I Turned $1M into $2.3B (Then Blew It Up and Rebuilt)

Want Sam's playbook to turn ChatGPT into your executive coach? Get it here: https://clickhubspot.com/etb Episode 722: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) sits down with Mike Novogratz ( https://x.com/novogratz ) about risk tolerance and coming back from massive losses. — Show Notes: (0:00) Mike’s first million (8:37) Starting Fortress (13:55) $30M to $2.3B (25:28) Operating system for life (35:41) Being early on crypto (40:26) Risk tolerance — Links: • Fortress - https://www.fortress.com/ • Galaxy - https://www.galaxy.com/ • Business Untitled - https://www.youtube.com/@BusinessUntitled — 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 HubSpot Media // 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm a good guy to sit around a campfire with drinking because I got a lot of stories.

• 0:04Sam Parr?

  This is Mike Novogratz. Mike grew up as a poor kid on Long Island, made his first million working as a trader at Goldman Sachs at the age of 32, and made his first billion at the age of 40. Is that life-changing?

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, we were the only company ever where five guys became billionaires in a day.

• 0:20Sam Parr?

  That's wild. Mike is a cowboy in his personal life and his professional life. This guy likes to push it and he's max risk all the time.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:30Sam Parr?

  That's crazy, man. Mike's made and lost a fortune about two different times.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  We made a bunch of mistakes and next thing you know, not only aren't you worth $2 billion, but you're going under the billion pretty quick. And you're like, oh shit, that sucks.

• 0:44Sam Parr?

  And what are you doing? Like, what's the lesson to be learned here?

• 0:47Speaker 00

  The gap between the really greats and the next level, and I put myself in that next level, is...

• 1:04Sam Parr?

  I value people who are good operators at life and who live a certain way that I like. I'm dressed like a cowboy today because I'm like, you're kind of like a cowboy a little bit, like the energy that you have. And that's something that I really respect. But I thought one of the coolest things was how you've made and lost a fortune, I think, two or three times.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  You know, I certainly have lost lots of money. That narrative exists. And one of my kids and a few of my friends were like, dude, that's a little unfair because even at your lows, you still had a lot of frickin' money.

• 1:34Sam Parr?

  So your first, your first hit was in your mid-30s, you're at Goldman, right?

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, listen, I was, I was a partner at Goldman Sachs. Goldman's an amazing firm. It's, it's, it might be one of the firms that everyone should study because they create a culture there where maybe not good for your mental health, but good for the firm. People define themselves by what their boss thinks about them. Lloyd Blankfein was like the big guy at Goldman in the later part of my career. And every single person, what does Lloyd think about me? You know, you gave your heart and soul to this culture of Goldman. And it's, it's a culture of excellence. It's a culture of world-class people. You're competing and working alongside the best and the brightest. And so you feel like you're on the New York Yankees when the Yankees are winning. And...

• 2:18Speaker 00

  One of the big advantages of that is they paid you wildly less than market as you're on your working your way up because you had the right the privilege of being at Goldman Sachs and one day you might become a partner. And so I started at 24 because I had done the army and flew helicopters for a while. And April 1st, 1989, I got my job. And, you know, I moved out to Asia, which was a great move. The Asian financial crisis happened. And what you'll learn in a financial crisis is you're either on the right side of it or the wrong side of it. And if you're on the right side of it, i.e. if you're bearish when the world blows up, you make far more money than you thought you would for the firm.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  And so Goldman and me and the team I was with was very lucky that, you know, we got ourselves on the right side of Asia. You killed it. And we killed it. And so I became a managing director first and then a partner. What age were you when you left? I think 33 when I became a partner, 34 when I left. And what was your big year? 97, 98, I made a ton of money for the firm. Now, 97, I got paid $2 million, which was by far the most I'd ever been paid, which was a ton of money no matter what you look at. I was a millionaire at 31. I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 30, but I didn't have a net worth of $1 million until I was 31. But the first year, I really felt like I got paid, I got paid $2 million, you know, in 1997.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Now, me and my team had made the firm like $200 million. And so that was a 1% payout, right? If you work at Citadel or any big hedge fund today, you're broadly getting paid 15% to 20% of what you make. Goldman paid us 1%, but you're going to be a partner one day and it's part of the and you'd listen, you didn't make it all on your own. There was a huge infrastructure. Goldman, you know, deserved more than, than let's say Citadel might. But they had this

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Mythology of the place that allowed you to stay there. And I went from my most quit and the bosses would take you out and say, oh, no, you're going to be a partner one day. And listen, I made partner in 1998 and in 1999, the company went public. And, and listen, anyone who was a partner at Goldman Sachs when they went public in 1999 was just lucky because the company had been built over 100 and plus years. So all those people who had built that enterprise value that weren't partners that day, you know, we got all their hard earned effort. We sold this enterprise that was built over 100 plus years to the public was one of the coolest IPOs of all time.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  And the junior partners, we all had 420,000 shares and the stock was a $55 IPO which traded to $75 and you can do the 400,000 times 75 and we all were roughly worth $30 million overnight. $30 million is still a huge amount of money. In 1999, it felt a lot bigger.

