Why "Desperation Induced Focus" Is the Key to Success, Plus Listener Questions

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) bring you the second edition of the Player Hater's Ball. They discuss the things they think don't work: bad business ideas, bad investing advice, bad life advice, and more. ----- * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (00:25) - Silent retreat in Portugal (04:10) - The raw meat experiment (14:30) - Desperation-Induced Focus (23:30) - Specialty License Plates (30:00) - Sam's pickup line to his wife (33:45) - Dharmesh's Wordle copycat and people who make things (44:35) - Start of listener questions: What do you hold in your portfolio? (47:30) - How to negotiate value of company you're selling (58:15) - How many Twitter notifications do you get per day? (01:08:05) - What would you invest in for the other person? ----- Links: * https://wordplay.com/firstword * https://rkg.blog/desperation-induced-focus.php * https://www.instagram.com/rawmeatexperiment/?hl=en ----- 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.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  If you could only get done one thing this year, what would it be? Don't waste your time with anything else. Just take your best person, which is either you, the CEO, whoever, and make them responsible for that problem and give them everything they need to do it.

• 0:22Sam Parr?

  Do you know, you know where I am or no?

• 0:25Shaan Puri?

  I have no idea where you are.

• 0:26Sam Parr?

  Oh, I'm in Portugal, dude. I'm recording this on a microphone, like a Blue Yeti mic and just my iPhone.

• 0:34Shaan Puri?

  Oh, okay. That's pretty good.

• 0:36Sam Parr?

  It's sick, right?

• 0:37Shaan Puri?

  What are you doing in Portugal?

• 0:39Sam Parr?

  So, um, Jack Smith, our friend, Jack, he, um, is looking at retreats out here in the rural area of Portugal, like the outside the city. And he wants to buy a meditate, a retreat and turn it into a meditation retreat. And he asked me to go with him and check it out with them. So I

• 0:56Shaan Puri?

  He's like buying a retreat center.

• 0:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, bit like a plot of land that has like five to 20 cabins on it. He's looking at multiple places.

• 1:07Shaan Puri?

  And why is he doing that?

• 1:09Sam Parr?

  Because silent retreats made a difference in his life. And he's like into meditation and stuff and he wants to do it. And he likes Portugal. I don't know why. It's really cheap here, dude. We went out to dinner with like six of us and I felt like we went to a fancy dinner and ordered a ton of stuff. And it was 120 bucks.

• 1:24Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. So he's also buying a farm.

• 1:28Sam Parr?

  Isn't that funny?

• 1:29Shaan Puri?

  Your, your short-term rental thing is just like you're, it's not even short-term rental. I wouldn't even say that. Buying a big ass piece of land. At least to put your flag down.

• 1:40Sam Parr?

  Is it, is this like the yellow taxi cab thing where like we're talking about yellow taxis? Therefore we see them everywhere. Or have you noticed that this is like, this is popular? I can't decide.

• 1:51Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if it's popular or not, but ever since you posted your photos of yours or you sent me yours, it went from like an idea that just sounded like a pain in the ass to something I'm like, kind of itching and wishing I had myself. So, and I, I don't even like, like we discussed, I don't even like leaving the house. So, you know, I don't even know why I want this piece of land. I'm never going to go. I'm, I'm literally never going to go.

• 2:13Sam Parr?

  I don't think I'm going to go that much either. I'm renting it out most of the time.

• 2:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and I don't want to deal with all that. I don't know. Ben, have you, do you want a piece of land now? Ever since you saw what Sam was doing? Did he influence?

• 2:27Ben?

  100%. Portugal sounds like it's, I actually like, I was already into it, but Portugal is just like increasing my interest like exponentially. That sounds incredible.

• 2:36Sam Parr?

  I think buying a place out here is not wise. Whenever I go abroad, I just, I love going abroad and I love meeting new people and cultures, but it makes you realize how America, like, we have our act together for, for most things. I would be a little nervous to buy a place out here without speaking the language of being a foreigner and stuff.

• 2:57Shaan Puri?

  What is Jack even buying? What do you need for a silent retreat? Like, you need like a place to sit on the ground?

• 3:03Sam Parr?

  Well, you have like staff, like feed breakfast, like give you breakfast every morning. And there's like, they have like a pool and a restaurant. I mean, it's like a proper like hotel, but the, the salaries-

• 3:16Shaan Puri?

  Pretty sick. A silent hotel? Okay, I kind of like this idea now. I don't know why. I went from, why does he need anything to, I need this?

• 3:24Sam Parr?

  It's cool, right, man? This stuff is actually cool. So I, it's, people are talking about it. It seems like in my world at the time, but I can't just tell us this because I noticed it now.

• 3:33Shaan Puri?

  I wish he was not making it like a retreat because that's still going to be like only for those who really want to like have this intense life experience. I wish it really was more like a silent hotel. It's like a place you can go for a night or two while you're in town.

• 3:45Sam Parr?

  It was a hotel. Like, the, the, it was, the place, he, I don't think he's, he's not turning it into a silent retreat. I meant to say, he has gone to many silent retreats and he loves them and he wants to create like a nature, like area.

• 4:00Shaan Puri?

  On a silent retreat?

• 4:01Sam Parr?

  No, I think it'd be really hard, but I would go on a nature-ish retreat, but it would be really hard. But can I, let me show you something kind of intriguing. So do you see that Instagram link?

• 4:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I got the thing.

• 4:16Sam Parr?

  It says, Sam, one, have you seen this shit?

• 4:21Shaan Puri?

  No, I haven't. All right. I opened it up. Raw meat. It's instagram.com/rawmeatexperiment.

• 4:27Sam Parr?

  So read, read this guy's description. Just read it out loud and let me see your reaction.

• 4:31Shaan Puri?

  Eating raw meat at Whole Foods every day until I die from bacteria. What the fuck? Seeing if I live for five days or 500 years. Follow me for more recipes.

• 4:43Sam Parr?

  So click a video.

• 4:45Shaan Puri?

  I mean.

• 4:46Sam Parr?

  So all this guy does is he has a video and look who sponsored it. Nick Gray, my friend Nick Gray sponsored it.

• 4:52Shaan Puri?

  Okay, who is this person? What is their name?

• 4:55Sam Parr?

  I have no idea who he is, but all he's.

• 4:57Shaan Puri?

  Sick. He's just eating a fish carcass.

• 5:01Sam Parr?

  And like, do you know my friend?

• 5:03Shaan Puri?

  The second video, he's holding a giant fish, like a salmon, a piece of salmon that's raw. And he's just eating it. He's not even eating it like nibbling on it like a burrito, like from the top down. He's just eating it sort of face on. It's very strange.

• 5:17Sam Parr?

  Look at some of the other ones. He'll eat like a prime rib. Is this the grossest thing you've ever seen?

• 5:24Shaan Puri?

  Wow. Almost 100 days of eating uncooked animals and everything is fine. Learning a lot each day. Today I got a juicy New York strip. I forgot a glass for the egg, so I had to suck a slonker out the old fashioned way. I'm gonna write up my thing, blah, blah. Okay, so he's not dead, so that's good, I guess. Kind of feel like he kind of was rooting for him to die a little bit, just for this idea. But um, is he healthy? Is he like doing well?

• 5:50Sam Parr?

  I don't know, man. All I know is I see his videos of him just eating meat and it's so gross. I about to turn it off. But the two things struck me. One, this is just crazy and weird.

• 6:01Shaan Puri?

  Do you believe that he's not eating anything else?

• 6:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think so. And two, his copywriting in his bio is beautiful. Like I saw that and I was like, this is the best.

• 6:11Shaan Puri?

  And he's getting featured by everything. He's just talked to Lad Bible, the interviews you're on, of course, because everybody wants to talk about this. I'm gonna talk about this. You are currently talking about this. This is crazy. He's literally eating a brick of ground beef with a cup of four egg yolks just as his drink.

• 6:28Sam Parr?

  It's disgusting, isn't it? Is this the craziest thing you've seen in a long time?

• 6:32Shaan Puri?

  That's absolutely filthy. Uh, yeah, this is crazy. Wow.

• 6:38Sam Parr?

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 6:40Shaan Puri?

  I guess it gets better. He does this than becomes a serial killer. He had two paths to choose from and he chose raw meat experiments. So I guess good on him for that.

• 6:49Sam Parr?

  It's crazy.

• 6:51Sam Parr?

  One thing I wanted to ask you, I think you're more in tune with this. I was talking to a friend who runs like a 40 person startup that has engineers. It's a app and they were telling me that the salaries that they're having to compete with. Like they said, their people are getting poached to work at like a Netflix or something like that. And those big companies are paying engineers like $500,000 a year cash. Like that's the salary.

• 7:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:17Sam Parr?

  I think she's.

• 7:18Shaan Puri?

  She said that. Average engineer. It's not even like the, uh.

• 7:20Sam Parr?

  It's like a 30 year old guy.

• 7:22Shaan Puri?

  It's not like you're a specialist who's going to bring some, something so unique to the table. It's like, no, you're like a mid-level, solid engineer, maybe senior engineer, but uh, yeah, it's crazy.

• 7:33Sam Parr?

  She told me that someone from Brex was, got recruited to Brex. And like the offer was like three or 400 cash and then like another like equity grant that was pushed it to like six, 700,000. Is that, how on earth can a small startup keep up with this? Is this crazy?

• 7:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but this has been going on for like, I don't know, almost a decade now where you have this crazy outsized compensation that's guaranteed. It's like, hey, this is, this job is easier and pays you more. And then you're the startup being like, hey, you want to work twice as hard for half as much? And it's like shit, but people do take the trade for two reasons. One is there's a lottery ticket element to startups, which is if a startup hits, you can like, kind of like leapfrog up and you can, you can make a lot more. Probability wise, it's not a good trade, right? Right? Your expected value is not that high, but, but there is a chance. The other. Component that helps is just people don't have a lot of fun working in big companies like that.

