Lessons From Billion $ Founders, The Nelk Boys, & More

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) discuss lessons from Shaan's ultra-exclusive event about what it takes to build a billion dollar company, the Nelk Boys, and doing memorable things. ----- Links: * Full Send Podcast * Nelk Boys * Relativity Space * How To Win Friends and Influence People * 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: (10:35) - The economics of big giveaways (15:00) - Sam's friend who went from $60M to homeless (18:35) - Elon and Sergey Brin's wife (21:30) - Shaan's ultra-exclusive event (48:40) - Do memorable things ----- 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?

  The hospital software guy, here's what he said. You'll like this. His was simpler. He's like, he said, yeah, like, agree with all that stuff. Here's how we thought about it. We need to have 500 salespeople that can sell a million dollars worth of product a year. Or 250, oh, sorry, 500 that could sell half a million a year, or 250 that could sell a million dollars as their sales quota per year. So we just work backwards from that. All right. What features products and like people do we need to like? Let a salesperson like get 500 salespeople that could sell half a million dollars a year of like sales quota. Like first, is that even possible? Can the, can this market support that? Yes. The market is very big. Hospitals spend a lot of money in healthcare.

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  And in our category, they spend more than, much more than that.

• 0:55Sam Parr?

  All right, we're live. So look, um, I, you said, Sean, that you didn't want to like do an event because you didn't want to travel. I decided to host one anyway. It's just like a meetup. But do you see the, you saw the link that I posted? Like the event right thing? It's no big deal, but you see it?

• 1:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you posted like an event in New York with you and a bunch of our like kind of tech buddy friends.

• 1:18Sam Parr?

  No, just Sahil, just me and Sahil. I was just like, I wanna, I was like, I wanna get out of the house. I wanna do something. You said no. And dude, a thousand people have RSVP'd and I have no idea where we're going to host it. I have no idea what we're gonna do. I don't have a plan. I know nothing.

• 1:33Shaan Puri?

  I don't know. It sounded like you had a plan. You were like, we're moving it to this other place and blah, blah. It sounded like something's in the works.

• 1:38Sam Parr?

  Some guy DM'd me on Twitter and said, I'll help you find a video, a venue. And I said, great, you're in charge. I don't know his name, but.

• 1:46Shaan Puri?

  Cool. You're it.

• 1:51Shaan Puri?

  Don't take backs.

• 1:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Hope it works. And then I got Nick Gray, the, uh, the small party guy to come. And I was like, dude, just come and organize this and you could sell books there. But, uh, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

• 2:05Sam Parr?

  Would it be lame if we just stand around and just say hi?

• 2:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, kinda lame.

• 2:10Sam Parr?

  Well, what the fuck? What am I supposed to do? Juggle?

• 2:12Shaan Puri?

  I don't know. Should have thought of that before you posted it, bro. Like, we did the live pod thing in Austin, Miami. And honestly, I don't think it was very good. I don't think listening to a podcast live is that entertaining.

• 2:28Sam Parr?

  Unless it's like a planned, like, comedy skit. Unless, like, we, like, planned, like, we had a bit. You know what I mean?

• 2:34Shaan Puri?

  Unless it's a scripted stage play.

• 2:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Well, no, just like, that's what comedians do, right? You know, it's like scripted, but they also kind of flow a little bit. But yeah.

• 2:43Shaan Puri?

  Or you're just so big that people, like, simply the idea of seeing you live is that entertaining. Like, I don't think we're there yet. Like, I went to, Tim Ferriss did a live thing once. It was just him sitting on a chair, fireside chat. I've seen the guys who do, whatever that political thing is, like Jon Favreau or whatever, they have like a political podcast, Pod Saves America or something like that. They do live shows. People just, like, geek out about meeting them and seeing them. I don't think we're there yet. And also, just in general, I'm a big energy guy. And basically, my idea of a good time is where the energy is, like, steady up and rising to the right. And like, you know, my idea of any kind of bad time is a dip in energy. Like, the same way people feel about awkward silences in a conversation,

• 3:28Shaan Puri?

  I feel about energy dips. Like, if I sense the energy going low in any room- Or hang out. Because that's what happens when you do, hey, we're two dudes from Twitter or a podcast. Let's talk in front of you, or let's say hi. Like, it's just kinda lame, isn't it?

• 3:43Sam Parr?

  Well-

• 3:44Shaan Puri?

  Maybe the say hi is less lame than the-

• 3:46Sam Parr?

  That's not helpful, though. I don't know what to do. I got, I have these people coming. Here's what I think is gonna happen. I think that they're not actually coming to see me. I'm just the excuse for all these Twitter dorks to see one another.

• 3:56Shaan Puri?

  So I got an idea that I think would be dope that you could use for this.

• 4:01Shaan Puri?

  Or we could use for something else, but basically I was like, okay. Like, I'll tell you, I went to this event in LA just now that my buddy Ramin through. And it's like, I whatever, there's a conference, but the day before the conference, there's like the dinner. And now this was like a baller dinner. It was like at the home of an NBA team owners, like on his rooftop, looking at the beach. It was like beautiful, right? But like, even if it wasn't that baller of a sin of a surroundings, like the, the house wasn't that sick. This still would have been awesome because it's basically the table was full of like, basically there was two tables. Each table had like one really famous person. And then like two kind of famous people, and then the rest were interesting, but not famous people. And just simple, like there was a

• 4:44Sam Parr?

  Which one of those were you?

• 4:47Shaan Puri?

  I was the just interesting person.

• 4:50Sam Parr?

  Got it. Okay. I just started to understand like the level of fame we're, we're talking about.

• 4:53Shaan Puri?

  No, no, I'm talking about like real fame, like professional athlete, actor, that's that level of fame.

• 4:58Sam Parr?

  Which actors were there?

• 5:00Shaan Puri?

  I can't say the names of anybody that was there. It was more athletes. It was, it was athlete event, not, not so much actors.

• 5:05Sam Parr?

  But like A-list people?

• 5:08Shaan Puri?

  Of, of athletes, it was like former A-list. It's like, or former B-list, let's say, it's like, uh, I, you know, you're not on the cover of the video game, but like, you know, I remember your name. I've seen you play.

• 5:20Sam Parr?

  I had You know that gamer's attributes. Yeah.

• 5:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. I could tell you exactly. I have memories of you playing the game, not like a bench warmer. So anyways, but the, my point is these dinner tape, like basically just like a table. And whether that table is like, you're playing poker or you're eating food or something like that, just like a round table of like eight people. Where the expectation is that, hey, we're all here to get to know each other. Like, we're all here to talk. And then you kind of can rotate. I think we could do one of those for the MFM community where we take the like 10 or 15, like most baller guests. So it's like Andrew Wilkinson has his table and you have your table. I have my table and then Steph Smith has her table and Ben has his table. And like, we just do this with like, kind of like, Well-known business people, we take, you know, we get whoever, you know, our famous guests, so Rob Dyrdek, or we get Balaji, or whatever, we get some of these people to show up.

• 6:08Shaan Puri?

  And then we curate the rest of the guest list is you are interesting, but you're not necessarily famous. So maybe you got a really interesting business, maybe you're really like knowledgeable about some science or domain or something like that. You're just like a nerd in your own right. But they're all fans and we basically just set up these tables and it's like, whatever, this room of 10 tables. And whether it's food or poker or something, there's some activity to do while you're there, just casually while you're talking. And, and you get to hop. So you get to rotate between, I don't know, three or four of these tables while you're there, random draws and, and like, that's the event. I think people have more fun with some, something like that because they participate than sitting in and watching other people talk. That's my, my personal guess. So I would do that for an MFM event.

