John Lee Dumas On How He Saved $1,000,000 In Taxes By Moving To Puerto Rico, How He Makes His Money, and More

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) bring John Lee Dumas onto the show to talk about why he moved to Puerto Rico, how he makes his money, why he went on a 10-day fast, 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: (2:20) - Interview with JLD begins (06:05) - Why JLD reveals his revenue (10:30) - Why he moved to Puerto Rico (19:30) - How JLD invests his money (39:15) - How he makes so much money on podcast sponsorships (47:15) - Businesses that JLD is jealous of (50:30) - Going on a ten day fast (57:30) - Sam and Shaan recap the interview and talk about fasting, a progress report on Milk Road, and more ----- Links: * https://www.eofire.com/ ----- 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?

  All right. Today we are hanging out with John Lee Dumas. He's a, he's a podcaster. Um, he's got, you know, pretty, pretty popular podcast. He does something cool, which is he publishes all of his income online. So the guy's generated like 22 million dollars in the last 10 years. He says, here's how much I've made. Here's how much I kept after expenses. He then moved to Puerto Rico and pays like 0% tax, a 4% tax, basically. So we talk about his business, how he makes his money, why he moved to Puerto Rico and the pros and cons of that. And, uh, what else we talked about?

• 0:31Sam Parr?

  We talked about, he did a 10 day water fast recently. So he told us all about that. We asked him if he knows of any marketers that are making just stupid amounts of money. Because that's what I was curious about. And we asked him a ton of good, a ton of good stuff. What did you think? He, uh, he's got some, um, he's got big energy. He's got BDE, man.

• 0:50Shaan Puri?

  It was fun. I didn't realize he would be fun. And I think there was some good, good, good comedy in this. I would give this one, I'm not even asking, I'm not even ask producer Ben what he thinks. I think this is an A, A episode, A or A plus, either one. I'm going to save A plus for when some real special shit happens. But this was a solid A. Like I would want to listen to this conversation. Cause I think I would hear some things that I don't otherwise get to hear. You don't really get to hear how people make their money, earn their money. Uh, you know, what, what actual numbers are, people are very cagey about that. And, um, also this guy was very opinionated. He was like, y'all are fucking stupid for living in California and paying those taxes. And here's why, here, you know, here's how my life works, you know, you schmuck. And so I liked his opinionated nature. I thought that was, that made for a good episode.

• 1:31Sam Parr?

  Also, how about him just making fun of me constantly?

• 1:35Shaan Puri?

  That's why I was like, oh, you must be boys. Cause you must be super close.

• 1:40Sam Parr?

  I don't know that. I mean, I, I like him, but no, he just kept making fun of me. He was like, dude, you don't even travel. You don't, you've never even been anywhere. I'm like, what are you talking about? You're just making fun of me, you bully.

• 1:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah. He just, he just bullied me on my own pod. He just alphaed me hard.

• 1:58Shaan Puri?

  I think that should be the title of this. Like Sam gets out alphaed and we talk about Puerto Rico and a bunch of other stuff. All right. Enjoy the episode.

• 2:18Shaan Puri?

  So hang on, do you guys know each other well?

• 2:20Speaker 02

  No. Done a fireside chat together and, you know, he said, he said a couple insinuating things on stage and I've really never forgiven him since.

• 2:30Shaan Puri?

  Oh, great. What did he say?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  It's actually not even like, like, it shouldn't be repeated, to be honest with you.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Sam's like trying to think if he actually said something, which he didn't. It was amazing.

• 2:43Shaan Puri?

  So why don't you do an intro then, since you guys are buddies?

• 2:46Sam Parr?

  So John Lee Dumas, he's had this, well, I think it, no, it started, it was always a podcast. I couldn't remember if it was a blog also, but blog podcast. And he's had it for like 10 plus years. I've listened to him forever. And he interviews entrepreneurs for a long time. It still is. It's every single day, it's only 30 minutes. And one thing that he did early on that he still does, in fact, I think you're one of the few people that still does is he releases his income every single month. And so like, I think in January, he made like $200,000 ish from podcasts and then another like 15 grand selling notebooks and another tens of thousands of dollars selling his podcasters paradise.

• 3:30Sam Parr?

  So anyway, he's, he's a, well, how would you describe yourself, John? You're a podcaster?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  I'm a podcaster, entrepreneur, wannabe influencer, wannabe Sam, you know, all of those things fit.

• 3:44Sam Parr?

  But he's been doing this for years. And when I, I told him this on our, on his show, and I'm not bullshitting, when I started The Hustle, I basically went and watched a ton of his interviews. I did it with him and Mixer G, and I tried to figure out how newsletters worked. And I figured it based off of his interviews and he would interview like Ben Lee, founder of Thrillist, like right when they're starting and like, and then also again, when they were getting successful. And I could like figure out how to grow it based off of those interviews. So it's

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Well, you obviously figured it out.

• 4:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we figured it out. And he's got this amazing database of, of like interviews and it's just kind of like gold for research.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Have you interviewed Andrew Warner, speaking of Mixer G?

• 4:27Sam Parr?

  No.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Get him on the show, man. That guy's a character. Like he's great. I love Andrew.

• 4:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's my buddy. He's a wild man.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Get him on the show.

• 4:40Sam Parr?

  So by the way, I gotta tell you this, Sean, did you see the email that I sent you?

• 4:45Shaan Puri?

  One about the podcast charts?

• 4:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So John, I don't know if you believe this, but Sean, what did it say?

• 4:52Shaan Puri?

  Subject line, HubSpot has eight podcasts in chartable's top 200. And then it's like us at number nine, Gold Digger at 32.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Oh, I believe it. Listen, HubSpot's only going after the players. Like I recruited Jenna Kutcher. I got Amy Poorfield in the house. Sam, you know, and my first million is obviously blowing it up. I mean, HubSpot's going big here, bro.

• 5:16Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I built a product that was called Blab a long time ago. I don't know if you ever ended up using it, but it was used by a ton of like podcasters and internet marketers. They're like, one of the groups that flocked to it really early. Cause they're like, oh, a stage I can stand on.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  I was actually on a Blab and like Tony Robbins jumped in and like the whole thing just like exploded.

• 5:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was crazy, but you were like, everybody referenced you. And so I didn't, I didn't know who you were, but they were like, uh, you know, John Lee Dumas, you know, blah, they just kept saying your name. And so I have this perception in my head that was like, you were like some, I didn't even know which one it was. I was like, is it marketing or is it podcasting? I didn't know which one it was, but you had a ton of respect in, in, in those communities. And so.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did. And I still do.

• 5:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You, Gary Vee, uh, you know, there was like a couple of people.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can stop there. Just me and Gary Vee, basically. We're the two people.

• 6:04Shaan Puri?

  All right. So Sam, where do you want to start?

• 6:07Sam Parr?

  Um, here's the first thing. So I've actually said, John, that I love that people like you and Buffer does this, ConvertKit does this. They reveal their revenue, but I personally would never do that. And I think it's, I think it's crazy. So like a lot of these YouTubers do it. So this guy, Graham Stephan did it. And then what's the other guy? Meet Kevin, I think is his handle. His name's Kevin. He was like, here's my $50 million portfolio. I think that's crazy. But you, every single month for like eight or nine years, however long it's been, you've revealed your revenue, your profit, where the revenues come from every single month. Do you think that that has been a net positive? Of course it's been a net positive, but is, will there be a time where you're like, all right, this isn't worth it for me anymore?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, you know, it's really important for me that people know that I'm really rich. So that's kind of a big deal. And I want to keep publishing my income reports because of that. But to give you like, the real answer is back in 2011, I thought all internet stuff was scammy. Like, I had an army background. I was off in the US Army for eight years. I'd been in corporate finance. I just didn't think that you could go on the internets and do something good and positive and be an honorable person and actually make money. I thought it was for scammers and slimy people, which of course, it is. And it always will be for some sector of the population. But I stumbled across this one podcast/blog called Smart Passive Income.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  And Pat Flynn, this guy that I didn't know from Adam, I found out about him literally that day, was publishing income reports every single month. I went back over his like, last 10 income reports. And I was like, seeing how he was making money and that he was a family guy and that, you know, he was working hard, writing really valuable articles for affiliate income. And I was like, wait a second. So you can be like, a stand-up person and make money, giving people real value that aren't gonna like, you know, call you slimy and scammy for them giving you money. Like, they're actually gonna be happy about it. And that kind of gave me faith in the internets as a place to grow a business. And I remember saying to myself that day, Sam, I said,

• 8:22Speaker 02

  hey, if I ever make money in this business, which was a huge question mark at that time, but I said, if I ever make money in this business, in this online internet marketing world, whatever I end up doing, I want to be the same type of inspiration for others that Pat was for me. And so, a year into Entrepreneurs on Fire, I had made almost no money. But then it clicked. And at month 13, I made $100,000. And ever since then, it's actually been 101 months exactly, because we do an income report every month. So 101 months now, we've published a monthly income report, bringing on our lawyer to give a legal tip, our accountant to share our tax tip. And we just try to share what's working for us, what's not working for us. We've made

• 9:07Speaker 02

  some huge mistakes over the years, and we share those in the income reports as well, which is why some months are lower than others, and some months are higher than others. And it's just part of the transparency that I wanted to bring to the space.