• 8:33Sam Parr?

  But I don't remember it being like five or $600,000. I think what's going on.

• 8:37Shaan Puri?

  I do think that's a little bit high. Like when we were at, I think I can just say this. I don't think there's anything stopping me from saying this, but when I was at Twitch, we like, I got my team all offers and then I also hired people there. And I would say that for like an average engineer, you might be like, let's call it a 30 year old engineer who's been working for, you know, seven, eight years, not a, not a manager or like kind of a senior manager who's managing multiple teams or anything like that. They would be netting, I think something like 300 to 400,000. And then once you get into, you manage engineers, you're an engineer who manages other engineers.

• 9:18Shaan Puri?

  Now you're talking more like 500,000. And then if you got to like a, what L8 or whatever, like these like principal engineers, and that's what they call them, or like you're at AI, if you're, if you're in the AI team, machine learning teams, then we're talking about you could be making 700K a year all in, which is a combination of cash and stock, but the stock is just like cash. It's like, you know, liquid, liquid public market stock. And these are crazy numbers.

• 9:41Sam Parr?

  It's crazy numbers and you were a PM, were you a PM?

• 9:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, technically I was PM, yeah.

• 9:47Sam Parr?

  What was your cash salary?

• 9:49Shaan Puri?

  So mine, when I, when I joined was, so they have a, I'm trying, how should I split this out? Okay. So basically what they do and Amazon does is they, they always say the highest possible salary you can get is $185,000 a year. Even Jeff Bezos only can make that. So no matter who you are, that's your set cash salary. But then they do assigning, they do a cash bonus. So it's like, it's kind of the same thing. I don't know why they split it out. So those two combined, I think took it up to like 400, 500,000, something like that. And then on top of that was your, your stock. Yeah. So I think 400, it was 400,000 was the cash component. And then stock would then be bigger. And then we got acquired. So we had not only your job, normal stock package, but then the acquisition stock package on top of that.

• 10:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And that's what I have now. I think, what is my salary? I think with the bonus, it's like 300, but the stock is a much, much larger.

• 10:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Sam Parr?

  Anyway.

• 10:45Shaan Puri?

  Insane numbers, but you know, I would say like, you know, this is, this wasn't the case for non engineers. So, you know, if I look at.

• 10:54Shaan Puri?

  Kind of like, you know, people in the marketing team or community team, you know, theirs would be like a program manager for something like that, you know, there, that's more in the like, what people are used to is like a good job. It's like, you know, you make like a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and you work at this company, you get benefits and all that good stuff, or they could get to one eighty or two hundred or something like that, max. It was really only the engineers, engineering managers that were crazy high. And then mine, I wasn't just like a random PM. It's like I ran a whole division of the company. There was only, I think, seven people at my level in the company. So it's like, so, so you see, you know, how many, how many peers do you have? So if you could manage a team of fifty to a hundred people, then you could have that kind of comp.

• 11:36Sam Parr?

  How many people do you think who worked at Amazon? Because I don't think Twitch would apply here. How many people do you think that would work at one of these big companies that probably had a liquid net worth north of fifty million from their comp?

• 11:52Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if you said Twitch, but yeah, not, not at Twitch.

• 11:55Sam Parr?

  Not, I meant Amazon.

• 11:58Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, man. I've, I kind of put this out there once. I think I asked, I was like, how many people at, at this company would make more than X? And I kind of got like a fuzzy answer. So I don't know. I don't, I don't have a great answer for that, unfortunately.

• 12:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was thinking about that with HubSpot. I'm like, how many, how many people do you think have made more than twenty million dollars from their stock? And

• 12:21Shaan Puri?

  Well, like, for example, even when Twitch got acquired by Amazon, the stock had gone up, I think, four or five, four or five X since then. So, you know, even if you came in and you got a million dollars in the acquisition, actually, you had four or five million dollars if you just held on to your Amazon stock. And so there was, you know, like, the appreciation of stocks is crazy. Like, if you just go look at a ten year chart at Google, you know, you might have had a three hundred K salary, but that was effectively, you know, a three million dollar salary when you look at it over the, over the ten year period. So it's pretty crazy. Tech companies have just accumulated so much wealth. The funny thing is, is these numbers sound crazy. Like, wow, these people are sort of like almost overpaid in a way. But it's like, actually,

• 13:02Shaan Puri?

  Like the company's getting the best deal on average because the company's creating way more value per person than they're giving out in comp.

• 13:09Sam Parr?

  Which is hard to understand. That's a really tough exercise to understand. I still struggle with it. I'm like, how do you have 3,000 people at this company that you have to pay this much money for? And it's like, well, because it makes billions of dollars.

• 13:23Shaan Puri?

  Well, yeah, just think about it. Like between Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, these are four of the greatest wealth generating machines, cash machines ever created, right? Like, these are trillion dollar companies, multiple, Apple's like a $2 trillion company or even more. So it's like, you know, there's a, these are the greatest businesses in the created in the history of Earth. So yeah, you know, like the compensation is kind of outsized and it's pretty crazy and it's hard to get in. And even when you get in, it's hard to move up. But once you're there, it's like, you know, it is really kind of a golden ticket, which is why it's funny. Like I quit, you know, like, and a bunch of people quit and go do other stuff because at the end of the day, it's just like, it's not going

• 14:06Shaan Puri?

  to move the needle that far for you. Right? Like if you can have an opportunity to feel like you're making a bigger impact, or just have more fun on a day to day basis, it's very tempting to, to, to go take that path. And I, you know, you see a lot of people do it. There's, by the way, there's a great blog post that I read. Have you read this blog post? It's called desperation induced focus?

• 14:28Sam Parr?

  No, but that's a really, really good headline.

• 14:31Shaan Puri?

  Amazing headline, right? So it's this guy, Ravi Gupta. So he, he was, he was the COO of Instacart. And now he's like at Sequoia, he's like a partner there. But he, he, he wrote this blog post and I literally, I was like, damn, this is one of the best blogs I've, I've read in maybe a year or two. It's called desperation induced focus. And he goes, he goes, people ask me about process all the time, planning processes, performance review processes, OKRs. And they think it's because I'm the COO, you know, I was a COO and my friends were COOs and everybody wants to like, improve their process. And he goes, you know, people sort of imagine me as like being in a room with Gantt charts all around me. And then he goes, I have nothing against process, but I think most startups are doing this way too early,

• 15:15Shaan Puri?

  way too often. And when I ask them, I go, why do you think you need this process? The answer is usually some version of, well, this smart person at this bigger company told, told me that they use this process. And so we figured we should use it too, you know, we're, we're just doing everything janky and like those big companies probably have it all figured out. And he goes, the lesson is, as always, big companies suck. And he goes, he goes, don't get me wrong. This is why I liked it. He goes, don't get me wrong. They didn't always suck. At some point, they were just like you, a startup that was fighting for product market fit. They was, you know, trying to, trying to expand and trying to grow. They were focused and everything. They were trying to hire like trajectory changing people and they were, they were giving them more of the responsibility than they even know what to do with it. And they were working their ass off to create something out of nothing. They had desperation induced focus. But now,

• 16:00Shaan Puri?

  things are different for that company. Most, most big companies are no longer creating things out of nothing. Somebody else somewhere made the money making machine and everybody else is sort of assumes it's, it'll just keep working. And now that the money making machine part is taken care of, they get the luxury of caring about, you know, a small number of other things like planning processes, performance reviews, creating an ever increasing number of checks and boxes, or something even that matters even less than those. This lack of focus is a luxury and a disease. I love that. And then he goes, he goes, my advice to people who are thinking about putting in a process was said, instead of the process, go to this whiteboard. If you could only get done one thing this year, what would it be? If the answer is put in a new process?

• 16:45Shaan Puri?

  All right, fine. Go for it. But more likely, they answer something like increase market share, launch a product that doubles our revenue, or what blah, blah, blah. Then don't waste your time with anything else. Just take your best person, which is either you, the CEO, whoever, and make them responsible for that problem and give them everything they need to do it. In reality, process is not your problem. Lack of focus is your problem. Peace time thinking, complacency. And then he talks about, about his time at Instacart and he gives kind of an example of, of when this happened. He goes, and he gave one other thing that was, he's like, at Instacart, we had one, a whiteboard with two words, unit economics. And he goes, at that point, once that became the singular desperate focus for us, then we started combing through,

• 17:29Shaan Puri?

  you know, the P and L in different countries and finding ways to save cents per order. It was awesome. And finally, we turned the unit economics around. I love this blog post. What do you think of this?

• 17:38Sam Parr?

  This is beautiful. And I think that it's true beyond just process. I've always said, I think I said on this podcast, I think what I like to do is I like to burn bridges. So, you know, a lot of people say like, if you're going to start a company, maybe like, um, work on it on the side. And I'm always like, no, fuck that. Like, I know it's not for everyone, but like, go all in and like, it must work or you're going out or you're going homeless. Like that type of like, I, I love that desperation. I love back against the wall type of moves. I think this is beautiful. And his writing, because I've been working on my copywriting, his writing is really, really good. Even his footnotes are, are pretty funny. Look at the first footnote, like this is beautiful writing. This guy's really good.

• 18:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. And then he goes, he has another one. He goes, he ended the thing. He goes, "The next time someone tries to tell you to do something because a big company says, the big company does it, be suspicious. Don't let them infect your company with a thing that's slowly killing theirs."

• 18:37Sam Parr?

  This is beautiful. Yeah.

• 18:39Shaan Puri?