• 5:14Sam Parr?

  Did you have to vest the, did that need to vest for the next four years?

• 5:17Speaker 00

  If you were a partner, it was automatically vested, but you weren't allowed to sell it for three, four and five years. I think four, five and six years or three, four and five years.

• 5:25Sam Parr?

  So when you left, you had to keep it?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:27Sam Parr?

  Okay, good.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  And listen, I, I left Goldman in not the, the nicest of ways. I had a personal, I kind of blew up personally.

• 5:41Sam Parr?

  I've been there, man.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  That was horrible. It was embarrassing. It was humiliating. It was, you know, you're letting people down. The guys had made big bets on you. You're like, oops. One of the great conversations that we'll ever remember, at that point I was working for a guy named John Thornton, who was the, one of the two co-presidents of Goldman and he had taken a big risk on me. And I think, John, I, I just feel so bad for you.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  So bad for me? He's like, I'm the president of Goldman Sachs. I'm worth a zillion dollars. I've got a house here and here. I got a nice wife and kid. Like, you don't need to feel bad for me. You need to worry about yourself. And I was like, it was such a nice thing for him to say. And it was so true.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  I was so, I was so worried about what those other guys were thinking about me and having let him down and and instead of saying, oh, my God, like, you let your family down, you let yourself down, like, go, go fix your own shit. I left their tail between my legs. And spent a year sorting myself out. I had a shrink for the first time in my life.

• 6:46Sam Parr?

  I heard you told a story that like you said at one time and it kind of got glossed over, but it's kind of brilliant. I think you said your brother was near World Trade on 2001. And he calls you and he's like, I think there's a terrorist attack. I think I'm in this. Was he in the World Trade Center?

• 7:03Speaker 00

  He was in the building right next to me.

• 7:04Sam Parr?

  He's like, what, what do I do? And what did you say your reply was?

• 7:07Speaker 00

  I was like, you should buy Euro dollars or two-year notes. And he was like, what the fuck? And I was like, oh, maybe get out of the building. And then I was like, maybe I should go back to Wall Street. I literally thought that I was like, well, partly, I then decided to run down. I'd been in the army. I want to run down to help and I picked my kid up and I'm running down the block. We lived in Chelsea at the time. And so I'm running to the West Side Highway so I can actually see the World Trade Center because you couldn't see it from my roof. And

• 7:33Speaker 00

  my kid started crying and I was like, oh, that's not a good idea to run down there with the kids. So I ran back in and watched on TV. But they wouldn't really take volunteers. The police blocked it off and I was like, I felt a little impotent, like no way to, no way to participate. I couldn't participate financially. I couldn't participate like in safety or physical.

• 7:53Sam Parr?

  It's like when you, you spent all your life trying to make money, trying to be charismatic, trying to be powerful and you're like, fuck, none of this matters right now.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so I literally remember saying, I want to go back to work in Wall Street and there's another chapter left in me. Because in between, I was looking at things like outward bound or just a whole different career path. I was like,

• 8:11Sam Parr?

  You were going to be like a camp instructor?

• 8:13Speaker 00

  I was going to try to run outward bound. You know, there was, you know, you're looking at, you got headhunters, like, you know, what are jobs that you could qualify for? I remember I was the president of Goldman Sachs Latin America. I was a young partner from Goldman. And so

• 8:26Sam Parr?

  That's wild.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Camp instructor was, was below my pay grade at that point. But I was trying to think of other ways to contribute to, to my life and to society that than Wall Street. And that, that nine 11 thing was like, you know, go back to Wall Street. You got another chapter.

• 8:41Sam Parr?

  And that's where you started Fortress?

• 8:43Speaker 00

  I actually, to be fair, didn't start Fortress. My partner Pete Brigger, who was a partner of mine and a good friend, both from Princeton Goldman Sachs and in Hong Kong, he had called me up and said, hey, why don't we partner up? And Pete's an amazing guy. He said, how about this? You're pretty, you have a fun life and I'm a pretty good investor. And you're a decent investor. Decent. Thanks Pete. And he said, we'll go together, we'll split it 50/50. Half of what I make, half of what you make. And at that point, his stock was trading at a premium to fair value and my stock was trading at a huge discount to fair value. And that he would make that call meant the world to me.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  And so I said, I'll do it. And so the two of us, we're going to partner up in something. And Pete had known Wes Edens, who had started Fortress a few years earlier. And at that point Fortress was probably 80 people and about a billion dollars' asset.

