What’s truly going on inside DOGE?

Episode 677: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) go inside what’s happening with DOGE. — Show Notes: (0:00) The wild story of Iron Mountain (17:39) Our take on DOGE (28:20) Government contract side quest (33:14) Elon vs Sam Altman PPV (39:16) How does Elon never get tired tho? (48:23) Life in situ (58:09) Casting call: $100K to the new MFM field correspondent — Links: • “The Many Lives of Iron Mountain” - https://tinyurl.com/t4drtpdb • “How the Economic Machine Works” - https://tinyurl.com/ydp966p9 • “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order” - https://tinyurl.com/2evfs6bd — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Dude, this vault, this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat. It's worth more than Pinterest. It's worth more than Twitter as a company. Isn't that crazy?

• 0:18Sam Parr?

  All right, we're gonna get a little current event-y, which we don't often, but I love current events. So I want to talk about a current event. So was it at last night Elon did this thing where he was like in Trump's office with like his kid, like crawling all over him, climbing up on him, which is kind of funny. And he told this story about a mine where all the government files were. Did you hear what he said?

• 0:42Shaan Puri?

  I didn't hear what he said. I saw a photo of this place, this like underground, somebody said, oh, it's the bureaucratic Gringotts from Harry Potter. It's like this underground bank vault.

• 0:53Sam Parr?

  So Elon said something that I feel like it was like an offhanded comment, but it's actually led me down this rabbit hole. Basically, they were asking him about how he was like getting rid of all these jobs. And he was like, yeah, I want to like actually retire more people. But I was told that I can only retire 10,000 people a month. And I was asking, well, why is that? And he said, well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual, meaning it's literally on paper and it's written down on a piece of paper and then it goes down a mine. There's literally a limestone mine where all the paperwork for retired people who want to retire is where it's stored. And so in order to actually make this work, the speed that we can move, the limiting factor, is the speed at which the line shaft elevator can actually move down.

• 1:38Sam Parr?

  Like, and you hear this story and you're like, what the hell are you talking about, man? And so I went down a rabbit hole and I had to figure this out. So can I tell you a little story about not just this mine, but this whole company that operates around this? So basically in the 1920s, there is this guy who grew mushrooms. And I guess in order to grow mushrooms in the part of America where he was growing mushrooms, he had to grow them in a cave. And so he was the mushroom king of America. At one point, he was the largest creator or grower of mushrooms in America. He was this German immigrant and he was kind of like this like funny guy where like his advertisements, he called himself the mushroom king, whatever. And he had to rent a cave and grow mushrooms.

• 2:23Sam Parr?

  And eventually he bought a cave and that's where he grew mushrooms. And this cave that he bought was massive. It was a huge cave. And for some reason, starting in the 1950s, post-World War II,

• 2:34Sam Parr?

  those damn Europeans started undercutting them and started selling cheaper mushrooms. And he was like, "My mushroom business is going to go under. This is not going to work. I gotta figure out what to do." And so he bought a bank vault door that was $20,000 in 1950, and he installed it in his cave. He took out the mushrooms and he installed this bank vault door. And he went to a local bank and was like, "Hey, you guys have a lot of paperwork. You've got a lot of files that you have to store. I have the safest place on earth to store this paperwork. You wanna like make a business deal?" And so he's changed his business and he started this thing called Iron Mountain. And it was called Iron Mountain because it was literally in like a mine that was like,

• 3:15Sam Parr?

  they would use the, I don't know how this all works, but they would use like the rocks to make like iron. And he grew this thing like crazy. And so basically this company, it's called Iron Mountain. Google Iron Mountain market cap.

• 3:29Shaan Puri?

  Iron Mountain Inc. is a $30 billion company. Wow.

• 3:34Sam Parr?

  So this company, I looked it up, since the year 2000, they have created a billion dollars at least, or roughly, per year in free cash flow. And they now own something like, I think it was something like 80 million square feet of storage. And so they have everything. So it could be like Princess Diana's will is in there. But it's like Sony, the music company Sony, the record label Sony, has all of their masters recordings, like literally like the tape stored in Iron Mountain. But their biggest customers is like an insurance company in Connecticut, who had been in business for 100 years. They, for some reason, legal reasons, they have to keep their paper files.

• 4:18Sam Parr?

  They have to save them for something like 75 years.

• 4:21Shaan Puri?

  This is nuts, dude. So they're just a giant, they're just like a physical vault for documents. It says Enterprise Information Management Services, founded in 1951. So it's just a giant vault. And they're like, we will protect your files, will protect your paperwork.

• 4:37Sam Parr?

  Exactly, but it's huge. So literally they have caves and he like would joke that it's an atomic bomb shelter. But that wasn't really a joke. They actually have a whole bunch of decommissioned atomic bomb structures as their vaults. And so, and they do this because if you, if you are like, for example, WWE is one of their customers. And they have every single time they've literally like physically filmed a fight, like a, like a, an event.

• 5:05Shaan Puri?

  Match.

• 5:05Sam Parr?

  The match, they store it and they have all these tapes, which is like, sounds like, okay, that's just like a small example. But they have other examples where like.

• 5:12Shaan Puri?

  Eight year old me would have broke in there so excited to just go to the vault of all WWE matches ever.

• 5:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but they also have like billions of dollars worth of art. So if you're a museum and you have extra art that you need to store, you're going to go to Iron Mountain because you know it's like real, like safe.

• 5:29Shaan Puri?

  It's one place or they have a bunch of these?

• 5:31Sam Parr?

  They have dozens and dozens of places. So I think they have 80.

• 5:35Shaan Puri?

  Caves, like, don't caves literally like cave in? Like, why, why not just a building? What's wrong? Like building with guys with guns. Why not?

• 5:42Sam Parr?

  Because it has a low moisture. So it's like, it's like, it's good for paper. And a bunch of reasons like that, but it's also like literally safe. So like a cave is actually, you know, I don't know how this works, but it's actually safer in terms of like there being an earthquake or there being an atomic bomb.

• 5:58Shaan Puri?

  When someone just gives me one scientific fact, like just like a minor, if you were just like, yeah, the humidity coefficient is, is lower. I'd be, all right, all right, I don't need to hear more. Like, I'm just like so satisfied. As long as I know there's any scientific basis for something, I'll just accept it, the argument in full. It's the, uh, there was a Harvard study that has the same effect on me.

• 6:20Sam Parr?

  Exactly. It's, and I was reading this and it was by the New Yorker and there was like all, like it, it was hard to comprehend how like epic this thing is now.

• 6:28Shaan Puri?

  This is the thing that stores the government stuff or no, it's separate business?

• 6:30Sam Parr?

  Yes. So let's get to the government stuff. So he said, there's a limestone mine where this is all stored. So he kind of like dismissed it because it was a mine, but that's actually important. But the federal government is a customer of Iron Mountain. And so here's how this works. This part is absolutely insane. So, starting in the 1950s or the 1960s, the federal government became a customer of Iron Mountain. And to this day, it basically operates the exact same way. And so, right now, the federal government is retiring around 100,000 people a year. And when, let's say you work for the FBI or some agency, federal agency, the Postal

• 7:12Sam Parr?