  I'm going to meet up with this. I emailed him. So I emailed this guy right afterwards and I go, I just sent him an email like two, I read this at two or three in the morning. And I'm going to read like what I sent him. Um, I just go, I go, wow. The desperation induced blog post, one of the best fucking posts I've read this year. Uh, I could give you a dozen examples. You know, my startup got bought by Twitch a couple of years ago, that, that proved this, but you don't need to hear them because you know, only somebody who knows could write this blog post. I'd love to meet you sometime. I'm Sean. I live in the Bay Area, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I do. Okay. I'm going to go read some other blog posts on your site right now. The bar is high. Don't disappoint me.

• 19:15Sam Parr?

  What did he say?

• 19:16Shaan Puri?

  He was like, wow, thank you. I appreciate that. Would love to meet. I'm over here, you know, let's, let's hang out.

• 19:20Sam Parr?

  You guys are hanging out?

• 19:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. It was like, anybody who writes this, I'm going to get along with you. I'm going to get along with you. We're going to be thick as thieves. It's just a matter of how much time we hang out.

• 19:29Sam Parr?

  What's he do at Sequoia?

• 19:31Shaan Puri?

  He's a part of or something like that. He has another one.

• 19:33Sam Parr?

  He's a big deal.

• 19:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's a big deal there. He has another one about like where he goes into more detail about what they actually did it. I think it was Instacart to improve their stuff, but I thought this was awesome. And I also think that the, you know, the writing is awesome. The lesson is awesome, which is most of the time you think your process was broken. It's that you don't have desperation induced focus on the main thing. You haven't, you forgot that the main thing needs to be the main thing. And you're better, you're better off just writing down what is the main thing on the whiteboard. And then saying, cool, who's the most capable person in our company? You don't do anything else besides this. And then letting them solve that problem and giving them everything that they need to do it. And every day, just talking to them about that one thing and don't talk to them about other shit.

• 20:16Shaan Puri?

  Don't, don't drag their focus in 10 different directions, which is exactly what happens at big companies is your focus gets split in 10 different directions. You're, you're doing 360 peer reviews one week and then you're doing your team offsite. And then you're doing diversity and inclusion the next week, and then you're doing hiring. And then you work a little bit on your plan, on your project, but then you have to write your plan and your budget for next year. And then you come back to your project for a couple of hours and then you get pinged by this other person to do this other thing. And like, sure enough, you know, six weeks have gone by and you've like, haven't moved the ball forward on your main thing. And the, and the company doesn't penalize it because they don't care. They don't know, they don't care.

• 20:50Sam Parr?

  This guy I'm clicking around is a very good writer. So his blog is rkg.blog. His writing is very, very, very good. This guy's a clear thinker. I can read his writing and I understand his, I understand how he thinks just from reading his writing.

• 21:05Shaan Puri?

  Ben, you got the Georgetown Law shirt on. What do you think of this?

• 21:09Ben?

  I think it sounds genius. By the way, my wife went here, not me. So, you know, I don't, I don't know how much credibility this gives me. I'm just a wife guy here in the sweatshirt.

• 21:17Shaan Puri?

  We already taught you how to, how to rock the Harvard shirts of the Georgetown Law shirts. Actually, I had this happen to me yesterday. I was walking in the neighborhood, walking my dog. And a lady in a Tesla swerves over, pulls over. She goes, did you go to Harvard too? And I go, um, she goes Harvard, did you go there?

• 21:34Sam Parr?

  Like, yeah.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I go, I go, yeah, I was there in 2006. Uh, loved the campus. And she goes, I know, I love, I went there in 2006. I go, I was there in 2006. God, I missed the campus. She goes, oh, me too.

• 21:51Sam Parr?

  Were you by yourself?

• 21:52Shaan Puri?

  She goes, I'm class of 94. And I go, oh, no, no, I just bought the shirt. And then she started cracking up. And then she told me a story of the same thing. She goes, she goes, that's, I go, sorry to fake you out. And she goes, that's so funny. You did that. She goes, my husband has this shirt that says like, it says like some, it's like some army insignia. It's like some shield and like whatever. It's like some, some army shirt. Because his brother or dad or something like that was in the army or something like that has the shirt. I think like his brother had given him the shirt and um, they were in the park and someone came right up to him and like stood and did like a salute and was like, you know, Colonel devil. And he's like, oh shit. He didn't know what to say. Cause like the guy was really like paying him like serious respect.

• 22:34Shaan Puri?

  And so he just kind of rolled with it for a second. And then like the guy walked away and he felt super guilty afterwards. He's like, fuck, I should have said something. I don't know what, I don't know what I was doing. Why did I just like play into that?

• 22:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, were you by yourself when you did this?

• 22:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was by myself.

• 22:49Sam Parr?

  That's hilarious. I would not, I typically am not in the mood when I'm by myself to pull a joke like that. That's a good one. That's a winner.

• 22:56Shaan Puri?

  Dude, it's the best. Cause my shirt also has like a hole in it. So it looks like worn, like this is like, it doesn't look like memorabilia. It looks like, you know, my old college sweatshirt.

• 23:06Sam Parr?

  Can I show you a business really quick? So check out, all right, look at what I wrote under specialty license plate. My friend Dennis uh, was showing me this. So there's this website called my plate. Is it my plates? Myplates.com. Can, yeah, sorry. Thank you. All right. So um, basically you can do one of two things on this website. The first thing is you can buy, someone has purchased the website like 001 or like.

• 23:35Sam Parr?

  Some funny phrase or something and you could do an auction to purchase the vanity plate. But what this website does is they made a deal with the Texas government and they guaranteed the Texas government a certain amount of revenue. So in order to get a vanity plate, you've got to spend 50 to a hundred dollars and myplate.com makes it really easy to register and get that done. And they go to the government said, hey, we promised you over the next three years, we're going to pay you 25 million dollars in fees.

• 24:02Shaan Puri?

  Five years, five years, 25 million, it says.

• 24:05Sam Parr?

  Sorry, five years, 25 million dollars. And the government goes, all right, fine, deal. You do that, then we'll keep making you the exclusive vendor of vanity license plates. And this company did it and they're crushing it. They've sold over a half a million of these plates. I read a recent article, they sold over half a million. And if you assume on their page, it said that prices range from 100 to 200 dollars. That's like basically close to 10 million dollars a year.

• 24:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So they're basically, they're doubling up, right? So they, they, they have this guaranteed payout, but then they probably have their own costs. So I don't know how great of a business it is, right? They have their own marketing costs and things like that. But let's say they did 40 million, 50 million, you know, across that time, they had to get pay out 25 million total for the rights. That's still pretty, pretty damn good for a business that has like, by definition, zero competition.

• 24:54Sam Parr?

  Well, and on LinkedIn, I saw two employees. That's it.

• 24:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, beautiful. This is very similar to what we talked about, the trend of going to a school, the guys who the tailgate guys who go to the school and say, hey, we want to be your exclusive tailgate provider, we'll pay you a guaranteed, you get this flat thing and then let us charge what we want to charge to do like turnkey tailgates here. And getting that kind of exclusive partnership is very hard to do. But once you do it, your business is like so defensible because, you know, obviously nobody else can get in.

• 25:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's, it's sick. I came across this, Dennis showed me and I was like, this is actually really badass. This is kind of cool.

• 25:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's cool. I've been, I've been looking into licensing recently. Have you ever licensed a product?

• 25:34Sam Parr?

  No, but the only thing I know about it is our friend Sully, who did it. And he like told me how it worked. And licensing is, if you're the person who owns the license, it's like, it's amazing.

• 25:46Shaan Puri?

  Well, yeah, in this case, like, these are non-exclusive licenses, but I've been learning how like, you know, like, how does the Disney licensing process work? Like, if you want to put Mickey Mouse on something, how does that work? And it's like, well, you gotta like, get in touch with them. And, you know, that's like, you know, hurdle one. And there's brokers that'll do it, or you could just get in touch with them directly. And then you basically are like, I guarantee you this much, and I'll give you whatever, 15% of all sales. And you have kind of veto rights on, on the design and all that. You have to approve it before we sell anything. So the whole process takes kind of like a year, but it's so powerful to be able to sell somebody something instead of from your brand that they've never heard of. You know, on a brand like Lion King or something where they have like already an emotional attachment to it.

• 26:29Shaan Puri?

  In this case, like, it said that the top sold license vanity license plate was 12th Man, which is like the, the nickname for the crowd at the UT, at the Longhorns game. And so, um, you know, if you're, if you're a Longhorns fan, which is like pretty popular in Texas, like you have that emotional connection to the team. And so you're going to get, you know, get that kind of benefit. So I think licensing businesses are quite interesting in general.

• 26:52Sam Parr?

  That's interesting. Yeah, I didn't really know much about it. I remember Sully like had some crazy story about how they did, did a bunch of licensing stuff. What are you trying to license?

• 27:02Shaan Puri?

  Brand, you know, any popular brand. So for my e-commerce store, we're just trying to, uh, look at any kind of like popular brand that we think would do well on apparel. So, you know, you can go to a sports team or you can go to, um, you know, like a big movie franchise, Star Wars or whatever, and turn it in, you know? That's how you get, you know, at Costco, like, uh, you know, some hoodie with Star Wars on it. It's not, it's not Star Wars making that hoodie. It's some company that's paying Star Wars for the rights to make that hoodie.

• 27:29Sam Parr?

  What's, um, what do you know about Logan Paul? What do you want to talk about with him?

• 27:33Shaan Puri?