• 9:20Sam Parr?

  So you're always gonna do that?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  I don't foresee a time stopping that anytime soon. There'd have to be like a real world event where, you know, I had, I start for a reason that's not for a reason that's currently existing.

• 9:39Sam Parr?

  Do you think that you're a target?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  And that could be the reason, honestly, is that because I could become a target? Cause now people see how much money I'm making, where the money's coming in from, where it's going to. Can definitely make you a target. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a crazy world out there. There's hackers or scammers. If anybody's involved in the NFT and crypto space, you see every single day, people are getting hacked and scammed and all this stuff. And, you know, you've got to remain vigilant and nobody's going to be perfect. I'm not going to be perfect. So I can make a mistake and then boom, boom goes the dynamite.

• 10:12Shaan Puri?

  And it says since 2012, so 10 years, gross income 22 million, net income 16.7 million dollars.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:21Shaan Puri?

  And that's in a 10 year period.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  That's post tax, by the way, cause I live in Puerto Rico, so I get to keep the money I make, unlike almost everybody else in the world.

• 10:30Shaan Puri?

  So when did you move to Puerto Rico?

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Six years ago. Thank God.

• 10:34Shaan Puri?

  And explain what led to that. So you met somebody who was doing this and you're like, that's not a bad idea. You started looking into it.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Nothing like that actually, but that was a good guess.

• 10:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  What happened was multiple years in a row, I was paying seven figures a year in taxes, which I'm sure you guys are very familiar with, like literally writing six figure checks every couple of months for estimated taxes, like multiple and just being like, bleh. Like it's like two steps forward, one and a half steps back. And I just realized, I had this really kind of big realization that, you know, except for the minute percentage in the world, you can make money anywhere in the world, but you can't build wealth. You can't build true wealth, paying 40, 50, 50 plus percent tax in taxes every single year. You just can't do it. So I started exploring the different options, like moving to Texas, blah, Florida.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Like, am I going to move to Florida to save, you know? Like 10% on state taxes, like it's not worth it. Like it's the federal tax 37 plus percent. That's the killer. So found out about this unbelievable incentive of Puerto Rico. They launched it back in 2012, actually, which was called Act 20 in Act 22. And it was fantastic. It literally said, if you move your business to Puerto Rico, which is an American territory, you retain, of course, your US citizenship. And you pay a flat 4% tax rate on all your corporate earnings. You pay no federal, no state. And the best part, this is where my real wealth has extrapolated to like

• 12:08Speaker 02

  the moon, is you pay 0% capital gains. So any money you made on stocks, real estate, crypto, 0%. It's amazing.

• 12:19Sam Parr?

  To play, we call it devil's avocado, to play devil's avocado here.

• 12:26Sam Parr?

  I think that I don't, it's probably true also that you love it there. Or maybe I think it is, but you didn't, you didn't say that you loved it. And it sounds like-

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I love it here. Love it here.

• 12:40Sam Parr?

  I think, I think if you are moving somewhere just for tax reasons though, I think that's, that's ridiculous. Because isn't that the point of being rich? That you can like live where you want to live and you could do what you want to do? And, and I mean, how much was the tax the number one reason?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  The number one reason. And I think it's ridiculous not to move with the situation. Because it is unbelievable what you can do when you start keeping the money you make, with the investments that you make, with the compounding. I mean, think of the millions and millions of dollars that I've saved over the years that I now have been investing in all these companies, money that I wouldn't even have had, the government would have had and thrown it down some empty pothole. And now those companies are returning to me five, 10, some of them 100x shots that I never would have even been able to take without that. So I'm going from like this person that would have been like doing my best to like squirrel away, like a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, investing in, you know, conservatively,

• 13:41Speaker 02

  because I don't have much of a cushion in the stock market, making like 4% to 6% a year. And then, oh no, 7% inflation comes and all my gains are gone anyways. And it's like, what am I even doing in this little rat race? Move to Puerto Rico. Freed everything and I will never leave. And oh, by the way, I live in San Diego. So I was in this little two, it was beautiful, but it was a little two person apartment on a beach. Like, you know, $5,000 a month, you know, great view, all this stuff. If I wanted to buy a house, it would have been way like, like seven, 10, 12 million dollars in La Jolla. It's like to maintain the kind of location that I wanted to maintain. I moved to Puerto Rico. $2 million bought me a 6,000 square foot mansion on the Caribbean.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  In 17 months, I had saved more in taxes than the house cost. Period. So now I have this property in the Caribbean in an amazing community. I can still travel six months of the year doing whatever I want. I can still live in California if I want four, five, six months of the year or wherever else I want to be. And I get to actually keep the money I make. It's something that we don't even talk, we haven't even talked about yet, but the six figure philanthropy checks that I've written to causes that I believe in, like pencils of promise. I send a Puerto Rican to my alumni province college every single year that I sponsor to my, to my college.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  So I have a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year, and every year I add another one to the queue. I mean, these are things that I'm able to do because of the incredible disposable income that I have that wouldn't even have been a sniff if I had stayed in California.

• 15:24Shaan Puri?

  And a bunch of other people moved to Puerto Rico. So you probably have a community of people who believe what you believe and you've met there. I would assume you've met a bunch of other kind of Americans who have relocated into Puerto Rico.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Well, to that point, Sean, like I actually call it the Puerto Rico funnel. And this is actually where Sam doesn't fit into the funnel and I'll explain it to you right now. The funnel is number one, you've got to be financially successful because otherwise you're not looking to move. So of course Sam checks that block. He's financially successful. The next step down there, though, is you've also got to be location independent. You've got to be able to work wherever you want because you're down here in Puerto Rico. So, you know, check that block. Sam checks that block, I'm sure, too. The block that Sam doesn't check, that's, you know, is the final part of the funnel that, to me, makes the coolest people move here, is you've got to be adventurous. You know, you can't be like Sam, like, I'm going to stay in the exact same place that I've been forever because I don't want to move. That's ridiculous. No, you've got to be somebody that's like, you know what?

• 16:19Shaan Puri?

  You just moved.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm going to get out there on a limb and I want to go try a place out in the Caribbean. And guess what, Sean? If it didn't work, if Kate and I didn't love it, we would have gone back in a heartbeat because it's not worth it if you're not loving it.

• 16:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, of course.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  We came out here, we were adventurous, that one block that Sam can't check in this funnel, and we fell in love with the place. And so all the people that do fit all of those checks and they move here, they're amazing flipping people and we could have the best time with them. It's amazing.

• 16:51Shaan Puri?

  All right, Sam, I will let you rebuttal. You have 20 seconds for a rebuttal.

• 16:57Sam Parr?

  For the record.

• 16:58Shaan Puri?

  Just take me out.

• 16:58Sam Parr?

  I'm from Missouri. Yeah, I'm from Missouri. I lived in California, in San Francisco, for 10 years. Now I live in Texas and New York and I'm doing this podcast from Europe. I've been, I've been a few places. I've lived in Australia. Come on, give me a break. Just, but my whole thing is like, the point of being wealthy is I want to live around my family and I want to have power most of the year.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  See, that's actually another thing. I wanted to live away from my family. So that's another thing that we differed with.

• 17:27Shaan Puri?

  So you, uh...

• 17:28Speaker 02

  We'll let, we'll let the listeners decide.

• 17:30Sam Parr?

  When the, when the hurricane hit, did you have power?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Not for four months.

• 17:36Shaan Puri?

  Four months. Okay. Strong rebuttal there. Strong rebuttal at the end. So, um...

• 17:42Speaker 02

  So, a week before the hurricane came in, I booked a one-way flight to London, England, and Kate and I spent three and a half months traipsing around Europe at one Airbnb to the next Airbnb, while my full-time handyman, that by the way, I can afford because I live in a place where I don't pay any taxes except 4% and 0% capital gains, is living in my house, fixed up a few of the windows that broke. I came back to a perfect place. My life didn't even miss a beat.

• 18:11Shaan Puri?

  And so have you met any other interesting characters there? So tell us like kind of some other archetypes. You're like, okay, podcaster blogger guy, you.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Logan Paul moved here because he's a smart dude. Jake Paul lives here. Brendan Bouchard lives here. Ty Lopez lives here. I mean, listen, everybody that I just mentioned, they're just smart people and that's why they moved here and that's why they're living here and that's why they're not like moving to some, you know, podunk place in Texas because the barbecue's great here. No, they are living in a Caribbean paradise.

• 18:43Shaan Puri?

  I mean, it wasn't exactly murderers row you just mentioned, but I'll let that pass. That wasn't the.

• 18:53Shaan Puri?

  So.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  True.

• 18:55Shaan Puri?

  So you, okay, let's shift gears a little bit. You make a bunch of money and you don't have to pay taxes on it. Fantastic. You get to do other things. Philanthropy. Fantastic. What do you invest in? So we like to, to kind of break down people's portfolios. Where do you kind of allocate capital to? So.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I do a lot of.