• 9:42Sam Parr?

  And it was a PE firm or a hedge fund?

• 9:43Speaker 00

  It had been a PE firm.

• 9:44Sam Parr?

  And you were buying any type of businesses?

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Well, it was a PE firm that Wes ran with a guy named Randy Nardone and Rob Kaufman, who are still friends of mine and partners and some other things. And they were doing mostly structured credit type PE buying. But Wes was a genius. He like came up with the idea of, let's buy all the cell towers and then think of cell towers as a REIT. And so he would look at business opportunities and literally craft companies that would then become billion dollar companies. And so we thought Pete has a real expertise in building a credit hedge fund. I was going to build a macro hedge fund. And the three of us sat there and said, one plus one plus one will equal 10. No one had ever taken a hedge fund or private equity company public.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  And we said, let's build a company where we all build our own businesses. And to be fair, 90%, 95% of the time, we spent alone. We didn't like, each day, what are we doing today? I built a company, Pete built a company, Wes built a company, that we all put in the same box.

• 10:46Sam Parr?

  Did you have to come up with any of your own capital to join?

• 10:48Speaker 00

  I did, I did. And I actually didn't have that much capital. You know, you, when I said Goldman had...

• 10:57Speaker 00

  You know, we got $30 million after Goldman. Well, that's pre-tax and the stock goes down. And I think Pete and I put in roughly 10 or 15 million dollars. That's all I had.

• 11:06Sam Parr?

  So you were worth 15 or 10. And you put all of it into Fortress?

• 11:10Speaker 00

  All of it into Fortress and actually borrowed some, I think.

• 11:12Sam Parr?

  And you're what, 37?

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, 37. And, you know, started a hedge fund. And I started a macro fund. Pete started a big distress fund. And Wes continued to build his private equity business. And part of our ethos was if we do what we say we're going to do, people will trust us. I learned that at Goldman Sachs as well. Goldman Sachs Assets Management Business didn't have the greatest returns, but they had lots of money because people trusted them. And so how do you build a sense of trust in investors? It's doing what you say you're going to do. No one expects you to win all the time. What was wonderful about Fortress is very cool is that over the first five years,

• 11:55Speaker 00

  really 2002 to 2007, Pete's business, I don't think, lost money in a month. He'd buy broken debt. He'd give loans to people, you know. I called him a loan shark. Like, if you couldn't get a loan from Deutsche Bank, he came to Pete. Like, private credit. Now, private credit's a huge business, but he was early in private credit. And so he built this very diversified portfolio of loans. Wes continued to do his stuff. And literally, his track record just kept going up and up. And I had a very good run as a macro trader. And so by the time we went public, my macro fund in those five years was a top-performing macro fund.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  You know, it was in the top 5% of macro funds. Pete had never lost money in a month. And Wes's track record looked like Warren Buffett's.

• 12:45Sam Parr?

  And that 15 million that you invested, or 10 at its peak, what do you think it was worth?

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Well, when we went public...

• 12:53Speaker 00

  We were the only company ever, and I think to this day this holds, where five guys became billionaires in a day.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  So in roughly 10 years, you turned 1 million into a billion?

• 13:02Speaker 00

  2.7, 2.3 billion, that's what the, we're sitting around our office after we rang the bell at the stock exchange, and I got my two young daughters, and all of a sudden Bloomberg puts a picture of Wes Edens, I was like, oh shit, Wes Edens, 2.3 billion, and then a picture of Pete Brigger, Pete Brigger, 2.3 billion, picture of my, Wes owned a tiny bit more, so Wes would have been 2.4 billion, and then Pete and I own the same, 2.3, 2.3 billion. And my two, like, nine and 10-year-old daughters looked at each other and high-fived.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Because we had never talked about money, right? You know, like, you know.

• 13:37Sam Parr?

  Was there any difference, is there any difference between making, let's say, $30 million than from 2. whatever?

• 13:45Speaker 00

  I think that fortress frenzy of us becoming rock stars almost, because we were the first company to take a hedge, we're the first guys to take a hedge fund, private equity company, public, and that, we were all on such a high. It didn't last long because the 08 financial crisis happened. You get treated a little differently. All of a sudden, you're getting calls from the president of your university who wants to sit down and talk with you. You're getting invited to cool dinners, and, and so it goes to your head a little bit, and, and you're not really ready for the rush of excitement around it. You don't feel that different. I think the same friends and, you know, but you've, there's a little bit of, everyone gets a little bit full of themselves.