  I can't tell this full story, but I can tell a part of it. So I met a founder today. I'm going to ask him for permission to tell his full story, but the part of the story I thought was amazing. It's just a little nugget. So this guy was in college and he wanted to start an e-commerce company. And he's like, okay, I don't have any money for marketing. So I need like, you know, maybe like an influencer to shout me out. I think that would be cool. This was back in maybe 2015. So this was like a while back. And so the founder was like, all right, in college, doesn't know what to do and starts, he's watching Vine at the time. And he notices that all the Vine stars, Logan Paul, Jake Paul, King Batch, you know, like all these people. He's like, I feel like they all live like in the same place because they're all their doors look the same. He's

• 28:17Shaan Puri?

  like, looking at the door handles. He's like, what are the odds? They all just have the same door handle. He's like, they probably live in one building that just has this door handle. So he does.

• 28:25Sam Parr?

  It was like an apartment building, right?

• 28:27Shaan Puri?

  And so, yeah, so he finds the apartment building and he's like, oh, great. He's on the East Coast. He just moves to LA, moves into this apartment building, like finds like whatever the cheapest apartment is in this building, gets in, moves in, and he's like, all right, I'm here. He's like, they're, they're here. I'm here. And he started, he's like, all right. Uh, how do I bump into them? He's like, okay, they hang out, they like, they go to the gym all day. So he's like, I started going to the gym like five hours a day. He's like, I'll just hang out there. He's like, first of all, I got ripped, which was awesome. Cause I was just at the gym all day, every day. Secondly, I would just see Logan, I'd see Jake, I'd see King Batch. I just see these guys every day. And then sure enough, we, you know, became kind of like friendly. And then we became sort of like friends. And then he's like, hey, guys,

• 29:09Shaan Puri?

  like, you know, have you guys ever thought about, you know, doing some merch? And ended up doing like a merch run with Logan Paul and that kind of kickstarted his e-commerce business, which is now doing, doing quite well, does, you know, millions of dollars a year. So, um, but yeah, I just, that was amazing, amazing hustle story of like, it's the, they found the line between determined and creepy. Um, like creepy is like, I'm hanging out in your driveway. It's like, oh dude, leave me alone. Like, you know, I'm in the parking lot every day.

• 29:41Sam Parr?

  The difference between like creepy and not creepy is really if you could just make the recipient smile a little. That's what I've noticed. If you could just make the recipient smile a little bit.

• 29:51Shaan Puri?

  All creeps out there.

• 29:54Sam Parr?

  Well, like, it's kind of like when you're like wanting to flirt with someone. It's like, you could say two phrases, the exact same words, but with different emphasis on different words, with a different tone of voice. And if you could get the person to smile, one's creepy, one's not. So like the difference.

• 30:09Shaan Puri?

  Do you want to share what your pickup line was for your wife, by the way? That story, I think, is the perfect example.

• 30:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Shaan Puri?

  As a friend, I recommend not telling this story. As a podcast host, I am hoping you tell this story because it's hilarious.

• 30:23Sam Parr?

  There's nothing bad about it, in my opinion, because like, her family knows and like, it worked. Like, we're married, so it worked out. But, um, so I was with my friend Lily, a girlfriend of mine, a friend who's a woman, and it helped. The reason I say she was a woman is it helped me look a little more disarming. And I was with Lily and this woman walked in the bar and I go, Lily, that woman's beautiful. Like, I can't let her, like, I gotta talk to her before I leave. And what should I say to her? And as I'm saying this to Lily, Sarah, my now wife, walks by and I go, hey, um, what's the difference between a chickpea and a lentil? And she looks at me funny and she goes, what? I go, I don't pay $400 to have a lentil on my face.

• 31:05Sam Parr?

  And she was like.

• 31:08Shaan Puri?

  Ben, do you know?

• 31:08Sam Parr?

  Ever gasped. And I was like, yeah, classic, uh, classic hummus joke. Big fan of hummus jokes, are you? And, uh, we became.

• 31:17Shaan Puri?

  Now you're married.

• 31:18Sam Parr?

  Now we're married. And we basically like fell in love like 10 days after that. So it worked out perfectly. And so that proves my point that the difference between creepy and not creepy is just getting that laugh. So, uh, kudos to this guy.

• 31:35Shaan Puri?

  That was like the most high-risk maneuver. Ben's, Ben looks so, I've never seen Ben so shook. He's, I, as a man of Georgetown Law, what do you have to say about this?

• 31:42Sam Parr?

  Because you've met my wife. My wife is like, uh, a little bougie. She's like, uh, higher class than I am.

• 31:49Ben?

  She's a classy lady. That's what I was gonna say. She's a classy lady. I want to know how many times did you ever use that pickup line? And how many times did it work?

• 31:56Sam Parr?

  Um, I used it on Tinder once or twice before and the, it was a good litmus test because if you didn't think that it was funny, then we weren't going to be a good match. And also, if you weren't quick enough to get it, then I'm like, oh man, I don't know if we're going to be a quick ma- a good match either. Um, so it was like-

• 32:13Ben?

  It leads me to think that like the best pickup lines are not necessarily the ones that work the most. They're the ones that are the best-

• 32:19Shaan Puri?

  Filter.

• 32:20Ben?

  Uh, filters. Yes, exactly. It's a perfect filter, filter pick up line.

• 32:24Sam Parr?

  If you don't think like a dirty joke is, if you think a dirty joke is not funny, then this isn't going to work. So that was, that was my reasoning.

• 32:33Shaan Puri?

  Sam, Sam, uh, you know, ghetto country Romeo. Sam like, hose water Romeo over here. Crazy, crazy joke, uh, out of nowhere. When you told me that, by the way, I was 100% sure you were lying. Cause I was like, there's no way that's a true story. That's a, that's a fake story. It's a funny fake story, but I was, I was still happy with the fake, funny fake story. And then, uh, Sarah was like, she rolled her eyes. She was like, yeah. And then rolled her eyes. I was like, wait, is that real? And she's like, yes.

• 33:06Sam Parr?

  I'm telling you, it works. This is like classic copy. I, I would, the, the best thing that had helped me meet women. Cause you know, like, like a lot of computer dorks, I'm just, I was just a nerd. Learning how to be a better copywriter taught me how to like grab people's attention, get them interested, make them desire, and then take action. I'm telling you, it was a classic copywriting.

• 33:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Anyone listening, go try that. Let us know how it goes. Go try that line out.

• 33:31Sam Parr?

  But the difference-

• 33:32Shaan Puri?

  Tomorrow.

• 33:33Sam Parr?

  The difference between it working and it not working, remember is getting the recipient to smile. I'm telling you, that's like the key and a good smile. Not like, not like, uh, you know, like you want to say like, wow, not like, wow. You know what I mean?

• 33:48Shaan Puri?

  All right. What else we got? You want to do one of yours? You have a Darmesh is amazing on here.

• 33:55Sam Parr?

  Okay. Oh, let's listen to this. So Darmesh, um, Darmesh is the founder of HubSpot, the co-founder. We had him on the podcast. He, um, very likely just based off his HubSpot stock is a billionaire. Knowing Darmash, he probably has like, like he's made other investments that have made him a huge sum. But I don't know. And he basically, when this app Wordle came out, he got obsessed with it. Or just became a fan of it. And he created a new game on its, uh, his own game. Where I believe I don't play Wordle. So I'm sure you've seen it because you play that game. It's like, basically is Wordle a once a day thing?

• 34:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, once a day.

• 34:36Sam Parr?

  So Darmesh's app is like, once you're done with your daily Wordle, come practice and train on my Wordle app. And it's like a training Wordle app.

• 34:44Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 34:44Sam Parr?

  And it's really good. Have you seen it?

• 34:48Shaan Puri?

  No, I need that because every day I do the Wordle and then I'm like, not satisfied with the one minute. You know, like I need more of a break. So then I go Google Wordle archive and I go to this bootleg site and I start playing an old Wordle. Just to play a little bit more.

• 35:01Sam Parr?

  You see his Twitter? Look at his thing.

• 35:03Shaan Puri?

  Wordplay.com?

• 35:05Sam Parr?

  I think that's it. Yeah.

• 35:06Shaan Puri?

  Of course, he has an amazing domain.

• 35:08Sam Parr?

  So basically here's why this is amazing to me is the, he is not able to do this. Because he's a billionaire who has time. He is a billionaire because he is doing things like this. Like constantly creating, constantly learning. He told me, I think last year. He goes like, my son wants to learn how to become a YouTuber. Because all the kids are, you know, care about that. So I'm going to create a YouTube page so I can learn and I could like, you know, like I could teach him how to do his homework. And he's doing really good. His YouTube's great. And I saw that when Wordle came out, he came out with this thing. And it's awesome. And he basically coded it by himself. Like sometimes he'll DM me at night. So I know he's up at night on his computer.

• 35:51Sam Parr?

  And he's just like working on this stuff. And this is why this guy's amazing and why he's so successful. It's because he's prolific at making stuff, even if it's a silly game. But the, the passion that he brought to like a silly game, I imagine is what he brought to building HubSpot. It's pretty amazing, right?

• 36:05Shaan Puri?

  It is amazing. I'm playing the game right now. So excuse me if I'm a little, uh, little off. I need a word that's are you blank, blank, why? Are you blank blank why? Rubby? No.

• 36:17Sam Parr?

  Rumpy?

• 36:18Shaan Puri?

  Runny.

• 36:19Sam Parr?

  Can we ruddy?

• 36:19Shaan Puri?

  There's no N. What is it? Ruddy? No, there's no D.

• 36:23Sam Parr?

  Are you D D Y? But this is amazing, right? That he's able to do this. He also, um, when BitClout came out, I believe he was one of the largest, uh, or most active, one of the more active participants on Blake, BitClout. And I was like, why? He goes, oh, I'm not sure if it's gonna work, but I want to just understand this technology. So I know what's going on.