• 6:49Sam Parr?

  Bro, great. That's cool. But I have a thousand people coming on a, can we have 10 people in a hundred person tables?

• 6:59Shaan Puri?

  It's just a lot. That's a lot of a lot. You don't have to let all thousand, that was a interest list. That wasn't a, you're, you're accepted in, right?

• 7:08Sam Parr?

  I don't know. I made, this was a toilet event. I made it on my phone. I was on toilet and I tweeted it out and it, and it worked.

• 7:15Shaan Puri?

  Here's what I think you should do. I think you should, whatever, you do something the same way. You're like, all right, everybody, we're all meeting in this junkyard or we're going to look for cool scraps. And like, that'll filter out people you want to hang out with. It'll be a no headache event. And then separately, I will host this cool event that's well planned. And you just have to show up to that. You don't have to do any work.

• 7:34Sam Parr?

  Whatever. We'll see. Can I talk to you about one thing really quick? And then I want to hear about your event. Dude, have you listened to the Full Send podcast?

• 7:45Shaan Puri?

  Uh, like not regularly, but I've definitely seen clips like when they had Dana White or Mark Cuban, I see a bunch of clips.

• 7:51Sam Parr?

  I don't exactly understand what Full Send is, but I know they're incredibly popular. Like it's, I don't know if it's like a boy band where it's like four guys doing something, or if it's just the two main guys and the rest are co-hosts. But it's basically a group of like, yeah, go ahead.

• 8:05Shaan Puri?

  Can I explain what it is roughly? So I'm also not an expert, but it's basically the group is the Nelk Boys. That's like the main name of the group. Full Send is like their brand and one of their podcasts and stuff like that. But these guys are basically, the way I think about it is they are like what Jackass was when we were growing up. That's what the Nelk Boys are now. So the, so Jackass back in the day was basically guys doing, you know, stunts, pranks, you know, punching each other's balls. Basically a group of guys who are kind of like, they're willing to go all out for your entertainment and for their own amusement. They kind of, um, they, they, they live a certain lifestyle and it's kind of like the, like, if you take a boys like fantasy, you just like crank it up to 12. It's like, that's what these guys do.

• 8:48Shaan Puri?

  The Nelk Boys are a little bit like that. They make YouTube videos. They got big on YouTube. They also have a bunch of brands. So they have one brand that's basically an equivalent of Girls Gone Wild. It's like a paid membership club. That's like for photos or videos of something. I don't know.

• 9:01Sam Parr?

  I didn't know about that. What's that called?

• 9:04Shaan Puri?

  That's called, I don't know, Ben, find the name of that one. Um, so that's one of their businesses that I think is really smart. Probably Prince Money. They have merch that they drop and they've done merch drops. They like show the live stream when they're like doing it. Obviously there's a little bit of hype, but like whatever. They're basically like the Shopify drop shipper bro on steroids. They'll do like two or $3 million worth of sales in like five minutes when they do a drop.

• 9:27Sam Parr?

  So the New York Times, well, New York Times said last year they did about 80 million in revenue, which is pretty good, but.

• 9:34Shaan Puri?

  Right. 50 million in merchandise, it says, I think.

• 9:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And then it said they're on track to do eight or maybe 70 the next year. And this article's a year old. And then, uh, they have this new shtick going on and F T. They all types of crap. But then if you go to that link that I sent you, each guy has like a video page. And one of these guys, his name is Steve, and I think this is like a point where I realized I'm out of touch. He's just like giving away a million dollars in every video.

• 10:01Sam Parr?

  Literally like-

• 10:01Shaan Puri?

  It's the Mr. Beast playbook.

• 10:03Sam Parr?

  But he's like giving two, he's like, here, I just gave this guy a hundred thousand dollar watch. I just gave this family two million dollars. And in all these videos, he goes, yeah, I'm gonna go give this guy a car. And then he was with Dana and he goes, I'm gonna, Dana, I just got this four hundred thousand dollar van made. It's yours. On one of the videos, they gave a guy two hundred fifty thousand in cash for his birthday. On another thing, they're giving away two hundred thousand dollars just to her family and the, like, so whatever, fine videos, but he's doing these multiple times a month. These guys are gonna run out of money, right?

• 10:37Shaan Puri?

  I have no idea how they give this much away, or if they actually give it away.

• 10:41Sam Parr?

  It's so much.

• 10:42Shaan Puri?

  If it's actually just like, you know, you know, like a staged thing, or if there's some like caveats or whatever. I have no idea.

• 10:49Sam Parr?

  They show his apartment, they show the guy's apartment and he's got his watch collection. And I know a little bit of watches. It's literally three million dollars worth of Rolexes. And then it's like in a four million dollar-

• 10:59Shaan Puri?

  I believe that they could have dope stuff, but literally giving away millions of dollars is kind of crazy. And if I look at his YouTube channel, he does do that sometimes, but like, he has other ones like, here's my three million dollar man cave. Here's, you know, here's me, you know, whatever, buying this car, racing this car. So that's a little different than giving it away. But I know, like, so did you watch when Mr. Beast was doing this, when he would go and he would basically give away thirty thousand, fifty thousand dollars, or he'd go into a Twitch stream that has like two viewers, he would just drop twenty grand in a donation and the person would freak out and that that clip would go viral?

• 11:32Sam Parr?

  Like, yeah.

• 11:33Shaan Puri?

  Did you see those? And do you know how he was doing those?

• 11:35Sam Parr?

  I know, I know they exist and I saw them. I don't know, like, the, anything about behind it.

• 11:42Shaan Puri?

  One of the things that he was doing, I don't know if this is the full story, Ben, maybe, you know, you're friends with Mr. Beast, so maybe you know, you know, he seems to consider you one of his top three closest friends. That's a plan. You may know better. But I remember meeting one guy who worked at this site called- Quid, quib, something like that, quid, I think it was. And basically, quid was like these, like, I don't know, little collectible stickers and cards or something like that. Um, it was kind of like aimed at a teenage audience. And what they did was they would go to Mr. Beast and they would say, hey, we'll pay you $50,000 for a sponsored video. And the genius of Mr. Beast was he was like, cool, but here's what we're gonna do. The, that's not you paying me for a shout out midway through one of my videos.

• 12:25Shaan Puri?

  Let's make the video about using $50,000 in an interesting way. How about that? And so he would do these videos where he would be like, I'm gonna go to this coffee shop and I'm gonna tip the barista $15,000 and let's see her reaction. And he would go and he would tip her, she would have this crazy reaction, he'd be like, thanks so much to our guys at Quiv who made this possible. Um, you know, go check them out, they do this thing, right? That video would get like 5 million or 10 million views. And so for the, for quid or whatever, they were like, dude, this is great. Like, we're getting way more bang for our buck than any other influencer shout out we're doing. So then they would up the ante, they would do 50,000, 100,000, 200,000, because each video was getting like 10 million views. And it was this like perfectly, like, I forgot what it's called in biology, where like the

• 13:07Shaan Puri?

  parasite actually helps you, like sucks out the toxin, so the parasite's getting food, but you're also getting healed. It was basically like a symbiotic relationship like that, where the, the brand was basically putting up loads of cash and he was using that to create huge amounts of views and subscribers to make himself the biggest YouTuber in the world.