• 19:10Shaan Puri?

  I don't see that on your website.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  I do a lot of, no, I don't, I don't put personal investments on my website. That's just an income report, money that I make income wise for the, from the business. But I do a lot of like angel investing in companies. I'm part of a couple of groups. I think you might know, you know, Josh Benzoni, right, Sam?

• 19:31Sam Parr?

  No, I don't.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  And Josh, okay. Well, there's, there's a couple of them that, you know, they have these like Matt.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Well, it's called 100 million dollar masterminds and they essentially get together Dan Fleischman, Josh Benzoni, and there's one other person. I can't remember his name off the top of my head. And they essentially are vetting these potential angel investment deals. And then they take the entire round as part of the masterminds.

• 20:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  And that's been really enjoyable to see because, you know, they're doing like all the legwork with the legal and the financial and they bring the people to kind of pitch to us the deal. And then, you know, there's hundreds of people in this mastermind. So only a percentage of people are jumping in on each deal. So angel investing is one thing that I do. Another thing that I've been getting really big into is both cryptocurrencies and NFTs going deep in there, you know, guts, a bunch of blue chips, like the Bored Apes and the world of women's and the cool cats and all those jazzes and, you know, just seeing where that's going, just kind of having fun with that. And then on the investment side of things, I stay away from physical like investments

• 20:43Speaker 02

  as far as like, um, not interested in owning actual real estates. To me, like anything that might cause me real work in the real world, I'm not as interested in. But I do also, um, hold a decent stake in both silver and golds as part of a kind of an inflation hedge strategy.

• 21:03Shaan Puri?

  No stocks?

• 21:04Sam Parr?

  Earlier, you said that.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  No stocks, zero. I used to own a lot of stocks. I used to be in corporate finance. I owned zero stocks.

• 21:12Shaan Puri?

  And what's your reason why?

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Um, cause all my money that would otherwise have gone into stocks is all into something that I consider equal to stocks, except a lot more high risk, high growth, which is the cryptocurrency, the tokens, the coins that I invest in. And, you know, I'm, I'm investing in mostly the quote unquote, blue chip cryptocurrencies, like the top 25 coins for the most part. I have a couple, maybe in the 25 to 100 range, and then maybe like three that are, you know, just complete degenerates, but, you know, could 1 million X if, uh, everything falls into place.

• 21:49Sam Parr?

  You said earlier that you've had these, um, I think you said five, 10, even 100 X. When you were referring to 100 X, was that some, uh, angel investments? And which one has been the biggest?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  So my biggest current investment, and this may or may not work out. Um, and again, when I, when I said 100 X, it was like, that's the reason why I'm investing in these, because that's the overall hope. Although the one I'm about to explain to you is, you know, currently a fantastic, um, is looking fantastic right now. It actually happened because, um, down here in the community, I invested in a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition, and it's basically a blank check company. And they ended up merging with, um,

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Trump media. And so I actually have a lot of money that I invested in the SPAC at $4 a share. That's the price of the SPAC. And as this is today, the actual merger is, which I am locked into, by the way, for at least the next six to eight months. So who knows if it's going to turn out to be anything. It could go way up from here, it could go way down from here. But those share prices are currently sitting at like $88 per. And my cost basis is six figures at a $4 cost basis. So that would be, you know, a massive multi, multi, you know, eight figure return.

• 23:15Shaan Puri?

  Sam, have you seen that one? The SPAC that is called, I think it's

• 23:18Speaker 02

  DWAC. It's called DWAC, Digital World Acquisition.

• 23:21Shaan Puri?

  It's pumping right now because they just launched Truth Social yesterday. Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, his new app, Truth Social.

• 23:26Shaan Puri?

  So are you on Truth Social to support your SPAC?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  I wanted to. I'm a little nervous. I don't want to, I don't want to spread FUD. But I mean, like, I literally went on the Apple Store, downloaded the app, entered in my email, my phone number, and it said, we'll send you a code. Never got the code, went back to the app, and I like, forgot password, error, something else, error, something else, error. And I can't even open the app now. And I'm like, yikes, this, this could end up being a, a 5% return. But right now, it's about a 500% return.

• 23:57Shaan Puri?

  That's funny.

• 23:59Sam Parr?

  How hard, Sean, you're, you're in the space. Why can't he figure this out? Well, like, because he's, I mean, he's obviously Trump. He's not the one running this, obviously. But like, this is like the, the second or third time that it, the app, I think his blog too, they both like screwed up. How, how could they not figure this out? How hard can this be to like, get a team, a 20 person team to just get, make this happen?

• 24:20Shaan Puri?

  So a couple of things. One is, I think that initially, the, the first kind of false start they had, I think it got leaked before it was ready. Like, the site was not ready. Somebody came and squatted on Donald Trump's like name, because they're like, oh, look, I found the, I found their website. Like, you know, I just made an account. I took his name. Like, it's a, so they weren't ready at that time for it. So when people first saw it, they're like, what is this janky, this is their big thing? But it was like, no, that was like, you know, not meant to, it seemed like it was not meant to be released. It was that bad that it seemed like it was not meant to be released. Then, when they do stuff, like when you put, when Trump puts something in the store. It gets like a crazy amount of traffic and it's very hard, even when you think you've

• 25:02Shaan Puri?

  prepared for scale, the problem with preparing for scale is you plan for a lot of users. So it's not like you didn't anticipate it, but you just don't know where your system's gonna break. So it's like, um, the example that that I've heard before is like, imagine you have a bunch of pipes and you you're worried about a leak. And so you could either spend like, you know, 12 days just walking down each inch of the pipe, looking for, is it okay? But it's like a huge pipe system. So you don't, you're not really ever going to be able to see it. Or the only real, real way to know is you turn the water on and you see where the, where the leak is. And so like, the problem with launching something when you're high profile is you turn the water on, but you turn it on at very high pressure, at very high volume, and you'll find wherever your leak is. So for example,

• 25:44Shaan Puri?

  Coinbase, which is like a thousand plus person engineering, uh, Silicon Valley blue chip company, did their, um, Super Bowl commercial, and it was the QR code bouncing around on the screen. And so many people scanned it and went to the site, their site crashed. Now you, again, you'd be like, dude, Coinbase, you've been, you have a thousand plus engineers, you've been going, you know, this is the Super Bowl. Why did this break? And it's not because they, they underestimated it. It's almost always because some part of it that you didn't expect to fall over, falls over, but you can't really test it without massive scale. So that's my long winded answer for you.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I've seen that happen, by the way, like in the NFT space. I mean, these people are, are at that big of a scale, but you know, they have discords of like 250,000 plus people. So they know there's going to be massive traffic when the mint happens, but it never ever not crashes. It crashes every single time. Bots happen every single time. DDoS attacks happen every single time. I mean, it's not like, oh, half, no, it's a hundred percent. It's crazy.

• 26:50Sam Parr?

  Did you guys, um, did you guys see what happened with the Coinbase commercial? So basically, uh, what's the, what's the founder's name? The guy with the same head? So Brian Armstrong does this like 10 tweet tweet storm where he said like, you know, we bought the Super Bowl ad spot for X millions of dollars and we weren't really sure what we were going to do with it, but we knew we'd figured out and we were sitting in a room, sitting around a whiteboard, coming up with ideas. And you know what? They all just seemed gimmicky. None of them were really true to us. And I thought that would be-

• 27:21Shaan Puri?

  Not sitting around a whiteboard. Not sitting around a whiteboard. It was, we got pitched a bunch of ideas, but they all seemed like basically others came and pitched us their ideas and they all sucked.

• 27:31Sam Parr?

  And they all sucked. And we were just sitting around and they're like, guys, this isn't us. These are all gimmicky. We gotta do something unique, something original. And that's when someone came up with this brilliant idea, just to do a QR code. It was just a small thing that we were kicking around at first. And we said, you know what? That's brilliant. Let's do it. And this one woman replies, who's the CEO of the ad agency-

• 27:51Shaan Puri?

  You missed the key part, which he says something in his, so he's doing a victory lap, basically. He's like, ah, it started with the best thing. It's like the, uh, people always ask me about my skincare routine. So I'm going to do a breakdown. It's like, people have been wondering about the backstory behind the Super Bowl commercial that was super successful. So let me just go ahead and tell you. And it, which is fine. Take your victory lap. That's cool. I like that. And, uh, but he, you know, he was doing the thing. And then he was like, you know, um, this wasn't going to win awards at Adweek. It's not something some fancy ad agency would do, but it was like, it was just scrappy, creative, and it was just us, basically. That was his message. So he specifically was like, no agency would have ever, like, you know, come up with this like stupidly simple thing.

• 28:32Shaan Puri?

  It's like black screen with a bouncing QR code with flashing music. And he's like, you know, that wasn't going to win any fancy, you know, like aristocrat awards, but it worked. And that's all that matters, right? So that was the con, that was the key setup where he kind of built his own, you know, uh, trap.

• 28:50Sam Parr?