• 36:41Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, he's, he's amazing. He's a tinkerer and a hacker for sure, which is like one of the, um, highest kind of like predictors of success, in my opinion, is people that just scratch their own edge, their tinkers, their hackers, and they build cool stuff. Uh, there's this founder, Farza, who's building this thing called BuildSpace right now, which is cool company. It's like helps web two engineers get into web three and like learn, learn, learn about web three and then get a job. And, uh, over the weekend, and he's like, you know, he's raised money, you know, from Andreessen Horowitz and others. So it's like a serious business. But over the weekend, he posted this thing. He's like, all right, check this out. And he's like, put this 30 second video up. And he goes, I bought this neurocity device, which basically, I don't know if you've ever seen this. It's like a thing you put like, see how my headphones are on my head right now? It's like this.

• 37:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:26Shaan Puri?

  And it measures your brainwaves.

• 37:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Shaan Puri?

  And so, and it could be coded again. So he goes, I have this neurocity device and I made it so that anytime I'm focusing or I'm thinking hard about something, it's attached to this motor on this hat with a little, uh, fan on top of the hat. Like, you know, those like goofy, like, you know, whatever, P. B. Herman type hats. It's like this, this thing should spin anytime I'm thinking hard. He's like, so watch this. He puts it on, it's not spinning. He goes, okay, I'm gonna do some math. Two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, eight plus eight is 16. He starts going up and, uh, the wheel starts spinning super fast as he gets to like 128 or whatever. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. It's useless, to be clear. Uh, but it's also completely amazing. And, uh, and so, you know, I give him credit.

• 38:09Sam Parr?

  If someone made that, I wouldn't bet against them.

• 38:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like this person, they're just gonna shoot a bunch of shots on goal and they're eventually gonna get it. The same thing happens on the marketing and marketing side. People want to hire somebody who's a marketer. It's like, oh yeah, I ran, you know, I ran market. I was head of marketing at Coinbase. It's like, dude, there's probably 15 people that say that they led marketing at Coinbase, first of all. Then secondly, Like, you know, the things you had to do there. Yeah, the things you had to do there to make Coinbase grow. It's actually like Coinbase is already growing rapidly. And you just helped kind of like, you know, you know, soften up the edges. Whereas the person who's like, yeah, I made this web. Like this is guy who's, I love this guy. I've been trying to hire him from Milk Road.

• 38:54Shaan Puri?

  This guy Rohan Vora, if you go to his, his Twitter, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. So R O H U N Vora.

• 39:03Shaan Puri?

  V O R A. So his thing goes, his thing is just, I created Bitcoin or shit.com. And Bitcoin is dead lol. And so if you go look at those, it's like Bitcoin or shit.com. It's like, it's a little mini website that just says, if you bought Bitcoin instead of stupid shit, you'd have blank by now. So you type in how much you spent on like, you know, whatever, a TV that you bought. And it's like, you would have had this by now. It's like, shows you if you had invested in Bitcoin instead, how much would your money be worth?

• 39:32Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is the way to go.

• 39:33Shaan Puri?

  And then this little site gets like a bunch of traffic because it kind of goes viral. And it was simple and he just like worked with some, you know, random developer to make it or built it himself. And he's built like 10 of these types of projects, you know, you've only heard of three of them. And then guess what? He got a job as the first growth guy at Main Street and drove like a shit ton of growth for Main Street. Because he was like scrappy as hell and was like, oh, cool. I think I could figure out how to grow this thing. Just like I figured out like clever ways to make my little projects go somewhere. And hiring people like this is like, these people are much higher like, they have much higher likelihood to be like a trajectory changer for your company versus the person with a bunch of experience at a larger company.

• 40:12Sam Parr?

  Without a doubt.

• 40:13Shaan Puri?

  Who never tinkers or creates stuff just for fun, just to see what happens and actually gets these random hits.

• 40:20Sam Parr?

  When I was running my company, I would, if I got an applicant from Apple or Facebook or Google, at first I would flip out. I would be like, I am so honored that a rocket scientist from Facebook would want to apply at my company. That alone, I feel like validated in my existence. And I hired, I'll try to be vague. I hired from one of these huge companies. It was horrible. It was horrible. We, we, it didn't work out. Um, and what I learned was like, basically they just don't do anything. Like when you're at Facebook, I had a friend that worked at Facebook and his job was basically to um, figure out what stickers to

• 41:03Sam Parr?

  uh, what stickers to make in order to put on a picture that gets people to upload more pictures.

• 41:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 41:09Sam Parr?

  But they didn't actually do the work. They had a team of like 18 people, then they got approval and I'm like, and I was like, oh, like so like, dude, are you like skilled? Like, what are you good at? They're like, I'm not good at anything. I just like organize shit. Like I'm, I can't do anything.

• 41:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 41:24Sam Parr?

  And so I learned the hard way that it, that it's not interesting.

• 41:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. This is why when you interview people, you have to be like, you know, okay, cool. So, so what's, what's a project you did there? And they're like, oh, I did this project. Cool. So talk me through, where'd the idea for that project come from? This other person. Okay, cool. So then, um, you know, explain to me maybe like the three different directions you could have gone with it and then which one you chose and why? And they're like, uh, it's like, oh, you didn't think you just kind of did the first thing. All right, cool. So you didn't actually weigh the options about which way to go and come up with three plans and pick the best one. All right, great. Uh, cool. So then when you wanted to do it, um, you know, what, what'd you, what'd you do in the first kind of like, I don't know, 10 days? Like, I don't know, because they don't think on short time spans about like, how do I get momentum? How do I generate some velocity and momentum? And actually get the ball rolling. It's like, no, we just like did it, took a year.

• 42:14Shaan Puri?

  And I never considered it taking kind of like less than a year. And, uh, you know, so that was that. And it's like, cool. So how would you measure success? Well, it was hard to measure for these reasons. You know, it's all, it's too many variables.

• 42:24Sam Parr?

  The question I ask.

• 42:25Shaan Puri?

  Thank you for coming.

• 42:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah. The question I ask is what tools do you use? And if they tell me like, well, I just use like Google slides and then I take a screenshot and I just drag it out over it. Like, I'm like in. But if you say that it's mostly like Excel or database stuff like SQL, I'm like, I don't know if you can actually create. I don't know if you could do it. If they say that they use tools where I'm like, I don't think that you, I don't think that you can actually make something that a user sees, then I don't know if this would be a good fit.

• 42:55Shaan Puri?

  I ask them how their competitors are doing and not like, what are your competitors good or bad at? It's like, so how much revenue or how many users do, does this other company have? This is my number one, kind of like instant filter of how like-minded we are and how like it's a, it's an instant red flag for me when people don't know the numbers of their competitors. Because anybody who's sufficiently motivated and clever will know their competitors' numbers within like a couple of days of doing their project. And, um, and if you didn't think about that, or you're like, you know, I think they're doing well. It's like, oh, you never thought to go figure out where they're at versus where you're at?

• 43:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I can't stand that.

• 43:38Shaan Puri?

  And I'm, I'm sure there's people who are successful who don't do it that way. But for me, I'm instantly like, this is one red flag. It's not a disqualifier. But if I hear three more, like this is, this is a definite no-go here in terms of this person. Cause I just can't fathom how you would do something and not try to understand where the others are at in numerical terms and not like just your opinion of them.

• 44:01Sam Parr?

  I'm same page and I do that when I, when I'm in, when I in making investments, I say, how big a business do you think this? And I name like a competitor is, and they're like, well, you know, I'm not sure. It's like, dog, I, I know you're not sure. I didn't ask you if you're sure. I just said, like, just like, let's have a conversation with me about like, I know you've researched this, right? And if they haven't researched, I'm like, fuck, man, I don't know if you're going to be.

• 44:21Shaan Puri?

  It's hard to say. I'm like, are you sure it's hard to say? Or can I just go to this number, this site and this site triangulate basically within a very close approximation where they're at. Or, you know, that's just like a crazy thing to me when, when people don't know that.

• 44:34Sam Parr?

  Do you want to answer a few questions? I'll ask you a few questions on your Twitter.

• 44:39Shaan Puri?

  Do we have some good ones?

• 44:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'll pull up your thing and I've got it up too. I'll ask you one and you answer first and then I'll answer second. And while each other's answering, just scroll and find another one. So this one's an easy one, straightforward, general question. But tell me the percentage of your personal portfolio, you know, stocks, crypto, rolling fund, real estate, e-comm, etc. Actually, for this, I don't know if you can include e-comm or any private businesses, because that could be like-

• 45:10Shaan Puri?

  Liquid or illiquid, right?

• 45:11Sam Parr?

  Do liquid. You could do liquid and I'll do it as well.

• 45:15Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I don't have the numbers exactly in front of me for like updated. But I think I did this last two months ago, three months ago, maybe. And crypto is like, I did it right before the crypto crash. So I think some of the numbers are going to be a little different now. I roughly have 30 to 40% in stocks, 40 to 50% in crypto. I own no real estate at the moment and I have very little cash. I keep less than, I don't know, less than 5%, maybe 3, 4%. I keep a very small amount of cash compared to most people. That's also just because I did a bunch of startup deals where I invested personal money into startups and things like that.

• 45:58Shaan Puri?

  So that took some cash and put it into liquid startups. And then there's startups, which I didn't say. That's kind of the remainder. So of liquid money, that's where I put it. The business or the e-commerce business, that kind of like your paper net worth, I don't count that. I don't, yeah, I don't count any, I don't count anything in net worth from businesses that are not exiting or, yeah, that are not exited yet.

• 46:22Sam Parr?

  So it looks like I'm at 85% equity, public equities and bonds, of which that 85% is basically 90% equities. And that includes Airbnb and HubSpot. And then I own 10% in real estate. And then I have 3.5%. I call it private equity. So that's basically angel investments that I consider it, they've marked up and they're like profitable and like relatively safe. So I like, and I put a discount on it. And then I have like 5% ish of crypto.

• 46:58Shaan Puri?