  Service, whatever, and you need to retire, because of 100-plus years of laws, there's a lot of complications. And so, when you retire, you're supposed to get a pension. Let's round numbers of $100,000 a year, but some people might get $98,000, some people might get $108,000. And the reason they will is because, let's say this federal employee was a cafeteria worker for a federal agency. That requires a different set of rules. Let's say this person was a retired vet. Let's say this person was an amputee. There's like a million rules about what you are going to be earning after you retire. However, this is all done on paperwork. So, every single federal employee, they, and not just the current ones, but the past

• 7:56Sam Parr?

  ones, they have a manila envelope in this mine in Pennsylvania that Iron Mountain runs. And so, when you want to retire, you have to file a piece of paperwork. Like, you literally write up on a piece of paperwork, you give it to your boss at your federal agency. The federal agency has to mail it to the mountain, or to the mine in PA, and it takes roughly 60 days because one of the 600 employees at this mine needs to physically have the file in hand, needs to walk to your file in the mountain, which this mountain is 200 football fields, or 200 acres. They had to literally hand, like, by hand, go and get that file, and they got to look at your file, they got to say, "All right, Sean, looks like he's 65, it looks like,

• 8:38Sam Parr?

  oh, he actually retired at 59 years old, then he came back, so that gets a different thing. Turns out, he served in the Iraq War, so he gets this thing, this thing, this thing." And then, they close the file, and they put it back, and they send the paperwork back to your agency to let them know, "Here's what Sean is going to be paid for his pension fund." And that process takes something like 90 days to do that whole thing. Since, uh, since the 1980s, they have spent hundreds of millions, it's approaching billions of dollars to digitize this, it's failed every time. And the New Yorker in 2004 wrote this amazing article, they're like, we tried it in 1980, we are trying it now, we tried it in 1995.

• 9:15Shaan Puri?

  Why does it fail? What, what, why, why can't they digitize? Too much? Or it gets rejected?

• 9:20Sam Parr?

  It's a huge, it's a huge task, but this mountain, it's in rural Pennsylvania. And these Pennsylvania folks, they're, they were literally mine workers, like that, that's what they were, this mine, when it was an active mine. So it's like generations of miners who are now doing this thing. So it's not like these 600 employees aren't exactly like computer experts, they're like physical laborers, so they don't exactly have like the labor there to do it, but also just the bureaucracy, the same thing that happened with, uh, when Obama launched, was it healthcare.com or whatever? Like, it's just really hard within a government, within the four years that a president is president, to make this massive change. And so this mine-

• 9:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and nobody, and you're not going to get huge pat on the back for like, digitizing this process, you know what I mean?

• 10:03Sam Parr?

  And the people who work at the mine, they interviewed a couple of them, they were like, it's a pretty miserable, miserable place to work. In the wintertime, when we arrive at work, we're there when it's dark, and then when we come home at night, it's still dark, and you can't have a flame in the mine, so all of the food has to be delivered for us every day, and it's like fried food or pizza, that's like our two vendors. Um, but they let you have unlimited overtime if you, if you want, and it's an eight to five job, and, uh, no one leaves. Like, the retention is 100%, they're like, it's just a good, stable job, whatever.

• 10:33Shaan Puri?

  These guys need a podcast, I need to, I want to be listening to Iron Mountain Pod, where they're just, just these miners, just talking about, about paperwork and eating pizza. It's like an ASMR channel of the limestone mine.

• 10:45Sam Parr?

  And the New Yorker did an article, and they like, were talking to these people, and they were like, if you guys want to see taxpayer waste, you should see what happens when a federal worker retires, goes back to work, and then retires again. He goes, one guy they interviewed, they go, I'm working on a case now, that's taken me 120 days to figure out how much, uh, pension this worker is owed, and it's just a nightmare.

• 11:09Sam Parr?

  And so it's like literally a physical labor job to walk around and find all these files.

• 11:14Shaan Puri?

  This mining company is this this vault, this this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat. It's worth more than Pinterest. It's worth more than Twitter as a company. Isn't that crazy? The $30 billion company.

• 11:28Sam Parr?

  And the retention might be better. And here's why it might be better. Here so so.

• 11:32Shaan Puri?

  It is better, I guarantee.

• 11:33Sam Parr?

  Listen, Workday, Workday is a piece of software. I've never, I don't think, maybe I've used it. But like the thing about Workday is considered like a dinosaur software company, right? It's like, or let's say ADP, like these payroll softwares that a lot of huge companies have. And they're regarded as a sticky product. But the issue with that is that you, a worker, as well as management, you interact with that product every day. So you're like, this fucking sucks. So eventually you might get pissed off and want to change it. With Iron Mountain, a bank by law has to keep these files on on and say, hey, we're going to give this to you guys. And they'll never talk to them again for the next 50 years.

• 12:09Shaan Puri?

  Dude, should we open up a drawer? Like, should we just go halvesies on a single drawer in Iron Mountain? And just start saving like hateful YouTube comments in there? Just have one, one little, one little station.

• 12:21Sam Parr?

  They told a story about this mine. They said there was some rich anonymous person, this old lady, who had like $100 million worth of art. And she, once a year, would go down to the mine and bring a blanket and cheese and wine. And would just sit and look at her art. I'd just be like, this is awesome. And that was in the article that she did that. Crazy company, right? This friggin' Iron Mountain.

• 12:42Shaan Puri?

  Really, really fun find. I'm glad you found that. Also hilarious that you started with, let's start with current events. And then you started talking about this old file storage system from like the 1950s. And that's where you went with this, this information.

• 12:53Sam Parr?

  Did you see photos of it?

• 12:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I saw, I saw the one photo. Now I'm looking at more and it's pretty wild, dude. It's just like, I mean, it makes sense now that you say it, now that you explain it, it makes sense. It's just who knew? Who knew that this is how, this is how it all works?

• 13:06Sam Parr?

  Now there's like digital versions of this. I forget what some of the guys in the space are, but like they were like Iron Mountain was like, hey, are you guys nervous about digital? And they like dismissed it. They're like, dude, you don't know how much like crap people need to store. Like, we're gonna be fine. Like, it's going good. And so if you look at their financials, it's just like consistently like a billion dollar plus of free cash flow. Just every year.

• 13:32Shaan Puri?

  Dude, this is how my wife treats my kid's art. She like created her own Iron Mountain in our house. It's disgusting. All right, so you brought up current events and then you said something that was totally not a current event, but there was other current events that are actually interesting. I'm just curious, give me your one to 10 level of interest in these. You may, I have a feeling you might not be interested in these. Elon offering $97 billion to buy OpenAI. Did that tickle you?

• 13:59Sam Parr?

  Eight out of 10. The Elon stuff is like inherently incredibly interesting at the moment.

• 14:03Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay, eight out of 10. Let's rank this one. Elon crashing the press conference in Donald Trump's Oval Office. That was at a?

• 14:13Sam Parr?

  10.

• 14:15Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, I bet it's not even for the content, just for the social dynamic of him standing behind Trump and just overtaking the press conference. Is that right? That's my guess.

• 14:24Sam Parr?

  Is that what you want to talk about?

• 14:25Shaan Puri?

  Well, there's one other I want to get you to read on, which is just Doge as a whole.

• 14:31Sam Parr?

  Nine, nine or 10. Yeah, let's go in that order.

• 14:34Shaan Puri?

  Okay, okay, so start at 10?

• 14:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so you sent me a text last night and you said, uh, rule number one, never outshine the master. Elon Musk, and you're referring to the 48 Laws of Power, uh, how to be powerful. You never outshine your master. Elon Musk 100% outshined Donald there. That was so emasculating to have Donald just sitting there and Elon standing up sort of behind him. Like, he was gonna come and put his arm, like his hands on his shoulders. You know what I mean?

• 15:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he hijacked the press conference and just started giving his own speech, a wordy speech, while his kid is there rambling also. And Trump is just sitting there like a goon at the table. And it was just so interesting. I'd never seen anyone who's not the president. Give their own press conference from the Oval Office while the president sits there. Forget what they were even talking about. Just that was like, whoa, hold on. This is like, uh, you know, like if you watch The Bachelor, sometimes they do a two on one date. It's like, whoa, hold on. It's not a one on one. It's a two on one. Oh, there's gonna be some drama here. That's how it felt. It felt like a bachelor two on one goes going on.

• 15:40Sam Parr?

  When Elon told the story of Iron Mountain, Trump like looked back at him and he goes, huh? No shit, really? Like he was like, like he was learning, like he was being entertained at that moment as well. Do you know what I mean?

• 15:53Shaan Puri?

  I also love how Trump sometimes is like, we're gonna send Elon in, Elon's gonna go in, he's gonna, he's gonna do great things. He does great things. And he's just like, that'll be the plan. But honestly, that's actually not a bad plan. It's like, if I was gonna say one thing, it's like, we're gonna send Michael Jordan on the court and he's gonna shoot. He's a great shooter. It's like, that's kind of what he does with things. He's like, we're gonna send Elon in there. He's gonna take care of things.