• 13:26Sam Parr?

  I don't think these guys have, that's cool. I don't think these guys have sponsors.

• 13:30Shaan Puri?

  Well, they must have it somewhere, right? Like, the model must be that, either, it's the same thing. The money comes in one, one door, then they reinvest it in stuff like this, because they know that seems to be a pretty good formula. I give away, you know, I give, I'm gonna give this family in the hood $100,000, uh, you know, let's see what happens. And it's him standing with like three, you know, three Mexican people from Home Depot. That's literally the, the second most recent video, and it's got 2.7 million views. So clearly that works. This video will monetize.

• 13:58Sam Parr?

  No, that's, that's their whole shtick, is they got banned, they can't monetize their videos.

• 14:04Shaan Puri?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't, I don't know how it's sustainable, maybe it's not sustainable.

• 14:07Sam Parr?

  But by the way, and it's also explicit, I don't think you could put ads on an explicit channel, but just like the economics behind what these guys are doing, it's, it's, it's outrageous to me. Something is crazy. I, I, I don't think I'm the, I, I think when I see this and I predict that they're gonna go broke, I don't think I'm the crazy one.

• 14:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, baby. I could see that. I could also see these things being money printers. So like, in the same way that I think the Jackass franchise ultimately was successful, right? You see like, oh dude, there's like a midget in a thong, you know, kicking this other guy in the balls. You're like, well, this doesn't seem like good business. But in actuality, as long as they have a good man, as long as they have their Kris Jenner in the background, that's like, yeah, go act the fool. Like this is, this is what drives ratings, then this will work. And like, the New York Times headline about them is, what won't the Nelk Boys do? And this is like, how, like, that's a brand, right? That's a really powerful, valuable brand to own is, the question isn't what do they do? It's what they, what won't they do? It's like, they do pranks, parties, crude humor, they get in trouble, but the backlash is the brand.

• 15:10Shaan Puri?

  That's literally the headline. Now, would they go broke? I don't know. I don't know enough about them, but you know, I'm a, I'm actually a fan of what they do. I think they're pretty cool. We should get them on the pod. I want to hear, hear their business.

• 15:19Sam Parr?

  I agree. I think one of their manager asked to come on, maybe we can talk to them. I heard a story about a friend, a person I know who made $60 million a handful of years ago, living in, living out of their car now.

• 15:32Sam Parr?

  I learned that this weekend.

• 15:33Shaan Puri?

  What?

• 15:34Sam Parr?

  So I know a person who made $60 million, like 10 years ago, and now they are homeless.

• 15:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Dude, that's crazy. That's not even crazy. That's normal, bro. Like, Jack Dorsey is like, starts two multi-billion dollar companies and then like actively tries to dress like, you know, a homeless guy. Like, you know, that's, that's the thing you do when you get rich. You then go on some journey to like, find the meaning of life. In fact, I was telling somebody this the other day, we were reminiscing. It's like, dude, at the event, I was like, dude, I haven't seen you in so many years. Like, oh, when was the last time I saw you? It was like, remember we were advising that kid on his company? And we were both afterwards like, yeah, but that's never gonna work. Like, you know, yeah, I had a good kid, but like, you know, he'll be maybe, he'll be successful in like five years. And then his company currently is like a multi-billion dollar company. And I was like,

• 16:23Shaan Puri?

  now that motherfuckers 25 years old, running around like with a huge beard, trying to like, figure out like, basically trying to figure out the meaning of life. Like, oh shit, you're on a spiritual journey already? Damn it. You're like, you are so far ahead of us now, after we kind of were joking around about how you, you know, you, you don't have this thing figured out. That is the part like the classic tech cliche is to like, be like, get, I made all this money so that I'm going to live like somebody who has no money. That's like the stereotype.

• 16:50Sam Parr?

  I want to get to your event, but really quick, one more thing, because this is the new cliche. So I hate talking about these guys, but Elon, um, in the Wall Street Journal, it came out yesterday that Elon Musk slept with Sergey Brin, the guy who started Google, his wife. And Sergey aren't friends at all. Elon tweeted two things that were hilarious. The one he goes, this isn't true. I haven't had sex in forever.

• 17:15Shaan Puri?

  I haven't had sex in months, yeah.

• 17:17Sam Parr?

  And then the next

• 17:17Shaan Puri?

  parentheses, sigh.

• 17:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Shaan Puri?

  Like a middle school girl.

• 17:22Sam Parr?

  And then the next thing that he tweeted was, here's me and Sergey hanging out right now on a boat. And it's them like drinking wine together, like partying.

• 17:30Shaan Puri?

  Did he post a picture?

• 17:32Sam Parr?

  Yes. Or, yeah, either he did or someone did it. He, he replied to it, said, yeah, that was us literally yesterday.

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  That's so funny. Yeah.

• 17:41Sam Parr?

  It's so funny.

• 17:43Shaan Puri?

  Here's what I, here's how I was feeling about this. I was like, all right. I saw the, saw the news break or whatever. It was like scoop on the Wall Street Journal. Scoop, exclusive scoop. Elon Musk sleeping with whatever, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, and I was like, okay, that's kind of interesting, I guess. Like, all right, got some TMZ shit. And, um, I was like, well, pretty sad for like, you know, the Wall Street, it was the Wall Street Journal. I feel pretty sad that that's like the Wall Street Journal's thing. But of course I get it. If I had that story, I'd, I'd publish it too. No, no doubt. Then he tweets out like the like the thing like not true and haven't had sex in months sigh. And I was like, ah, now another sad thing like first Wall Street Journal disappointed me.

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  Then Elon Musk disappointed me like, dude, I want my billionaires like being cool, not like, dude, that was like my MSN like away message, you know, just to cry for attention back in middle school or high school. It's like, oh, man, wouldn't be nice to get like, I wonder what a kiss feels like, you know, some shit like that. It's like, dude, lame. And then I was like, well, so did the Wall Street Journal just make that up? Because that's even lamer. So it was just like a lame sandwich that I was not into.

• 18:56Sam Parr?

  I just thought it was hilarious how he tweeted a picture of him and Sergey just hanging out. I enjoyed this drama. I'm here for it. I don't care about the cars. I don't care about the solar stuff. I just like this type of crap.

• 19:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, somebody had this great tweet. They were like, Elon Musk is like, you know, he's on some pirate shit. He's taking over companies like Twitter. He's trying to like conquer new lands like Mars. He's sleeping with his friends girlfriends. Like he's, he's on, he's on that pirate shit. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's true. That's cool. If true, but it sounds like, you know, maybe this one's not actually true.

• 19:30Sam Parr?

  What's this? What's this event?

• 19:32Shaan Puri?

  By the way, we forgot to say on the Milk Boys, they have like their beer, which I think is also like a big thing. Their Happy Dad like seltzer or beer, whatever the heck that is. Happy Dad is like everywhere on Instagram. Like, it's like the main brand.

• 19:45Sam Parr?

  I've seen a lot of people drink it. Yeah.

• 19:47Shaan Puri?

  I've seen a ton of people drink it. So I want to tell you some things about this event, and these are going to be kind of rapid fire little nuggets. You can choose to say the following. You could either say, that's stupid, and I'll simply move on. I won't defend it. You'll say, that's cool. I have nothing to add, and I'll simply move on. Or we could talk about any of these things. All right. So I go to this event in LA. My buddy Ramin, who we run our fund together, he hosts this event.