  Okay. And I guess the follow up to that is, do you like your allocation or do you wish it was different?

• 47:03Sam Parr?

  Um, it is really painful right now. It's painful. I've lost a fair amount of net worth in the past three months.

• 47:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 47:12Sam Parr?

  Um, if there's anything, I wish it was more real estate, but I don't regret not doing real estate.

• 47:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Sam Parr?

  Do you, do you, do you have regrets?

• 47:23Shaan Puri?

  No, uh, you know, yeah, basically my, my stock holdings are heavily biased towards tech and my, which has gotten slaughtered, um, you know, over the past, I don't know, X number of months, six months, something like that. And then crypto is also taking a dive recently, but my basis is quite low. So definitely still up on all of it. And then, um, I forgot startups are private equity. That's a good one to bundle together. That's probably like 10, 10 ish percent of it, uh, at least. Um, yeah, I think it's fine. I like, I like my allocation. Maybe I, I think, I think I probably should get out of some stocks and go more into crypto, if I'm honest.

• 48:00Sam Parr?

  Wow, that's crazy.

• 48:02Shaan Puri?

  I got, I got one for you.

• 48:04Sam Parr?

  All right, go ahead.

• 48:05Shaan Puri?

  Question, uh, this one comes from Dylan. Dylan asks, how do you negotiate the value of the company you're selling? So how did you come up with the price? How did you get to a price with your, with your company when you sold it?

• 48:14Sam Parr?

  I made a huge mistake. I made a classic mistake. I said the number first. I said, these companies typically sell for blank X and blank X. And of course, the first offer-

• 48:28Shaan Puri?

  They asked you like, what's your, what are your expectations or what's of rain? What do you, what price would you be happy with? What do they, how did they ask it?

• 48:35Sam Parr?

  I don't even know if they asked it, but I said, oh, you know, I was like, I said, like, look, like it's, I'm not, I said, I'm not going to mess around. Like, so these companies typically sell for blank to blank. So if you're in the market, let me know. And the first offer was the low number of that.

• 48:55Shaan Puri?

  And And Last offer, was it the high number or somewhere in the middle?

• 49:00Sam Parr?

  In the, well, so it was in the middle, but like the thing is, is that when we sold the company, the HubSpot stock was $350. And basically a week later, it was like, you could look it up. It was like $550. And then like three months after that, it was like $850. So like it, it changed, the, the sale price was one thing, but it pretty much changed quickly. But it was like right in the middle of that number, but um, I made a huge mistake. I should not have done that. And as soon as I said that, I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck.

• 49:33Shaan Puri?

  And you said it in an email.

• 49:35Sam Parr?

  Did I say it in an email?

• 49:36Shaan Puri?

  I think you said, I think, I don't know, it sounded like the story you're setting, you're saying you said it in an email.

• 49:40Sam Parr?

  I don't remember. Uh, no, I think I said it on the phone and the woman who I'm now friends with, who is doing the deal, fucking latched on to that like a shark and she tore, and I knew it. And afterwards, I, I, I'm friends with her now. She doesn't even work at HubSpot. And I'm like, you, you got me on that. She's like, yeah, like you said the number and.

• 50:00Shaan Puri?

  Thing to do is after you negotiate a deal, go talk to the person. Once you're, once you're pals and they're on the same team, say, look, we're on the same team for sure. Uh, but man, negotiating that was so, you know, confusing for me. Uh, what did I do poorly? You know, like, what would you have? What, what do you think you would have gone up to? Make me hate myself. What, what would you, what do you think you could have gone up to? And you just ask a bunch of questions to try to suss out what got them interested? What made them hesitant? How they figured out the value? What they were willing to negotiate to? What mistakes you made in negotiation? Cause you get so few reps at negotiating, it's important to do that. But it sounds like to answer Dylan's question, you did two things. You said, first you looked up comparables. So you found out comparable sales. So that's how you got a range.

• 50:43Shaan Puri?

  And then you made the fuck up in your actual negotiation of that range to fit to like you, you, you actually set up the proper range and.

• 50:50Sam Parr?

  Which probably cost me, it, it cost me many millions of dollars.

• 50:54Shaan Puri?

  Right. It's like that one decision you made actually was more important than like the previous two years of operating, probably.

• 51:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I don't like thinking about it, but yeah. How did you do it?

• 51:05Shaan Puri?

  Um, we, I did not say a number right away. Um, I fucked up in one regard, which was.

• 51:14Shaan Puri?

  I let my emotion. So when we, so the way we decided to sell was there was nobody coming and knocking on our door saying, you, we need to buy you. You're the best. Uh, we, we, we're, we want to be in the business of you. I was basically frankly, I saw the writing on the wall for my business. I was like, okay, I think this is not zero, but it's not going to be huge. So what do I want to do? Do I want to ride out a middle of the pack like small, like medium sized outcome for the next five years? Or can I just go flip this thing now? And I decided I want to go flip this thing now. I was also really tired because I had been doing, I've been trying to find product market fit with different startups in our idea lab for like six years. I was ready for a change in general. And so I told my investor, my co-founder, I said, hey, I want to sell this thing. I think it's time.

• 51:58Shaan Puri?

  And they were like, okay, if you want to sell, then let's sell. And I said, all right, let me, let me run a process. I'm going to try to sell this in the next 45 days. So first that was good because I time boxed it, but I also, you know, like, uh, it added a lot of pressure. And so the mistake I made when I was figuring out how to sell, I was, I let my emotions of the day dictate how I sold, how, how hard I sold the company. So what does that mean? At first I was super confident. They're going to want to buy us. So I went to two or three companies with my super like swagged out, like cocky, cocky like pitch, basically, which was sort of like, yeah, everybody wants us, but like, you know, so if you guys are interested, you know, you, you basically like,

• 52:41Shaan Puri?

  you gotta let us know because this is moving fast with, you know, these other people. So you, we, we got approached. We're interested. We might go that path. You're either going to get on the train now or you're going to miss it. So I was like, kind of cocky confident. That was like working. But then like two days would go by where like somebody, you know, they didn't text me back or they said they were going to review the thing and email me and they didn't email me. So then I started to have doubt creep into my head a little bit. So then I would like, kind of like, it's like a booty call. It's like desperation. Reach out to some other company. And so one of them was I reached out to Facebook through somebody I know. And I was sort of like, hey, like, you know, we're going to sell this thing. I, I use the word aquahire, which was like the wrong word to say. I guess aquahire means a specific range of what outcome you're going to get. And it basically means,

• 53:25Shaan Puri?

  Don't value my company, just value my talent. And I shouldn't have done that. I should not have said that there. I was luckily able to recover because it was such a big company that by the time he made the intro to the person who made the intro, I had like changed the narrative completely. But the third guy was like, yeah, you guys looking at Aqua? I was like, I don't know where the fuck you got that. No. And it's like, I literally had sent an email and you know, with myself saying that, but I luckily was able to change it. And actually they, they came in with the Facebook came in with the highest offer. And so we, so I ended up recovering from that mistake, but that could have been critically bad.

• 53:58Sam Parr?

  Do you wish you would have taken the Facebook offer?

• 54:02Shaan Puri?

  No, uh, like the Amazon offer ended up working out great, but um, you know, whatever. It was a good deal in the end, I guess, but, but that was the main thing. And I didn't have a comparable. I didn't have comparables really. I kinda, the comparables I heard were such a huge range. But I was like, okay, I just need to forget I heard any of those numbers because it's too wide of a range. It just means like, it depends. And so then I started negotiating. I didn't say the number first and we waited till we got offers. They tried to get a number out of us, but I was like, not gonna do it. And um, I was anchoring in other ways besides saying the specific number. I was like, leaving little hints or kind of just like, you know, just making sure they knew that we had other interests.

• 54:47Shaan Puri?

  And eventually, once we got one offer, I was like, okay, that's a ballpark. And then I basically just texted the CEO of Twitch and I was like, hey, I'm gonna take this other offer unless you can match. And he's like, you know, give me some time. Let me give me some time. I was like, I don't have time. He's like, oh, give me an hour. And I was like, okay, I'll give you the hour. And uh, and then he came back with an offer that wasn't quite a match, but it was good enough where I said, okay, all other factors considered, we think this is the best because they were gonna take more of our team and other stuff that the other one wasn't gonna do.

• 55:16Sam Parr?

  What a stressful, it's such a stressful period.

• 55:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Sam Parr?

  It's such a stressful period.

• 55:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, nobody teaches you how to do this. And it's like, the most important thing you'll do as a CEO of your company is land the plane. But it's like being a pilot and you learned everything about takeoff and flight. You've never heard anyone mention how the fuck you're supposed to land. And so you're like, just kind of pointing downwards. And you're trying to land the thing based on like, instinct and then like, a few fuzzy messages you get from mentors. Or you use like, if you use an investment bank, it's different. But we were not at that size. You gotta be doing like, 50 million to 100 million minimum in your sale price to be, to have a banker who does it for you.

• 55:56Sam Parr?

  Dude, I had this roommate named James. And like, he was like, a stoner pothead. And like, like, the first day of work at his new job, he went and he had a T-shirt that said, I heart weed. It just really big, I love weed, instead of I love New York. And he, he was negotiating a salary for a company, Vungle, Jack's company, that I introduced him to. And he'd been unemployed for 10 months. And he'd been struggling to find a company that he wanted to work at. And I think he was using like, his mom's credit card to pay the bills, because I would get like, his statements. And like, so I thought like, maybe things were going south for him. I'm like, dude, I don't know if you have much money left. I don't know how you're gonna pay rent.

• 56:38Sam Parr?

