 10:24Sam Parr?

  Like war dogs. Yeah. Like looking for new, look at through a database of government contracts and seeing what he can fulfill.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what I realized is when I text you that, uh, yesterday was I'm doing similar things. So, um, I realized what, and it, this is the, the magic of, you said something that was really smart where you're like, rich people read a lot. And it's very true. Our mutual friend, Andrew Wilkins had just tweeted out, he's like, I wish I could short entrepreneurs that don't read. And that's what I found as well. It's like, not only if the people I study is like, they had, they were so good at what they did, that somebody wrote a book about them. Like that's fucking crazy. Right? And then you read their books and they're constantly reading biographies, studying great work that came before them. And so the Bloomberg idea was like, he, his business is fundamentally, he's like, I want to sell you like a $27,000 a year subscription or whatever it is. My business, his business collects a bunch of unique information.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  And he made like a bunch of atomic pieces of content, started a media company as a way to get his brand. And so 90% of the people that read his media will never buy a subscription, but his media is spread around everywhere. Just like there's a ton of people that are going to read your Hampton blog. You know, obviously I think you should do a podcast. If you do fucking short form, whatever, it's like, that's going to be spread out like that. And then, you know, 1%, 5% of those are going to convert into members. And like, the more members you have, the more data you have, the more data you have, the more members you have, and it just keeps going. So to answer your question. I just hit episode 300. I've read over 300 biographies of entrepreneurs so far. I have, that's over 100,000 pages. What I realized is like, over time, I input all my highlights into this app called Readwise. And so everything you see externally are just, they're essentially

• 12:02Speaker 00

  highlights that I, like the one I posted yesterday, we were talking about Bloomberg. And I was like, oh, fuck, let me go and read back through my highlights on Bloomberg. And I found one where he said that like, you know, if you should try to love what you do, because you love what you do, you do a lot. And then, you know, that compounds everything. And I put that out and like immediately these hit and then people discover the podcast and they started listening. And so me and you and Bloomberg are kind of running the same idea, but in, you know, different different industries or different like.

• 12:27Sam Parr?

  Dude, I use, up until like, so two years ago, up until two years ago, I was reading a ton. And then I, so I like to listen to books. I like to listen, I'll listen, I have one that I'm listening to and one that I read at night. And I like to listen while I'm on walks. And there's this one narrator who I love. Have you ever listened to Titan or Vanderbilt's book, Tycoon? He, the narrator is awesome. And so I was like, I love this narrator. He's so good. So I went and found books just by that narrator and I started scrolling through and I'm like, oh my God. This guy's done 1,500 books or something like that, that he's narrated. And it's like how to win friends and influence and like all these like business-y, self-helpy books. And then I go and looked at his LinkedIn and I'm like, huh.

• 13:13Sam Parr?

  He's reading all these books. Why isn't he more successful?

• 13:17Sam Parr?

  And I'm like, I'm like, huh, that doesn't work. So I got angry. So now I, now I read mostly for fun. And if I don't like something, I brush it off. I put it away. And so I quit reading nonfiction books. Now I strictly read biographies or history.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  So your friend Ryan Holiday has a great post where he shared like his top 25 biography recommendations and his, the, the intro to that post is excellent. Cause he's like, listen, you go to the most successful people in the world, look at their bookshelves, they read a lot of shit. They all read biographies, all of them, without exception. He's like some of the most high value reading you can do. You notice that as you read through the biographies, like they're all doing this. Now here's the thing, this, this actually clicked for me the other day. You know Eric Jorgensen, right?

• 14:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He helped Naval write the thing.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Yep. So he gave me this fantastic book recommendation I had missed despite this game, Peter Bevlin. And he kind of, it's a book on Buffett and Munger. It's called, uh, it's just all I want to know is where I'll die. So I don't go there. And there was something that Buffett and Munger were saying in that book that really clicked for me. They kept saying, it's like, listen, we're going to share everything we know with you guys. We know that most of you are just going to listen or read it and never do anything. And I thought about that for a long time. I was like, oh, so learning is not memorizing information like the guy you were just describing. Learning is changing your behavior. If you don't change your behavior, then you didn't actually learn. And so therefore, if I'm not applying the lessons I'm learning in this book for my own business, then that means I'm just wasting my whole fucking life. Cause I'm, I'm working on the seven days a week. Like I'm giving a lot of my life energy to this. And I think that's the important part is it's like, not just, these people didn't just fucking read.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  They took this idea like, okay, how can I apply it to my business? And then they actually changed their fucking behavior, which is like the key.

• 15:01Sam Parr?

  No, and I've done that a ton. I mean, I'll, I'll, what I, my, the reason I read biographies is I look for patterns and I say, uh, what mistake did this person make and how do I avoid it? And where did they win? And how do I like lean in on that? And then like the way that I kind of, this sounds really lame, but we make a joke that I'm, I call myself a manifest cowboy. Cause I'm a little bit of a redneck, but the reason being is I'm pretty good at like setting five year and 10 year goals and staying focused and working backwards to achieve it. And like, I can like, there's this one book called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Love that.

• 15:34Sam Parr?

  And like, I, I like listen, I was like, all right, what, and he, and he was, uh, he had cancer, I believe, or, uh, I don't know if he had a cancer when he wrote it, but he died soon after. And he was like, if I could do it all over again, I would try to be financially secure by age 35 and then just putz around. And I was like, okay, let's do that. And so I like, just worked backwards. So like, how do you just like, have like the bills handled? And then everything else is just, you know, icing on the cake. And so I'm pretty good at that, but I,

• 16:06Speaker 00

  When's the last time you read it?

• 16:09Sam Parr?

  I read it all the time. I refer, I use it like a textbook. So like when I think about like equity and how much to pay people, I go and read the sections that he talks about. So I have it. If you just Google how to get rich, free PDF, there's like a website that has it. So I've bought many copies and I have a bunch of his biographies. But I'll just like refer to that all the constantly. I'm like, all right, what did he say about this? And he gives like pretty practical advice, like on company credit cards, like how do you issue your company credit cards and like office space? And so I refer back to it constantly.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Andrew Wilkinson gave me advice. He's like, what he did, he's like, I read the book before I got rich and then you read it after you get really rich.

• 16:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  I thought that was really great advice.

• 16:50Sam Parr?

  We, so you and I are both UFC fans. And I was asking you, I was like, what should we talk about? And I was like, I want to talk about the difference between the people who are pretty good and absolute killers. And you were like, oh, that's just like in UFC. That's kind of the same way. But I, because I'm fascinated with like, I listened to your, I think his name is Sam Bronfman, the guy who started Seagram's, which eventually turned into like all these other things. And then I listened to

• 17:16Speaker 00

  What a fucking savage.

• 17:18Sam Parr?

  He's a savage, you know, like he almost reminded me of myself, not in the savage sense, but he did a few funny things. He, he was like a hermit and he like, didn't go anywhere unless his wife went with him. And I'm the same way. I'm like, I don't go out unless my wife comes up to me because I'm, I have like some social anxiety a little bit. And like, but when it came to business, he was like pretty brash and like told people exactly what he thought. Except like when it came to social situations, he was like super not confrontational. If I go to the grocery store and I don't see what I'm looking for, I leave. I don't ask. You know what I mean? I'm like, I'm like, dude, I just don't even want to ask for help because it bothers me. But anyway, I listened to him and then I listened to Napoleon. That one was really good.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Oh dude, look at this book. Sorry. Sam Altman said the best book he's read in the last few years is this one. It's really hard to find. It's first published in 1955.

• 18:08Sam Parr?

  Is that the concise history one? I can't see.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  No, no, no. I'm about, I'm gonna do this in like two, um, two, probably two episodes. It's called The Mind in Napoleon. It's Napoleon's own fucking words. And

• 18:19Sam Parr?

  That's cool.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, cause everybody's obsessed with Sam Altman right now because of ChatGPT. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but Napoleon's.

• 18:24Sam Parr?

  Well, Napoleon had this amazing saying, I forget if I heard it from you or Ben Wilson, but it was something like, um,

• 18:32Sam Parr?

  you, he, he was talking to someone, he goes, you and I are not the same. I am born of a people of conquerors or something like that. Like he had this like, uh, like this, he felt like he was just like, I'm here to conquer, get out of my way. And he had that at a young age and I thought that was really insightful.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Um, there is something that you picked up on where people, it's fascinating how like, uh, you'll listen to founders or you read a bunch of biographies and you realize like the most successful people in the world, you're like, oh, I don't, I don't want their life. And that's the way I feel.

• 19:01Sam Parr?

  For sure.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  Out of like, I, I, exactly. First of all, you said something that was really smart too. It's like, people diss like manifestation or visualization. And they think it's like, like willy poofoo nonsense. Okay, that's fine. I can just tell you pops up in the books over and over and over again. I told you yesterday, I'm reading this fucking insane biography of Tiger Woods. This dude is like eight years old, listening to motivational tapes, writing it out and on his wall, it's like, I am powerful. I will achieve my goals, like over and over and over again. And you see this from Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, Estee Lauder, uh, Bob Noes, founder of Intel, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have you read The Education? I want to send you, I was gonna ask you for your address to send you this book, but I was like, he might've already read it. Did you ever read The Education of a Bodybuilder?

• 19:41Sam Parr?