• 20:16Shaan Puri?

  And it's basically like athletes and big shot investors. So at this event, we're like, three or four owners of like sports teams. So these are basically like billionaires or billionaire families, like legacy families.

• 20:28Sam Parr?

  How did he get these people?

• 20:31Shaan Puri?

  They just wanted to come, I guess. I don't know. He just cold reached out that he's not paying anybody and it's a free event. So there's nothing, there's like no money to be made, but this is just like in-network. Then there's pro athletes, mostly retired athletes, but some active players, like, kind of like some guys from the Lakers, some guys from other, other teams that are younger guys, but then some older guys that are retired and they're like on to the next phase of their, their business life. And they maybe are doing content now. They got like a media brand or they're doing real estate or whatever. And so the idea was let's get together like 50 people from the world of sports and 50 people from the world of like tech and business and let's see what happens. So I went last year, I went this year again. And I have a couple of like little stories. So the first is, um, I'm going to tell you, there was one talk

• 21:15Shaan Puri?

  that was good. There was, it was like a bunch of talks on the day of the conference. Um, there was only one talk that I thought was good. And by the way, that's shitting on myself too. I was, I hosted a panel too. I didn't think was very good. Um, but the one was really good. It was basically lessons from billion dollar founders. So onstage was the CEO of Korda. So, uh, Korda, they do cap table management. They're a multi-billion dollar company. Um, something called, shoot, what was it? It's like a, a therapy app. The name will come to me. It's basically like Better Health. It's like a Better Hope, but it's not them. It's like some other competitor. Uh, another one, but basically they, they basically do like therapy and mental health, uh, uh, through telemedicine, like online. And, uh, and then there's another one that was like

• 21:59Shaan Puri?

  some hospital software, a Thelos. And then there was, uh, this most interesting one, just then they called Relativity Space. And by the way, you could basically tell, you know, I wouldn't say that the most interesting person at a conference is always the one who dresses differently. But somebody who's dressed very differently is almost always very interesting at these conferences. Uh, last year when I was there, I told you, I saw this kid who looked like a breakdancer wearing this like tie dye shirt with like a black stud earring. It looked different than every other, you know, suit in the room. And it was the founder of Bolt, who now has become a lot more famous because he like, you know, went on these Twitter tirades and Bolt is a multi-billion dollar company and all this stuff. But I met him there and invested in his company because I was like, this dude's just really interesting. So that happened again. This guy's the founder of Relativity Space. He's competing with Elon. His two competitors are Jeff Bezos

• 22:44Shaan Puri?

  and Elon Musk. Uh, like, you know, no big deal. I'm competing with the world's richest man and like second richest man, basically. Is this Tim Ellis? Tim Ellis, yeah. And so I'm just going to share with you two things. One is this dude's company is insane. So Relativity Space, what they do is they 3D print rockets. And then they send them into space. So basically, there is a huge, huge demand for rocketry. So but the ability to take satellites up to space to do, you know, some scientific missions, whatever. And right now SpaceX is like the number one, Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos' company is number two, and Relativity Space is number three. But they kind of have a differentiator, which is all those other companies like to build a rocket, they need like whatever hundreds of parts, like specialty parts. And they might 3D print individual parts, but like, the whole

• 23:28Shaan Puri?

  thing is like a very expensive, complex structure that where a million things can go wrong. Whereas these guys basically 3D print the entire rocket with only a couple extra parts. And, uh, and so because of that, they're like, you know, cheaper and whatever. He said this line, this throwaway line, he's like, so he's explaining, he's like, you know, our mission is to make humanity like humanity multi-planetary through 3D printing rockets. We're one of only two companies on Earth that has a mission of making the human race like multi multi-planetary. The other is SpaceX. He goes, the launch market today is eight billion a year. So eight billion gets spent launching things into space and is growing to 30 billion. Uh, there's really only three companies that possibly can serve this right now. Um, and he's like, you know, um, we,

• 24:09Shaan Puri?

  in the last three months, we have, we've sold over 1.2 billion in, uh, launch and launch sales. I was like, what?

• 24:18Sam Parr?

  Dude, and he started, he started the company when he was 25. He's 32 now.

• 24:22Shaan Puri?

  So he used to work at Jeff Bezos' company, Blue.

• 24:25Sam Parr?

  As an intern, his Wikipedia says, as an intern.

• 24:27Shaan Puri?

  And he was trying to do 3D printing there. He was like, hey, I think this is like one of the ways we can dramatically reduce the costs and complexity of rockets. And it was like, yeah, nice R and D, but like, it wasn't the main way they were doing things. So he left and he starts this thing. He goes, we have 850 employees, 500 are ex SpaceX. And I thought that was literally the funniest shit anybody could say. What kind of absurd statement is that? That's so amazing to me. Um, and he's like, you know, we have a launch site now. That was like the big progress last year. We have a launch site. So we're going to be doing our first big, like, uh, I don't know if our first big or next big launch there. Uh, there are only four launch sites in the country. None have been built since 1960, and we now have exclusive rights to one for the next 25 years. It's like,

• 25:12Shaan Puri?

  you know, he's basically, because in this talk, he's like, what makes a company worth so much? Because people will see me. Okay, I'm a young guy. I'm a young guy. Company's not that old. And it's worth how many billions of dollars? Like, that's crazy. And he's like, well, here's what we did. He's like, We hopped into an emerging wave. So we basically like there's surging demand for for going in for missions into space for satellites and more.

• 25:37Shaan Puri?

  There's not enough supply. There's basically like not much competition. Everybody's sort of scared away. So in actuality, like just going into the space, we're not competing with most companies. The next one is, you know, we basically we're like defensibility. We have a launch site. There's only four of these. None have been built in like, you know, 60 years. And, um, and we have, we have one of them. And so like, you know,

• 25:59Sam Parr?

  What's this have to do with?

• 26:00Shaan Puri?

  If you wanted to do this, it's hard.

• 26:01Sam Parr?

  What's this have to do with the billionaire lessons?

• 26:04Shaan Puri?

  Well, these are lessons. What does it take to build a billion dollar company? These are the core elements like defensibility. That's, you know, that's one of their moats. The next one is like this, like this extreme imbalance in supply and demand.

• 26:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, how lame must you feel if you're like a software guy like Karta, like following this guy?

• 26:23Sam Parr?

  You know what I mean?

• 26:23Shaan Puri?

  They each had to say their thing. So I'll tell you what each of them said. So this is what this guy was saying. All right. The next guy, the telehealth guy, or this not telehealth, sorry, the hospital software guy. Here's what he said. Uh, you'll like this. His was simpler. He's like, he said, yeah, like, agree with all that stuff. Here's how we thought about it.

• 26:42Shaan Puri?

  We need to have 500 salespeople that can sell a million dollars worth of product a year. Or 250, uh, oh, sorry, 500 that can sell half a million a year or 250 that can sell a million dollar as their sales quota per year. So we just work backwards from that. All right. What features, products and like people do we need to like let a salesperson like get 500 salespeople that could sell half a million dollars a year of like sales quota. Like first, is that even possible? Can the, can this market support that? Yes, the market is very big. Hospitals spend a lot of money in healthcare. And in our category, they spend more than, you know, much more than that. Okay, cool. So it's possible. Then he's like, all of our product team, they know they work for sales.

• 27:26Shaan Puri?