• 16:14Sam Parr?

  That was actually a really good Trump impression.

• 16:16Shaan Puri?

  I mean, I didn't fully commit. I do. I do regret that I didn't fully commit because it kind of started off pretty hot. And if I had really gone for it, maybe I would have surprised myself, but I'll never know. And I'll live with that regret till I die.

• 16:27Sam Parr?

  I thought it was pretty good. It was a very, that had a lot of promise there. What about the Doge stuff in general? I have a, I have a very opinionated take. Do you?

• 16:37Shaan Puri?

  I have a big picture take and then I have just like small things that I wish, wish more stuff would come out from. So here's my big picture take. I cannot believe we're on this timeline. So if you just rewind the clock, like a couple of years ago, here's what was going on. I was reading this Ray Dalio book. Did you ever read the Ray Dalio, like, I forgot what it's called, Rise and Fall of Nations or something like that? It's basically how empires like fall, right? No empire lasts forever.

• 17:05Sam Parr?

  The, the title scared me and I was like, I just kind of want to be ignorant. But I read his first one, Principles, and I know that he comes off historically as a pessimist, right?

• 17:16Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no. He's a realist. I don't know. He's, he's just an observer of, of how things are. So if you're gonna watch one thing, by the way, watch.

• 17:24Sam Parr?

  But it was alarming.

• 17:25Shaan Puri?

  He's got this thing called the How the Economic Machine Works. It's a 20 or 30 minute YouTube video, which sounds long, but it's amazing. It's an animated video where he just explains how the economy works in a way that even a, you know, bozo like me could understand. And it's, it's, it's amazing. Go watch that. Like, you should just pause this podcast and go watch that. I think it's called How the Economic Machine Works.

• 17:45Sam Parr?

  The Bridgewater office, by the way, is literally 1.5 miles from my house. If you want to go and just talk to him.

• 17:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Sam Parr?

  We should walk right in.

• 17:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we absolutely should. So he wrote this book about the rise and fall of nations. And he basically talks about, like, he studied all the empires, the Dutch Empire, the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire. And basically, why do the empires end? Why don't they just keep going? They have all the advantages. They got the power. They got the best military. They got the best economy. They have the growing population. Like, where do things go wrong? And he saw that over time, things go wrong in a very predictable cyclical fashion. And, um, and then because he studied history, he could see that, okay, even if it's not gonna be the same, it's probably gonna rhyme. I should look out for some of these signs. And, you know, one of the signs that he talks about is around the big debt cycle. So there's like a short-term debt cycle. There's a long-term debt cycle, which is like an 80 to 100-year

• 18:34Shaan Puri?

  debt cycle. And what happens is, you know, the countries or empires will end up going into too much debt, which the US is in right now, like $35 trillion of debt, like just an absurd number. And then the interest payments are really high, then because people lose faith in their ability to pay off that debt, you know, they lose at some point their status as the global reserve currency, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So Ray Dalio makes this argument. It's a interesting book. You should read it. Now.

• 19:02Sam Parr?

  Does he mention, uh, mukbang? Where on the timeline is, do you know what mukbang is?

• 19:09Shaan Puri?

  Listening to people eat, right? Watching and listening to people eat loudly.

• 19:13Sam Parr?

  Incredibly fat people just stuff their face with ramen.

• 19:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like a governmental mukbang is what he describes.

• 19:19Sam Parr?

  Does he mention, uh, when the decline is when, uh, mukbang gets popular?

• 19:26Shaan Puri?

  There were signs. So.

• 19:30Shaan Puri?

  So as he's talking about this, it's like, oh, okay, shit. You look at the kind of the current world, you're like, oh, shit. We got inflation, but then, you know, to fight inflation, they gotta raise rates. When they raise rates, that slows down the economy, which slows down spending, which creates this other problem. Then you get stagflation, you get like all these, oh, man, this could go poorly, right? Oh, they're printing too much money. That could hurt the dollars, you know, they're debasing the currency. That's what he says that they do. This is what's gonna happen. And it just seemed inevitable. The problem was, you looked at it, he's like, but who's gonna go and fix this, right? It's not like a company, because a company has to face reality. So what a company has to do is, ultimately, the company needs profits and needs, the shareholders are gonna demand that the company stop this excess spending.

• 20:15Shaan Puri?

  But the problem with the government is, the government can sort of go infinitely in debt until it can't. It could just print money, right? Like, imagine if you or I just had a little machine in the closet. It's like, well, I could solve this problem with hard work, cutting back, tightening the belt, you know, or I could just go in the closet, push this button. I'll just do it this one time, just this one time, okay? And like, that's what just kept, keeps happening. You go and you push the button, you print the money. And so, um, so that's the problem, okay? And it just seemed like there was no solution to this, because anybody who wanted to get elected, right, the leader, first, the leaders were not business people, right? So problem number one, the people who run the country were lifelong politicians, typically, and they were not CEOs or executives who had that as their core skill set.

• 21:00Shaan Puri?

  The second thing is, they didn't have the incentive, right? Because when you wanna get elected, it's like middle school all over again. You gotta go, "Promise, we're gonna have free pizza every Friday." It's like, where's, who's gonna pay for that? I don't care. I just gotta say it and promise it, we'll deal with the consequences, because that's what gets me elected. So the presidency is never about, "Hey, I'm gonna cut back all your favorite programs." It was always gonna be, "We're gonna do more for you. We're gonna cut your taxes." Okay, so less revenue for the government? How's that gonna work? We're already in debt. We're, we're gonna cut your taxes, and, uh, you know what? We're gonna, we're gonna spend more on this, we're gonna invest in education. That sounds great, we're gonna give you free healthcare. We're gonna pay off your student loans. It's like, wow, we're just Where's the money coming from? And the money was coming from that magic money printer in the closet.

• 21:44Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so it just seemed like, dude, there's no way, there's no way out. And somehow, this insane situation has occurred. And I'm not saying that it's gonna work. And I'm not saying I agree with everything about these people. I don't agree with everything Trump says. I don't even, I didn't even vote, okay? Look, you can't even hate me. Okay, I didn't vote for the guy, I didn't vote for anybody. So, so you can hate me for other reasons. I don't agree with everything that Elon does, but he's an impressive, ultimately impressive entrepreneur. I think he's the greatest entrepreneur of all time. Okay, so, but I also, yeah, don't think I agree with, I don't agree with everything he says. Great, my caveats are either way. I cannot believe we ended up on this timeline where Trump gets elected. Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of all time. And even if you disagree, okay, he's second, right? Like, he's close.

• 22:30Sam Parr?

  What, when did Trump, was it January 20th? Is that, wait, when, or four, was it?

• 22:35Shaan Puri?

  20th is inauguration, yeah. So, less than a month ago.

• 22:38Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 22:39Shaan Puri?

  Forty weeks ago.

• 22:42Shaan Puri?

  And he brings Elon Musk in and basically like.

• 22:45Sam Parr?

  Like, he's still doing onboarding.

• 22:46Shaan Puri?

  If you just said, what's the only way America can get out of this? I'd be like, dude, we gotta get like, someone as smart as Elon Musk in there with a mandate and somehow have a free mandate to actually go and cut all the bloat to get us out of this excess spending, to cut the deficit, to balance the budget, to get us even into a surplus, that's the only way, we gotta like, somehow do that. That sounded impossible two to three years ago. Like, there was no path where something, he's not even an American citizen, he can't be president, he's not gonna run, the president's not gonna just give him free rein. Well, somehow, we ended up on this 0.1% probability timeline where Trump gets elected, Elon becomes his bestie by backing him and giving him a bunch of money and throwing his weight behind him.

• 23:28Shaan Puri?

  Elon's stipulation was like, I wanna create Doge, haha, Doge. And he's like, I'm gonna cut spending. And Trump's like, okay, great. And somehow it became cool to cut spending, which was never cool before that. And now he just took like this army of his smartest, most ruthless people.