  I've heard about it. I've never read it.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  It, the first 113 pages is, it functions as a, as a autobiography of Arnold when he's 30. And like the visualization thing, seeing things and like he said, he's like, he would lay in bed at night and just picture himself on the stage, holding the trophy of the Mr. Universe or whatever in his hand. Everybody's like, essentially like bowing down to him. He's a conqueror to use like that example. What I find is that a lot of the people that, um, even Felix Dennis, man, uh, I think his, the advice he gave was wise. Like that guy had a hole in his heart that could never fill. He spent a hundred million dollars in a decade, 10 million a year on cocaine, alcohol and prostitutes. You know, like, that's a fucking crazy story in that book. And what I love about autobiography as a first, usually they write them towards, and they're like, they don't hide shit.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  They're like, I was fucked up. I was a bad father. I cheated on my wife. I whatever, you know? Um, so the, the, the tie this into like the UFC thing and, and like the conquering is that quote, um,

• 20:40Sam Parr?

  I think it's a, I am of the race that founds empires is what it is.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  So I, I want to read this quote that you and I were, uh, discussing where I think Joe Rogan is obviously like the world, the world's leading expert on, you know, MMA. Like the stuff, I wish I could talk to that guy. Just, I hope I get that, I hope I get the chance just to ask him. I wouldn't, I just want to talk about MMA and all the shit that's in his brain. And I was very curious what was going to happen with this John Jones surreal, surreal game fight, right?

• 21:09Sam Parr?

  So for those who don't know, John Jones is this very controversial character at age like 22, 23. He was like the first UFC fighter sponsored by Nike. He was the golden boy. He was the champion when he was 20 or something. And he's just a killer, never lost, but he, you know, has hit his girlfriend before. He's gotten arrested for drinking and driving. He's a mess. He's a killer on and off, uh, the field.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Did you ever see the video of him where, remember like during the, the pandemic, people were like lighting shit on fire. There's all these riots and they did it in, uh, Albuquerque where he's at.

• 21:44Sam Parr?

  And he stopped him and he, yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  You saw that? Could you imagine if those two guys, there's two small guys, like young kids are like spray painting and vandalizing shit. And John is just walking around saying, give me the can, give me the can, give me the can. Like dude, if you know who that is, you'll give him the can.

• 21:59Sam Parr?

  Cause you, John Jones is like six, two, probably, well, now he weighs 260 pounds. I mean, he's like one of the scarier people you could ever see and he's athletic. The guy's a freak. He's a freak, but he comes off, this is why this is interesting. He, he, he. Tries to come off like a nice guy a lot of times in interviews and when you listen to him talk, you think, or at least I think this is learned behavior and you are actually a little more sociopathic than you are not and you will kill someone easily and sleep like a baby at night.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Hundred. So this is the fascinating thing about setting history. So this is what Joe Rogan said about John Jones, which I think is gonna, it reminds me like a young Bill Gates, which we can talk about. He says, Joe is like, listen, there's human beings that have a ruthless competitive drive that is terrifying to the ordinary person. John Jones is a bad guy who is trying to be a good guy. If he were living a thousand years ago, he'd be on a horse with a battle axe chopping the heads off of everyone and everyone would be running. These dominators have always existed. He's a fucking conqueror. That is the thing that's inside of him that leads him to be the GOAT, greatest of all time. Without that, you don't get there. There's a thing inside of some people that's a driving force that allows them to overcome the greatest people around them. When I heard that, I wasn't thinking about John Jones. I was thinking like, that's Michael Jordan, that's Jeff Bezos, that's a young Bill Gates,

• 23:18Speaker 00

  that's Edward Land, that's John Rockefeller, that's Carnegie, that's all of them. They have this ruthless competitive drive. To me, they're a different species than an average person.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  And so the example of that is like, I did this, this excellent biography of a young Bill Gates, right? In my opinion, the perfect biography, it's like, I don't need to know what their great grandfather did for a living, right? It's like, tell me the struggle. The reason we're like, give me a little background to what family they were born into, then tell me the struggle and then once they're rich, end the book. And so there's a book called Hard Drive, Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, that covers the first 35 years of Bill Gates' life, right? So it ends right after the Microsoft IPO. And I'm obsessed. The reason I have a solo podcast is because my podcast idol is Dan Carlin Hardcore History, right?

• 24:06Sam Parr?

  And Is he by himself?

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. He's got a giant audience. Um, we should actually talk about podcasting if you're interested in that. He, he, a lot of people will share numbers. He had said, uh, don't let me forget the thread on Bill Gates, by the way. Um, he had said the latest episode, this is like two years ago, uh, that got published. He had 19 million downloads on. And then he said, oh, wait, then he said, oh, wait, uh, it turns out some of them were double counted. So in any case, cut it in half. It's nine. He's got an audience of probably 10 million people that listen to him.

• 24:42Sam Parr?

  That would be one of the biggest episodes of the year for most every podcast. You know, the big dogs get a million or 1.5 per episode, but rarely, you know, Joe Rogan, if he interviewed like Bernie, when he interviewed Bernie Sanders or someone like that, that maybe got five or, or eight or something like that.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  So Joe, Joe's audience and Joe has more data than anybody else. And all the Spotify exclusives have more data than anybody else does. He said, uh, remember when they tried to cancel him? This is also the magic of podcasting, man. Uh, which I know we don't like, we, we had to be careful here because we talked about it forever. Um, the problem is, is like you have people that don't, if you listen to Joe or you listen, like I listened to you and fucking Sean forever. I know even before we met, I like, I know who you guys are. I know Manifest Cowboy. I know the fucking terminology. We have an idea of who you are. Like the personality before you meet them, right? That's the magic of podcasting. It's like, we're not creating content. We're creating relationships at scale, which is very fucking powerful. And still, uh, people, most people don't, they, they underestimate how powerful this is. Um, and so what happens is like, you have, you know, people saying

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Joe Rogan's racist, you know, they, they, they cut the clip and then, you know, he's anti-vax, everything else. And so they try to cancel him and then somebody's been listening to him for fucking 10 years and listens to him 10 hours a week. It's like, you're not going to tell me anything about Joe that I don't know. And so what happens is he said his audience added 2 million people. I think it went from 12 million subscribers to 14 million subscribers on Spotify. Those are the numbers I've heard. Yeah. Um, and it speaks to like this, he's still the biggest by far, because even like the top, you know, humans, everybody else, like yours 1.5 without YouTube and everything else. So it's still just crazy how big and successful Joe's show is. Um,

• 26:18Sam Parr?

  But what about Bill? Back to Bill.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  So Bill Gates is, I was doing an episode on him and I had just been listening to Dan Carlin's Wrath of the Con series on Genghis Khan for like the 15th time.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  Bill Gates is not who you think he is. He's like, this is Genghis Khan in a Mr. Rogers costume. He's in a disguise and he is unbelievably relentless. So there's this guy named Michael Moritz, who was, now he's a billionaire. He's one of the guys that helped scale Sequoia, but at the time he was just a journalist. This is a perfect example. He's giving, he's just a journalist. I think he's writing for Time Magazine and he's meeting Bill. You know, Bill's probably, maybe 28, something like that. They do an interview. Bill's like, hey, I'll give you a ride to the airport. They get in Bill's car and Michael's like, oh shit, somebody broke into your car. What happened here? He's like, what are you talking about? He goes, your radio. It's like, somebody stole your radio. He's like, no, I ripped it out. He said, why would you do that? He's like, from my house to Microsoft's office is seven minutes. That's 14 minutes a day.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  From Microsoft's office to the airport, I go there three times a week. That's 15 minutes round trip. You know, 30, 30 minutes, or 15 minutes each way, 30 minutes round trip. And he adds this up. He's like, so that's like two hours in the car. And if I have a radio, then I'd listen to it. And then I'm spending two hours not thinking about Microsoft.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  And there's all these fucking crazy stories because somebody asked the other day, like, what's the largest bootstrap business of all time? And Paul Graham answered, Microsoft. And people are like, oh, they took VC. No, no, they were printing money and they sold a million shares of Microsoft for a million dollars to a VC. They did not need the money right before they went public to get expertise. That was a bootstrap business. The year before, this is in 1980 money, the year before Microsoft IPOs, they did 140 million in revenue and 38 million profit. That's insane, right? He's insane. And then, so this extreme, John Jones, the serial game thing, when you hear about how he thinks about his fucking competitors. It's not just enough that he needs to win. He's like, I have to fucking destroy you. So there's this spooky fucking, um.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  This spooky story that's in one of Bill Gates' biographies, I've read two of them. And Bill would be able to tell you, like, in the software industry, he's like, I know the CEO of every single software company, I know what their revenue was, I know what their, where their product is right now, I know everything about them. And so they, he had a bunch of like frenemies, he's like, I want to destroy you, but he would talk to you. And a lot of them were getting customers at these, in the early days of like these, these software conventions, which is very, like, very new. And so this guy Philippe Kahn, that he was trying to fucking destroy, he literally wants to put you out of business. Cause he, he told his employees, like, if I, if we lose a $50,000 contract, that's not 50,000. That's 100,000, because we lost 50 and our fucking enemy got 100, got 50. So you just cost me $100,000. He was like, very psychotic about it.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  And so Philippe goes over, sees Bill sitting by himself in like a foldable chair, just looking at something. Philippe walks up to him and he goes to say hi to Bill and he realizes what Bill's looking at. He's looking at a picture of Philippe Kahn. He's in public in a fucking corner of a convention center staring at a fucking picture of his enemy. Like, the, what Joe said about John, a thousand years ago, we lived at zero sum. If you wanted to build wealth, what'd you do? Like, you took their land or took their resources from somebody else.

• 29:32Sam Parr?

  Conquer.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. So a thousand years ago, that personality type, Bill Gates, would have been, he would have been a Napoleon. He would have been leading an army. It just so happens that this same personality type that is, that exists today, has existed forever, will exist forever in the future, can run companies and build wealth. And when you, when you study the personalities of these people, it's like, they're all like that. Thank God we are living in a free market economy, or else they'd be, they'd be pillaging and raping and doing everything else.