  And I thought that was very different than what most people say. He's like Silicon Valley loves to preach that like product is king, product is the god. You just need a great product. He was like, we build great product if it's going to help us sell better. And like, we build great customer support so that it helps us sell better. Everything is in service of sales. So I really like that guy's kind of like one liner approach. The Carter guy basically was like, You know, we, he's like, here's how I think about it. He's like, you need, you need to, basically, he's like, you want to find a multi-billion dollar wave if you're going to be a billion dollar company. He's like, so find an emerging wave. So for example, the telehealth guy, his is that, his was that, uh, mental health coverage was now required. So like a bunch

• 28:10Shaan Puri?

  of, I don't know if it's like, uh, insurance companies or companies, they were now requiring that like, uh, mental health is part of a healthcare package. He's like, that changed. He goes, second thing that changed was, mental health is getting de-stigmatized. You're seeing all kinds of famous people talking about mental health. It's not like this taboo subject like

• 28:27Sam Parr?

  I caught inflections. So there's like regulatory inflections, which is like, all right, now you could do telemedicine. That's a new thing. There's, uh, cultural inflections, which is, wow, it's not weird to talk in front of your camera anymore and like make a video. There's technology, technological inflections, which is like, oh, wow, our phones all have GPSs. So you want to like, look for different inflections.

• 28:48Shaan Puri?

  Right. Exactly. That's exactly what he was saying. And the last one he mentioned was like, the pandemic was another inflection because it forced everybody, if they needed a doctor visit to do a, a video one. So it's like, uh, everybody had to try it for this two-year period. And so, video visits and telemedicine, now the hospitals know they need to have it. Uh, doctors know they need to be willing to do this and patients have like tried it once. Uh, all right. The next thing he goes, he goes, team, he goes, billion dollar companies are almost never bootstrapped. So you kind of have to know that going in, like, if you're going to build a billion dollar company, you almost certainly are going to raise money because you're going to hire A-plus players. They need to have an A-plus mission. And secondly, you need to have a high velocity customer acquisition model. And I just thought that phrase is very good. High velocity customer acquisition model. It's something

• 29:32Shaan Puri?

  you could just kind of ask yourself, do I or don't I have a high velocity customer acquisition model? Every business wants one pretty much. Um, and you got to say like, okay, what's our current velocity? So at what rate are we currently adding customers? How high would it need to be for us to get there? And like, what are we going to do to make this, this little wheel spin faster? Um,

• 29:50Sam Parr?

  All right. But let me ask this. Those four guys, it was four people, right? Four guys?

• 29:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:55Sam Parr?

  Were they A, tired and exhausted looking? And B, do you think they were happy?

• 30:03Shaan Puri?

  All right, we'll give you the scale. The mental health guy honestly looked not tired and happy. He was like fit. He didn't have like crazy bags under his eyes. He like spoke with energy and he was like sitting upright.

• 30:14Sam Parr?

  That makes sense. That checks out.

• 30:17Shaan Puri?

  Carter guy, he looked calm, like he didn't look like he was facing death, but he looked like he like had been facing death for some extended period of time.

• 30:26Sam Parr?

  He only has five lives.

• 30:27Shaan Puri?

  Kind of hunched over. Yeah, like, you know, I could tell he wasn't in bad shape at all, but you know, like, didn't look like, you know, he was springing around with energy necessarily.

• 30:37Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 30:38Shaan Puri?

  Space guy, that guy looked like he just walked, you know, it looked like he just walked out of a room. You know, like those scenes in Game of Thrones were like, oh shoot, we're going to war and the guy like gets up and out of his bed scramble like four nude women and he's like, oh, okay. Yeah, let me just go do my next thing. That's how this guy looked. He had the swagger of a guy in Game of Thrones, who was just sleeping with four women, four beautiful women. He had the Tyran Lannister energy. He, and that's when he was like, yeah, billion dollars in sales in the last three months. And like, you know, we have 500 ex SpaceX employees. Yeah, they leave Elon to come.

• 31:12Sam Parr?

  So he seemed like he was happy?

• 31:13Shaan Puri?

  That's the energy he was carrying. He looked happy.

• 31:16Sam Parr?

  Damn. Well, fuck these guys, man, right?

• 31:21Shaan Puri?

  I was sitting with him at lunch and he was asking questions to everybody else. And like, that was one of the most, that was one of the coolest parts of this event. I don't know how they did it, but nobody had an ego. Like everybody who was there, I don't know if they just filtered people out who had egos, or they're just like, everybody got the vibe, which is like, everybody here is equally valuable. Be curious about others. You're not just like the star and all these people are used to being the star. It's like, yeah, you're, you own that NBA team. You own that football team or like, you're like this superstar, like, you know, the guy on my panel with me, I think he had like, you know, $90 million, he had a 90, he just signed like a $90 million contract. He's like one of the highest paid NFL players. And the guy was like, dude, I'm just here to learn, man. I would love to, you know, subscribe to your newsletter and blah, blah, blah. I'm like,

• 32:02Shaan Puri?

  wow, this is incredible. You are going to go so far in life because you are obviously skilled and successful, but you're so humble. It's crazy.

• 32:10Sam Parr?

  Damn, how many people were there?

• 32:13Shaan Puri?

  About a hundred, hundred twenty, maybe.

• 32:14Sam Parr?

  Romaine organized this?

• 32:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So basically Romaine and then Tribe, which is like a VC fund.

• 32:23Shaan Puri?

  Tribe was one of the hosts and then TPG, which is like one of the biggest private equity companies in the world.

• 32:27Sam Parr?

  Dude, why is this guy working with you?

• 32:28Shaan Puri?

  They manage like a hundred twenty billion dollar. What?

• 32:30Sam Parr?

  Why is this guy working with you?

• 32:33Shaan Puri?

  Bro, I always have that Tyrion Lannister energy regardless of what my situation is.

• 32:39Sam Parr?

  Holy crap. This guy's amazing. Well, that's badass. I was in LA.

• 32:43Shaan Puri?

  I was in LA. I'm gonna give you a couple of other things that I took away from this. Ben, so Ben Levy, who's not producer Ben, my business partner Ben. He has a superpower that we talk about. Now, have I told you about his superpower?

• 32:56Sam Parr?

  His superpower to me is people just tell him shit and he just smiles and laughs and then he uses it against them. If, if he needs to.

• 33:06Shaan Puri?

  Fucking trust magnet. Yeah. I don't know what he does. Everybody trusts him. Like me and you, I've known you for, I don't know how long, like eight years. We spent time together. We've gone through ups and downs. Adversity, we've, I've seen each other, whatever. We know each other very well. You might have met Ben twice in your life. But even you will be like, if, if there's something interesting or something going on, you like text Ben, like do my new business doing awesome or something like that. And he just has that pull with people. Everybody wants to talk to Ben. Everybody wants to tell him how things are going.

• 33:35Sam Parr?

  So enthusiastic.

• 33:37Shaan Puri?

  I don't know what it is, but I saw his super on blast. So I'm gonna tell you a little story here. And I don't even know how much we can take away from this. I'm just gonna kind of explain that it happened just so that, just because I think it was amazing. And because I think that if there is a way to learn this skill, everybody should learn it. I'm trying to learn it myself. So I'm gonna talk out loud about it. So we go to this event. At the event, I get a text from Ben. Ben sitting across the room. We, we split up at the event. We don't always just sit together and just only talk to each other because that's kind of defeats the purpose. And he's like, yo, the dude next to you is awesome. And I go, who? He goes, he goes, that's Chris Johnson. That's this guy who he trains like some of the best NBA players on the planet. And I was like, oh, really? Like I'm a big NBA fan. I was like, I don't know this guy. Like he must follow him on Instagram. Like Ben's just like even deeper down the rabbit hole.