• 14:27Sam Parr?

  Did your, did your life stay the same, but the, the people who wanted to talk to you changed?

• 14:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're getting, you're getting emails and, and calls from people you haven't seen in years, and people you don't even know that say they know you, yeah, you get this, there's a, especially because it was public, right? If it had been done quietly, no one would have known, but we were like on newspapers and magazine articles, and so, and it goes to your head a little bit, and then, you know, the wonderful thing about having six brothers and sisters is they don't treat you much differently. They're like excited for you, but they.

• 14:55Sam Parr?

  Well, and you have six, six or seven, you have a bunch of siblings who are also ballers, too.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  And friends, and so, you know, and then the markets always take their pound of flesh. You know, we, we made a bunch of mistakes, 08 happened, and next thing you know. Not only aren't you worth $2 billion, but you're going under the billion pretty quick. And you're like, oh shit.

• 15:18Sam Parr?

  You're losing a comma.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Oh shit, that sucks. Some of this goes back to, and this is gonna sound crass as heck, but if you were a kid in high school that played sports and the girls liked, or the guys liked if you were a girl, and had a decent social life, and didn't have a chip on your shoulder, it doesn't seem like, success is a little easier to handle because you were used to it. And it's not the same magnitude of success, but like, if you got lucky with the girls in high school, you usually turn out to be okay. Like, it's often you see the problems of people that really have a hard time adjusting, was when they were misfits or socially, and that chip on their shoulder drove them to

• 16:04Speaker 00

  this crazy success.

• 16:05Sam Parr?

  And you, the reason I'm interested in you is because you've won in a bunch of different parts of life, so you're a great wrestler, you went to Princeton, like you did a lot of amazing things, but then you, what's funny is because your personality is so loud, and because you're so like funny and tell these crazy stories, like, you talk about trading and you're like, oh yeah, I forgot, you actually had to be skilled at something. What, the people who are around you, what do you think they would say you're good at?

• 16:31Speaker 00

  I have a weird insight into looking at what the future is gonna be, you know, it's called pattern recognition. I can look at the charts and say, this is gonna happen, or I can synthesize information well, and so I'm a good speculator because I see the future pretty well.

• 16:47Sam Parr?

  Do you read a lot?

• 16:49Speaker 00

  I used to, I watch a ton of TV now, but I read a lot of like, nonfiction stuff that's coming through my desk all the time, right? So I keep up on news and the world and talk to people. Most of the great CEOs read a lot, they're curious. I'm curious as heck, I get a lot of my... Curiosity and learning from conversation. From, I have this amazing network of people that I've met in the world and I'm learning all the time. I literally had lunch with Goldman's chief intel, uh, chief information officer. So now he's got nineteen thousand of Goldman's forty-five thousand people that work for him. And, you know, it was a masterclass in AI. And so then I'm like meeting some other guy in AI.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  And so I'm learning AI from reading articles, playing with it, but mostly finding out the world experts and, and, and learning from them. And that's, that's the way I've been learning as I've gotten older.

• 17:41Sam Parr?

  So you think that people would say that you're good at seeing patterns? What else would they say you think they think you're good at?

• 17:47Speaker 00

  And I'm a good storyteller. And so why that's been important is crypto in the last ten years has been about narrative. Right? It has been about the story of understanding the world and then telling that story. And I think I've been unbelievably well-suited for this moment of time to be a crypto CEO because I'm a good storyteller. Right? How do you convince someone to buy Bitcoin? Right? You've got to tell them a story.

• 18:14Sam Parr?

  What about being a good trader? Because you were actually a trader for a long time.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  I still am a trader. That's a hard job because you have to, first of all, develop a process, an internal algorithm that wins more than it loses. You gotta be really honest with yourself. Am I good at this? Right? It's not, am I intelligent and am I smart? But am I good at this? Am I good at taking this information and making bets on it? And even if you are, then you need to develop a discipline that allows you to make sure that your, your guesses are in your portfolio. There are so many people that say, oh, my God, you gotta be short the dollar right now. The US is on a downtrend, right? Trump is pissing everybody off.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  The short dollar is the biggest, easiest trade to see. Every single macro investor, almost every single investor right now believes that you should be short the dollar. And it's a maximum conviction belief. I would bet if you took all their portfolios, only forty percent of them have a really big position.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  It should be tautological that if you're bearish, you're short, and if you're bullish, that you're long. But it's not because of fear. What if I'm wrong? And so, so much of trading is anxiety management. So much is how do I overcome my fear?

• 19:44Sam Parr?