• 23:47Sam Parr?

  It's not even army, it's 40 or 50. Folks who are 24, one person is 19.

• 23:54Shaan Puri?

  You just go get a bunch of 10x type of people. And he's literally like raiding, he's like raiding buildings and he's taking over payment systems and being like, okay, I can't change the laws, but I could stop the flow of the money. I could audit everything from this payment record system. He's bringing like young hackers in, he's bringing some of his smartest people in, he's doing this. Now, will this be successful? I have no idea. Can't tell you. Is this fascinating? Absolutely. Is this one of our only shots to get out of the death spiral of excess spending? I believe so, and I cannot believe it happened. End of rant.

• 24:26Sam Parr?

  All right. Let me give you, let me give the audience a counterpoint and I'm going to get flamed for this.

• 24:30Shaan Puri?

  You're going devil's avocado on me?

• 24:32Sam Parr?

  I'm going hardcore devil's avocado on you. No, not exactly, because I'm on board with like what a lot of the stuff he's doing, but listen to this. Let's just say that you're 45 years old, you got two kids in high school, you got a mortgage and you're thinking like, you know, life's pretty good. And then all of a sudden you get a message that says, look, we appreciate you Diane for working for the government for so long, but you're done. You're, you gotta get out and you're thinking, how the hell am I going to pay my mortgage? How am I going to like provide for my kids? You want to go to college? And then you look online to learn about your situation and you're like, wait, the guy who just decided to fire me changed his Twitter handle to Twitter, to hairy balls. And he put in his

• 25:15Sam Parr?

  description that he's offering circumcision for 69 cents. And did he just call a guy a retard on Twitter?

• 25:25Shaan Puri?

  Dude, someone yesterday sent me an advanced search. You knew you Twitter advanced search. It was just like a, a single link I could click that was just Elon Musk saying the word retard. And bro, you could scroll for days. It was, it was unbelievable. It was an unbelievable link.

• 25:37Sam Parr?

  It's sort of like, like a really successful entrepreneur, CEO doing layoffs because money's short from his beautiful chalet in Aspen with a beautiful view behind him on Zoom. And For Elon, I'm like, do what you gotta do, but can you not be so smug about it? And like, have some like, fucking grace when you're like, doing some of these things? Even if those things are good, and I agree with him, I just wish that like, the maturity level would go up because at the end of the day, it's cool for like, these tech guys to say like, cut them, cut them, let's make the government smaller, whatever. But it's, at the end of the day, it is real people's lives and half of these people, they're not like,

• 26:20Sam Parr?

  hungry power people, they're just fucking guys who are working nine to five and they just want to play softball on the weekends. You know what I mean? And that, that, that bumps me out. I wish that he would show a little grace when he's slashing, you know what I mean?

• 26:32Shaan Puri?

  Like, I think you bring up great points. I think his, uh, it's like, I've been told many times, you're not wrong, but your delivery sucks.

• 26:40Sam Parr?

  What do they say in the Big Lebowski? You're not wrong, man, you're just an asshole.

• 26:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Sam Parr?

  That's like what's going on here.

• 26:48Shaan Puri?

  So I think you're absolutely right on that. I will say, they did offer eight months severance. I will also say, this wasn't like, an optional or flimsy, like, it's not like somebody's just messing around. Basically,

• 27:04Sam Parr?

  But that's what it seems like when you've changed it to hairy balls.

• 27:07Shaan Puri?

  He made it seem like that. You're absolutely right.

• 27:09Sam Parr?

  It certainly seems like he's messing around.

• 27:11Shaan Puri?

  The style is bad, I think the substance is good. The reality is, the way that the government works is actually like a financial terror attack on all American citizens. And so as much as Diane, I, I don't like that Diane is, is gonna possibly lose her job. The reality is, she shouldn't have had that job probably in the first place. Or this, maybe not her specifically, but the overall system is spending so much, it is going to tank the entire economy. Like, you look at all these crazy stats about how much of job growth is just federal jobs? How much of spending is just going to federal employees? It's like, you know, a wormy, like the game of snake when you start to eat your own tail. It doesn't even make any sense. I'll give you, I'm gonna tell you something. I have a friend,

• 27:54Shaan Puri?

  who was, last year or two years ago, they had an unlucky break. They wanted this promotion or this job, they didn't get it. They didn't really know what to do, didn't look like they had a, had a great, you know, like upside. I thought that they deserved a little bit better, so let me just see if I can help this person out.

• 28:11Shaan Puri?

  And around this time, I had met some people that were some fat cats who were doing well with government contracts. And I'm talking about like, you know, one company, for example, they just threw a web web dev shop. They made websites.

• 28:24Sam Parr?

  Now, they're a fat cat. We got to bring that back. Great usage.

• 28:27Shaan Puri?

  Fat cat. Yeah, exactly. And what I mean by that is they were making websites, which you can go on Fiverr and get a website for five bucks. You can go on Upwork and get somebody to do it for a couple hundred bucks. You can go on Squarespace and do it yourself. You could, there's a whole bunch of things you could do. They're getting 19, 20 million dollar contracts to build simple websites. It was unbelievable. And, and they're multi-year contracts to do things that literally I have interns that could do them in three, four days. It was, uh, these aren't like high traffic, not complex apps, not super sensitive data.

• 28:58Sam Parr?

  Just like a Squarespace.

• 28:59Shaan Puri?

  Informational websites.

• 29:00Sam Parr?

  Put your menu online.

• 29:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. So, um, started noticing this. So I go to my friend and I say, let's get you a government contract. And I can't say too much specific stuff. We have, we got this friend, a government contract to do something that probably takes four hours, not even high skilled, you know, not, not, anybody could do it. My sister could do it. My cousin could do it. Anybody could have got this contract. It's been going for two years and now it's a hilarious game of hide and seek because I'm like, yo, Doge is gonna find this contract. And when Doge finds this contract, they're gonna publish this thing. It'd be like, we paid for this. And I'm glad that my friend got like, you know, a, a, a great.

• 29:44Sam Parr?

  You're glad he got his.

• 29:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. However, it's the, what is that thing called? The free rider problem in society? It's like, I forgot. There's like some social term for this where it's like, you, you can abuse public parks and public transport because nobody's kind of like on the hook for it. And like, well, I'll get mine. I'll get mine. And when everybody tries to get theirs, we all get screwed.

• 30:08Sam Parr?

  Where did your head go where your friend doesn't get the promotion? And then the default response is? Let's get you a government contract, baby.

• 30:18Sam Parr?

  Let's go to the government contract store, just pick it off the shelf and go check out.

• 30:21Shaan Puri?

  There's these side quests that, you know, I'd been through this, this podcast is great, right? You do this podcast and you meet people and you hear stories. We were talking, but we had done a segment on government contracts, businesses. I think we had done a business, a thing because somebody I know had pivoted. They used to have the episode I remember exclusively was they used to be in the business of making vodka bottles with LED lights. So if it was like Sam's bachelor party, it'd be like Sam, last day of freedom, like rotating around a vodka bottle. That was their business. COVID hit and they pivoted their entire business to selling masks and got an 80 or 90 million dollar contract.

• 30:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  And this is somebody who lives less than a mile away from me.

• 31:01Sam Parr?

  Who did that?

• 31:02Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, oh my God, like, can you believe that? We talked about it on the podcast and I just had some people email me, which is the flywheel of this podcast. And they were like, yeah, dude, like, have you ever checked this out? Check this out. You can go see what, what's up for bid right now. Hey, have you heard about this company? Have you heard about this company? So I started getting curious. Now I was never going to do it, right? Because I'm at a phase of my life where I am intentionally trying to not make any decisions for money. So even when I saw something that I was like, oh, wow, you could go make money doing that. I no longer want to be that guy. I was that guy for like 15 years. I don't want to be that guy anymore. If I make a decision, it can't be for the, for money as the number one reason. But I did take note and I was like, somebody could do that. Maybe somebody who's maybe top priority right now is money. And so this little side quest was let's go help a friend. I don't want to do this for me.