  And then the woman who is the CEO of the marketing firm, she goes, actually, Brian, we came up with this idea. You could see it in paragraph three, page 14 of the plan that we pitched to you, along with page, you know, 49, paragraph five, it says, and she like highlighted like where you could see that she came up with the idea. And it was a, I like this guy, Brian. It was a wonderful dunk on him, though. He, that was not a good look.

• 29:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think the commercial was great. Coinbase is great. He's great. But that's all right. You get, sometimes you get smacked down. I've been, I've been slapped around my, you know, many times. What do you think I've been doing to Sam the whole episode? Now and then, he needs to get slapped down a little bit. Come on. And then he tried to walk it back, but he like, he kind of, he barely walked it back. He was like, he said, this is where I was like, ah, you know, you messed up. Like, I totally liked the victory lap. No problem. I, I believe that he didn't know and didn't realize that it was an agency that had given them the idea. Um, so, you know, because otherwise, why would he say that? It's pretty stupid to say it if he knew. So I, I give him the sort of pass on all that. But in his like apology, he was sort of like, he

• 30:01Shaan Puri?

  gave only like a centimeter of an apology. He was like, uh, I don't know, we could pull up the, the exact thing, but he said something along the lines of, you know, I didn't realize it was an external, like, he's like, he first he said, it wasn't an ad agency, it was a creative marketing firm that helped us. And is that like splitting hairs, like as if that mattered. And then the second thing was like, the teams worked so well together, I didn't even realize it was another company. The synergy was so strong. Yeah, exactly. Brian.

• 30:33Sam Parr?

  John, I've got a question for you. So you mentioned guys like Ty Lopez and I, because you've been in the game for a bit, you're not necessarily in this world, but I think that you know, a lot of these guys who are in this world, who are like the Ty Lopez, um, what's the, what's the other guy? Grant Cardone? And then there's like Abraham. What's his, what's Abraham's? He writes those good books. Jay Abraham. Yeah. He's right. Writes some really good books that I've read and I dig him. Of those folks that I mentioned and other people who are in that world. One thing that I've always thought about these guys is I'm like, well, they definitely are crush it as like quote internet marketers. So I'm kind of like negatively stereotyping them as this like other group, but there's no way that they're like worth hundreds of

• 31:17Sam Parr?

  millions or billions of dollars like the real, you know, startup guys who could sell a company for half a, half a billion or billion dollars. Is that, of those folks, do some of them actually truly just knock it out the park and crush it in terms of building really big profitable companies?

• 31:32Speaker 02

  I literally have no idea. I have no idea. I, I do wonder why some of them stay so high profile and keep working so hard if they have. That's kind of a question that I've always had. I'm just like, well, you know, there's a million things you could do, but you keep doing this thing. So, you know, but I, I, I just don't know.

• 31:55Sam Parr?

  I see. So one thing that Grant, like I, I don't know who Grant, I don't know Grant Cardone, but Sean, you know who he is, right?

• 32:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Yeah. I'm very familiar, I would say.

• 32:05Sam Parr?

  So he, I think he has like over a billion dollars in assets under management in terms of multifamily. And for years I was like, this guy's full of it. But if you look closely, he rides, he has this jet, this fancy jet. And if you go look really closely, the name, the, the seats of the headrest, the headrests on the seats are embedded, like embroidered with his name, you know, GC. And I was like, oh, this, this has to be legit. How, I'm like, this guy, I mean, I don't think he's lying. He's got like a $50 million jet with his name embroidered on the headrest. This, this isn't a rental.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I actually have a question for you then, because you know this world better than I do, the one I'm about to inquire you about, which, you know, you said you have a guy that can sell a company for half a billion dollars in the Silicon Startup world. In my impression, I'm just like, that person's probably sold like 99% of their equity to venture vultures years and years and years ago. So when they're getting out, I mean, are they really sitting on half a billion dollars? I mean, or a percentage of that?

• 33:04Sam Parr?

  No, I would imagine in most cases, Sean would know even better than I. I would imagine in most cases that you see these massive, close to a billion exit. I would imagine the founder owns between 10 and 20% maybe.

• 33:16Shaan Puri?

  The like Still a lot of money. Famously, the low number like is like 4%. Obviously, there's outliers, but like I remember when Box.com went public, it was like, wait, does he only own, it was either Dropbox or Box, I don't remember which one, I think it's Box. And he owned 4% of his company at that point. But you know, there's other, you know, cases where they own 20, 25%. You know, I know several people that owned 70% at the, at the billion dollar sale. So you know, obviously there's a range. I would say your estimate of like sort of 15 to 20%, 10 to 20% is, is probably the correct range. Like I think you can go look at like when Twitter went public, because you have to think first, multiple co-founders. So you take 100%, you divide it by either, now you own 50 or 30.

• 33:57Shaan Puri?

  And then you're going to take multiple rounds of dilution. And so you can basically, as a rule of thumb, assume like 50% dilution is like a pretty standard number by the time you get to an exit. So if you owned 33% because you had two, two co-founders, well, now you're down to half of that, right? So, so you end up in that range that we talked about.

• 34:15Sam Parr?

  Well, and then

• 34:15Shaan Puri?

  10 to 20%.

• 34:16Sam Parr?

  You have, you typically you have an employee pool that's 10 to 15% as well.

• 34:21Shaan Puri?

  Well, yeah, I was saying all in, all, all in your dilution ends up at that. But then, you know, the, the crazy thing is usually the story doesn't end there. So you either get acquired by like Facebook and then guess what? Facebook stock runs up over the next 10 years also. Or you, you go public and it's like, yeah, what Box went public at is, you know, not the same what Box is today. So you still own those shares free and clear. You vested them. And so you can go do whatever you want with your life and, uh, you know, you can still appreciate like. Hopefully you moved to Puerto Rico, so all those capital gains can be free. Very few do, which is kind of surprising. Like when I hear about the Puerto Rico thing, I'm honestly like, what am I doing? And not just because I think the same thing. You were very convincing, uh, but really like it's very Did you exit Blab? What's that? Did you exit Blab?

• 35:05Shaan Puri?

  The pivot we did of Blab is the one that, that sold. Okay, how much did you own of that pivot when you, when you sold it? I owned 20%, but we sold it not for stock in the company. So we basically sold the assets and like the code, the team, all that stuff as like a bundled deal, but they didn't buy the actual shell and shares. And so we, we negotiated a like custom deal basically upon sale. So I ended up with a different number than, than the 20% that I owned and same thing for my team, like if. Like I just made sure everybody got a win. The investor got a win. Everybody got enough of a win. We tried to divvy it up that way, but.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Now, when you look at a company like Riverside that like we're on here today, like, are you looking at this company saying, oh, I know what's going on behind the scenes because I did a similar type company? Or do you consider like Blab completely different than than a Riverside?

• 35:53Shaan Puri?

  Blab was different because Riverside did what we refused to do. They were like, we're going to just be a tool. We're going to charge 9.99 or 19.99 a month and we're going to be a niche tool for podcasters. And whereas with Blab, like you remember, there was an audience when you were live talking like this. So there was like,

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:08Shaan Puri?

  The goal was to be more like what Clubhouse became or what like, you know, a lot of the live streaming products became where it's like a, we were trying to build like the next Twitter and it was like, go big or go home was like the, the kind of mentality for that. We had a bunch of like, like Cisco and Oracle were using it and they were like, hey, you should just make this for enterprise because this is way better than Citrix. And we were like, yeah, but the problem with that is then I want to kill myself. So what do you, what solution do you have for that? And they were like, ah, what do you, why did you say those words? And I'm like, ah, because I don't, I don't, I don't want to talk to you anymore. So, so, you know, they Riverside did a different thing. So even though the grid looks the same and it's kind of a similar technology, they went down a path that said, can we get a few million dollars a year of recurring revenue through a subscription? And so, you know, it's just a different game.

• 36:51Sam Parr?

  And John, I think, I don't know, maybe Sean, what do you, I, I, I think that in order to get like your first substantial win, I think it is far, the likelihood is better that you're going to make more money bootstrapping a company and selling for 10%, 20%, 30% of what these huge startups sell for and try to own 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100% of the company.

• 37:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, definitely. The probability is higher. I mean, it's like a risk reward thing, right? So, you know, it's less risky, but the reward is lower.

• 37:28Sam Parr?

  But unlike, here's the shitty part, John, is like for me, and I bet you too, Sean, I was paying myself, I wasn't, we, our company would make seven figures in profit, really good profit. I paid myself 20,000, 20,000, 80,000, and then the highest was like mid six figures, but lower, I don't remember, 300, 400,000, and that was like the last year, but whereas you were paying yourself a lot more. And so-

• 37:58Speaker 02

  I just keep all the money I make. Like, I live in Puerto Rico, I have three virtual assistants, and I just keep 80 to 90% of every dollar that comes in my door after tax.

• 38:08Sam Parr?

  And a lot of, a lot of startup folks like me and Sean, I, the only income we have, like, I have a friend that raised 35 million dollars and the startup went south after eight fucking years, which is crazy, because that sucks, that he just wasted eight years. And the only wealth that he made was basically his 150 to 200,000 salary. Like, that was his only, that's all he was left with.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Killing himself for eight years on that.