  And Vungle made him an offer for like, $190,000 to be an engineer at their company. And he told me, and he goes, are you gonna, are you gonna take it? And he like, exhales weed. And he was like, I don't know, man, I'm not sure if it's worth my time. I'm gonna make him sweat a little bit. And I was like, James, are you kidding me, dude? I'm like, you don't have any money. You've been interviewing and talking to guys for 10 months. You're screwed. He goes, yeah, let's make him sweat. And I get a phone call from the recruiter, who I introduced him to. And he goes, dude, James is like, a hot engineer right now. Like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to land him. Like, he's just bargaining so hard. And I don't think we're gonna get this guy. And I was like, I put the phone down. I go, James, do you hear what they're fucking saying? You better come to an agreement soon.

• 57:23Sam Parr?

  And I go, well, you know, just give him what he wants. Like, who knows? Give him what he wants. Yeah, you just gotta land him. And I hung up. And they ended up upping his offer. And he negotiated from a place of having nothing. And he didn't care at all. And I learned from him that day that that's actually a really good place to negotiate from. So long as you're willing to accept these horrible consequences.

• 57:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I gotta actually say that. That was the most useful thing, like, how we sold our company was, I was totally okay if nobody bought it, because I was kind of excited about just... Ending it and going and doing something completely different. Like I was kind of like a maniac in that way. I was like, okay, look, if I got zero millions out of this, if I got zero dollars, I'm actually kind of excited about that path, too. So I was like, pretty free in that way. Whereas I think you had a real business that was producing real revenues and profits. You didn't have that option of like, not a good, like, you know, not getting a good offer. You needed

• 58:15Sam Parr?

  Dude, I felt that way, though, where I was like, I'm done. I'm out. I was like, I like, I just, I need to get out of here. So I felt the same way as you. And I'll learn a little bit differently how to run things. You don't get burnt out. All right. Last question. Someone, oh, we'll ask two more. The first one, how many Twitter, someone asked, how many Twitter notifications do you get a day?

• 58:36Shaan Puri?

  Oh, I have no idea.

• 58:37Sam Parr?

  I turned mine off.

• 58:37Shaan Puri?

  It says, like, the way Twitter works, it just says 20 plus or like 100 plus or something like that. And it's just always like, anytime I go to Twitter, it's 20 plus on the little bell, which is the max. Yeah. And then when I go to the thing, it says like 100 plus people have followed you or something like that. So it's not even useful because, and it's very addictive because you can just always go, it's like a thing to refresh that's always going to show you something. Like literally, like within two minutes of itself, it'll, it'll show you something new, which is crazy.

• 59:03Sam Parr?

  I turned my mind off. So in order to see what people are saying about me, I've got to search my name. But I had, I turned it off because I don't even want to know.

• 59:11Shaan Puri?

  Well, you're talking about the phone, the phone, like notifications you're talking about.

• 59:15Sam Parr?

  No, but you can, like literally when I log into Twitter, I only see a notification if someone I followed, sent me a message or DM'd me or, or mentioned to me. If a random person Yeah, if a random person mentions me, I don't ever, I never know. The only reason I ever find out, for example, did you know that Graham Stephan, that guy, that YouTuber we like, he talked about us on his podcast, Alex Hermosy was on it. And in the beginning, he goes, I want to give a shout out to my first millions. It's like, I love this pod. I saw you on that when I was watching the whole thing. And it was, I watched it a bunch of times. And I only found out about it because someone DM'd me it where he was tagging us or something like that. And I had no idea.

• 59:50Shaan Puri?

  That's dope. I gave Ben my Twitter like account login. And so he goes in there and he'll just be like, hey, these five interesting people followed you. This guy is the founder of that, that brand we like. This person is high up at this company. And so he just kind of manually, he just gets curious. So he likes to see it or he'll go into my DMs or any, any product we like, he'll go DM them as me and he'll just be like, yo, your thing is like name of, name of your thing is dope. Love it. And then they'll reply and they're like, I only see the, once the replies are, it's like a conversation has been started. Then I'll take it over. But that was, it was like the best feature of Twitter is like, just give Ben your account and let him like, let him go ham, you know, it's, it's, cause it's a good resource. It's just mentally exhausting for me to like, try to keep up with.

• 1:00:34Sam Parr?

  A last question, who's a bigger asshole in real life and why is it Sean?

• 1:00:39Shaan Puri?

  This question from you?

• 1:00:41Sam Parr?

  No, it's someone, didn't someone say that?

• 1:00:43Shaan Puri?

  From sham par over there.

• 1:00:48Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Yeah. I am, I think I am actually the bigger asshole. I think you, I think you would come across as a bigger asshole, but you're actually a nicer human than I am. That's what I'm saying. Like I think your verbal style could, could brush like ruffle feathers faster than mine would. But your actual intent, I think is very pure and I would say more pure than mine almost.

• 1:01:11Sam Parr?

  Well, no, I think, I think that you are better at being selfish because you're more comfortable. I definitely want to be selfish and say no to all this type of shit. But you're, I think you're a little bit more comfortable with confrontation than I am. So oftentimes I come off as nicer, even though I don't think that's exactly what I want to be doing.

• 1:01:31Shaan Puri?

  What's a, what's an asshole thing you, you did this week? Let's make it tangible.

• 1:01:38Sam Parr?

  Well, someone just now was knocking on the door. It was the cleaning lady at the hotel and like she knocked like a bunch of times and I just ran over there and I was like, Hey, can you please go away? I'm right in the middle of something and I just closed the door. So I get really mad, like I get mad with incompetence. So like if I'm, like, if I go to a restaurant and there's like a menu that's like taped Scotch taped to like the mirror or something, or like to like the glass, I'm like, hey, what are you guys doing, man? Why don't you guys just get like a nicer, like, like take some pride, like I'll say stuff like that. I get really mad at that. That makes me angry. And I'm like, hey, just so you know, like if you, like this stuff makes me not trust you. So that's like an asshole thing that I'll do.

• 1:02:18Sam Parr?

  What else? When people DM me their ideas, I just say like, yeah, send it to me when it's live. Like, I don't want to hear about your idea. So I, I get short tempered with maybe like people just like not taking their job seriously.

• 1:02:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's good. Um, do you want me to ask you another one? I have one. Here's a layup. How do you vet your ideas? There are so many ideas out there. What would you do if you're starting from scratch? Plug your thing?

• 1:02:41Sam Parr?

  Uh, wait, what do you? Oh, the idea you see.

• 1:02:44Shaan Puri?

  Your idea of bootcamp. That's what this is, right? You're like.

• 1:02:47Sam Parr?

  The idea is a bootcamp. So when, when I, I, me and Sean researched like crazy. He was, he, you use the word Sean triangulate. We do that like, like a mofo. So I created a course on about that. If you go to maven.com, you'll see it. Although I'm not even taking people anymore. So we had 150 people sign up. I'm afraid to, I'm not letting more people in. I'm really nervous. I want to nail it.

• 1:03:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:03:09Sam Parr?

  Um, were you, are you, were you nervous ahead of your, I'm scared. I'm like, have staged right?

• 1:03:12Shaan Puri?

  I thought about that the first time and I said I was going to cap it. I think I did end up capping it, but I capped it at double what I was comfortable doing.

• 1:03:20Sam Parr?

  What, what did you cap it at?

• 1:03:21Shaan Puri?

  I think the first one was 200 something people.

• 1:03:24Sam Parr?

  How, this is, so this just crossed a hundred thousand dollars. It's 150 people times 699, whatever that is. Um, I think that's like a hundred grand and like, I'm scared. I'm like legitimately nervous. And Goggan.

• 1:03:38Shaan Puri?

  It's gonna be the same either way. Whether there's 150 people there or 200 people, you're not going to notice the difference between that. Like if you had only 30 people, yeah, you would have a different vibe. But once you get to 150, 200 is no different. 250 is no different. I think once you get to like 500 or a thousand, now it'll again start to feel different because it's just nameless, faceless. People that are like, they know that you couldn't possibly keep track of everything.

• 1:03:59Sam Parr?

  But do you feel like you're giving, how much was your, did yours cost?

• 1:04:02Shaan Puri?

  950 bucks.

• 1:04:04Sam Parr?

  Oh my God. Doesn't that intimidate you?

• 1:04:07Shaan Puri?

  I also did the thing you're doing now, which is I underpriced the first cohort. So I priced the first one a half off because I was like, look, if you're my true fan, you want to take this first one sight unseen, and I'm telling you, my first run is not going to be my best run. I'm going to give it to you half price, fill up these seats and let's do this. And so I gave the first one a half price. And then since then, I know I didn't do any discounts now, nothing like that. It's just full price.

• 1:04:27Sam Parr?

  But were you scared? Like, I just, I have like,

• 1:04:29Shaan Puri?

  Dude, you know your shit. You know your shit. As soon as you do your first class, you're gonna be like, you're just gonna be effortlessly spitting off these like things because you've been doing them for a long time. Like, it's not like you're teaching material you don't know. You're teaching the thing you know really, really well. And as soon as you start, you're gonna say something that's obvious to you and people in the chat are gonna be like, like, I always tell them, I write, I say, right, I teach something, I go, your job when you're here for an hour, you're here to get one golden nugget. A golden nugget is an insight that you can take, you can go and you can actually act on. That's like a kind of a game changer for you. And so when you're listening, if, if one comes up for you, just type it in the chat. So I know what the golden nuggets are for you and other people can get excited about them too. Cause you're kind of like grabbing this insight that's coming out of my, coming out of my mouth.

• 1:05:13Shaan Puri?

  And so now like I'm seven minutes into one thing and people like golden nugget. And they have one and you just see people in the chat saying this and it's like, then you're like, oh, yeah, I didn't even realize that so that part is so second nature to me. That wasn't even my, that's not even my A stuff. My A stuff is coming 30 minutes later into this thing.

• 1:05:31Sam Parr?

  But you weren't nervous. You weren't nervous the first time?