• 29:57Sam Parr?

  Well, that's why my favorite era of American history is like, 1890. So that's 30 or 20 years after the Civil War, so we're, America's kind of getting back to it. Up until like 1920, because in 1920, like the Sherman Act, which was the Anti-Monopoly Act, started coming about. And then the SEC was invented. And so between like 1890 and 1920, America was really the Wild West, where we had some technology. You know, we had cars, we had, I think phones were coming about, telegraphs, so we could

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Railroads.

• 30:34Sam Parr?

  Railroads, we could, and the stock market existed, so we could like make wealth, but

• 30:41Sam Parr?

  There was a few things that you could do. So for example, Andrew Carnegie and um, uh, who's his partner Frick?

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Henry Clay Frick.

• 30:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like when people would, uh, when the union workers would boycott and protest, they killed them. Like they, they hired a, a private police team and they went out, a private army and, and they literally beat like 10 of them to death. And I don't think anything happened. I don't know if anything happened.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  No, because they also own the politicians.

• 31:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And it was wild. And then like, there was a time where JP Morgan loaned the US government money. And, and then there was a time, a lot of people don't know this, but JFK, John, John F. Kennedy, the, uh, president, his father, Joe Kennedy, was like the seventh richest man in America at one point. He got rich from insider trading. Then, after he was already rich, he created, or he was the first head of the SEC that made insider trading illegal. Like, it was like hardcore crony capitalism. That's one of the reasons why I like reading about John Rockefeller is because of all the things he did, he was dishonest once or twice, but for the most part, he was a ruthless competitor and he didn't lie and he was honest. Other than, uh, one big time he lied, but besides that, he was pretty straight.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  And how crazy was it that his employees, he, they like, he never, we never heard him raise his voice and he never said an unkind word to us. Now, his competitors, different story. He's completely ruthless with them. But inside of his, you're not going to find anybody that worked inside of Standard Oil and then obviously they, they hid all the things they owned. This is actually an idea I stole from, uh, Rockefeller.

• 32:12Sam Parr?

  By the way, his competitors, he wasn't really, I mean, he was ruthless, but he would go to them. He goes, hey, I'd like to buy you. This is a very fair price. Come and join me and I'll make you rich, of which many did and they got rich. And he said, if you don't join me, I'm going to destroy you. So let me know if you, and so to me, that's like, he's like, look, we can work together or I'm going to end you. You can pick. But he wasn't like necessarily like rude about it.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the, the one thing he said was so badass. He was trying to buy somebody out. They were, resisted. He's like, I have ways to make money that you know nothing about. He was, I always say like, there's a, there's a very common theme that, common themes that reappear in the history of entrepreneurship. And so I have maxims for a bunch of these. Like my favorite one is excellence is the capacity to take pain. It's just like, you're not going to achieve. Large success without being able to tolerate pain for extended periods of time. Right. Another one is bad boys move in silence. Like they find an advantage and they shut up about it. This is what um Steve Jobs realized when he was built trying to build Pixar. He's just like, we can't get any fucking data on how profitable. He says they're transitioning from selling hardware to just pure animate like trying to build the first computer animated movie.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  And Steve Jobs like, I don't get why, like, we can't get any information on this. And then he realized he's like, oh, the reason that you can't go to the library. And check out a book that says like the business model of animation is because there's only one company ever did well and it's Disney. And they don't want anybody else to know how lucrative it is. And so he realized that because they had they made like Snow White like 60 years before. And right when he's doing negotiations with Pixar and Disney. They re-released it and were selling like VHS tapes. And I think that they might have had DVDs at this point. And they're like, wait a minute, you just sold 28 million copies of a movie you made 60 years ago. That's all profit. And they made two, he said they made a quarter billion in profit on that one movie releasing it for like this new technology. And so I actually took an idea from John D Rockefeller, Rob Moore plays a role in this.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Is like um what what um Rockefeller would do is like he had this secret allies. Right. And so he entered into an industry where he thought was very disorganized. And so he wound up building relationships and allies with all the people in the oil. Remember the oil business when he jumps in, it's not what we think is oil. He was he was like, it was a refiner. He was selling kerosene for fucking like lighting and stuff. He made up, he actually made more money in retirement because after he retired, he still owned a shit ton of um equity. Goes back to Felix Dennis. Uh, and then the ambition of the core. And so now like, oh, this, this, my, my stock's even worth more. Uh, but what he would do is he'd go around and he'd organize all the other people in the industry. So like, I do this with a bunch of podcasters, like me and you just started doing this, like texting about this. It's just like, you just share information.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Like you build secret allies and you just say, hey, this guy figured out this for your podcast, you should use it. And like, everybody in the podcast industry is extremely positive. So I listened to your um, your interview with Brandon Shaw. He said the same thing about, he's like, Joe told us we have an obligation to help each other out. And so for business podcasts, like they're all kind of like satellites and like loosely defined. And so me and Patrick have been going around building relationships with people and just sharing information. Like, I was at the choir guy's house in San Francisco a few weeks ago. They're like, we get Patrick. They have one of the most profitable. Ben and David, who are fantastic, I'm actually wearing their merch right now. They have one of the most profitable podcasts compared to audience size and how much they make.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  And they're like, well, Patrick told us that we weren't charging enough, so we tripled our prices. Then we, and then we still sold ads and then we tripled them again. And then it's like, holy shit, he was right. And so that idea is like, we're no gatekeeping, just share information and try to help people as much as possible. That's an idea from Rockefeller.

• 35:42Sam Parr?

  When you read about some of these killers, do you think they are different than me? Or do you start becoming that? Like, do you think that just surrounding yourself with them is going to change your behavior? Or is it just like aliens exist and I am not them?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  No, here's the thing, we, I don't know if we're recording, I like how you guys just jump right in, by the way. So I don't, I think most of our discussion was caught on the recording. But um, I am very glad that I have a wife and two kids.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Up and down, like here's, here's my thing, it's like the thing that I don't like and it's very present in a lot of these books is like, if you're an adult, it's your job to figure it out and like not let people take advantage of you, right? So if like John D Rockefeller gives you a bad price and for your business you accept it, that's on you. What I'm, you hear this on the podcast, like I'm induced into a state of rage is when people fuck with kids. I can't stand that. And so up and down my family tree, like I was the first person to graduate high school in my family, much less college. I'm the first male in my three generations not to go to jail, right? And so like up and down both sides of my family tree, I just see a lot of like terrible parenting. And this is not necessarily my parents, they did the best they can because they're both sets of their parents were shitty people. But like I saw drug abuse, I saw sexual abuse, I saw people going to jail, cocaine, all this crazy shit, right?

• 36:59Speaker 00

  And so I was like, if I'm going to have kids, I'm not going to be a shit father. And I think the fact that I have a kid and a wife, that like we get along really well. It saves me from not, I think if I didn't have that, I would literally work from the time I eyes open in the morning till the time they close. And I would just fucking, like, I think the scary part is like I, and I'm trying to compare myself to, you know, you can't compare myself to Rockefeller, but like.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  I have a little bit of that in me too. And I think I hear from a ton of people that listen. They're like, I think like that too. The whole thing is like learning from their experience like, hey, but they get to their life. They're not necessarily happy. You know, like, so I don't want that. I don't want to destroy everything around me. Because I chased professional success, but I think men in general, you know, type A aggressive men like that's what. Successful people, super successful people are crazy. Like they're not normal humans and it's probably one to five percent of the population that are borderline sociopathic. You know, I'm not saying murder people, that's, that's a little extreme, but like they're willing to do whatever they can if you get in their way. And

• 38:02Sam Parr?

  So I, I'm, I've been lucky that as we've, it's, it's funny that as we've, I've gotten more popular for like content and business shit. A lot of people in different fields who I previously looked up to, like for example, a Lance Armstrong or someone like that. They'll like message me and I'll get an opportunity to hang out with them. And this isn't about Lance, but this is, I've been lucky that it's been a bunch of different people. And I'll go and hang out with them a couple of times. And then I think, I don't want to be around you ever again. Like, and so like, I don't enjoy being around them. And so I've had a bunch of people who, if you told me when I was 12 that these people want to talk to me, I'd be like, that is sick. Now I just, I'm just like, I don't like being around you. It's actually not enjoyable being around some of these people.

• 38:48Sam Parr?

  Because it feels like, well, I don't know exactly how it feels like, like it feels like we, we're in a pissing match when we're, when we're with each other. And I simply don't enjoy it. And so now I have, I have a rule in my household, which is no new friends. So I default, whenever I talk to someone, I default to, I'm not going to be friends until it's like, all right, maybe after a while we can, we can, we can cross the threshold. But by default, it's, I don't trust you and I'm not going to let you in. Whereas before it was like, oh, anyone who wants to holler at me, yeah, I'm in. And then I go and hang out with some of these ballers and these killers. And I think, oh, this is, this is a very unenjoyable hang. You know, there's a bunch of people who.

• 39:31Sam Parr?

  Maybe Ben might know who we're talking about, but there's like a couple of people that are like some of the most famous and successful people in the world and we've been lucky to hang out with them. And then we'll go hang out with them after the pod. And I'm like, oh, this is just miserable. I don't want to be around you at all. And so my point being is for the, to, to what, what you said about the most successful people being crazy. Not only are they crazy, I don't want to be around them. It's not fun. They're not fun to be around. And so you really see that there's a price to pay, which is you are in the one percentile or 99 percentile of this, of these other traits, which usually, not always means you're going to be lacking in a handful of other traits. And sometimes that's like, whatever the traits are of you wanting to be near someone, I guess, like physically and hanging out with someone.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  That, that's why everybody's like, okay, uh, like, are you doing all this? Are you, do you want to run like the next Apple? Like, what are you doing this for? And I'm like, no, like out of the 300 people that I've studied, the, the person that I want to be the most like is the, the closest person that I've studied and read about that has come to mastering life is a guy named Ed Thorp. Right? And so it's

• 40:33Sam Parr?