• 31:45Shaan Puri?

  It wouldn't be worth it for me, but it would totally be worth it to, to like for the story and to see if I could help my friend out.

• 31:51Sam Parr?

  And it's still going?

• 31:52Shaan Puri?

  It's still going, but dude, every month, and now that Doge is out, it's literally like a game of hide and seek. And I could hear the footsteps coming. I know, I know it's coming and it's going to be hilarious when it hits.

• 32:04Sam Parr?

  That's insane. That is pretty funny. What about the, um, the third thing, the, the. So the reasoning behind it, like he has a reason for doing this, which is that he's trying to.

• 32:17Shaan Puri?

  Explain what it is. They're saying what it is. People don't know.

• 32:20Sam Parr?

  So Elon, uh, so from my understanding, uh, OpenAI is a nonprofit. They're trying to convert to a for-profit. In order to do that, Sam Altman, as well as some of the shareholders, have to, quote, buy the company. And what Elon has done is he's put a competing offer to buy the nonprofit of OpenAI in order to make Sam Altman, as well as the other shareholders, to have to pay more. Is that the summary?

• 32:43Shaan Puri?

  Sort of. He's not trying to buy the nonprofit. He's trying to buy the assets and same thing. So basically, OpenAI today is a nonprofit. That's how it started. That's who, you know, has a lot of the IP. Then they created a for-profit where the nonprofit owns, I think, 25% of the for-profit, or they're, they're trying to own 25% of the for-profit. That'll be like the, the deal. And, um, the for-profit has been raising billions and billions of dollars. They just, they were just trying to raise from Masa and SoftBank.

• 33:13Sam Parr?

  At a $250 billion.

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  $250 billion, $240 billion valuation. And so that implied that when they do this conversion, or they sell, they convert the ass, they'd get the assets out of the nonprofit into the for-profit, right? The IP, the, the intel, the, the, the, all the code, all that stuff. Uh, the assets were valued, I think, at 40 billion in that, that transition. And it was going to be like stock, basically. It's like, oh, you're going to have 25% ownership in the for-profit. And what Elon did was just throw a wrench in that a little bit because he's like, actually, I'll, I'll buy the assets for 90, whatever he said, 97 billion. So a couple of possibilities here. Number one, he might actually get it.

• 33:54Shaan Puri?

  It's possible that he could do it. And then in that case, he would own the assets of OpenAI, merge it with XAI, and he would be, he would go from fourth place to first place overnight.

• 34:06Sam Parr?

  That, see, I'm, I'm, I'm uneducated on the topic, but I know a little, a bit about stories. That just seems too, that, that won't.

• 34:14Shaan Puri?

  I've watched Game of Thrones. They're not, they're going to die before they do that. Okay.

• 34:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that story won't happen.

• 34:18Shaan Puri?

  So he's, so it's possible.

• 34:20Sam Parr?

  Right. Do you agree?

• 34:20Shaan Puri?

  Possible, not probable. Yes. And it's possible, not probable, only because of the egos and personalities involved. Sam Altman would fight to the death to not have that happen. That would be him losing and getting checkmated by Elon. And Elon is doing it because he wants to checkmate Sam because he feels like he got wronged and betrayed because he funded the first 40 something.

• 34:40Shaan Puri?

  Million dollars into OpenAI when it was a nonprofit and he owns nothing of the for-profit today.

• 34:46Sam Parr?

  Would you put money on either of them?

• 34:49Shaan Puri?

  Winning this?

• 34:51Sam Parr?

  Or just like in terms of just like the battle of the wits, like a chess match? Or do you think that it's too hard to?

• 34:57Shaan Puri?

  You know, when we watch those UFC pay-per-views and it's like, sometimes you get the ones where it's just like, oh, I just want to see Khabib do his thing. He's gonna win, but I just want to watch how. And then there's other times where you're like, I have no idea who's gonna win this fight. I have no idea. You got the unstoppable wrestler versus the guy who's amazing at jiu-jitsu and striking. And like, I could totally see it going either way. I gotta pay $90 pay-per-view. I gotta watch this. That's how this one is because

• 35:21Sam Parr?

  I agree.

• 35:22Shaan Puri?

  For as many people who say you never bet against Elon, there's a equal number of smart people who say you never bet against Sam Altman, right? And so you don't know which way it's gonna fall. Now, and there's also, it's the highest stakes thing, like AI is the highest stakes game. And this is the crown jewel asset is OpenAI. And it's gonna be a fight to the death. Okay, so the second possibility is he just wants to make it more expensive for OpenAI. Cause like I said, the implied valuation they were talking about was about $40 billion for the assets, non-cash contribution. Or maybe it was a cash contribution, I'm not sure. And this would up the price. So if nothing else, you go to your enemy and they have to pay double for their car.

• 35:59Sam Parr?

  But do you think like?

• 36:01Shaan Puri?

  Maybe that's satisfying enough. Maybe that's a win.

• 36:02Sam Parr?

  In the board meeting, can you just imagine all these suits to like, well, do we? Do we look at this offer and then everyone just like, no, it's just Elon. He's just being a dickhead. Okay, like, do you just like, do they just like collectively agree that he's just being an asshole? Or are they like, uh, guys, we gotta like, look into this?

• 36:22Shaan Puri?

  They're collectively, because I mean, that would be a very low price for the, for the assets of OpenAI, right? Like literally on the open market, they're raising at a $240 billion valuation. So to sell the assets at a $97 billion valuation wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense, right? So at the very least, he's upping the price. Or just slowing it down, making life more complicated for his competitors. So if I, if we're competing in a race, but I know I can distract 15% of your mind share, right? It's like a honey pot, like, you know, like. People used to do this, like, send in a pretty-looking girl. And it's like, this is just a nice little distraction for my competitor that I can send in. Like, they will do that. So there's, there's multiple levels this might be playing at.

• 37:00Sam Parr?

  This is just like the nerdy Kendrick Lamar versus Drake thing. Because they're now they're going after their personalities. They haven't gone after family yet, but I honestly would not be surprised if that happens next.

• 37:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm not paying a whole lot of attention to it, but it, I mean, it is interesting to watch like a sort of real-life, you know, rap beef or Game of Thrones battle going on.

• 37:23Sam Parr?

  I, uh, does it bother, does any of this like wear you out? Because I feel a little excited at the moment, but I wonder when, but we're only a month in. And I'm like, how much longer can I like last with all these like amazing stories?

• 37:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, uh, yeah, I know what you mean. There's definitely a part of it where it just feels like I've just watched too many episodes of Jersey Shore. And I'm like, I wasted my whole day, you know, like, you know, there's, oh, he said this and he did this and they're gonna do this. And let me look up the Delaware law and it's like, for what? Is, are you getting anything out of this? Or are you just gossiping and say, oh, I'm gossiping? Okay, cool. Well, there's only so much of my energy I really want to put towards gossiping.

• 38:05Sam Parr?

  I also just constantly think, and I think a lot of other people think this, is how does one man have so much energy? It's pretty like amazing. It's hard for me to imagine like writing a serious email that would require me to make a decision that has long-term impacts. Because I'm like, oh, I just can't like turn my brain on right now to get into that. Imagine never feeling that feeling. I think Jimmy, Mr. B said something, he said something like, he was like, oh, no, I'm focused like every waking hour. Or he made like, he was like, I don't get distracted. Like, I don't like browse, like, he said something like that. He was like, but when I do get in that mood, which is seldom, I go all in for like 24, 48 hours. And I just need like a two-day recharge and then I'm back in and I don't get distracted.

• 38:47Sam Parr?

  Now imagine being like an Elon and having to like, you don't have, do you have zone-out mode? Like, most people do after 7 o'clock at night? You know, you know what I mean?

• 38:56Shaan Puri?

  I read this story about Bill Gates and it was a story about how Bill Gates was building Microsoft and people don't know because Bill Gates is now a philanthropist slash like, you know.

• 39:07Sam Parr?

  He's got grandpa energy.

• 39:09Shaan Puri?