• 1:05:36Shaan Puri?

  I wasn't nervous, but I did feel a responsibility to do well.

• 1:05:41Sam Parr?

  That's how I feel.

• 1:05:41Shaan Puri?

  I was like, I'm gonna make more money doing other stuff, but for some reason, the fact that someone's paying me just for knowledge. I'm like, then I'm gonna give you fucking, I need to make sure that I'm giving you fire knowledge, but I'm not. Nervous isn't the right word. It's just, I took it really seriously to, to, to like, I was like, I'm gonna over deliver whatever they think it is. I'm gonna over deliver it. So I like spent more time on my stuff to make sure it was really good.

• 1:06:03Sam Parr?

  I think there's a world where, I'm not sure, right now you've got a bigger Twitter audience for, than, than I do. So I'll say for sure, and you have an email audience. I don't have one anymore. There's a world where this becomes a half a million to one million dollar a year stream for you. Is, is that crazy?

• 1:06:18Shaan Puri?

  That's the current world. Yeah. The question is, do we try to get?

• 1:06:20Sam Parr?

  Well, for sure.

• 1:06:23Sam Parr?

  Do you think it could be above one? One million's a lot for doing, I mean, that's

• 1:06:27Shaan Puri?

  What I don't know is if I teach it often, like to do, to do a million, you basically need to teach it five times a year. So if I taught it five times a year, the question is, am I going to exhaust my existing audience of like the people who are in my audience who care about it, want to improve this part of their life and are willing to pay for a course and can afford it and all that good stuff. I think I'll run out. Maven's like, no, you won't run out. Like you'll keep growing your audience and trust me, like, this is only 250 people at a time that are joining this thing. So think about your total audience size and think about 250, it's a very small percentage.

• 1:07:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but that's not how many people are seeing the page. The, I think that's a flawed way of looking at it. Not that he's wrong or right, but the right way is how many people saw it and didn't sign up. You know, like how many people will come to your landing, how many qualified people will come to your landing?

• 1:07:14Shaan Puri?

  But that's a lot because like if I send an email to my list about something I'm doing, it'll get like thousands of clicks, tens of like close to 10,000 clicks. And so 10,000 people will go look at the page and decide if it's for them or not. So I don't know, we'll see what happens. This year I'm going to teach it more times. And if it runs out, it runs out, no problem. Like I'm kind of excited to teach something else. I want to teach a crypto thing. So that's like my, the main thing is I teach this writing thing right now. It's good, but I'm like itching to teach a crypto thing instead because that's where I'm more interested right now and where I'm learning a bunch and I want to share a bunch of things. In fact, that's the question that I was going to ask you, which is some, this guy Clay says, if you could invest anything for Sam with his money,

• 1:07:53Shaan Puri?

  that he would not feel comfortable with at first, not like at first, but would ultimately thank you later for, what would it be and vice versa? So I know what my answer for you would be.

• 1:08:03Sam Parr?

  So you say it and I'll think about what I would do for you.

• 1:08:07Shaan Puri?

  It would be in the crypto space, but it would not be something super high risk. So what I would do is, have you ever heard of a stable coin called U S T? Terra, Luna, any of these words?

• 1:08:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, you told me about Luna.

• 1:08:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So basically, what I would do is I would buy a stablecoin. So I take, let's say a hundred thousand dollars and I'd buy you a hundred thousand dollars of a stablecoin, which is going to be sort of like by definition worth the same amount. It's not a highly volatile asset. And there's a protocol called the Anchor Protocol. And basically, you could put your money in there and you can get 19% a year fixed. And so I would get you a 19% a year return fixed and you would be like, okay, this is great. So I don't have to worry about the price of the stable going, going up and down. And I'm getting 19% returns. That's way better than my index funds. It's even better than maybe this real estate project. Once you count all the time and effort I have to put into it. I could just get 19% on a, just for my dollars, basically.

• 1:09:03Sam Parr?

  And I would take 19% any day. I would love that.

• 1:09:06Shaan Puri?

  So I think you'd be comfortable with the idea once explained, as I just did. I think you'd be uncomfortable if I said, hey, Sam, go figure this out. Cause you'd be like, fuck, okay. Where do I even get this thing? I gotta sign up for this other thing. I gotta move it to a wallet. I'm kind of scared I'm going to lose it. Is this legit? Am I really going to get 19%? Where does the 19% come from? There's all these questions. And so the thing I would do, I would just do that for you. And then you would just see your number going up and you'd be like, this is great.

• 1:09:29Sam Parr?

  Isn't there, there's not a way where I can just click buttons and like wire money and it works?

• 1:09:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's all clicking button, but it's wire money. It's just how many buttons and, and are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with where you're wiring the money to, right? Like, that's the question. You have to have the confidence that if I wire this money, I'm actually going to go, my money's going to be mine. I'm going to get 19%. Like, that's the trick with crypto is navigating, you know, sort of a little bit of a minefield of knowing which buttons to click. And then doing it in a way that you feel confident with.

• 1:10:01Sam Parr?

  All right. Well, thank you. Maybe I'll do that. And then I'll wrap up with my answer for you. I think it would be. Do you own a squat rack?

• 1:10:09Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 1:10:10Sam Parr?

  I would love for you to own a squat rack and to hire a coach and teach you how to squat properly so you can lift heavy weight. I think that, I think that, I think that, or build you like a really nice home gym for like four grand. I think that would be, I think-

• 1:10:26Shaan Puri?

  What are the benefits? So, why do I care about lifting heavyweights? Really, what am I gonna get out of this? Cause it just seems to me like, that's cool if that's your hobby or your ego thing, but like, do I really care if I could squat 275 pounds or 500 pounds, whatever? Does it really matter?

• 1:10:42Sam Parr?

  The number doesn't matter. The number is irrelevant because the effort that I, when I say heavy, I want you to be able to do an exercise where you can only lift the weights five times and on the sixth time, you wouldn't be able to do it.

• 1:10:56Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 1:10:57Sam Parr?

  So, it doesn't matter what, what the number is. It just, because I think that when you squat heavy, I think a couple of things happen. First, it releases chemicals. I'm, I'm not a doctor, but like it releases hormones and chemicals in your body that impact the rest of your body, not just your butt and legs. Number two, you, I gained a ton of confidence when I have that weight on my back and I could do it properly and I feel free and I feel like I've overcome some adversity and it makes me feel really good and like a mini high. So, I would say those are like the two biggest things. And three, I do think that being able to put some weight on your back and squat really low and stand up is just an all around really good for your joints and everything like that. I'm not saying like hundreds and hundreds and, I don't necessarily think that getting like huge is the best way to go, but

• 1:11:42Sam Parr?

  like being able to squat like maybe your body weight or a little bit above your body weight is really good.

• 1:11:47Shaan Puri?

  We've got one great question that we should have answered, cause I, I don't know what, I don't know what my answer would be. Liam goes-

• 1:11:52Sam Parr?

  Let's do it fast.

• 1:11:53Shaan Puri?

  Liam goes, what's a physical feat you could bust Sam's ass in? And he goes, Sam, what's one way that you're much more charismatic than Sean? Embrace the debate. And then it's a picture of Kanye West holding a notepad that says, "I'm here to stir shit up. I'm just here to stir shit up."

• 1:12:06Sam Parr?

  Um, you would bust my ass in basketball, I think.

• 1:12:09Shaan Puri?

  Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true.

• 1:12:11Sam Parr?

  I don't think I could, I just don't have like not shot a basketball in like 10 years. I think you'd kick my ass in basketball.

• 1:12:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm good at basketball. And then.

• 1:12:19Sam Parr?

  Or probably golf. Could you play golf?

• 1:12:21Shaan Puri?

  No, but I'm good at basketball. They said this all will stick with that one. I don't need two. One, one was enough. One was enough for me. And then this charismatic one, I feel like you're already, you know, more charismatic or as charismatic. So I don't feel like it's a fair question, really.

• 1:12:34Sam Parr?

  I'm willing to admit, I think you're on fire. Though I think you've had a good year, a good two years.

• 1:12:41Sam Parr?

  I think, I think you try really hard.

• 1:12:42Shaan Puri?

  Compliment by Sam.

• 1:12:44Sam Parr?

  No, no, no. Here's why. I think, no, I think you care more because like, since I've known you for like the last eight years, you've told me you wanted to be an actor, or you wanted to, and you used to be an actor as a kid, or you wanted to be a stand-up comedian. So I think you study this trade a lot. And I study, I study a medium amount and you study it a lot amount. And I think you're also natural at it. So I would say that you, you care more, not in the sense of like, it's good or bad to care, but you, you, you're fascinated by this craft a little bit more. But I am also fascinated.

• 1:13:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I love speak, I love public speaking. I love content. I love comedy. I love all that stuff. All right, we're done. Ben, what'd you think of the episode?

• 1:13:23Ben?

  Great stuff. Just one last question is, did you ever figure out what the word was, Sean?

• 1:13:27Shaan Puri?

  Oh, no, I still have it open. I forgot. Do you know? What have we got here?

• 1:13:31Ben?

  I just guess rugby, I think is my best guess.

• 1:13:34Shaan Puri?

  Oh, rugby. That's gotta be it. Damn. Perfect. Let me see. Rugby. I would have not got that.

• 1:13:40Ben?

  Boom.

• 1:13:41Shaan Puri?

  Because I did, I was going through my head, R U G. What could go after that? Ruggy? No. Ruggly? No. Rugby. Wow.

• 1:13:48Ben?

  Got it. All right. I thought it was a really good episode.

• 1:13:52Shaan Puri?

  That's why you got the Georgetown, that's why you got the Georgetown diploma and I don't.

• 1:13:56Ben?

  That kind of, that level of analysis, good episode. You don't get that just anywhere.