• 34:23Shaan Puri?

  So I was like, okay, cool. But I was like, I don't know what to do with that information. Like, I guess like if the opportunity kind of presents itself, I'll, I'll go introduce myself. Like, you know, I have nothing to, you know, I don't know how to force my way in. He seems busy right now, but okay. Ben does something where I don't know, I don't know what he did, but he approached this guy. Ben approached this guy and he starts talking to him and I, I think two things happened. I think number one, in a room full of the guys who are usually on screen. This guy who himself is obviously like a heavy hitter in his space. The average Joe did not know who he was, right? Like every tech nerd who was in there doesn't know who this guy is. Even people who like sports probably didn't know that this guy's like the, you know, the skills trainer for all these top guys.

• 35:04Shaan Puri?

  And I'm talking about like this guy will train with Dwyane Wade and LeBron James and like other guys like that, like the top of the top. And Ben goes up to him, he's like, dude, I follow you, man. I love your videos. It gives him a compliment. They start chatting a little bit. I don't know what Ben said next, but I think I, I'm going to skip to the end and we'll fill in the middle. The end is the event's over, everybody's leaving, people going to the airport. This guy comes up to me and he, he's, I'm talking to Ben, we're, we're figuring out if we're going to get our Uber. He goes, I knew I was coming to this event for a reason, but I didn't know why. This man was the reason.

• 35:36Sam Parr?

  No way.

• 35:38Shaan Puri?

  And I go, what? And I was like, what do you mean? Like, what did he do? He's like, I don't even know, man. He goes, this, I am so happy I've met this guy. Ben, I will always remember our conversation. He goes, he said something, he goes like, he goes, he's like, he's, he's like, bro, brother, anything you need, anything you need. I got you. And I was like, and he, this is not the type of guy, he's not schmoozing. This is not, this is a guy where when words come out of his mouth, they mean something. And I'm just like, I'm just sitting there, I'm not even laughing. I'm not even asking questions. I'm speechless. I get this look on my face like, what the fuck did you do, Ben? How did you do this again? And, and Ben, still he's just smiling. He doesn't even say anything back to this guy. He's just smiling and I go, I go, what?

• 36:22Shaan Puri?

  I go, what did he, I go, what happened, man? Why? He goes, I guess, I don't even, he goes, I don't even know. He doesn't even know the spell he's under. He goes, I don't even know, but he goes, you know, I'm a trainer, man. I work with athletes. When they need something, they call me. When they're, when they're in a slump, they call me. When they're trying to get better, they call me. When they want their next contract, they call me. I help these guys get paid. I'm always helping. I drive to this guy's house. I drive here, I fly there, I do this, I do that. I'm always pouring into other people. He goes, Ben, you filled me up. You poured into me today.

• 36:49Sam Parr?

  What the hell, man?

• 36:50Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, what just happened? I was so amazed. And the guy goes, the guy goes, when are you flying out? And Ben's like, tomorrow. He goes, come train with us tomorrow. Ben goes with him the next morning to his facility and does a session. The guy spends two hours correcting Ben's form. There's other NBA players there. He's locked into Ben. Ben sends me this video. He's wearing like a fucking weighted vest. He's got a glove on his hand because this guy like invented a shooting glove. He made an experience out of it for Ben and I really appreciate like this guy didn't have to do that. That was incredibly nice of this guy. He was just very like, I don't know. He was very like, you could see why this guy works with so many people because there's something magnetic about this guy's personality.

• 37:32Sam Parr?

  What's his name?

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  But two magnets met, dude. And I don't know how, I don't know what Ben's superpower is. I don't know how he does this consistently. These sorts of things happen where people are just very attracted to him in this way. I don't know what it is, but he's amazing.

• 37:46Sam Parr?

  It's, you know, who else is really good at that? Me.

• 37:50Shaan Puri?

  Who?

• 37:51Sam Parr?

  I'm fucking good at that. I'm good at that.

• 37:55Shaan Puri?

  You are good at that.

• 37:56Sam Parr?

  I'm not that good, but I'm good. Yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  This data is wrong every freaking time.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Whoa, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  HubSpot, grow better.

• 38:20Shaan Puri?

  So yesterday, we'll talk about it in a second, but yesterday I did an interview with Martin Shkreli. And, um, and I wanted it to go well. I was like, yeah, okay, you know, I think people could be interested in this. Let me do a good job. And I'm five minutes into the interview and I find myself doing the like bullshit socialize. I'm like, ha, ha, ha, yeah. I'm like smiling, I'm laughing. I'm like, so that must've been hard for you to blah, blah, blah. And what would you say? I'm just like falling into some fucking like script. Like, I don't know what, I like became some character, this like generic podcast character. And literally the thought in my head was Sam would never do this. Sam was like, he's, he, he said something he was like, he was talking about like, yeah, how he like, he's like, yeah, dude, I, I like got a contraband cell phone.

• 39:05Shaan Puri?

  I was on the internet the whole time I was in prison. And I was like, and I was like, I started and I was like, dude, if Sam.

• 39:10Sam Parr?

  Well, no, you know, you know what I would ask, right?

• 39:13Shaan Puri?

  What?

• 39:13Sam Parr?

  What websites were you using? Like, what were you, what were you going?

• 39:16Shaan Puri?

  You would have been like, wait, what? How do you get it in there? Do you like get it like you have to put it between your butt cheeks? And like, you would have said something like that to kind of disarm him, to get him to share an interesting nugget. And you would have just genuinely been like, wait, what the hell? Like, hold on, no. And you would have just reacted like a normal person rather than like, that's fascinating. You know, um, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on blah, blah, blah. It's like, dude, that's podcaster versus real person. And so I was, I like literally switched into Sam mode and I started being like, I was like, what are you doing? And then he shares this hilarious thing. He's, he goes, yeah, dude, and you, you, you would have been like, how much was it? I was like, how much you get the phone for? He's like, dude, he's crazy. He's like, you have to buy these things for like thousands of dollars. He's like, I paid fifteen thousand for one phone.

• 39:57Shaan Puri?

  And I thought, shit, this phone must be made out of gold because he's like, but you have to do it because to get the phone in, they got to grease. You know, one guy to get one guy to get another guy, you gotta bribe five guys to get this in. And so like, you know, you gotta pay that big. And he's like, most guys, I was like, so what do you use it for? Exactly your question. He goes, he goes, yeah, most guys just get used for porn. He's like, he's like, but me, I'm in, I'm on GitHub and like Khan Academy and porn. I did that too. But like, you know, I was the only guys using this for like advanced math also, you know, under the covers, listening to this. And that little magic moment that came out.

• 40:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was great.

• 40:28Shaan Puri?

  It's like, that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen unless you kind of act the way that you act, that Ben acts where it's like, yours is a little different. Yours is like, you get to like real talk really fast. Ben just kind of like seems so curious and earnest. I think that people really like, they like how genuinely interested he is in their life and how he, how helpful he tries to be without like seeking anything or talking about himself.

• 40:52Sam Parr?

  Have you read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People?

• 40:57Shaan Puri?

  I read like the first chapter where it was like. The people's favorite word in the English language is their name. And I was like, oh, this is great. And I never read it again.

• 41:03Sam Parr?