  He's got grandpa energy. Exactly. He's wearing his sweater. He's like, well, you know, I read books and I, you know, I've got these nets to catch mosquitoes. Like, you know, he just sounds like, you know, sort of harmless. He was ruthless.

• 39:19Sam Parr?

  Puttin' around, puttin' around, Bill.

• 39:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's puttin' around in the mornings. He was ruthless when he was building Microsoft and he was insane energy. If you don't believe me, play the clip of him jumping over the chair. All right, we're back. So on top of that, they were like, Bill, do you, uh, somebody was like riding in a car with him to do an interview or something like that. And they go, Bill, what happened? And they look at his, um, in his car, like the tape deck was missing. It was like pulled out, like it almost got stolen. And they go, did it get stolen? He said, no, I took it out. They go, why'd you take it out? You don't like to listen to music? He goes, if I'm, you know, the radio? He goes, if I'm listening to the radio, I'm not thinking about Microsoft. So I just took it out. I don't want to listen to the radio. I want to think about Microsoft.

• 39:58Sam Parr?

  It's wild, right? And that's just a little tiny story, but there's probably like some epic, epic stories. And, and these are small things. Like, for example, let's say you get like an email saying like, you know, this partnership that we thought about doing or the sale that we're thinking about doing from you. It's not for us. Thank you. There's people, and this is like kind of small, but like it's just an example of this behavior who they're like, they'll just get on a plane and they'll fly to that person's office that next morning and they'll just make it work. And you think about doing that with like your young kids, you got a few kids, I have one kid. And I'm like, there's not a chance that I'm getting on that plane unless it's like a pretty amazing thing. But just to do these like daily, these daily, these daily items that show how intense you are, it, it's

• 40:43Sam Parr?

  really challenging to imagine living that life. And I think very few people can actually sustain it. And I'm not one of them.

• 40:50Shaan Puri?

  So back to your question of like, how does he do it? This is a legitimate question. How does he do it? So one of the reasons my, my interest in Doge is, is, uh, top of mind right now is I just had my most viral tweet ever.

• 41:02Sam Parr?

  You did?

• 41:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And it was me. All I said was, I would pay stupid amounts of money for someone to follow around the Doge team for the next six months, Hard Knocks style. Like, have you ever seen Hard Knocks, the show on HBO? They follow like an NFL team through training camp. I would, and it's true, I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for that.

• 41:22Sam Parr?

  What was the reach on that?

• 41:24Shaan Puri?

  I mean, the tweet got like 50,000 likes or something crazy.

• 41:27Sam Parr?

  Oh, that's so funny. I didn't see that.

• 41:29Shaan Puri?

  It has just like, like really viral for some reason. A lot of people felt the same way, like there's a fascination around this. And part of it is, um, I would really want to see, like, I want to know, I want to know what it's like, like, I'll, I'll give you two things. So one, I want to know what Elon's like. But not because I'm like, oh, Elon, he's the best. I just want to see. I literally want to understand, like, so this guy's running six billion dollar companies at one, logistically.

• 41:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Shaan Puri?

  And then there's shit like where he's like, he's also tweeting 10 times more than me. So it's not even like, oh, but he just doesn't waste time on social media like you. It's like, no, actually he wastes more time on social media. It's like, yeah, but he doesn't just waste time playing video games like you, you assholes. Like, dude, he, he's bragging about being a top hundred ranked Diablo player. And it's like, so something's cap. The Diablo thing, I'm certain is cap. Like, I am certain that he's paying people.

• 42:19Sam Parr?

  How old are you? Could you, are you allowed to say that?

• 42:21Shaan Puri?

  I thought it was pretty fluid. Was that not?

• 42:23Sam Parr?

  It was actually so fluid.

• 42:27Sam Parr?

  I was like, what did he just say?

• 42:28Shaan Puri?

  I said it in the mirror the other day. I was like, I think that works. I think that's, I think I can add that to my bag. There's another one.

• 42:35Sam Parr?

  I can't believe, dude, you're, you downplayed having audacity to do Trump. To have the audacity to say cap is so fluidly. Like, that was really, are you gonna say that?

• 42:44Shaan Puri?

  I've been on the internet for way too long.

• 42:47Sam Parr?

  I thought you meant cap like a cap to his energy, not cap like no cap. That was really good.

• 42:53Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I'm gonna start saying cap as in a limit.

• 42:57Shaan Puri?

  That's cap. That's the cap. That's the maximum cap. I've reached my threshold is what I'm saying. What are you saying? I didn't say I lied.

• 43:05Sam Parr?

  What did I say on MFM like earlier this year? You're like,

• 43:08Shaan Puri?

  Let him bake.

• 43:09Sam Parr?

  Let him bake. You were like ripping and I was like, let him bake. I tried to be cool. They're like, wait, is it bake or cook or microwave? What is the phrase?

• 43:18Sam Parr?

  I, uh, have you met anyone who's worked with them? I, I haven't. Uh, yeah, I have actually. Yeah. I, I talked to that one guy who that recently, he said, um, he goes, I had a meet with Elon and his assistant gave me the heads up in advance. And he goes, just so you know, Elon's companies are making something like $20 million per hour. Or something like that, or 20 million per half hour. So if you are going to have a conversation with him, it better be a $20 million conversation.

• 43:47Sam Parr?

  And that $20 million number, by the way, that it's more now, it's more now if you, if you think of Doge. So it's just like every, can you imagine that? Actually, that's a kind of an exhausting way to live because do you ever hear when people say like, uh, well, that's just not worth my time? And when I would think about that for a long time, I'm like, does that mean I should always be doing something that is like of more value? And I'm like, well, how much am I valuing just laying on this couch? Or how much am I valuing just like mowing my grass because I want to actually mow my grass? And I thought that was kind of an exhausting way to look at life.

• 44:19Shaan Puri?

  It totally is. By the way, there's a simple, simple solution to that, which is you only price things that you don't want to do. If you want to do it, you don't put a, you don't put a price on it. If you like, if you enjoy the, if it's therapeutic to you, or what is it called? They're like, uh, whatever.

• 44:33Sam Parr?

  Like it feels good just doing nothing.

• 44:34Shaan Puri?

  If it feels good to do, to do the dishes or to like, like trim the bushes in your garden or whatever, like go do it, you know? No, you have at it. You don't need to be like, oh, this is an inefficient use of my time. You only price the things you don't want to do to say, you know what? Am I wasting my time on stuff I don't even enjoy?

• 44:50Sam Parr?

  Well, I mean, we had Rob Dierdick on the pod. He said that he places that number at $1 million per hour.

• 44:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, dude, I watched a Cody Sanchez clip and like, I don't mean to knock on Cody. She's always been nice to me, but she, she was on a panel.

• 45:06Shaan Puri?

  And they go, she goes, I was talking to my mentor, Bill Perkins, and he always, you know, tells me you are as, you are as low as the low, like something like that. It's like, you are as low as the lowest tasks you do. And she, she was like, you know, I, um, I feel like I was dropping some, I had to, I was pumping. Oh, he goes, do you still pump your own gas? And she goes, at first I thought, how pretentious. Of course, I still want to be a person who pumps my own gas. And then he did the math for me about how much I'm wasting, how much money I'm wasting pumping my own gas. And he said, are you still buying this? You, you should not be buying that. You should not be going to the store to do that. And I just thought like, and this video had like, whatever, tens of thousands of likes. And I think that's a totally valid way to think. She might be right. That might be the

• 45:51Shaan Puri?

  right answer for her. It's not the right answer.

• 45:52Sam Parr?

  Dude, I went to Whole Foods last night at 9:00 PM just to walk around.

• 45:56Shaan Puri?