  Who's he?

• 40:34Speaker 00

  This is a fucking crazy story. So it's episode 222 and the crazy thing is like, usually the episode titles are just the book I read, right? This says my personal blueprint, right? And because what he did is like, first of all, he's a, Ed Thorp is one of, he was the guy that made the first quantitative hedge fund. Right? Uh, the reason I liked him is because what I think you were talking about earlier, like you have varied interests, right? Where you need a balance because I've also heard you speak enough where I'm like, okay, he's clearly type A and driven. And like, if you didn't have your wife or you didn't have these other things, I could also see you going, not sociopathic, but like, you know, no limit to the kind of empire you want to build. You have a chip on your shoulders. It's like all of them. I do too. So I see that.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Um, Ed Thorp, essentially like what he did is like, he made a ton of money as a quantitative investor, right? But once he had more money, like he didn't need to worry about money anymore. He refused to trade time to make more money because he understood he's like, more money is not going to make me happy. But by time is limited. He was a good father. He was a good husband. He was, he followed his own intellectual interests, like he, he had fun. He, uh, Tim Ferriss just interviewed him and I would highly recommend going to YouTube and just type in Tim Ferriss at Thorp. And look at that guy's picture and tell me how old you think he is. I've done this a bunch. I did it with my wife. I go, how old do you think he is? She's like, I don't know, 65. He's fucking 90. Because he learned when he was really young, that physical fitness was really important. And so he gave me the best heuristic for health.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  He goes, I view every hour in the gym as one less day I'll spend in the hospital at the end of my life. And the guy's still doing like pull ups. He looks fucking fantastic, right? He's like, I think he might be like 92. Um, and so this whole balance of like, your friend Ryan Holiday, actually I learned this from his content. Was like, what it means to be a completed human? We've known that forever. We just get distracted. It's like, you want work that has meaning. You want good relationships. You want to have fun and you want to make sure that your body's healthy and you feel good. That's it. There isn't anything else. I love what you just said because the same thing, when you have a successful podcast, you get hit up on all kinds of fucking crazy experiences, which is actually, you know, huge benefit. But it's like, man, I'm not going to build a thousand relationships that are like an inch deep. I just talk to the same people over and over and over and over again.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  It's like, you have a limited amount of people you could actually be friends with. And yet we're all connected. So we're like, we're hugely distracted. So I was like, okay. I'm not smart as a Thorpe. He's way smarter than me. So I'll just fucking copy his blueprint. I'll write that down. I'll be a good father. I'll be a good husband. I'll take care of my health. I'll have work that I'm really fucking obsessed with, but I put guardrails on, right? And like, I'm not going to keep trading money or time, which I'm going to run out of for more money when I'm not even spending the money I have.

• 43:15Sam Parr?

  I want to, um, I want to ask you some more questions about history, but a story really quick. I, I have a friend who's 40, low 40s, worth a billion dollars, has a publicly traded company. And he was telling me the story about how. He had this phrase called it's never enough. And he was telling me a story about how he went to one guy's home who was worth 50 million. And the guy was complaining about how he lives in this fancy neighborhood and he can't. His home is his six million dollar home is less good than is is worse than the other people in the neighborhood. Then he's like, I went to another guy who's worth like half a billion. And he was saying like, yeah, but you know what? I don't have a super yacht. And then there was another guy who had like one or two billion.

• 43:58Sam Parr?

  And this guy was complaining, he's like, can't get a sports team though. It's not enough. And so.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't want to be around people. I think you hit it. Don't be like, I don't want to be around people like that.

• 44:08Sam Parr?

  It's never enough. And that's what I've also learned because like I've thought that when I've hit certain points, I'm like, well, I won't want anymore. It's you always want more. It's a very challenging thing.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  It doesn't have to be that way, though. I had the advantage because like this is the crazy thing about podcasts you just said, like you never know who's listening. So I got invited to have a two hour lunch with Sam Zell, right? And that's fucking crazy. Um, it came inbound. Sam had listened to the podcast I made on his autobiography and he's like, I want to meet that guy.

• 44:37Sam Parr?

  So Sam Zell, Sam Zell's a real estate guy. He's got a great book called, uh, am I being loud enough?

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Or am I being subtle? Or am I being subtle enough?

• 44:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, am I being subtle enough? He's a, he's probably close to 90 now. He's kind of, he's kind of got this blue collar ish vibe about him, but he's worth probably five or 10 billion dollars, something like that. He owned, uh, uh, all these real estate things. He created the REIT, I think. Then he like owned Schwinn bicycles. He owned the LA Times, I think, or the Tribune, something like that. He, he's always like a tycoon.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  He so you're, and you fucking love him. So he's 81 years old. He sold his, his real estate company for 30 billion to Blackrock or Blackstone. I don't fucking know. You know, they're all named the same. And so, you know, who the fuck, how, how often do you get to meet somebody that sells their company for 40 billion dollars? And I couldn't believe this was going to happen. I thought it was like, oh, like this isn't really happening. Now it's like, oh, maybe it's going to be like a lunch I'm invited to. And there's like 20 people there. It's like, no, he sat eye to eye for two fucking hours. And he's not like that. You would, the reason I, I got back after that lunch and I told my wife, I go, I want that. I want that. I want to be eighty one years old, completely still unbelievably curious about the world around him, still doing deals. Doesn't give a fuck. He's not one of these like media trade guys, right?

• 45:50Sam Parr?

  He only wears blue jeans, I think.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  He invented, he, he takes, he takes credit. He's like, I invented business casual. I'm like, Sam. I don't know if you should invent this schedule. It's fucking hilarious that you would say that you invented business casual. Will not wear a suit, still rides a motorcycle. Still, I think smoked weed. Like, it's fucking crazy. But the thing, the advice that he gave me, he's like, David, he's like, the richer you get, what you realize is one, he goes, you'd be shocked at how many rich guys I know that aren't having fun, which is describing exactly what you're saying. You go to their house and they're talking about other people or what other people have. I'd run the other truck away. Sam didn't talk about that. He goes, listen. He goes, money, he's like, there's very few true luxuries in life. The richer he got,

• 46:32Speaker 00

  he's like, then I just kept just buying nicer of the same shit. So I'd buy a house, then I'd buy, get richer, then I'd buy another house. Like, this was fucking stupid. So he's like, I basically own nothing. He has a place in Chicago and he has a compound in Malibu. That's his words, by the way. He's like, I have a compound in Malibu. Um, he's like, just, he's like, the advice he gave me over and over again. He said it five or six times every two hours. He's like, optimize for freedom. If you get freedom, you get to choose what you do and then you'll have fun. And if you have fun, you'd be really good at it and the money will come. But do not give up your freedom for money, which so many rich dudes do. It's fucking crazy. And then he goes, the one thing, he's like, none of that shit matters. I could buy everything I want. He goes, I rent a bunch of shit. Which reminded me of you, because I know you fucking hate owning a house.

• 47:12Sam Parr?

  I like renting, yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  He's like, don't own a bunch of shit. Just rent it when you need it. Like, and you're like, because if you own it, then you've got to take care of it. This is advice from fucking the guy that, you know, obviously owned assets. He was buying, he's still buying a ton of businesses. The day before I saw him, he, he's like, he, dude, he was eighty one, he just, his eyes lit up. He's like, I just spent three hundred million dollars buying seventy five percent of this company makes fifty million a year or some shit. Like, he's just loves the deal. He's like, I'm going to be doing deals till I die, just because he likes the game. He's like, he treats it like a game. But he's like, there's only one true luxury in life. He goes, try to get the private jet money.

• 47:42Sam Parr?

  Really? What what are? What was it like meeting Charlie Munger?

• 47:47Speaker 00

  So that was fucking crazy, too. Um, and again, because like Andrew and his partner, Chris, um, it was fascinating because I heard your podcast where you guys had met Chris and spent time with him. Um, and I got to have the the the the few hours before we had dinner with Charlie Munger, I had like a super long lunch, one on one with Chris. And that dude is fascinating. I wonder if he'd ever come on your podcast.

• 48:13Sam Parr?

  I'm gonna hang out with him tonight. I'm gonna be with him tonight.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, like you should. Yeah, I know he's more private. He's another guy where I think he knows. Like, one of the things I loved about Chris, and obviously he's wicked smart. But one of the things I thought was so cool is like, he showed me his calendar when we had lunch. He's like, look at my calendar. It's like every day at three o'clock, I'm picking my, I think it's his son, his son up from school. Like, he's not going to be, you know, he's like, obviously, rich and successful, will continue to be more rich and more successful as he carries on. Um, but he's not doing it at the detriment of being a shitty dad, which like I admire a lot. I fucking hate shitty dads.

• 48:49Sam Parr?

  So what was Munger like? He was he was present?

• 48:52Speaker 00

  So Munger was, uh, he has this line where he's like, oh, I didn't succeed in life because of intelligence. I succeeded because of the long attention span. Definitely has a long attention span. But that dude is way smarter than me. Like, if anybody's

• 49:04Sam Parr?

  Even even at ninety eight or what? How old is he? Ninety five?

• 49:07Speaker 00

  So he's ninety nine. Anybody is gonna have uh some level of cognitive decline at ninety nine. And so all I could think about is like, if that is who he is at ninety nine, imagine trying to compete with that dude thirty years ago.

• 49:19Sam Parr?

  What was his house like?