  I heard a guy the other day say, anxiety is just when your brain is a lot bigger than your balls.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  And so, listen, anxiety is real, right? Like, there is this, the lion that shows up and you go into fight or flight. In trading, you see the lion all the time. And you get nervous when the market's going higher and you're long. Well, if it goes back down, I'll give back my money. And so, there are all these different reasons you get scared. How do you learn to trust yourself? That's a really hard process. What I've learned from the best, and I'm really good at this, but there's a group that's better than me, and I think about this all the time.

• 20:22Sam Parr?

  Let me say this, you're good at what?

• 20:24Speaker 00

  At being a macro trader.

• 20:25Sam Parr?

  But does that mean you're good at managing anxiety?

• 20:29Speaker 00

  The whole process of seeing the world and then betting on it and making money from it. And so, there are 25 macro traders that people have probably heard of. Stan Druckenmiller, David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones, Louis Bacon, you know, Alan Howard, Chris Rocos. There's a bunch of people that are great at this. The gap between the really greats and the next level, and I put myself in that next level, is discipline. And so, you have to have a set of rules that you follow.

• 20:57Sam Parr?

  Well, do you consider yourself a highly disciplined person?

• 20:59Speaker 00

  I think I'm a really hardworking person who has, and I was really disciplined at parts of my life, and I think I have sporadic lapses of discipline, partly because I have this really diverse group of interests, and I get excited. I'm a people pleaser, so I'm trying to help things out, people out all the time. And it's a prioritization. Like Stan Druckenmiller, for instance, who I think is the best, or you know, David Tepper's pushing on him, but the best trader, certainly of his generation. Tepper's a little bit younger. 32 years, never lost money, compounded over 30%. Everyone in our seats look at him as like...

• 21:41Sam Parr?

  The guy.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  The guy. A ton of integrity on how he lives his life and how he lives his portfolio. When he was managing other people's money, he never golfed. During a workday, and he loves golf.

• 21:54Sam Parr?

  But what you said, you said you had this great quote, you go, you were quoting Napoleon or someone, but you said, "I hire lucky generals, not skilled ones."

• 22:02Speaker 00

  So this was, how did I learn that I was, had the right to be good at this, right? I was making money lots, and I was like, yeah, everyone has a bit of imposter syndrome. And Ehud Barak, who had been the prime minister of Israel, I'd hired as a consultant.

• 22:17Sam Parr?

  How do you hire the prime minister of Israel?

• 22:19Speaker 00

  One of my investors said, "You need to meet Ehud Barak," and Ehud Barak was looking at ways to make money, and he had just started this business, and he had two clients. Louis Bacon, who was a multi-billionaire, you know, one of the pantheon of the greats, and Bruce Covernor, multi-billionaire, one of the pantheon of the greats. And Mike Novogratz, who was a little peanut at that point.

• 22:40Sam Parr?

  What was his rate?

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Maybe it was 200,000 a year or something.

• 22:44Sam Parr?

  So you got the former prime minister for 200 grand a year to give you feedback and advice? That's a pretty good deal.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  I just remember thinking, "I've had the same consultant," and he only had like three clients, as two of the world, like literally the great traders of all time, Bruce Covernor who built Caxton, and Louis Bacon who built More Capital. And I'm sitting with Ehud for lunch, and he said, "You don't know if I figured you out." He said, "You know, you're not so smart, but you're lucky." And I was like, "That's the compliment?" He said, "Don't worry about it, because, you know, I was just with Louis Bacon, and I spent time with Bruce Covernor," and he said, "Covernor might be smarter than you, but, but, you know, all of you guys have an intuition." And he gave me this quote from Napoleon. He said, and of course I didn't know French, he's like, "I forgot, you're not so smart, you don't know French." Son of a bitch.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  And Barak, at least allegedly, had the highest IQ of anyone in the Israeli military, and he was the most decorated soldier in the Israeli military. He was a wonderful guy, charming. And he said, "You guys have an intuition, a pattern recognition, an ability to sense where things are, like a general did, and that's your intelligence." Instantly, I was like, "That's why I'm right more than I'm wrong." I never knew why I was right more than I was wrong. It's easy to know you're being commercial, right? You and I can be commercial if we can...

• 24:04Speaker 00

  If we can make these, you know, cups of broth for 50 cents and sell them for $2, we're both gonna say, how many can we sell? Right, that's not hard. But why should I be able to predict where dollar yen is gonna go in a year better than you?

• 24:16Sam Parr?

  Are you able to do this in other facets of your life where like, man, I met this person, I predict that they're gonna face these problems or whatever?