  Totally, totally, totally. I think there, I think underneath a lot of that, like, oh, I gotta be so efficient with every second of my day is just some underlying feeling of lack. What do you think you lack in your life that you have to optimize every minute of every hour of every day? And that you are like above doing certain things. And by the way, also, when you stop doing things, you lose touch with reality. So there's a price to that, too. And so I just think like, there's a, my takeaway was not even about Cody or her idea that if it works for you, more power to you. I just think, I just thought to myself, you know, you know, much bad advice is out there? Like, whether this was bad advice or other, like, one of the great skills in life is just playing hopscotch and not, not

• 46:37Shaan Puri?

  stepping on the like landmines of terrible advice that exist on the internet. Our podcast included, by the way, we say some dumb shit. And we say some things that don't make sense. They don't make sense for you. Maybe it makes sense for us, or maybe it just doesn't make sense at all. But there is a skill to, how do you block out the 98% of awful advice that sounds smart?

• 46:59Sam Parr?

  You want to hear something funny? So I met this guy who's a billionaire, a multi-billionaire. He's probably 65. And I talked to him for like, an hour online for something. And at the end of the call, for some reason, he started talking about his family and his kids, and how he has like, I forget, five kids, and they're each married with children. And he's like, oh, I'm always around the grandkids. I just love this. Like, and he was explaining his life philosophy. And at the end of the call, I go, hey, you know, we don't know each other. We only know each other for this hour. But do you think they could come over, me and my wife, and stay with you and your family? And I can just watch how you interact with your family? Because you seem really happy, man. And you're

• 47:40Sam Parr?

  successful. You've won. And he goes, I would love that. And so tomorrow at 7:00 AM, I am flying to Park City to go to this guy's house for three days. And he was like, my whole family's gonna be there for this weekend. And I was like, great. Can I come and just hang out with you guys and be part of the family for a weekend just to see how you're interacting with everyone because you are awesome. And he was like, yeah, I would love that. So I'm going to his house tomorrow till Sunday, just to like, learn how to be, when I met him, I was like, you are just such a warm person and you're, you're rich and successful, which is like one attribute that's amazing. You seem happy. You seem fit. You have a lovely family and they seem like they love you. I gotta, I gotta download what you're, you're doing because you are amazing. So he's letting me come over.

• 48:22Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that's great. I've, I've always enjoyed doing that. I have a word for it. Can I throw some jargon at you?

• 48:27Sam Parr?

  Stalking? Is that it?

• 48:31Shaan Puri?

  The word for it is in situ. So like,

• 48:34Sam Parr?

  What's that? Wait, is this a made up word?

• 48:36Shaan Puri?

  I'm a biology major. So at one point I did a biotech company and one of the things you learn when you do any, any biotech company is there's a huge difference between the lab environment, which is a sterile controlled environment. And you see this data come out and it says, wow, this thing really works. We produced this many milliliters of this or this many grams of this substance or whatever, right? It had this much, this much energy, this many kilowatts generated, whatever, whatever the thing you're doing in lab. And then you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. We're about to change the world. And I was like, trying to high five and nobody else was excited. I was like, why aren't you guys excited? They're like, well, like it's the lab. I'm like, oh, does the lab mess up? They go, no, the lab's great. So what do you mean? What's the problem? Lab? It's a test. It's a scientific test. How

• 49:19Shaan Puri?

  much more proof do you want? They go, oh, everything changes in situ. I thought, well, in what? And like in situ, basically was like, you take the thing, the, in our case, we were working on these microbes. We had this company where microbes would eat coal and basically fart out natural gas. So you could get natural gas without burning coal. Kind of amazing. Natural microbes, real microbes that just exist on the planet. Right? And so they were working amazing in the lab. They're producing so much natural gas. It was, it was amazing. We're gonna, we're about to change the energy industry.

• 49:51Sam Parr?

  What's that word in situ is like in situ in a situation?

• 49:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't know exactly what it's. I don't know what the technical definition, but yeah, it's kind of like in the situation or in ground. And so what we did was you take the bugs, then you have to actually go to the field where the coal is buried 200 meters underground or whatever, and you're going to pump the microbes in and you got to pump them in with some water. You got to like, see what happens. And then there's cracks in the ground. It's not perfect. And then the blah, blah, blah, the weather, everything, everything is different. The temperature is different. The, the other microbes that are there, there interfere, right? Et cetera. And always the in situ was, you know, not only worse, but like just dramatically different to the point where it's like, why are we even doing these lab tests? And they're like, well, look, if it fails in the lab, it's for sure going to fail in situ.

• 50:32Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 50:33Shaan Puri?

  But just as it succeeds in lab, doesn't mean it works in situ. And so there's a really long-winded way of saying, I have this little word I tell myself, which is like, go in situ. So, so for example, it's like, you might have a theory, but go test it. You might have an idea, go test it. You might think your Donald Trump impression is good. You got to say that shit on the mic and see what happens. Another version of it is this person might look like they've got it all together. They're happy. They're successful. God, they're saying all the right things on this podcast. Go in situ, go to their house and you'll know within like 15 minutes. You said three days, three days, massive overkill. You'll know within like 90 minutes for sure, everything you need to know about this guy. And you'll, you'll pick up all these nuances, just about like the family dynamics and the house and their schedule,

• 51:16Shaan Puri?

  their level of overall like busyness and rushing through their day versus like, wow, this person really seems at peace. Or like, you know what? They just seem like their baseline mood is really high. Or, you know, they're how their kids relate to them shows me that they have a great bond, an underlying bond, you know, versus what they say. And so you pick up so much. And this is why people are like, oh, what happened to you and Sam aren't doing this interview together? And it's like, yeah, because I actually wanted to go to that dude's house and he lives near me, or he lived where I was traveling and Sam was traveling somewhere else at the time or whatever. But I pick up so much more, not from the interview, but the like, hours we spend before the interview, just hanging out at their house. I pick up so much more in terms of lifestyle. And I've talked about this before, but like,

• 51:59Sam Parr?

  Who was one person who you hung? Sorry. Well, go, go ahead.

• 52:02Shaan Puri?

  I'll give you the example. So we go to Austin and we had four interviews scheduled. It was. Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire who started more billion dollar companies than anyone else in America.

• 52:11Sam Parr?

  And like a hard hitting, get after alpha type of dude.

• 52:15Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. I go to, and so there was him, there was Monish Prabha, an investor. So he was a value investor from the school of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. There's Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss, a guy I've admired for many years, author, experimenter, investor, et cetera. And then the fourth one was somebody else. I'm forgetting. This was like a year ago. So we go and we do the four. Now, for each of the four, I hung out with them. Tim less, but the others, like Joe Lonsdale, I went to his house at eight in the morning. I did a morning workout with him. We had breakfast together. We did a cold plunge together. We talked and then we did the podcast. I saw his family, met his wife, you know, et cetera. Tour at his house, saw where, you know, where, where does he work? Where does he play? What, you know, he's got this LAN center, like literally like a gaming LAN center for him and his cousins to just come play video games, like six computers.

• 53:00Sam Parr?

  LAN, okay.

• 53:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. He's got like a basketball court. He's got old like artillery gun at the top of his thing. Right? When we were leaving, 10 senators were coming over for lunch and Elon Musk showed up while we were leaving the house. It's like, whoa, okay, that's what your day looks like. Got it. You know, he had like a, it was amazing. He was so hospitable, by the way. He's got like, he was so nice and generous with his time. Then he had Monish Prabha. I go over to his house. He's like, yeah, come over whenever. My day is clear. I go to his house. He doesn't have a staff that answers. He opens the door.

• 53:29Sam Parr?

  Wasn't he barefooted?

• 53:29Shaan Puri?

  He's wearing basketball shorts and is barefoot. He's like, yeah, what do you want to, let's just sit. Let's have some tea. You want tea? And we have tea. He's got no clock, no assistant telling him, you gotta move the next thing. He shows me his nap room. He's like, I nap every day. It's great. Napping is great. My whole job is thinking. You know, I have to make great decisions. Napping keeps me fresh. It's like having a second day. So, you know, I was like, whoa. And then he's got all these books in his library, but it was also kind of alone. I was like, you don't have a team? He's like, no. Like investors make their decisions not as a committee. Investors make their decisions, you know, as an independent thinker. And so now I have a huge team. I got like a researcher or two, but like, you know, they don't, they don't come over every day.

• 54:05Sam Parr?

  So he has how many billions in his fund?