  Dude, that book, that book like changed my life. And in one of the chapters, he talks about how there was a story of a man like sitting with the, with the young guy and the young guy like wanted something like a job or something from the, from the older guy. But the young guy, you know, used Dale Carnegie's practices and basically like he just listened to him the entire time. And you know, the older guy did all the talking and at the end of the, the end of the conversation, the older guy goes, wow, this was the best conversation I've ever had with anyone ever. And the younger guy was like, well, I didn't say a word. So, but like that, that's funny how that works. And the older guy goes like, you know, you should, we're friends now. You should come in like apply at our company, you know, like things like that. And that like changed my life when I learned, when I learned that strategy. And so when I want to get stuff from people,

• 41:46Sam Parr?

  I usually amp them up. So I'll do one of two things. One, I'll either insult them a little bit. Like if I know that their business is doing above a hundred million in revenue, I'll be like, that's, that's a nice little business. What do you guys do? Like 50 million? Like, and, and then they're going to like tell me the exact, so I'll like make them a little, or the thing that I do more often than not is I just encourage them like crazy like, wow, you did that? You are so amazing. You're my hero, dude. How did you do that? You know, and they'll like start like gushing and I'll just make them feel really good about themselves. This sounds manipulative, which I guess it is, but I don't think it's a bad manipulative. But yeah, it works.

• 42:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. The way I put it is like you go to these events to make connections with new people, right? That's the point. Or we wouldn't go to an event if it wasn't for that. But it's kind of hard to do that. I find myself like feeling uncomfortable in a lot of those situations, you know, like, okay, I need to introduce myself to this person. I, I don't like quickly, you know, like, are they interested in me? Am I interested in them? There's very much like a, like a dating component to that, to this, like a speed dating component to these events. And you sort of see their eyes start to wander. It's like, oh, they're clearly like looking for the next conversation or like, you know, the, the bathroom or some excuse to get out of this sort of thing. Or you're like, or you find yourself tuning out because you're like, oh shoot, I'm just kind of judging them like really quickly. Like, everybody's got something to offer. I just want to, I, I should be in the mode of like finding out what that is rather than like,

• 42:58Shaan Puri?

  looking at their badge and trying to figure out like, are you, you know, valuable at this conference or not? That's sort of a stupid way to do it. But like, I am fascinated with Ben and this guy, Chris, their, their ability to connect was so strong, like. The way Chris talked to me too, I felt like a friend of his within two minutes. And it's not because he was manipulating me. No, he's just like, that's his energy he carries around. So if I think about why has he been able to connect with these athletes, everybody wants to connect with them. Everybody wants to connect with LeBron James. Everybody wants to connect with Kevin Durant. Everybody wants to connect with Dwyane Wade. How does this guy do it? Well, obviously he's got to be good at his job, but that's not enough. You also have to have the people skills. He told me a story. I think I could share this on here. By the way, he wants to come on the pod. I'll tell him to come on. He showed, he told me the story. So I don't know if you pay, you probably don't pay attention to this, but.

• 43:43Sam Parr?

  Did any of the people you met listen?

• 43:46Shaan Puri?

  Oh yeah, there were some people who listened to the pod.

• 43:48Sam Parr?

  I've got them.

• 43:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, not, not a ton, I would say, but like definitely a few. One of the franchise owners listens, which is kind of.

• 43:56Sam Parr?

  Really?

• 43:57Shaan Puri?

  And so, or like he had listened. I don't know if he's a super regular, but um.

• 44:03Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So he was, so basically this guy was talking about the trainer, he was talking about like uh. Fear. And so he, so he was like, somehow we got on the topic of fear. He's like, yeah, man, I was like, I work with these guys in the gym. They can hit like, you know, whatever 80, 90, 93 pointers in a row, like 80, 90%. But in the game, it's obviously lower and sure it's the speed is there. The defense is a little tighter, but like. Take free throws. There's no defense. There's no speed. Still, the guys in the gym perform one way and in the game they perform another. It's because there's a huge mental component to this. He's like, so I train their mental just as much as their physical. And he's like, you know, um. LeBron recently went to play at this thing called the Drew League. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but it's basically like. It's in downtown LA. It's like in the hood, basically Drew League.

• 44:47Shaan Puri?

  LeBron, I don't think has ever played and it's usually like, kind of like former players or like fringe guys, journeyman, guys who want to make a league. They're very good at basketball, but they're not like stars. And LeBron was like, I'm thinking about going and dropping in and just playing. And and this trainer was like, that would be awesome, man. That would like mean a lot like I think it would mean a lot to the people. I think you would you would have fun. It's a legacy thing like just it's like one time Kevin Durant went to Rucker Park and he played in Rucker Park. He dropped like 50 points or something like that. And the crowd like mobbed him. They just like ended the game because the crowd just rushed him because he was being so awesome. And he just like hit a three from from half court, basically. And like, he just gets mobbed by people. It's like this very memorable thing. And so the guy was like, you should do it. But like LeBron has a lot to lose at something like this, right? LeBron's already one of the best players in the world, already one

• 45:32Shaan Puri?

  of the richest, most famous athletes in the world. So he doesn't need the fame. He's not going to get any money. He's not going to get better like just by playing in this one game with people who are worse than him. Like, um, and there's plenty of things that could go wrong. Like, he could get hurt. He could get dunked on or embarrassed in some way, crushed over in some way, like, you know, that sort of thing. Or he could just like miss shots and like, ah, man, he went and it was like, dude, you couldn't even like, you weren't you ain't all that. Like, you know, it wasn't like hype. So he had something to lose. And, um, but he decided to go. And then the trainer was he like pulls up his cellphone. It's like the NBA All-Star game is his iMessage. Like, just one star after another. He's like, he clicks the text message with him. He's like, he told, he's like, I told him, your victory is in your vulnerability. Like this, you felt you were vulnerable. That's why this was

• 46:16Shaan Puri?

  a win for you. Because he went, it was amazing. Everybody loved it. He played Super Bowl, dropped 40 points. And like, it was awesome. Uh, and the clips go viral on Instagram and people really respect him for it. And he goes, you remember that your victory is in your vulnerability. And he looked around the circle. He was just like, remember that. And all of us were like nodding like, yes, sir. I was like, I will, I what do I need to be? I will take my clothes off right now and be more vulnerable if it helps me be like LeBron and be like, you know, like, but he was really inspiring telling these stories. And so I love meeting people like this. I love hearing stories like this. And I love getting these golden nuggets, these little things you can take away that like you can use in your own little, your own life.

• 46:52Sam Parr?

  You know what my takeaway when I hear this shit is, is, damn, these guys are cool. I want to be fucking cool. Like, like, I want to stick. How the fuck do you have to be cool? I just Google it Amazon, how to be cool. Where's this book? I need one of these books. I didn't want, I want men to want me. Like,

• 47:08Shaan Puri?

  I want to be idolized by young man.

• 47:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah. How do you be cool, dude? Where's that book on how to be cool? I want that. This guy read it. I want to read it, too. That's crazy. There's books on everything.

• 47:18Shaan Puri?

  I want to read that book, too.

• 47:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I'm so envious when I hear people like this. I'm like, damn, they got a good shtick.

• 47:25Shaan Puri?

  Let me tell you one other little nugget here. Do memorable things. I wrote this down. All right, what does that mean? I went to the conference last year. I went this year. In between, I've like launched a business. I've, you know, the podcast has grown, blah, blah, blah. Guess what the number one thing people remembered me for at the conference this year?