• 49:21Speaker 00

  I I had to be careful because I got into a little bit of like, they want me to keep some of that stuff private. So like, I can't answer that question.

• 49:28Sam Parr?

  Was it fancy? Was it what? Uh, was it as you'd expect? Which is very, very, very nice.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  No, he li- he's very authentic. He, if you read Munger and talk about Munger, he's like, hey, don't have a lot of silly needs in your life. Uh, his whole thing is just like, I I've truly believed that he just wanted to show what he could do with his brain, so he could make a ton of money with his mind because he's really smart. He like wears like, you know, he loves

• 49:52Sam Parr?

  He wears flannel in your in your picture, I think, like flannel from Amazon.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  So the Costco, like his, one of his favorite entrepreneurs, Jim Sinigal, who I love a lot too. And one of his favorite companies, Jim Sinigal, or it's Costco because of that Costco could have made more money, but pass the, the benefit of their group buying onto the customer. And so Charlie is who he says he is. He's like, he's not, doesn't have fancy watch, doesn't have fancy clothes. He just buys books as far as I can tell and talks to interesting people and makes a ton of money. But he's not in it for the money. He just wanted, he's in it. He says, he's like, I didn't want the Ferraris. I wanted the independents.

• 50:27Sam Parr?

  Who all that you've, so besides Ed Thorp, who all have you, who have you listened to or spoken about? That you think is like in your top five people of like, they will conquer the world if given the chance. Like they are, they are the, the, the top, they are the 1% of the 1%.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I think the selection here is that every single person is in the top, you know, point 0001%. Because you're only, to get on founders, you have to liberate someone, or somebody would have a book about it. What I would say is like, I just got done reading James Dyson's autobiography for the fourth time. And it is my number one book recommendation by far for entrepreneurs. And he's written two autobiographies. The second one's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm talking about the first one because the first one he writes after 14 years of struggle. Like what I admire so much about this guy is like, he's not necessarily like a conqueror in the sense like he's going to go around. I don't think he'd be like a Napoleon in other times, but what I love is like my favorite entrepreneurs are very adamant

• 51:29Speaker 00

  about what they want to do in life and how they want to run their business. It's not formulaic. They're not going around asking people advice. Like what do you think I should do? What does my product look like? What is, how should I run the business? Like, no, I have a very set mindset of like how I want to build the product, how I want to build my business, how I want to, uh, to like spend my time.

• 51:47Sam Parr?

  You know what I call that? I call that they bend reality to their, to their will, you know? They kick their dent in the universe. That's what I always call that. I'm like, they know what they want. And they bent reality to fit what they wanted.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Read, read that dude, you can read his autobiography in a weekend. It'll fucking blow your mind because it's like, why is this guy not quitting? Well, what is, what is happening here? He's borrowing, he's got two mortgages on every single house. He's got these crying at the end of the night, never think he's going to be successful and he just won't quit. And what happens is like, You fast forward now, James Dyson is 75 years old. He owns 100% of Dyson Company. He's like, you know, that company's probably worth $20 billion. It makes supposedly, you know, a couple billion a year for profit for his family. That like they take out of the company. What I love is um, the company he owned before Dyson Vakims, it was this thing called a ballbarrow, which looks like a wheelbarrow with a ball at the front. And he goes and rents, does a photo shoot for the ballbarrow

• 52:43Speaker 00

  at this like massive estate that has been in England for like 300 years. 25 years later, he buys it. He's like, this is my shit now.

• 52:51Sam Parr?

  Like, dude, I've talked to a lot of people who love that book. One thing that, one thing, so I remember like when I've just got started in my career, I was like firmly in the, in the field of like, I'm gonna pull myself up from my bootstraps and I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this into existence. And then I remember when we were selling our company and everything got done. And that was the first time in my life where I thought, luck is so important. And even though I, I think I'm a badass and that I would, and I think that I could will myself to a very, I think I could will myself to a really nice amount of success. But in order to have the Uber success, which we'll describe as like liquid hundreds of millions of dollars, there's lots of people who are these types of killers who do have these attributes.

• 53:36Sam Parr?

  But one or two things, both in their control and out of their control, went wrong or right. And that can absolutely change things. Like, it could be like, like, you know, John Rockefeller didn't know that a car was gonna be invented. Uh, or like with, with Zuckerberg, like he would have kicked ass no matter what, but it just so happened that like the phone came out and that like has helped a ton. Or, uh, you know, someone like, you know, I'm sure we've seen a lot of fortunes get created during a pandemic. Like, luck is real. Like, when we sold our company, and that was my first big win, the CEO, Brian, got into a nearly fatal accident afterwards. And I'm like, dude, if that happened like four weeks prior, I don't know if this would have gone through. And I still think I will be very successful.

• 54:22Sam Parr?

  But imagine if I was selling my company for a billion or $2 billion and the CEO of the buyer got. Killed or quit. Do you think that with these guys luck is real?

• 54:32Speaker 00

  Of course. You, you said something great on the acquired podcast. You're like, I've met a lot of these guys is like, they're 20 times richer, but they're not 20 times smarter.

• 54:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  And a lot of Rockefeller is a great example, right? Like, so the best way to describe is like, moderate level of success, like, you know, you could probably get to tens of millions of dollars in net worth. That's like playing poker, right? It's like, that's a skill set you can get, but like, to like Jeff Bezos, like the funniest thing, I had dinner last night with two founders. It's like, you guys know that Jeff Bezos has a private jet, has a private jet? Like he takes off and there's another one, like that level of shit, like there's so many things I gotta break. The idea is like, he knew he was gonna do.

• 55:07Sam Parr?

  Why, why does he have a second private jet?

• 55:09Speaker 00

  I'd love to ask him. I don't know. Like, so you know how this is like people track private jets now? Some YouTuber made a video and they noticed that every time Jeff's, playing, maybe it's like the people who does one on his plane. I don't fucking know, but like, there's a jet that follows his other jet around and like, it's somebody put all this together from public information. So, uh, that level of success, like he knew, okay, the internet is growing. We, the everything store was a code name in the hedge fund. He, for Amazon, they, they were gonna incubate it in the hedge fund. He was working for David Shaw, a billionaire hedge fund guy in New York. And so he knew it's like, we could sell books. And then he also knew he could sell other things likely. But he didn't know like he could invent AWS. Like there was no, like all that stuff that happens. Rockefeller is a great example.

• 55:48Sam Parr?

  Bezos, when he pitched the first investors, he goes, I think this could make a hundred million dollars a year if we're lucky.

• 55:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. He, uh, he, it took him 50 meetings for Venture Capitalist to get his first million dollars. And he said, the most common question he was asked is what is the internet?

• 56:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  He's a fucking savage. He is the closest to me. Bezos reminds me so much of Rockefeller. Like if you read, Bezos' shareholder letters are excellent. Uh, because he's, he's telling you what he's, just like the, the Arnold books that I recommended earlier. Arnold says, this is my blueprint. This is what I'm gonna do. He calls a shot and then he goes and does it. Bezos does the same thing. But the Rockefeller, 20 times richer, but not 20 times smarter thing, I think is obviously, you're talking about randomness, you're talking about luck. Uh, Rockefeller, was gonna be successful no matter what. Like the, the business he was in, as you know, it's like, he was, they were wholesaling like produce and other stuff, right? They were just traders. And one thing that he did that I think is really smart is like, he's worked, he's like 19 years old, working for two. Founders, he's he's just an employee. He goes back and read all of their books, goes back and studies their entire company history, memorizes all the finances, everything,

• 56:46Speaker 00

  and then knew more about the business than the founder said. Like that kind of personality is going to win wherever he's going to go. Now, he could have stayed in that business and made millions of dollars. Is he going to build the arguably the most successful company of all time if it wasn't for the random discovery of oil? No, like he didn't control the fact that he was in the, what I always say in the podcast, it's like you find these people that the right, right person, right set of skills at the right place at the right time. If you're missing any of those, you're not gonna build, you know, a trillion dollar company or, you know, two hundred million or two hundred billion dollar net worth. You need things to break for you that are outside of your.

• 57:19Sam Parr?

  What do you think you're gonna do next? Like where, you know, where, what's your blueprint for 10 years?

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is where I start talking reckless because um I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of like how good of a business podcasting can be. And I start talking crazy and then I have some friends that have built giant businesses on the back of podcasts. I was at dinner with them last week and they literally pulled me to the side. They're like, shut the stop telling people all this shit. So.

• 57:52Sam Parr?

  What's an example of a great business built on the back of a pod?

• 57:55Speaker 00

  I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I off, I can't like, there's, there's, okay, so there's one that I don't have any intimate knowledge on. I can give you an example of that.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  Because there's some of that have intimate knowledge. So I'm not sure what I know that I can speak publicly and don't, but like ButcherBox, bootstrap, 500 million dollars of revenue, largely expanded from podcasting and there's a ton of those.

• 58:17Sam Parr?

  They're buying podcast ads.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:21Sam Parr?

  Got it.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Yes. And then look at, this is something I've actually learned on your podcast, which I think you guys do an excellent job with was when you guys were talking about how Unilever came and bought on it. Right? I didn't, I didn't know that happened. I knew about on it. I knew about Joe. I, I knew he owned like thirty percent rumored to be owned thirty percent of the company. But think about like Joe has a ton of, um, ad slots, just that one ad slot that he randomly put in. He probably had just on that ad slot, I don't know, seventy-five million dollars, like depending on what the actual purchase price was. Um, Joe, so this idea is like, I started talking shit where like, people like, everybody knows because of Mr. Beast thing going, oh yeah, there's gonna be, I could see why there's gonna be like some billionaire YouTubers, right? Like that, I think that is obvious now, given where Mr. Beast, highly likely that dude, unless he dies, he's gonna hit that. My point is just like,

• 59:06Speaker 00

  that's the, the, the, the, the deep relationship people have with podcasters is not comparable to the relationship they have with YouTubers. It's not at all comparable. And this is not at all new, what, like, what, anything that.