• 54:08Shaan Puri?

  Two, I think, something like that.

• 54:10Sam Parr?

  And it was really just him and a researcher?

• 54:13Shaan Puri?

  He was the guy there. He didn't have like a

• 54:16Sam Parr?

  But like ish of five person staff generously?

• 54:19Shaan Puri?

  Generously, yeah. I could be wrong, right? Like, don't, don't, don't quote me on these, but that's what it

• 54:24Sam Parr?

  But small.

• 54:25Shaan Puri?

  I'm 90% sure. Tim Ferriss, I was like, you know, he shows up and I was like, so like, what you been up to? And he was like, oh, I just came back from Europe. I was like, oh, cool. Like vacation ski? What are you doing? He goes, no, I spent three days with the guy who's the best in the world at making board games. And I wanted to understand. I want to learn about board games. So you, so you pick up like li- lifestyle flexibility, ability to indulge in your hobbies. How lonely are you? You know, do you have a team? Are you doing, you know, somebody tweeted this out the other day. They go, the thing that socialists are Marx got, Karl Marx got wrong was how much fun it is to make money with your boys. I was like, I feel that dude, like me, Ben, Diego. It's so much fun to just do what we do. It would be way less fun if it was just me doing it, even if I had owned 100%. I got more equity and all that.

• 55:10Shaan Puri?

  I would never take that trade.

• 55:12Sam Parr?

  Dude, I completely agree. By the way, that's why I have co-founders.

• 55:15Shaan Puri?

  And I moved Diego out here. I was like, dude, I'll pay you more. Just move out here. Move within 10 minutes of me. And now we hang out every day. And I'm like, my life just got better, right? Like little things. And so, you know, my kids interrupt me in the middle of the day. I have a piano right next to my desk. Cause in between working, I'll just play piano. It's for fun, right? Like if somebody was here in situ with me, they would say that I don't have a perfect life, but I've built a life that I love. And they will know for themselves if that's kind of what they want. And so I think this is massively underrated is a very long-winded way of saying, I think more people should do this. I think you pick up way more when you go to somebody's house and see their, you know, just kind of hang with them for, for a day or even a couple of hours.

• 55:51Sam Parr?

  I think we need like a, like a tobacco pipe or something. Today is like philosopher hour on our, on our rocking chairs. Just like riffing on what makes a good life and what doesn't.

• 56:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we started at limestones.

• 56:04Sam Parr?

  We should go, by the way, check them out. It sounds sick.

• 56:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would love to go, uh, go see it. I think it'd be pretty boring, but it would be mind blowing at the same time. You know what I mean?

• 56:15Sam Parr?

  I think it would be.

• 56:16Shaan Puri?

  Nothing would be thrilling, but the whole thing would be mind blowing that that's what it is. That's what it is.

• 56:20Sam Parr?

  We almost need to do like MFM field trips because I, the, the, the timing was horrible when you were doing the Monish Pabria one because I was moving that day. And we couldn't make it work because I had like a six month old and it was like a huge whatever. But I am so envious. I'm like, fuck, I just wanted to like see, I just wanted to like get a, a feel, I wanted to do a field trip of just sitting in his living room and watching him interact.

• 56:46Shaan Puri?

  Totally.

• 56:46Sam Parr?

  That's like, I get so much joy doing that exact same thing.

• 56:49Shaan Puri?

  You know what I would want to do? So there's like your boy Brett who's doing robotics. I want to go see that shit. I want to go see.

• 56:56Sam Parr?

  It's awesome.

• 56:56Shaan Puri?

  Humanoid robots and the factory and just be inspired by that. There's another one that I think would be really cool. Have you ever been to a Cisco Foods?

• 57:06Sam Parr?

  Like Cisco is the company that like makes the food that goes to all the restaurants, like they make sauces and shit. Yeah. What? No, I've not been, what is that?

• 57:14Shaan Puri?

  It's, I went once because we had a restaurant and it's the most wild, like huge scale operation. You don't realize it. You're like, oh, I guess, yeah, the company that supplies all of the materials to all of the restaurants and grocery stores. I guess they gotta be pretty big, right? The bigger than anything you've ever seen. And, and it was like a tour of that facility. And then you see the automation, like there's these little like hockey pucks, you know, those like scooters are like the little butt scooters where you just like sit down on this thing, like an old PE thing, where you sit down on this little four wheel flat thing and it rolls around. That's like little robots like that, that, that fly around this warehouse, picking up pallets and moving them places. And so it's this incredibly sophisticated operation to move like cans of tuna.

• 58:00Sam Parr?

  I'm looking at their factors. It looks so large that you could like see the earth curve.

• 58:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. It's, it's huge. Another one would be like, uh, like, uh, probably not allowed, but like Andoril or like one of these companies is making like lasers and like, you know, like war machines. Also just like the crypto house and just go see all these like degenerate 19 year olds.

• 58:19Sam Parr?

  That's actually a good idea.

• 58:20Shaan Puri?

  It's like, you don't know it till you see it, till you feel it, right? Like, it just leaves an imprint on you in a different way.

• 58:25Sam Parr?

  Going to hacker houses in San Francisco was amazing and seemed like their kitchen. And I'm like, who cooks what? How do you guys know?

• 58:31Shaan Puri?

  Dude, it's like, you've seen the Barstool, like, one bite pizza reviews? We just do the one sniff hacker house reviews, the odor, just.

• 58:40Sam Parr?

  And they're all, in San Francisco, they're all in like these warehouses. So they all got Walmart feet. So everyone's walking around barefooted with like dirty, dirty ass bottom of their feet. It's like disgusting and I had so much fun doing it. I remember, I felt that same way walking around Facebook. Have you walked around Facebook's campus?

• 58:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Facebook's one of those.

• 58:54Sam Parr?

  I remember walking around, I'm like, why does a webpage need so many employees? What are all these fucking people doing? They're like, there's so many people walking around and you're like, I can't. Like, I would make fun of Facebook constantly because I thought it was a soulless job. But you walk around and you're like, oh, my God, this is like a beehive.

• 59:12Shaan Puri?

  You know what we should do? Do you remember TechCrunch Cribs? Did you ever see this show?

• 59:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was awesome.

• 59:16Shaan Puri?

  It was awesome and they discontinued it, just like they discontinued Cribs. But I think that needs to come back and, okay, realistically, we're like, we should do this. And then both of us are gonna like, look at our kids and then like, just not travel.

• 59:29Sam Parr?

  Sorry, I'm gonna go to a Cisco factory.

• 59:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I really wanna go see the.

• 59:33Sam Parr?

  I'm gonna go learn how hot fries are made.

• 59:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. So realistically, let's be honest, absolutely not gonna do this idea. But we need a field correspondent. Every great show's got a field correspondent, right? So.

• 59:45Sam Parr?

  That's actually kind of funny.

• 59:46Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna throw down the gauntlet right now. Hundred K a year, be the MFM field trip correspondent. We're gonna send you to different awesome places. You gotta film it like the old TechCrunch Cribs or MTV Cribs episodes. And you just gotta go to like funny epic places, you know, cool, interesting companies where they got a crazy like office life, crazy factories and shit like this. And that could be your job. Travel around, film content, we'll put them up on MFM as episodes.

• 1:00:12Sam Parr?

  I wanna see these, like, there's, dude, these AI, we gotta talk about this next week, but these AI companies that have like 20 employees, but 100 million in revenue? I just wanna see what they're doing all day.

• 1:00:22Shaan Puri?

  Absolutely, absolutely. To audition. Email me, [email protected] and just email a audition tape. So do a, do an episode of any business near you. Go to your coffee shop and just film it, just so that we can get a sense of how you are on camera.

• 1:00:38Sam Parr?

  That's the best. Nice pod. I actually enjoyed these.

• 1:00:42Shaan Puri?

  You never said that to me. That was very nice. Thank you.

• 1:00:44Sam Parr?

  I enjoyed these because I just enjoy hanging out. Those are my favorite podcasts. All right, that's it. Great pod. Wonderful pod. See you out there.