• 24:23Speaker 00

  What's interesting is, without being conscious of it, like I've invested in a few independent movies, nobody makes money in independent movies, like almost nobody. And I've invested in two of the top three selling independent films of all time. Independent films that sold for the top prices, right? Birth of a Nation still, I think, is the highest.

• 24:46Sam Parr?

  19 or what? 19 million it sold for, I think?

• 24:49Speaker 00

  19 million, and then there's a movie called Assassination Nation, which didn't do well in the box office, but sold for like 13 million. Like, those are two of the top, you know, five prices for independent movies, at least they were. And was that just luck, or was it intuition?

• 25:04Sam Parr?

  I mean, it's not luck if it happens twice.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Right. And so, for me, that conversation with Barack was giving me confidence that my decision process wasn't random, that there was something in it. So I went back and I thought about like, how do I make decisions? And it is at the intersection of lots of data and a gut feeling. And there's that, I think, moment. And so, once I understood that, I was much more confident in telling investors how I made decisions. My hedge fund went from $300 million under management to $2 billion, and my performance went straight up over like the next six months. But mostly because investors could feel my confidence. And so, the lesson for you or for listeners is,

• 25:51Speaker 00

  spend time figuring out what you're good at, and where that comes from. And not everyone has the same skills.

• 25:59Sam Parr?

  Where does it come from for you, though? I mean, because I remember reading about, I'm not in the finance world at all, but I read Blackfish, which was about Steve Cohen. And they told stories about how in the 80s, there was a physical ticker. And he would like, he could just hear the rhythm of the ticker and make, and I'm like, that is just so vague. And it's a pain in the ass because I'm like, you're explaining it like an art, but I want it to be more of a science because I want to learn. But that's what you're, that's how you're describing it. It's like, it's more of, it's very, it's very artistic.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  For me, the type of trading I do, it's very intuitive and it's very pattern recognition. If I went blind, I couldn't trade. I need to see the ballet of the charts. There are other people that do things very differently. Like, the interesting thing about trading is there are a thousand different ways to approach it.

• 26:44Sam Parr?

  What does Steve do? You were saying.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  I know Stevie pretty well, but I don't know his exact process. But I would tell you, he's one of the most competitive guys out there. He used to go on vacation and have all his screens set up. And if he didn't, if he wasn't in feeling things right, he'd fly right back to get it to his desks. Like, he was obsessed with beating the markets.

• 27:05Sam Parr?

  Are you, you think you're competitive?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  I'm not as competitive, which is interesting. When I think about like with Stan Druckenmuller and Lewis Bacon and like, why those guys have been in that, and maybe one day I'll catch them, but I'm not in their category at this point. They're more competitive than me. They just, I mean, Lewis Bacon, I remember playing croquet against him. And I'm like, how's this guy killing me in croquet? Well, he had hired the world's best croquet guy to teach him.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  He doesn't like to lose. There's partly, like, these guys are ultra competitive, but they also are ultra disciplined. And those two cross factors.

• 27:39Sam Parr?

  Creates a maniac.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Well, creates an amazing performer.

• 27:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Maybe not the easiest person to go to cocktails with. Sometimes they are, but like, like, an amazing performer. And I. I don't want to discount, I've had an amazing run of success at trading. I just know myself, as I compare myself to the other guys, a little more disciplined. Now, I would probably argue I've had more fun. I've done more different things than most people. But again, each person makes their own decision on what path they want to take. And I'm not, I'm not making a value judgment on how people live their lives. The key is to figure out how you want to live your own life, but figure out what you're good at. And again, that, that comes from mentors, it comes from sometimes chance.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Without that conversation with Hubrock, I was miserable because I was feeling so much pressure. And I remember telling my wife, I said, "I might even just shut this hedge fund down if I can't have more fun." And I was winning, but I was feeling so much pressure. And I think I was feeling pressure because I didn't know why I was good. And that literal conversation over lunch unlocked this story in me that said, "Hey, this is why I should, this is why I win."

• 28:52Sam Parr?

  And that was intuition, you're just good at, you, you feel certain things and you should trust it.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And I, and it doesn't come just, you don't get it from sitting in a box. There's a tremendous amount of information I'm shoving in my brain, right? Looking at charts, talking to people, understanding psychology, looking at, you know, who's long and who's short. There's tons of stuff that goes into the algorithm, but it was at that intersection of the intuition. It's all in the part of your brain that you're not tapping normally. A lot of it's historical too, like you see things, they repeat themselves.

• 29:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I heard, um, one of my heroes is John Rockefeller, and I was listening to Business Untitled, and you're like, "When I was in fifth grade or eighth grade or something, I wrote a paper on Jaden D."

• 29:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:31Sam Parr?