• 59:16Sam Parr?

  What do you mean? People are deeply, are more, uh, they, they like podcasters more, like there's more affinity?

• 59:22Speaker 00

  It's, so do you know Blake Robbins from, uh, he's at Benchmark?

• 59:26Sam Parr?

  No.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  He has this, okay, so, um, he'd be actually interested, somebody interested in talking. He's the one that gave me this spectrum idea. He's, uh, helped incubate, uh, what's the, what's the, uh, professional Call of Duty team? Hundred Thieves or Forty Thieves?

• 59:38Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know what you mean.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  They went from zero to like eighty million in revenue, I think like eighteen months or some shit like this. So, Nate Shaw was, uh, developed an audience on, you know, Twitch streaming. And so, so Blake has this spectrum, and this comes to you, like, uh, there's people out there that have heard you and, uh, Sean talk way more than they've heard their best friend's voice. There's a ton.

• 1:00:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, because when they, when they put the headphones in, it's just us and them, and it's usually for fifty or an hour minutes, uh, you know, sixty minutes at a time, whereas a YouTube video, it's, uh, maybe eight.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  I've heard you talk for a hundred hours. Like, so, like, we've text exchanged messages online, but never talk in person. I was like, oh, I fucking know Sam. Like, I know what he's into. We have the same interests. Like, I think we'll be able to talk about a lot of shit, a bunch of shit, right? So his whole point is like, on the spectrum is like, how much do people, how much time do people spend with you? He's like, on the far end, all the way to the left is like TikTok dancers, right? TikTok dancers, you know, they might have millions and millions of followers, but they spend thirty seconds, and if they try to like sell tickets, they can't even fill a room with like three thousand people, even if there's, thou, you know, millions of followers. On the far end of the spectrum, all the way to the right is Twitch streamers. People spend literally forty hours a week with their favorite Twitch streamer, right? Or thirty hours a week or twenty hours. He goes, David, podcasting you, you're just one.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Uh, one, one step towards the left. He goes, there's going to be people have listened to you speak for hundreds of hours. Right. And that parasocial relationship is unbelievably deep and comprehensive to like, you saw that I saw them. People had said that you're doing a public meetup, I think in Austin, right? And or a show and there's people flying in from fucking Dubai. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Okay, so think about that, like they're not flying into Dubai to watch like a TikTok dancer. They're not flying in and your podcast is technically a business. You have all this other stuff you could do. It's like, how many brands do people identify with so much that they'll fly all across the world? I just did this. I'm introverted as fuck, right? Yeah, you seem like it. Yeah, so. Yeah. I am. You seem like an introvert.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, but on one on one, but with groups, I hate it. So Shane Parrish from Knowledge Project Burner Street was in Miami. He's like, dude, let's do a public meetup. I'm like, oh, fuck. And I agree just because he's did it. How many people came? Uh, like 70, like I think around like 70 people came. It's awkward, right? It's not awkward. Uh, I, I don't think I'd do it again, but like, this is the thing, like the only thing I did to promote it. Shane was supposed to send it out to his newsletter, never did. Thanks, Shane. But, um, I just made like this one minute. I, I was like, in like five days before the event or something, I uploaded to my podcast. I was like, hey, you happen to be Miami area. We're going to do this. Here's where we're going to be. And like, I'm like, all right, there's no like, my audience is in like, you know, California, New York.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  It's just like Miami's not like the spot for it. People flew out from New York, Washington DC, drove for hours. And I'm like, what are you in town for? Like this, I'm like, why? What, what are you talking about? And so it's this deep love of relationship. So here's your question, like my 10 year plan is just like, I'm going to be making podcasts till I fucking die. I love doing it. It's the best job in the world. I think Sean tweeted out something that he's like, podcasting is the best job in the world. It's like, you get to be curious to learn all the time. And then you package up what you learn and you send it out to the world and all this good benefit comes back to you. You know, relationships, investment opportunities, businesses you can launch, whatever it is. Um, and so I'm just going to run the same playbook that like Rockefeller does. It's like, right now you scale with ads.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  People pay a very high dollar amount because your audience is valuable.

• 1:03:08Sam Parr?

  And thank you for promoting Hampton on your pod.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  That was more than my first car, buddy. For free.

• 1:03:16Sam Parr?

  I appreciate. Hey, I look, hopefully you get more, hopefully you get more than enough value.

• 1:03:22Speaker 00

  No, that's, that's, that's a perfect example. I did it. You wouldn't, you didn't have to ask me to do that because I got so much value from you. The weird thing that you probably experienced too, that this is people, dude, the conversation you have with podcasters, you can, if you're not on this side, you don't understand. A listener does not understand the shit that like, why every single person you talk to that's a podcaster has a successful podcast is like, I'm never fucking not gonna quit. Like, I'm never not gonna do this. This thing is, it's like magic.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  And so when, what I was like, dude, I think Hampton, first of all, is a great idea. Because entrepreneurs have to be around other entrepreneurs. Like, we do not think like anybody else. You go to, you're gonna have, you said you're gonna have a family. Once you start having kids, you go to these birthday parties and then you're back into, you're outside of your bubble and now you're in like random distribution of people. And every time I'm like, where's the, where's the entrepreneur in the room? And if it's not an entrepreneur, I gotta leave. Like, you have to be around them. Paul Graham has that great line where he's like, ambitious people are star to be around other ambitious people. If you put them together, they bloom like dying plants with water, which is exactly what you're doing with Hampton. The funny thing is like, oh, thanks for doing that. I was like, no, thank you for making your fucking podcast. I, every day I get messages like, thank you for doing it.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  I was like, dude, if you didn't listen, like I get to read books for a living. I need to be thanking you. So that's the power of podcasts. So the answer to questions like, I'm gonna vertically integrate.

• 1:04:44Sam Parr?

  What's that mean? What product are you gonna create?

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  By, by next year at this time, like you're not gonna, no one's gonna be able to buy and out on founders. Right?

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  So, and this is the crazy thing about having a podcast. So like, you have all, you hit on it. You're like, super successful people read all the time. They also listen to business podcasts all the time. And you were able to build relationships with them. We're like, I just met, like you example, when I talked to Chris and Andrew, I was like, you guys can advertise for as long as you want. But eventually like what you, I think ideally is like, find a business, you guys buy businesses for a living, you hire managers for a living, like. We'll partner up on distribution as opposed to like just doing an ad. You have people like Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like the Best, like literally saying, hey, whether we have to buy a company, we scale it, or we incubate a company, like basically, he's like, we need to found, we need to find founders' version of Tegus, right?

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  And what does that mean? This is something that I think is public now, so I don't think I'll get in trouble for saying this.

• 1:05:46Sam Parr?

  I've heard about this. You, I can say it so you can, you don't get in trouble if you want. So this is just rumors. So here, let me tell you the rumors that I heard. So there's this company and you could let me know. So this way you won't get in trouble for revealing anything. Tegus is a company where I think what they do is if you wanted to talk to an expert, you pay them money and they connect you with an expert, but they record all the conversations and transcribe them. And so instead of paying money to talk to an expert, you could just read the transcriptions they had with any other the experts, whatever. I heard that they advertised on Patrick O'Shaughnessy's podcast and he saw how good it was going. And he goes, screw this. I want some type of equity and I'll, I'll invest a little bit, but I want to add a sweetheart deal.

• 1:06:29Sam Parr?

  And it was a sweetheart deal and he continued sending them tons of customers to the point where his equity whole, holding in the company has been worth, is worth tens of millions of dollars. Is that roughly accurate?

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  So I, I don't know the prices. I know he, he says this publicly. He put 20 million into his company. He's got a giant fund too. My point is like, I don't know the valuations. I, I'm sure if I asked Patrick, he would tell me, but you know, it's none of my business. My point is that like, okay, Michael Elnik, who's a co-founder of Tegus, the CEO and a fucking savage. Like he is, he is like the guys we study, right? I was, we, we talked, I was talking to him one time and um, he was just telling me like, oh, like what do you do? Like decompress like you're in a, like he's building an incredibly valuable company. He's got a like, and he's completely dedicated to it. Him and his brother both ran track at Brown. So like they blow off stress by like running, like Phil Knight did in Nike. And then you ask him, he's like, oh, so like how much do you work? He's like, oh no, I take time off. Like I think Saturday morning's off.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  And it's like, that's it. Oh, Saturday morning. So he's on it. I love his intensity, but he said, he's just like,

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  One at one podcast, they only advertised, they had their first few customers from like, you know, word of mouth at their network. But you know, the first probably 50 to 60 million dollars of revenue, whatever it is, like Patrick's podcast, because of who's in his audience, helped them scale. And as a result, like, then there's just a relation, there's a million things you could do. So in Patrick's case, he's running a fund, like you can do equity. I'm not an investor. You said the other day when you were talking to him or who you were interviewing, like, you don't like investing in people's companies, like you want to like, build your own shit.

• 1:08:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, investing doesn't entirely give me a dopamine rush. Like, I'm in the game for adventure and that and I'm searching like, like a little bit of a rush. And I find it to be very, it's so boring. You give someone money and you don't hear from them for six years.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  I'm the same way. I'm like, I'm not interested. I get so much deal flow. Like, hey, do you want to angel invest? I'm like, no, like, why? I would just like, do my own shit. And people say I'm stupid on doing that. And they have to understand, it's like, I'm not also running my life to maximize for most dollars made. Like, that doesn't make any, like, if we talked about learning is not just memorizing information, it's changing behavior. How many fucking times you get to these super rich people that do things they don't like for money, and then get money, and they wonder why they're not happy anymore? All that matters is how you spend your time.