• 38:31Sam Parr?

  Killing himself. It's really, it's not sad, because like, it's cool that we get to take these chances, but it's just, man, it's a miss. It's a really big miss.

• 38:38Shaan Puri?

  So Sam, have you seen his income reports? So you're making 180,000, I think, on podcast sponsorships?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, for the win.

• 38:48Shaan Puri?

  What are we, what are we doing? What, what the hell's wrong with us, Sam?

• 38:55Sam Parr?

  John, listen, here's the numbers. So this podcast, I'll give you December's numbers, because that's what I remember. We are at, I think, these are ballpark numbers, 500,000 in YouTube visits, or YouTube video views a month, and then roughly 1.3 to 1.4 in podcast downloads. According to Chartable, that puts us at number nine. I don't know if that's true, but whatever. Are we, what, what, what could this podcast make independent?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Independently?

• 39:26Sam Parr?

  Independently.

• 39:27Shaan Puri?

  Because your number is an independent number, right? Or your number is now the hot, now you, do you put your like HubSpot deal right here in public?

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Well, my HubSpot quote unquote deal is that they're sponsoring 50% of my episodes. So you can pretty much deduce from whatever it makes sponsorship wise, that half of that's come from HubSpot.

• 39:43Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay, great. Perfect. I need to go renegotiate. Actually, I don't even know that maybe that maybe that is about the same. Well, it depends how many downloads you get, right? As we started the pod, you're not on those charts. So what's going on? What are your monthly downloads?

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'll pull up my downloads from last month. And this will be podcast downloads only because we don't aggregate everything else. Cause they're a fraction of what you're talking about anyways. But so for the month of January, we did 2.968 million. So just under 3 million listens for just the podcast.

• 40:17Shaan Puri?

  And you do, how many episodes do you do like in a week?

• 40:21Speaker 02

  We do 30 episodes a month.

• 40:23Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so you do way more, way more episode volume than we do. We do, we do eight, eight a month.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:30Shaan Puri?

  All right, Sam.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  You're getting more.

• 40:31Shaan Puri?

  Strap it up, baby. Every day. We do get out here, we talk about, you know, hair and workout.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  By the way, is kind of one of the secret sauces for my sponsorship revenue all these years is like when they came to me back in 2013, there was a company called the midroll and they said, hey, we're coming to you to first to sponsor for business podcasts. Cause they were only doing comedy podcasts before that. They go, and then we're coming to you because you do 30 episodes a month. That is 60 potential sponsorship slots. Cause you can have two pre-rolls, two mid-rolls and two post-rolls. And even now I actually add a third mid-roll. So now I have two pre-rolls, some episodes I have three mid-rolls and then two post-rolls. So they're like, you're giving us like 60 to 75 sponsorship slots per month.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Whereas a weekly show, we're only getting eight. And so, you know, we can bring you an episode, we can bring you a sponsor for 200 bucks a month. Eight hundred bucks may not be exciting for, you know, somebody but or 200 bucks an episode. Eight hundred bucks might not be interesting for somebody doing a weekly show, but you know, $200 times 30 also then that starts becoming a little more exciting money, especially for me who was just starting out. So I think I made $12,000 the first month. I was I did a sponsorships and all of that was because it was 30 episodes. So the quantity was huge.

• 41:56Sam Parr?

  So what what could what could this podcast earn my MF? So let's just say, uh, so let's just round down. Let's say a million. So a million would be what?

• 42:05Shaan Puri?

  The easy way is just what are you trying to you charge a CPM like like a fixed CPM across all those?

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we charge between a 25 on the low. If it's a longer term sponsorship.

• 42:17Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  To for the short for the short sponsors, people like, oh, we want to test a month.

• 42:21Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  That's going to be $35 CPM.

• 42:24Sam Parr?

  Right. All right, Sean, I think we're I think we're in we're we're all in the

• 42:27Shaan Puri?

  Ranger just does way more volume. Um, because he's, you know, in Puerto Rico, he just goes, he's sitting at the pool, comes back inside.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 42:35Shaan Puri?

  Records.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Most important thing to remember, I'm keeping all this money. I mean, believe me, because I remember, guys, I remember when I would make, I would do these webinars all the time in San Diego when I was pushed in podcasters paradise and we'd make $30,000, $40,000 on a webinar and I'd be like, excited, but at the same time, I'd be like, oh, that's that's $20,000 in taxes right there. Like, it was literally like quelching my entrepreneurial soul and I knew I had to leave, man. I knew I had to start keeping all the money that I made.

• 43:06Shaan Puri?

  Is there?

• 43:07Sam Parr?

  Are you gonna have pets?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're actually getting married April 23rd, right here in in Palmist, Del Mar, Puerto Rico, my community, because it's that awesome. Thank you. And then, uh, goalie's getting yanked. So, uh, we'll see. I mean, I'm 42 years old, man. I'm no spring chicken. I may not, I may not have been able to have kids for 10 years now. Who knows? I mean, that would explain a lot, to be honest with you.

• 43:33Sam Parr?

  And you want to raise your kids there?

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Oh, my God. I wouldn't want it anywhere else. The families that move here, like, it's unbelievable to see what happens with their kids. They just like transform. Now they're all like cruising around in the community on golf carts. It's a huge community, by the way. There's 3,500 homes in my gated community. So there's 17 restaurants, two 18-hole golf courses, 20 tennis courts, 10 pickleball courts, a beach club, a fitness club, and a K through 12 academy called Palmas Academy right here in the community. And it's just like this one all-inclusive. It's kind of like the Truman Show. You know, remember he was stuck in that bubble? I'm stuck in a bubble.

• 44:15Shaan Puri?

  Is this where Peter Schiff lives?

• 44:17Speaker 02

  What?

• 44:18Shaan Puri?

  Is this where Peter Schiff lives?

• 44:19Speaker 02

  No, he lives in Dorado. That's where all the rich snobs live that don't want to view the ocean. Because Dorado's flat as a pancake, so nobody, except the people that live right on the ocean, which is just a condo complex, has a view of the ocean. Whereas in Palmas del Mar, as you can see here, which is where I live, we live up on these hills and everybody's got these epic, epic panoramic, mountain Caribbean island view that's just to die for.

• 44:52Shaan Puri?

  And like if you get sick, you know, what, you have to like go to the local butcher for like surgery? Or there's like a hospital?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna lie, you want to start talking cons, there's cons to everything in life.

• 45:01Shaan Puri?

  So yeah, give us the cons.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  There's not great hospitals in Puerto Rico. I will give an asterisk. Where Peter Schiff lives, which is Dorado, they just opened up a state-of-the-art Johns Hopkins Hospital, which is epic. But unfortunately for us, it's like an hour and a half away. I'm actually a military veteran. I did eight years as an officer in the army. So there's actually a lot of amazing veterans hospitals in Puerto Rico. Because there are three and a half million people here, and a lot of them are veterans. Because it's like one of the best ways to like get off the island if you're in poverty. So a lot of people do that. So we have a really state-of-the-art veterans hospital, which covers me. But for your average person coming down here? It's not the most ideal thing in the world by a long shot.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Like what most families do is you get, there's a lot of doctors that live in our community and they offer their services for a monthly rate. And so like Kate, she pays a thousand bucks a year. No, wait, 1,100 bucks a year. And she has full-time access 24/7 to a doctor who will, you know, like write her prescriptions. Or if anything happens to her physically, he'll actually like take her to which he thinks is the best hospital for that injury or that illness. And like do all the translations and get her to the right place. Cause he has all the connections and all that jazz. Cause again, another, another con is there's a language barrier. Most Puerto Ricans do not speak English. Where we live in our community, everybody speaks English here.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  So it's, it's, that's which is good and bad. It's, it's bad because it doesn't force us to learn Spanish. So I lived here for six years. I don't speak a word of Spanish. It's just the reality. But you go outside of our community and you're like amongst, you know, the Boricuas, which is the, the name for a native Puerto Rican. They don't speak English, like no habla inglés.

• 46:53Sam Parr?

  Has there, um, has there been any businesses mentioned on your podcasts? Where you're start this right now, or maybe not, you don't, you don't want to, but you're like, oh man, blank should go start this right now. This is an interesting opportunity. Is there anything in your head right now that, uh, that sticks out as, as a brilliant opportunity that you discovered on your podcast?