• 47:41Sam Parr?

  Like e-commerce stuff? Oh, last year, this year?

• 47:45Shaan Puri?

  This year. When they, when they're like, oh, I remember you talked about X.

• 47:49Sam Parr?

  Probably investing.

• 47:52Shaan Puri?

  The Michael Jordan house thing that we talked about on the podcast.

• 47:54Sam Parr?

  Wait, really?

• 47:55Shaan Puri?

  The idea of buying MJ's house. So two things happened. That went kind of semi-viral in the sports and sports media and sports agent world. People shared that clip. Like, remember the Twitter clip has like 100,000 plus views? People shared that with important people.

• 48:11Sam Parr?

  I think like the TikTok thing was like millions.

• 48:14Shaan Puri?

  Maybe. It got shared with a lot of people. They were like, oh, I remember you were going to buy Michael Jordan's house. What happened with that? And they were like, it's like, dude, you remember that from over a year ago? And like, I've done a bunch of other things way more seriously. That was just one brainstorm with Sam about this idea. Like, that's crazy. So that was the first thing. People were remembering me for that. Then, then we, while we were there, Ben took a call to potentially invest in this company. And, and I'm like, cool. What's this guy's background? And the guy's done many things. Ben goes, you remember the Taco Bell Mexican pizza dish? I was like, kind of, I guess. Like, yeah, I know it exists. He goes, they took it away off the menu and people like, like were outraged on social media. And this guy got like a million people to sign the petition to bring it back.

• 48:59Shaan Puri?

  And they brought it back.

• 49:00Sam Parr?

  That's what he was known for.

• 49:02Shaan Puri?

  And well, that's what Ben remembered. And like, this guy's done a bunch of interesting things. And he had like three, this guy had three stories like that. And once you have like three stories like that, it's like, all right, I need to know this guy. And I feel like you do that really well, too. Where you have these little things where it's like, ah, the hot dog stand like calls, you know, Sam's Wieners is big as a baby's arm. Or it's like, you know, the Pawn Star, Pawn Stars guy, the pawn shop thing. Or like, I feel like you have these things that are like that. These little nuggets or stories that are like. They're memorable, but not for the thing you actually spent years of your life building.

• 49:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but dude, the problem is is that I'm like trading on old stories. I need to do some cooler shit now. I'm like, you know, we gotta like do some stuff. I gotta do something.

• 49:43Shaan Puri?

  Well, I I think that's the thing is like, do more memorable shit. Because these punch above their weight. You know, they don't take that long. They're not that hard to do, but like.

• 49:52Sam Parr?

  I was gonna do like a, the other day I thought maybe I would like spend three weeks riding around on a motorcycle. And I was like, that's lame. I already did that. I gotta, I gotta think of some, I gotta do something cool. You know, I think maybe I'll have kids next year. I could do something. I gotta go out with a bang.

• 50:11Shaan Puri?

  I don't think you understand what I'm talking about.

• 50:16Sam Parr?

  Let's do something cool, man. We gotta do something cool.

• 50:20Shaan Puri?

  Let's do cool shit. Yeah, I think there's a bunch of things that would be cool to do, but they don't make any sense. And what I'm learning is that those things do make sense just on a different time scale. And you gotta like, in a different weird way. And having the, having that little collateral of like cool shit that you could talk about is worth it.

• 50:38Sam Parr?

  I thought about walking across the country. And I was like, that'd be, that'd be pretty sick. And then I kind of like thought about like playing it out. And I'm like, huh, it's pretty far. It might take like six months. Like, I don't know, like, you just listen to audiobooks all day. Like, I don't know, like, you know what I mean? I gotta think of some, something like, kind of cool.

• 51:01Shaan Puri?

  It's gotta be authentic, right? Like, extreme for extreme sake doesn't work because again, you don't know if these are gonna pay off or when they're gonna pay off. So you gotta do it where the, the, the act of doing it or talking about it or like, that has to be itself enough for you.

• 51:16Sam Parr?

  I was like, maybe I'll just like use Twitter and like see if I can hitchhike from like New York to California. I don't, I gotta figure out something. I, I'm gonna figure something out, but this stupid podcast, I gotta be here twice a week to record. It holds me back. I thought about walking across the country, but I gotta like, gotta carry around this lame ass mic for this stupid podcast. But I gotta figure something out.

• 51:40Shaan Puri?

  That's hilarious. Yeah, let's do another topic.

• 51:42Sam Parr?

  You remember how I tweeted out that thing about Hassan? How do you pronounce his last name? Minhaj? The comedian? I tweeted out this thing that basically I like saw him walk by me and I went and grabbed him and goes, "What's up, man?" And it wasn't him and it was really embarrassing.

• 51:57Sam Parr?

  You know, I've never like really talked with him. Did you give him my number?

• 52:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:02Shaan Puri?

  He texted me. He was like, "This is funny." He's like, "Give me Sam's number and I'll text him and then I send him your number."

• 52:08Sam Parr?

  So I'm getting dinner with him and it's gonna be the first time I didn't get to meet him when you did that podcast. But I thought that was also a cool example of just like these cool things just happen when you, when you take a lot of chances.

• 52:18Shaan Puri?

  Would you say that maybe your victory was in your vulnerability here? By sharing this embarrassing story?

• 52:25Sam Parr?

  By sharing this embarrassing story where I look like a racist. Yeah.

• 52:29Shaan Puri?

  All right. Your victory was in your vulnerability, baby.

• 52:32Sam Parr?

  And it was, you hooked it up. So I appreciate that. Yeah, it was, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go hang out with him. You, you guys are like homies, right?

• 52:40Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, I really like him. We, uh, you better be funny, dude.

• 52:44Sam Parr?

  I'm not.

• 52:45Shaan Puri?

  So isn't that like, you gotta go one way or the other? If you're gonna hang out with a comedian, you've either gotta be like funny or just like blatantly unfunny.

• 52:54Sam Parr?

  Is he funny when you're like just hanging out with him?

• 52:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's a funny dude.

• 52:58Sam Parr?

  Shit. I'm not prepared at all. I gotta go read a book. This is why I need that cool book.

• 53:03Shaan Puri?

  Fuck it. Try to be hot instead.

• 53:05Sam Parr?

  No, I can't do that either.

• 53:07Shaan Puri?

  You're closer to hot than funny.

• 53:10Sam Parr?

  That's still ain't far. I'm average at both. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm average at best. Like it.

• 53:17Shaan Puri?

  All right, Rick, try to be rich instead.

• 53:19Sam Parr?

  Dude, I'm still a six out of 10 on that, too.

• 53:23Sam Parr?

  I'm just like a six across.

• 53:24Shaan Puri?

  Panic of meeting, the panic of meeting, uh, famous people is so funny to me.

• 53:31Shaan Puri?

  Like, I just think it's like a hilarious thing that happens when people, people be funny, people meet famous people. Their instinct is like. To just like throw all good common sense out the window and start behaving like an idiot.

• 53:43Sam Parr?

  Dude, it just sucks being a seven at everything. You know what I mean? I'm just a seven at everything, so.

• 53:48Shaan Puri?

  Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the seven.

• 53:52Sam Parr?

  A jack of all trades, a master of none. I'm just this fucking seven. Neither like, it just doesn't work out.

• 54:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but you're a hard seven though.

• 54:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm a hard seven. Alright, that's the pod. We'll talk to y'all later.