• 1:08:47Sam Parr?

  So what's your, what's going to be your TIGUS, though? What's going to be your product?

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  I don't know what that, see, that's the thing is like, I was having a conversation with two founders about this last night. The good thing is, is like, we have some ideas, obviously, like, we'll share that when time comes. But like, I have all these really smart, successful people that like the podcast that want to help, you know, like Andrew and Chris Atiney. I just met with their EIR. I think they have more than one, but I just had a conversation with their EIR. Patrick's trying to help me. The guy that connected me with Sam Zell, he's got like, $20 billion of assets under management. He's just like, well, we can fucking buy a company, we can do whatever you want, you know? He's also has investments to some companies to scale up podcasting. So he understands the power, and he just likes the product. So. The point being is like, that's where I'm going, but I'm not doing it for money. I'm doing it because I'm completely obsessed with podcasting. I think it's a miracle. Like, when I say I start talking shit about podcasts, I'm like, podcasting is fucking, uh, it's, to me, it's like

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  the printing press for the spoken word. It's like as big a revolution as Gutenberg's fucking printing press. And it's just like, it's on-demand audio that you can educate yourself anytime you want, all over the world. That's fucking crazy. They didn't exist when you and I were kids. It didn't exist. I had to fucking, I, I remember like being obsessed with talk radio and just having to listen to whatever was on the three or four dials at the time it was on. And then they go from that to like streaming it in the browser. I remember when that happened, I was a fucking grown man. I was like, oh, this is amazing. And then when my friend Eric's like, oh, no, you can listen to Joe's podcast anytime you want. I'm like, what the fuck did you just say? What the fuck did you just say? That's crazy. And then think about that, like, if somebody, like, this is, um, a young kid, so me and you both know Michael Seekan.

• 1:10:18Sam Parr?

  Who's Michael Seekan?

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  From our future.

• 1:10:20Sam Parr?

  Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, dude, he's in my phone as Michael Future, and I never referred to him as Seekan, his last name, never. I was like, Seekan.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  I don't know. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly.

• 1:10:34Sam Parr?

  Dude, he's at my house, he's at my house like twice a week, and I just call him Michael Future. I, like, it's crazy.

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  I love how arrogant he is.

• 1:10:43Sam Parr?

  Dude, I had a guy at my wedding, and I didn't even, I barely even knew how to say his, I didn't even know his last name. I just, I just called him Siava Russia.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  I love Michael's confidence, and my point being is like, imagine being, you know, 20, 20, because he, he would call DM both me and you. And yeah, he, he's really good at it. He sent me a DM, he's like, hey, I love your podcast, I took a, an idea that I got from your podcast, made a video about it, and it got 10 million views. Can we talk? I go, you did what? What the fuck are you talking about?

• 1:11:11Sam Parr?

  That's an impossible message not to, dude, I always tell, he's at my house all the time, and like, I'm not old, I'm 33, but he, he's 23, I mean, he, whatever, he's first, just out of college, he'll come.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, young.

• 1:11:22Sam Parr?

  And he'll come over and me and Sarah will be like, Michael, just tell me what's, what are the young kids doing nowadays? And he'll literally just sit there for two hours and just tell Sarah and I like all these phrases and words and I'm just, I'll just listen. I don't even say a thing. I just say, just talk, just tell me like, what's up with young people? And then he's like, well, just tell me and, and I'll ask him about his dating life. He just talked. And so I always try to, this sounds always weird whenever I say this. I, I always try to surround myself with young, like younger people. And I'm like, just tell me, I just want to listen. Just tell me what's going on. And he always does that to me.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  He's like, you, you tweeted out one time, he says, I'm like, oh, what are you going to be doing in 10 years? I'm going to be landing my helicopter on your lawn or something. But like, I love his confidence. Cause like you, at the beginning.

• 1:11:59Sam Parr?

  One time he said, uh, he goes, got some really bad news today. Just got back from the chiropractor. They said that the chip on my shoulder is permanent.

• 1:12:10Speaker 00

  He actually gave me a really good book recommendation. He texted me yesterday that I'd never had found. It's like all these like, um,

• 1:12:15Sam Parr?

  Which one was it?

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  The ones that, um, I'm obsessed with the, the history of the American West and like all that personality type that's like, oh no, fuck the East Coast. I'm going to go across and do this crazy journey.

• 1:12:25Sam Parr?

  It was the one written by, uh, Philip Anschwitz or Anschwitz, the guy who owns, um, the biggest ticketing company in the world or something. It's called like A W E, whatever it is. It's like one that every, everyone know. I think they own Ticketmaster, I think, something like that.

• 1:12:40Speaker 00

  He says, they're on the Lakers and the Coachella. He says, I don't know if that's true, but it's called Out Where the West Begins.

• 1:12:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And they own, um, uh, Coachella. Anyway, this guy, Philip, a lot of people don't know this. It only has 10 reviews on Amazon. This 80 year old, 20 billion dollar guy. He has a book about the West.

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I already ordered it. The, the reason I brought up Michael though, is because one, I think it's smart to be like, I, I think we have a, an epidemic of people that don't believe in themselves. People think we have an epidemic of arrogance. I believe the complete opposite. It's like, there's so many more people that can create businesses. Cause like the best description of a, what a business is, came from Richard Branson, I've ever heard, came from Richard Branson. He goes, a business is just an idea that makes somebody else's life better. And if you look at it from there, like there's limitless opportunity. And so to, to have the belief that you can do that, something that pops up in these books all the time is that belief comes before ability. But society wants you to show me that you're, you should have like show, prove that you should have your confidence to deserve. It's like, no, no, you don't actually understand. It's like, they, the belief comes before the ability.

• 1:13:40Sam Parr?

  Then that's why a lot of people were like amongst my entrepreneurial friends, they watched the Billy McFarland Fire Festival documentary. And they were like, yeah, he did the wrong things.

• 1:13:52Sam Parr?

  But it almost worked. And the reason why, like, a lot of my entrepreneurial friends were like, were like, oh, forgiving of him was it's like, yeah, but I've been there. I've faked it until I made it type of vibe. And like, because I remember I did this for my conferences too. I would kind of fib. I would tell these 15 speakers, individually, the other 14 had already confirmed, which they hadn't. And luckily, I got them all to confirm and it worked out. So it wasn't, and it didn't end up being a lie. But there's like so many examples where I promised something that wasn't real, where I'm like, oh shit, I got, I hope I can deliver on these things. You know what I mean?

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Sam Parr?

  That happens a lot.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  The, the point I was making with Michael though, is imagine being his age, right? And being able to listen to every single episode of My First Million, every single episode of Founders or what, or how, how to take over the world. We've got to give Ben a shout out because fucking, I think what he's doing is incredible. And like, perfect example is like, dude, you should just make as many episodes as possible. Cause like you have missed, you have Sam Parr saying your shit is really good. Right? Which is fucking incredible. And you have Mr. Beast, literally the biggest creator on the fucking internet, saying only listen to one podcast. So I hope that like lights a fire under Ben as well. But like, just see a built like, I would kill, I would have fucking killed. That's why I think podcasting is a miracle. I don't want to do anything else.

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  Let's say I never launched any businesses to ensure tenure plan, which I, I, I don't see how that's even possible because there's a ton of entrepreneurs I know that like want to partner on these things. Um, but even if I just made podcasts and I just continue to grow the audience and I just made money on ad rep, like, whatever, I fucking, that's, that's plenty fine for me. That's the way I like to live my life. Do you ever read, uh, do you ever heard of Chuck Eager?

• 1:15:26Sam Parr?

  Uh, Chuck, is that the guy who broke the, uh, sound barrier?

• 1:15:28Speaker 00

  Yes. So the fucking crazy thing is the miracle, uh, books is like, you never know, like, well, you're going to read some random sentence that you've never fucking.

• 1:15:36Sam Parr?

  Everyone loves that guy's book. All business people love his book.

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  So I didn't know who the fuck he was. I kept noticing this, this old guy on Twitter in a, in a pilot suit, talking hell of shit. Like unfiltered, I fucking love these people that like really talk who they are. They're authentic. And I, I read his book. It turns out he fucking, it's sold like. Five million copies, the first year it came out in the eighties, like it's one of the most successful autobiographies of all time.

• 1:15:59Sam Parr?

  Well, he was famous back then when he did that. I think he broke the sound barrier. Is that right?

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  So he broke.

• 1:16:05Sam Parr?

  Two or something?

• 1:16:05Speaker 00

  He was the first pilot to break the sound barrier, and I think he was the first pilot to become ace in a day. Uh, in World War Two, he's like, I love killing Nazis. He says, like, one of my favorite things to do is kill Nazis. And so, yeah, he, there's a great line in his book where um, he's like from this, like, this is what I also love. It's like great can come from anywhere. He lived in like this rural, um. What's that area in, in West Virginia? It's like Appalachian where there's like a.

• 1:16:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:29Speaker 00

  So he lived in like the Appalachians, completely like isolated, right? And so he describes, the way he describes in his book about killing all these Nazis, he, he shot down five, to become an ace in a day, he had to shoot down five enemy planes. And he goes, the Nazis came up uh, into the skies and they met a goddamn West Virginia buzzsaw. That's the way he described himself. But he gave me a, another blueprint. Um, let me see if I can get the quote exactly right. This is the magic of having Readwise too, because I can just think of something and pull it up immediately. It's like a giant search engine for everything I've read. Um, and he gave me this idea where it's like, it's how you and I should avoid what you just described. You, you get around all these rich guys, they never, it's never enough. They don't seem to be enjoying life, which is, what's the point of being rich at that point?