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Um, I really did just interview an interesting couple the other day and they had a, you know, one of those very romantic stories where she stood him up for a date, but she felt bad. And so she ended up baking him cookies and then delivering him cookies. This is like 20 years ago. And the guy was like, well, you can get pizza, pizza delivered, but why, why can't you get cookies delivered? And they literally started up this homemade chocolate chip cookie delivery service company that's now like a billion dollar company. They're sending me a bunch, by the way, right now, which I'm kind of excited about. And I was like, that's just kind of the cool ideas that I love to hear about. It's like these ideas are just like, they happened because of a reason. You're like light bulb.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  I would never want to go do any of those things because I, I personally believe for me, I have the perfect business where I work six days per month. I do 30 interviews with amazing people, Sam included. And then I get to release these episodes to the world. I make plenty of money and you know, life is good. I get to chillax by the pool 20, 25 days a month. I'm literally leaving Sunday for eight days in Chamonix, France. That's my bachelor party. So I'm skiing up in Chamonix, which is up in the French Alps. Then I'm spending three days in Geneva by myself and I'm flying to Rome.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  I'm taking a train up to this town called Orvieto and I'm doing a 10 day self-guided walking tour, about 15 to 20 miles any given day, walking back into Rome from middle of Italy, along the Canterbury Pilgrimage Trail. Then I'm flying to Istanbul. I'm going to be in Istanbul for 10 days by myself, just doing my thing there. And then I fly back to Puerto Rico, which is like vacation away from vacation. And that's my life.

• 49:09Sam Parr?

  And didn't you just, listen to this Sean, didn't you Jen just like do like a five or seven day fast or something crazy?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  So in 2021, I decided I was going to get into the healthiest states, optimal health and wellness of my life. And you know, like most of us, we've kind of kept it together over the years. But I was like, I can't get like below this, this floor of like a hundred. For me, I'm like, I'm 5'10", so it was like 170 pounds. I just couldn't get quite below that. So I read this book, which was a game changer for me called The Pleasure Trap. Game changer, changed my entire wiring in my mind around food and health and wellness in general. Went to this guy's clinic in Santa Rosa, California for 17 days. Did a 10 day water only fast with a seven day refeeding cycle afterwards.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Came back, was from one, from 170 went down, got down to 150, dropped 22 pounds. Actually, because I was 172 weighed in, got down to 150 when I got back. And then, you know, put, put myself back up to where I actually wanted to be, which is like 160. And I had such a good experience with that, that over the course of this, the remainder of 2021, I did two more five day water fasts, which, you know, I had a good experience with as well. I just did it here in my house in Puerto Rico.

• 50:34Shaan Puri?

  Sam, have you ever done a water fast or a juice cleanse or anything like that?

• 50:38Sam Parr?

  Just for like 24 hours. I've never done, I, I'll do, I'll do 24 hours every 10 days or so, just, just, just because it feels nice sometimes. But I've never done like that long. Did, what, what does it feel like to go that long?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  It's tough. And it's day two and day three, your body runs out of glycogen and glucose completely. So you go from sugar burning and you flip into ketosis. So now you're really keto adapted and you're just burning fat. And that like metamorphosis is a tough transition. So you, you feel like crap. You have like low energy. You're hungry. You're cranky. But then, once you kind of wake up on day four, after getting through days two and three, which are tough, you kind of have this like clarity moment of like, laaa. And then days four through 10 for me, which was interesting, no hunger, zero hunger, hunger was gone.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  And then I just kind of went like up and down, energy, no energy, energy. Like I had to go for a walk and I'd be like, I'm much more tired than I would normally be on this walk. I, I know, no lifting, no heavy exercises. But I worked the whole time and was fine the whole time. You know, got a lot of, one thing you realize, by the way, during a water fast, how much time food takes, thinking about it, getting it, preparing it, cooking it, cleaning up after yourself. Like, it's necessary, by the way, because you almost, you're like, I have way too much time right now. And you're just like, you're like, what do I do with all this?

• 52:10Sam Parr?

  That's what I was gonna say. Like, it'd be kind of boring. I feel like most of my life is just preparing for the next meal.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yes. And by the way, when you do a long term fast, you realize that that's exactly what your life is. Yeah, it's not even, it's not even a joke. Like, that's exactly what your life is. And the life of everybody around you, they're planning, whether consciously or subconsciously, what they're doing for breakfast tomorrow. Okay, I gotta run to the store because we're having these people over, or this or that, or like, it's movie night, we need popcorn. It's like, all people think about. And you realize, every advertisement in the world seems to just lead back to some kind of food consumption. And you're just like, wow, this is a crazy world.

• 52:51Sam Parr?

  Which, which is great, I think.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 52:53Sam Parr?

  Eating is, like, we had a guy, we had a guy who lived on Soylent for 30 days, and we wrote about it. And he was like, I feel fine. He goes, I'm just so lonely because the most fun I have is when I'm eating with friends. And like, I'm traveling, you're gonna travel soon, John. Like, the most fun that you can have is like, just going to a bar, going to a restaurant and meeting people, talking to the waitress, and experiencing the, the culture via the food. So, when I, I'm down, I, I'll, I, I, after this, I want you to send me the place that you did the 10 day thing at. Because I totally would, I wanna do it, but I think it's a thing for me.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  I took three classes a day. Like, morning, afternoon, lunch, you take classes. They have chiropractors there, massage people there. Like, you're learning everything. There's all, there's tons of food there, by the way, too, because people are always refeeding. So, you're always seeing people eating as well. It's a very social place. But, um, it is, man, it, it can be, if not done right. It can be very lonely.

• 53:49Sam Parr?

  Is it like a hotel? Was it like a hotel? And, and what was the cost?

• 53:54Speaker 02

  So cheap, 200 bucks a night. And it's, you're like, you have your, yeah, it's so cheap. So reasonable.

• 54:01Shaan Puri?

  But for us with taxes, it's like $400, Sam, so.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Right, that's true. You guys, you guys have to make 400 to spend 200, so. I get that, for sure. But one other thing I'll mention about this, and then actually, I gotta jump to my next interview, but, um. It's the, it was the mental bandwidth that a lot of people don't think about too, because unfortunately, your brain knows it needs to eat to survive. And so it's just like you have this little record in your head that like, it just says, "Go get food." You're like, "Well, no, I'm fasting." But then 20 seconds later, "Go get food." You're like, "But no, I'm fasting." Go get, and you just can't stop it. And so I remember after I first took like, I had my first meal, I was just like, "Oh, my God."

• 54:48Speaker 02

  The voice stopped because it was like no longer just telling me to go get food. So that was the weird thing about that I was not expecting was the mental drain.

• 54:59Sam Parr?

  Damn dude, Sean, do you want to do this?

• 55:01Speaker 02

  You guys should do it.

• 55:02Shaan Puri?

  I got kids, so I'm like, "I'm gonna have to do it at home." You know, like, I'm not gonna be able to leave for 17 days.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  After it happens, after it happens, I went to a conference in Orlando, Florida. And, no, wait, it was, was it Orlando? Yeah, because we went to like,

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  I thought I was with you. I thought I was with you.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that event, by the way, you saw me. I went out with a couple buddies that night to like the down, the Planet Hollywood place. So it's like a real deal, you know, bars. So they were actually carting people to get in. My three buddies who were 35, 32, and 27, I'm 42, they all just walked in. The bartender literally was like, "Dude, come on." Like laughing at me that I was gonna try to go into the bar without giving him my ID. Again, like right now, I've got a, you know, gray beard and all this stuff, but I was clean shaven. I was super thin, like my, I was like no inflammation on my face, like thin. And, and that guy literally did not think I was 21 years old.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  And I was just like, "Wow, that's a testament to fasting because I'm definitely over 21 years old." But anyways, guys, I gotta get going. Anything else you wanna talk about before we get off? I enjoyed chatting with both of you.

• 56:13Sam Parr?

  All right, would you do the 10 day fast?

• 56:16Shaan Puri?

  I'd probably start with something lighter. I've never fasted at all or done a juice cleanse or a detox or anything. So I'd start with something smaller, but yeah, like if that felt good, I would go on to the next one.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Would you move to Puerto Rico just for taxes?

• 56:29Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I sure as hell want to after listening to that. I'm like, wait a minute. I'm sort of thinking, how do I time this with the sale of a company that I own? So I'm like, okay, when would I move such that I pay no capital gains for that company's exit? I think that makes a lot of sense versus moving there like perpetually. But I would definitely just go visit and just see what's life like. You know, I lived in like Indonesia and China and a bunch of different places. And I saw like, yeah, your quality of life can go way, way up when you have like, we had a chef and a live-in maid and a driver and a mansion and like all these things for less than I have my like, you know, San Francisco two-bedroom apartment. So like I get it. Uh, but I also saw the cons, which were like,

• 57:11Shaan Puri?

  you know, you're away from American culture. You don't, you know, your friends are like, kind of just like this select group of other people who made this, this leap. Your healthcare is not very good. And there was other, other issues with it. But, um, I'm kind of down, you know, I think it's.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  Would your wife do it?

• 57:26Shaan Puri?

  She would not want to do it. That's the main, that's the main reason I wouldn't do it. She, you know, we have our family here. So it's like, at the end of my life, am I going to be like, thank God I saved that money on taxes? Or like, thank God, you know, I was with my, you know, I was hanging out with my family all those random weekends that we were doing so. And for me, that matters. But I think I could sort of convince my family to go too at some point. So I think there's a, we would move as a tribe. Either we all move or nobody moves. It's kind of like our, our mentality. Ben knows.

• 57:54Ben?

  I'm.

• 57:57Ben?

  Say like, the dream is if you can pull it off with a compound, you get like, like, like 15 families or whatever, your, your, your closest friends and family and I'll get them to move with you.