  And I thought that was cool because he's a fun asset to learn about. And you also, you and your partner Wes did the train thing.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Wes did the train thing, I was a cheerleader and an investor, but, but, uh, yeah, that was fascinating when I went down there and I was reading about Flagler.

• 29:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's a man. These guys are hardcore.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:48Sam Parr?

  I went and talked to a bunch of friends of ours who, we have mutual, you and I have some mutual friends, and I want to tell you what they said, they go, "He's max risk all the time, his entire life. He takes tons of risk and he lives life on the edge." And another person said, um, uh, "He's blown up a couple of times and he's won a lot more." I'm amazed at how good he is at managing risk. And I actually talked to some of the guys who work with, and they also use the word risk constantly.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  It's hard to be in the crypto business and not to be comfortable with risk. Like, it's an asset that, you know, Bitcoin went up and crashed down.

• 30:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think it's bigger than Bitcoin. I think that you got lucky that Bitcoin exists when it does. I think that you're a guy who, you enjoy risk. You enjoy, I think you were telling, I heard a story about how you said like, you are a 37 out of 40 in terms of like, some type of personality test of fricking rules. And you're like, it's funny, my kid like is the exact opposite. And then you hear, I read the New Yorker or some article where they're like, he flew a helicopter down the street like during the Princeton graduation. Like, there's clearly like this thing of like, this guy likes to push it, and he's pretty comfortable teetering on like big ruins. And so, are you, for your personal finances, are you at risk often?

• 31:07Speaker 00

  So, part of it is,

• 31:11Speaker 00

  there's this balance between like, yeah, there's an adrenaline need. Like, I like adrenaline, like in sports and in trading and in, you know, it's a dopamine addiction if you want to think about it. But part of it is, I like my life. And I was a helicopter pilot at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and I made 18,000 a year after tax. I remember because I had $1,500 per month paycheck. Pat Tierney, who's a buddy of mine still, was one of my buddies down there. And we had the time of our lives. I, when I look at how much fun and how much I enjoyed that, in the middle of fricking lower ugly, the ugly corner of lower Alabama, right? The Wiregrass, it was called by Dothan,

• 31:54Speaker 00

  with 700 other guys and almost no women around because all the women have gone off to college and there's 700 guys and a few women in flight school. We still had one of the time of our lives. So, when I think, was that year better or worse than the year I made lots of money? I can't tell. Like, that was a great year. And so, I think if you enjoy your life... It's easier to take risk. If I lost my money, it would hurt my ego for a while. I would be embarrassed.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  I'd be frustrated because all the money really does at one point is allow you to help other people. Right? And that's both a blessing. It's a huge blessing, but it's also a lot of responsibility and sometimes it's a pain in the ass. And so I actually don't think I've tied how I live my life on a year to year basis to money. Now, some of my friends say, oh, it's bullshit. Look at the parties you throw. You spend lots of money. I do spend lots of money, but I threw tons of parties when I didn't have a lot of money either. I just threw cheaper parties. And so I think so much of being able to take risk is being okay with your life and not being defined by just your money.

• 33:04Sam Parr?

  Have you met a guy named Brad Jacobs?

• 33:06Speaker 00

  No, I wish I have.

• 33:08Sam Parr?

  He has a book. That's I've never met him. I've read his book. It's called How to Make a Billion Dollars. He's created, I think, six billion dollar companies, like XO Logistics is one of them. If you've ever heard of that, like these like huge, like $10 billion logistic companies. And his whole shtick was he fragmented industries, bought all of them, operated them well, took it public, whatever. And he talks in his book about how he was like, I researched like crazy. Like anytime I get into a business, I research like crazy. So I read all the books. I use Tgus or whatever else, like the services and or Alpha sites, wherever they are. And like I hire experts, but then I go and talk to the employees and I just research. So it's like, I'm really confident that this is going to work because I've talked to literally 500 people and I have all these notes. What I've noticed a pattern with you is that you don't, I don't know if you call it research,

• 33:53Sam Parr?

  but you talk to a lot of people. And so like I just on the way here, I was hearing a story about how like your roommate was Gloria Vanderbilt's son or something like that.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  He was.

• 34:02Sam Parr?

  Like, so that's like pretty magical, like to be around and hear stories of that family. And then like your other roommate helped create Ethereum. And then there was like this other story, this other story. There was like 20 stories where I'm like, what the hell? Like, it's like, it's like you.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  I'm a good guy to sit around a campfire with drinking because I got a lot of stories.

• 34:19Sam Parr?