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  Um, they, it seems to be surprising to them that they're not enjoying life because they don't actually like what they do day to day. But they make a ton of money. So why the fuck, how the fuck could you take? One third of your life is going to be spent working, right? You, you hate what you do. You think, how is it possible that you think you're going to get your end of your life and like your life? It's impossible. And so he says, he goes, I wasn't a deep sophisticated person, but I live by a basic principle. I did only what I enjoy. And here's the part. It's, I wouldn't let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things that weren't interesting to me. And so it took me years.

• 1:17:46Sam Parr?

  Isn't that funny how that's like? Business people say it, pilots say it, it doesn't matter. Like people, a lot of people who I talk to, they, they, they ask me what my pod is, if it's all about business. I'm like, not really, because like, I don't give a shit if you're an artist. As long as you're like, kicking ass and you've like defined what success is and you've achieved it. I think that's, I think that's dope.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  It's all the same personality type, just applied to different things. Like, I could show you this. I don't know if you can see it on the camera, but like, this is one of my favorite dudes. He's my fucking launch. His name's Ernest Shackleton. I love reading about polar explorers. I like reading about athletes.

• 1:18:16Sam Parr?

  That's the best book I've read in probably three years.

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  Endurance?

• 1:18:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's excellent. I love, I'm gonna make a shirt and I might sell it, but I'll just make it for myself with that fucking picture where he's just like covered in snow and looking like shit. And I love the fact that he came up with his own motto, by endurance we conquer. It's like, we're just gonna win because we're never gonna quit. And I think that could be applied to everything that you fucking do, assuming that you like to do it. But um, yeah, I, I think Chuck E. Here is just smart. We're like, so many people buy into this, this, I feel prestige is a myth, right? Where they're like, I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna do activity X because it'll give me prestige. And what prestige is, is you think other people are thinking about you. And no one is thinking about you. You like, humans are self-absorbed. That is our human nature. So like, think about the person you, I listened to your Ariel Hawani interview. You're a big fan of his.

• 1:19:05Sam Parr?

  I love Ariel Hawani.

• 1:19:07Speaker 00

  You're, you're a big fan of his. How much of your life is spent thinking about, you're a huge fan. You buy all the shit, you listen to stuff.

• 1:19:14Speaker 00

  Less than two tenths of one million percent of your life.

• 1:19:17Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 1:19:17Speaker 00

  I wish people understood it's how few people are thinking about them. And therefore you wouldn't chase prestige because prestige doesn't like, all that matters is like, the people around you, do they, do they think you're a good person? Do they approve of what you're doing? And then your work, all that really matters is like, your own opinion, right? The Ben texted me the other day about an idea for his podcast. And I was like, dude, cause he's like, he added music. Ben, do you care if I say this?

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  Okay, so Ben added music. He's like, what do you think of it? And I was like, I don't love it and I don't hate it. I don't care about it at all. I thought your episode was fantastic. It was excellent. I shared it with friends, but I was like, he's like, well, the, the, the reviews are mixed. You go, I saw that. I went to the tweets. It's like, some people are like, this is great. Some people are like, this is bad. Exactly. Fucking exactly. All that matters is what you like. If you like the music and they don't, then let them go find another fucking podcast to listen to.

• 1:20:05Sam Parr?

  Dude, his music though, on that first, on his, uh, on How to Take Over the World, that's the best intro song. Yeah. Podcasting. That, that intro song has helped make, uh, make his podcast popular.

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  The UFC, like that, going back to the UFC thing that, that connected us to, like, go what? Like, I know you have, but like, everybody out there needs to go talk about Manifest Cowboy. Conor McGregor, he's, he is literally in the documentary. The fact that he was, had somebody film him when he was flat broke, living in his mom's. He owed money to every single fucking agency in Ireland. And he's like, I'm going to be the fucking world champion one day. He's like, literally manifesting this shit. Remember when he got the double belts and he's like, he, Joe was interviewing him and he's like, I saw this in my mind. He goes, oh, look at that. He's like, I dream. He's like, I literally saw it and I fucking made it real.

• 1:20:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's why people like him.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  That documentary is fucking incredible. It's a, cause he called his shot. It's like this.

• 1:20:57Sam Parr?

  He just ruins it by doing, he ruins it by doing all the other dumb stuff though, but it certainly, he's, he's, he's a, I have, I have a love hate relationship with them where it's like, you've got all this amazing stuff. I admire you so much and I also can't stand some of this other behavior. You know what I mean?

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  I think that's where your wisdom is. He's like, okay, I, I sold my company, like I'm rich as fuck. Uh, you're still, like, you have a massive advantage, like, uh, you can launch businesses, you work on whatever you work on. But you're realizing this like, but I also like, take care of my health. I want to spend time with my wife. I want to have a family. I want to like, be able to like, have freedom. I've heard you describe like, what's important to you. And this is like, yeah, that's, that's how I feel too. Because like, it's my issue is like, I'm not impressed by somebody that's successful for a year, five years, 10 years. It's like, I like the people that fucking never fucked it up. And, um, there's a great line that Charlie Munger said. He's like, it's not getting rich that you have to worry about. It's staying sane. He's like, it's not part, and this is in a book. It's not normal to human nature to have unlimited resources or be so much rich richer.

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  And then not fuck it up through draw. He's he he says, uh, through ladies, leverage and liquor is usually how rich men go broke.

• 1:22:06Sam Parr?

  That's what Muggs said?

• 1:22:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's in his book. He didn't say it in person, but um, my point being is like, I think there's a sense of wisdom there where it's like, okay. I already have this. How do I keep building on it? People like Connor and and Kanye West is in this example, too. It's like they're gifted at a young age and then their their superstar success is so disorienting. They're like, again, it's not getting rich you have to worry about. It's staying sane. They weren't able to stay sane. I want to stay sane, dude. I want to get to them in my life. When I'm I try to make decisions like when I'm 80 years old, my like, I knew for a fact. Uh, part of the reason I I felt comfortable like jump all in on the podcast, even though I didn't know if I was going to make it success or not. Was that when Jeff Bezos is like, well. I was making a ton of money as this hedge fund. I was 30 years old. I had an apartment on the Upper West Side.

• 1:22:50Speaker 00

  I'm best friends with a billionaire who's like mentoring me like he's already set for life, right? But he's like, I knew if I quit now and forego my quarterly bonus and move across the country to Seattle and try to sell books on the internet. He's just like. I feel that the internet is a life changing technology and I want to play a role in that technology. And the 30 year old self, you can confuse yourself and think, oh, it's our as prestigious as working in a hedge fund. It I'm going to miss out on, you know, a couple of million dollar bonus, whatever it is. He's like, your 85 year old self is going to be like, you had a shot to play a role on internet and you didn't do it. That's how I feel about podcasting is just like, I believe it's a miracle. I want to play a role and therefore like I want to get to them in my life.

• 1:23:33Speaker 00

  I know 80 year olds like, man, David, I'm glad you fucking risked it. I'm glad you fucking did that.

• 1:23:38Sam Parr?

  I'm happy you came on here. You're um, you're very fascinating to me. I've listened to dozens of your episodes. Um, I'm very eager to see what you become. I think it's cool. I didn't know that you're doing it for six years. I know that I've listened to like. Episode like number 10 as well as like 300. So I guess I should have done the math, but like, congratulations on your success. It seems like you're kicking ass. It seems like you're in the groove and like, it's really cool to see someone.

• 1:24:05Sam Parr?

  Like it's really fun to see someone like right when it's happening. And that's like, kind of the cool thing about podcasting and like Twitter and all this stuff is like, you can catch stuff in the middle, not before and not after, but as it's happening. That's where you are right now. And I appreciate you doing this. Where um, what do you, what do you promote? Just founders, I call it founders pod. It's a founders podcast founders, Twitter, your founders. You're always tweeting good shit.

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  I want to say thank you for having me on like, seriously, I love your fucking podcast. I would just say that um, one thing that podcasters uh, like it's obvious who has the magic. And I've been telling people way before I ever fucking messaged you. I was like, you need to watch what Sam and Sean are doing. It's clear they have the magic. They have insane chemistry. I remember listening to you guys where you're like, oh, I'm only getting 60,000 downloads an episode, which is still super impressive. And now you guys are fucking blew right past that. It's extremely obvious that you guys are really good at it. I hope you like do a ton of it. I swear, and I know you're might not be interested in this, but like, there's a, there's a massive hole in podcasting for like the Pat McAfee version of business podcasts.

• 1:25:12Sam Parr?

  I agree.

• 1:25:13Speaker 00

  And I think you and Sean, like, like dude, there is going to be a business podcast where you have Pat McAfee gets paid like 30 million a year by whatever his presenting sponsor is, whatever, like I forgot what it is. Dan Lebatard got that $50 million contract from like DraftKings. You see Spotify gave Alex Cooper 20 million a year. The, the reported number for Joe Rogan is way bigger than it's reported. But my point being is like, there's a gap in the fucking business podcast space, which I think you and Sean have the best way to like, if you did it every day, just like you did, like your hour show is the perfect length, the research, the, it feels like you're hanging out with your smart friends and you guys are brainstorming together. There's nothing else that's like what you guys are fucking doing.

• 1:25:58Sam Parr?

  Hey Spotify, if you're listening, I'm, I'm, I'm easy to contact. You, you just DM me on Twitter. We can talk. Thanks.

• 1:26:07Speaker 00

  I appreciate you inviting me on. That was fucking super cool of you.

• 1:26:09Sam Parr?

  I appreciate you doing this and uh, yeah, it means a lot. And uh, yeah, it was awesome. That's the pod. That's the pod.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.