• 58:06Shaan Puri?

  And then nobody has to wear clothes and everybody could just like be nude all the time. It's, that's the dream.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  That's the Mormon way.

• 58:12Shaan Puri?

  A small colony.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, you Mormons know about that. You, you, you, you have big dating circles.

• 58:19Ben?

  Well, I don't, I don't know where the nudist angle came from with, uh, with Mormons, but, uh, the rest I guess applies.

• 58:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm just mixing two different groups together there. Best of both.

• 58:29Sam Parr?

  I think um, I don't, I'm not sure if I would do it. I'll go check it out. But what I will commit right now is I'll, before the end of the year, I'll, I'll, I'll do a five day, at least a five day. I'll go to his, I'm gonna go to his place. I think that'd be fun. I think, remember I told you if I was gonna start like, I joke, I said, I'm gonna start this thing called hostage, where we just steal you for 10 days.

• 58:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you just lose weight.

• 58:50Sam Parr?

  We just don't feed you, you just don't.

• 58:52Shaan Puri?

  Results are guaranteed.

• 58:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, results guaranteed. It's just math. Uh, I think, uh, I think, I think that's, I'll, I'll, I'll put myself through hostage. I think I'll do it.

• 59:02Ben?

  Do you consider going to a fasting, uh, like retreat? I know someone who did that.

• 59:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think that's the only way I could, I think that's the only way I could do it.

• 59:11Ben?

  You couldn't do it like just at home? You'd have to go to a retreat, you think?

• 59:14Sam Parr?

  I think, so what, what I love, the, one of the reasons why I like, um, I like spending, uh, half the year in New York, half the year in Austin, I like to travel a lot, is when you travel and break your frame, you get out, or when you, when you, when you move to a diff, when you're in physically a different location, you also become, uh, a different, in a different frame, mental frame. And I, so I think that it's really important to do that. So like, it's called, and, and this is like, for example, let's just say that I took you to, uh, a Costco aisle seven, and I go, Ben, sit down, you see this Picasso, isn't this lovely? You should buy this for $10 million. You're not in like the right frame to buy this like expensive thing. But let's say I took you to this like museum, and I set you down this red velvet seat, beautiful lights.

• 59:59Shaan Puri?

  Did you say Costco in the first one?

• 1:00:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm saying like, you had, like, a different, a different physical location, puts you in the right frame to do something. And like, you're not gonna like, if I'm in Costco, I'm not gonna buy something for tens of thousands of dollars. But if I'm in like this beautiful place, that I'm more likely to go do something. It's the same way with different fitness stuff, or, uh, you know, like, like, uh, someone says they're gonna meditate for like, an hour a day. I'm like, dude, I can't do that at my house. Like, it just, I, I'm just not in that, I, I'd rather go on my phone. But if I'm in like, uh, physically a different place, I think I'm more likely to do it. So I'd rather just sacrifice and do it.

• 1:00:35Shaan Puri?

  You just said a couple of things that are so true. One, Just changing your location will just break your pattern of thinking, which is super important. I'm, I just realized when you said that, how true that is and how guilty I am of that right now. Cause I have this like great rhythm going, but I'm in the same place all the time. Like when I went to the farming conference, that was my pattern break. And guess what? That's where we like conceived and launched the milk road. And now it's doing great. And it's like, uh, like dude, would I have done that? Would I have really mustered up the energy, been able to pitch it properly, been able to like formulate the exact idea? Had I not just like changed my frame, it's like that conference was really nothing about, you know, it was a different kind of milk that I was thinking about basically at the farming conference. So, so that, that just shifting your, your mentality, breaking your mental pattern is so true.

• 1:01:20Shaan Puri?

  Uh, that's, that's what you, the other thing is like, if you think about the fasting, what are you really doing? Are you really doing it because you're going to lose weight for 10 days? Well, you're just going to put it back on most likely, right? It's like, you're doing it for the experience. Like if, if I was going to do it, I would do it because I want a unique experience. And I like questioning the things that are not questioned in my life. Like the, the things that society has just conditioned me to do and believe are necessary. I like having that red pill moment where it's like, oh, do you really think you need to eat three meals a day? Why three? Why not four? Why not five? Why, why at these times? Maybe you don't need to eat at all. Have you ever tried that? It's like, no, I just followed, you know, the instructions in the manual of life and I just did it.

• 1:02:00Shaan Puri?

  So it's like, I like the questioning of life exercises and want that experience. So like I'm, I would do it at home just because I wouldn't want to leave my kids for like 17 days. Um, you know, just to do something kind of just for myself right now, because they're really little. But, um, but that's what I would want out of it is the unique experience of being in that place, changing your mental frame. And then doing it intensely rather than with low intensity. Like at home, I could do it with sort of like low intensity, whereas if I'm there, I'm committed at a different level of intensity.

• 1:02:32Sam Parr?

  How's the Milk Road going? What are you at?

• 1:02:34Shaan Puri?

  It's amazing. I don't want to say. You know what I always say? I always talk about it when it's a, when I want your help to make it work. Like when I want the audience to help me make it work. And then once it starts working, I shut the fuck up. It's at the shut the fuck up stage. So I will slack you, I will slack you privately and tell you how it's going.

• 1:02:51Sam Parr?

  But, but you're getting energy from it?

• 1:02:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun and it's like the businesses like, the business just worked straight off the bat. Which is wonderful because we didn't have to like wander around and search and who knows, maybe like add some things later, but like the core of it is working. People like it. I like it and it's creating. The reasons I had for doing it are all happening. So I'm like, okay, well, that's exactly what I would want.

• 1:03:16Sam Parr?

  Can you see yourself producing or writing for 350 days for the next two years?

• 1:03:22Shaan Puri?

  Ben takes the load on the writing. So he writes the draft every day. And then I edit the draft every night at like, you know, once like my kids sleep super late, so they, they fall asleep eventually like 10 or 11 PM and then I'll edit it for 30 minutes to an hour at night. And so, so far that's working now. Ben, I'm sure at some point, you know, wants a vacation or catches the flu or whatever. And you know, like we haven't like accounted, there's like no redundancy. It's like, it's like we do it tonight or else. And so, uh, like, let me ask you this for the hustle. Did you ever miss an addition?

• 1:03:56Sam Parr?

  No, never. I don't, I don't think, I, I think, um, uh, there was a couple of times where there was like a terrorist event or something like that. Like, um, remember when the cops, the, the, well, remember when the Dallas cops got shot, uh, like, or, uh, like there's something where like,

• 1:04:13Shaan Puri?

  because it was like a bad, in bad taste or something.

• 1:04:16Sam Parr?

  Well, we had to like delete, like, uh, I think that there was like, when there was fires in Napa or I, I forget exactly what happened, but there's been like these like crazy events, like when Trump won, um, like where it was like everyone's focused on that. We had to like scrap our plans and kind of throw something half ass together, but we almost all, we, I don't think, not once had we ever missed anything, but sometimes it felt like we phoned it in.

• 1:04:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you didn't, you know, the button, it's like in the button and

• 1:04:43Sam Parr?

  No.

• 1:04:44Shaan Puri?

  and lost. It's like you have to hit the button every whatever. What is it like every eight minutes or one hour and eight, six minutes or something? They had to hit that button. That's how it feels running the milk road business. It's like the email has to go out every morning and for the life of this company, it cannot miss a day. Um, and I

• 1:05:01Sam Parr?

  It's stressful, dude.

• 1:05:02Shaan Puri?

  That level of intensity you had with it. I know me, I skip all the time. Like I have five tweet Tuesday. It's been sent on Wednesday. I think like five times this year already. So it's like five times the last year. And so, you know, I'm the type that like, I don't really do good with like adhering to schedules and stuff like that. But it seems very necessary for this business as a like standard to hold.

• 1:05:25Sam Parr?

  Yes. The only thing that we would do, and I think you should do is we would be really liberal with the holidays. So for example, there's like a holiday of like, should we celebrate this? Should we not celebrate it? We typically defaulted to celebrate it. Um, and we'll run like we, we would have backups that we would run, but that particular day would be different. So for example, on President's Day, that would just be like a redo of like something old that we've done. Um, and so we would take advantage of holidays. Um, but that's pretty much it. But also we, we sent on Sunday too. So it was six days a week.

• 1:05:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So we do, we do five. Um, and then the other thing, so the business is working, the feedback, like I was reading, I read the feedback every morning and like everybody who responds to the thing.

• 1:06:04Sam Parr?

  It's addicting, right?

• 1:06:06Shaan Puri?

  Very addictive, uh, but also very like, you know, um, feedback can hurt. Uh, you know, like you think you did good and people are like, you're a dumbass because you got this number wrong, this word wrong, or I disagree with you. And so it's like such an awesome thing to feel every day is an actual feedback, feedback loop of your work. If you think about it, like, you know, most people in most jobs get almost no feedback on a daily basis. And, um, even this podcast gets very little feedback, right? We record it. It comes out like, I don't know, four or five days later. I don't, I don't ever listen to it. If people like it or dislike it, like, you know, I'll get a few compliments, but I don't get the negative stuff typically.

• 1:06:47Shaan Puri?

  You know, we don't really get a feedback. We see a number and a number is very impersonal versus with this, it's like I get daily feedback every single day on something I created and tried to make good. And that's like a pretty awesome thing that's going on. And the other thing that was cool was Chris Dixon, the partner at A6, at Andreessen Horowitz, who runs their crypto thing, like their whatever billion dollar crypto fund or whatever. He tweeted out something that was like, what's the coolest thing in web three that's going on right now? And we literally, I think, got like, I don't know, 50 to 100 mentions of people just organically just going to Chris and saying, milk road, best thing I've, best thing I'm subscribed to for crypto. Milk road has got to be the best, my favorite thing crypto right now.

• 1:07:28Shaan Puri?

  So that's when I was like, look, Ben, that's working. Uh, like, that's what working feels like, because we didn't ask them to go leave a review. Like, we didn't even know. We got, started getting tagged in this. And if, and so the example I'll give of that is my family was hanging out at the end of the year. We were kind of like, oh, what are you most grateful for this year? Kind of like, I don't know, you probably had a similar conversation like, oh, what was the best thing of the year, worst thing of the year, whatever. Kind of had our own little over lunch, just conversation about that. And four of us all said that we started training with my trainer, JA. And so it's like, yeah, training with John was, uh, was the, the best thing I did this year. It was the best part of my year. It was the best thing I did this year. I went back and told him, I go,

• 1:08:10Shaan Puri?

  dude, that's kind of crazy. Like on one hand, it's like, oh, I'm a personal trainer. There's plenty of those. Yeah, I make this amount of money. It's not like, oh, I'm this billionaire, blah, blah, blah. I was like, but four people, you know, that I know said that you were the best thing that happened to them in the year. Like that is the, one of like the highest compliments you can get. And it just sort of changed my thinking of like, what does like high impact or what does winning even look like? Because I hadn't really considered that that could even be a part of it.

• 1:08:38Sam Parr?

  Dude, there's a, there's a reason why all these rich people buy media companies. You know, the, one of the first Facebook employees bought, I think, the New Republic, which was a famous newspaper. Jeff Bezos, Washington Post. What did a Salesforce guy bought something? I think Time. An Indonesian billionaire, I think Indonesian bought Fortune. A Chinese guy is buying Forbes.

• 1:09:06Sam Parr?

  Wall Street Journal is, I mean, Rupert Murdoch like is obsessed with this shit, even though he doesn't have to do it anymore. It, it, media, it, it sucks that, so media can be lucrative, but the likelihood that it will, like, the likelihood, Fox is the biggest probably media company in the world and it's not, it's probably, I actually don't want to know what its market cap is, but it's not bigger than like a Salesforce or so, or I bet you, like, like HubSpot will likely be bigger and HubSpot's just like.

• 1:09:33Shaan Puri?

  Is bigger than the, than the value that of the company.

• 1:09:36Sam Parr?

  And that sucks. And that, that's like at my heart, that, that kills me. I'm like, fuck, the thing that I love is not the most lucrative. And that can kind of suck sometimes because, uh, what did you say earlier? You said it's a nine out of 10 hustle, but a two out of 10 opportunity. Media requires a nine out of 10 hustle. I would say it's a five out of 10. Maybe it's a six out of, I would say it's a, I would say it's a five out of 10 opportunity. And, and that kind of blows.

• 1:10:03Shaan Puri?

  Totally. If this wasn't, basically, uh, my test was like, I think this is pretty much like a bad business opportunity. Just in general, like of, of all the business opportunities in front of me right now, this is on the end of the worst ones, but I still want to do it. That means it's a, like a signal I should really go do that thing. Because like if my, my emotion is actually even trumping the on paper logic, that means it's actually what I want to go do and I'm not doing it.

• 1:10:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, obviously.

• 1:10:27Shaan Puri?

  External outcome. But then in this one, the other thing that like bumped it was, I think crypto has more opportu, higher opportunity score than if I had done media in like, let's say sports or some other thing I'm interested in.

• 1:10:39Sam Parr?

  Obviously.

• 1:10:40Shaan Puri?

  It's, you know, it's the business of money, right? And it's like where a lot of the action is right now. So.

• 1:10:45Sam Parr?

  You know, like, you know, the Motley Fool makes like five or six, $700 million a year.

• 1:10:50Shaan Puri?

  I'll give you an example of this because we were just talking about it. We did e-commerce last year. I think e-commerce is also like level 10 hustle, level five or six opportunity, maybe level six opportunity, level seven max. And, um, But I was, I was chatting with Ben yesterday and I was like, you know, what's the, one of the best startup investments in our portfolio right now is this company called Triple Whale. That is like a e-commerce, like a kind of like analytics company. And we were, I saw it. I was like, oh, I want this for our brand. And then we started using it. I was like, oh, this is a great product. I should try to invest in this. I was one of the first investors in it. So I got in at a very low valuation. And it's raising now like a very high valuation. And so that investment alone is like a, you know, 30x plus multiple already.

• 1:11:36Shaan Puri?

  And it's still pretty like early in its lifespan that if that keeps going like that, that could end up being a sort of like, you know, 100x, 200x return. I was like, we might make more money off that than the actual D to C business. We definitely are going to make more money off. Right now that investment is going to make more in my pocket than my brand would spit off and, you know, owner, owner profits. You know, last year or something like that. And, you know, that decision to invest in that took five seconds. I wrote a check, never did any work. Don't do any work. Yeah. I also wouldn't have ever invested in that had I not been doing this. And so, you know, the Steve Jobs quote of like, you can't connect the dots, looking forward. You can only connect the dots, looking back. I think that's very true. Early in my career, I made the mistake where I was doing something.

• 1:12:19Shaan Puri?

  And my eyes were sort of like shut towards like the adjacent opportunities that were coming, like the halo effect, the other things that were in my world. Because I was in this space, right? Like, okay, like let's take producer Ben for a second. So producer Ben makes some money for producing this podcast. Fantastic. That's a good thing. He's sharpening up his skills. That's like the direct benefit of this job. But then there's the indirect benefits of the job. And like, what are the indirect benefits? Like, for example, producer Ben, you've never said, hey, Sean, could I, you know, maybe co-invest with you on some of these deals? Like, I would say yes to that. And you could put in whatever amount of money makes sense for you. $500, $1,000, whatever, whatever would work for you.

• 1:12:58Shaan Puri?

  You could be getting like the benefits of maybe the hard work I'm doing in one place because we have a good relationship. So that would be an example of indirect benefits. I looked back at my career early on and I realized how few of the indirect benefits I realized were around me. And I was like, damn, I bet if I had just asked, that would have been easy. Like, for, for example, my co-founder at my last company, Furcon, he, he had shares in AppLovin. That I think AppLovin, when he left was like worth like a few hundred million.

• 1:13:28Sam Parr?

  Now it's worth like 20, 20 or 30 billion.

• 1:13:30Shaan Puri?

  It's 20 billion, 21 billion today. So it's like, it was 200 or 300 million, I think, when he left. He told me about, I was like, oh, that sounds like a great company. And then he kept telling me how great it was doing. It was like, oh, now we're doing this. It's worth 500 million. It's worth a billion dollars. And then it almost, and along the way, he like needed money. He was like, hey, can I like take some of my salary, like, you know, advance? I'm like trying to buy a wedding ring for my wife, whatever. Like I have a wedding to pay for. He's like, I'm going to try to sell some of my Apple 11 shares. We sold some back to the company. He's like, yeah, I want to hold on to these, but like, I just need cash to pay for like my wedding and shit. Like that was the indirect opportunity right in front of my face. So I could have been like, hey, best friend.

• 1:14:07Sam Parr?

  Well.

• 1:14:07Shaan Puri?

  I'll buy those shares off you.

• 1:14:10Shaan Puri?

  You know, and instead I was just like doing my favorite, like, you know, shuffling money around.

• 1:14:14Sam Parr?

  To go easy on you a little bit. It's not like we had a lot to.

• 1:14:18Shaan Puri?

  I didn't have a lot of excess cash, but like whatever I was putting in the stock market, like, you know, just random ass, you know, like, whatever companies they were, I basically like, I could have got the money. So for example, we had a bunch of wealthy friends. I could have said, I could have done what I do now, which is say, hey, guys, this is a great opportunity. I've found it. I vetted it. I can explain to you why it's good. And if you agree with me, you put up the cash and give me a carry for creating this opportunity.

• 1:14:40Sam Parr?

  This is my fear, by the way, of when we're talking about,

• 1:14:45Sam Parr?

  moving to Puerto Rico. I, my, my fear is being, it's not being relevant anymore. Um, and missing on interesting things. It's not like money making things necessarily, but not being in the thick of culture.

• 1:14:57Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, I feel that. Um, anyways, I don't know why I started ranting about all that shit. You were just trying to recap the episode, but whatever.

• 1:15:03Sam Parr?

  No, that's what I wanted. I, I didn't get to talk to you much because, and I had a lot of stuff on my mind, but, but the, that was cool.