  But there's just so many times where it's like, oh, I just, it's like, normal people would be like, I know a guy, you know, I sat at a bar next to a guy and he did this. You just have all these stories, except they just happen to be like these like wild, crazy people. Who, what was the story about how you first heard about Bitcoin?

• 34:33Speaker 00

  So Pete Brigger. Uh, who had been my, he lived above me my freshman year at Princeton. He lived in the room above me.

• 34:40Sam Parr?

  This dorm was amazing.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  We had a pretty cool little group of people.

• 34:44Sam Parr?

  Right? Is this wild? It's like the greatest dorm on earth.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  He lived above me.

• 34:47Sam Parr?

  How many billionaires are from that dorm, do you think? No, seriously.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  At least three.

• 34:52Sam Parr?

  For real, in that dorm?

• 34:54Speaker 00

  But he's the reason I got my job at Goldman Sachs. I was literally wandering around Bleecker Street, a little drunk. And I ran into him and I was interviewing for jobs. He's like, bullshit, you gotta work at Goldman Sachs. And, you know, I was from the army and so he got me an interview at Goldman Sachs. And 41 interviews later, they gave me a job. And then we lived in Hong Kong together and we slowly became very good friends. I'm the godfather of his youngest son. Then we did Fortress. And he was the guy that was the distressed debt investor. Well, because he made a promise to his wife that at one point they'd move back to California. He moved his entire business, or the bulk of it, to Stanford area, Palo Alto.

• 35:36Sam Parr?

  And what year was that?

• 35:37Speaker 00

  This probably would have been, he probably moved his business out there 2010 or something.

• 35:41Sam Parr?

  Alright, good timing.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  And, but he's not a tech guy. But his brother-in-law was a tech guy and the group of friends he had were tech guys. And they all started talking about Bitcoin. And Pete wanted to be part of the, part of the, you know, the clan. And so he called me up, he said, I'm hearing about this thing, Bitcoin, all my smart friends are doing it. What do you think? And I never heard of it. And I quickly did a Google search and asked around and.

• 36:05Sam Parr?

  This was in 10?

• 36:06Speaker 00

  This was in, this would have been 2012, 2013, maybe. Bitcoin was at like $96.

• 36:12Sam Parr?

  So, uh, it was nothing really. I mean, there's not, there would have been like bitcoin.org or like some forums.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  There wasn't a lot, but it was online. The Chinese had just started buying it. And I made a thesis, I said, oh, we gotta buy it. And we started buying some of it. My friend Jeff Lowe, who's become a great investor, was working in my family office. And he bought my first Bitcoin for me. And, and then Pete and I kept talking about it and we were like, maybe this should be bigger than just us buying a little bit of it. So we called a third friend, Dan Moore, another Princeton guy, who I had invested, who had, you know, had a similar, went to Princeton. He'd worked on Wall Street, he worked at Goldman, he worked at Tiger. I had invested in his first hedge fund. And he was on the sidelines in between, you know, after oh eight, his hedge fund didn't do well. He was trying to figure out what to do. He did some cool stuff in Argentina. He researched this for a while and came back and was like, guys, this is going to change the whole world.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  And Dan was really confident and was willing to put a whole bunch of his net worth into this thing. Pete and I were wealthier because fortunes had gone public than Dan at the time. And we're like, if he's putting that much in, we need to put at least that much in. And you know, that's the way guys think. And so we all roughly put similar amounts in.

• 37:24Sam Parr?

  Was it like eight figures?

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 37:26Sam Parr?

  Or you can even say that?

• 37:27Speaker 00

  It was, it was seven figures.

• 37:28Sam Parr?

  Seven?

• 37:29Speaker 00

  But it was a significant amount in dollar terms at a hundred, but not in our net worth terms. Right? We were very wealthy guys at the time and it's one of the reasons we were able to hold it so long. Because even it went up, if you're a young guy and you put $10,000 into something and all of a sudden it's worth a hundred thousand. Your friend's like, dude, you gotta, you gotta take some, you can buy a house, you can, your girlfriend wants you to buy, you know, like, there's so many reasons you're going to sell that thing and almost nobody can hold. But if you're already having a lot of money, it's just another investment. And so we get a lot of credit for having made lots of money in crypto. It was easier having started rich and it's gotten me thinking why this world is so off sides.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  When you're wealthy, you have assets. Assets are basically chips on a table. You know, I bought SpaceX when it was 120th was today because everyone's like, ah, you gotta buy some SpaceX. And you look, you're like, Elon Musk is killing it. He's brilliant. Let me get some private SpaceX. And so all of a sudden you make, you know, a hundred million plus in SpaceX. He didn't do anything other than make, put a bet down. And so getting money and, and getting network.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Makes making money so much easier. Uh, it's almost unfair. It's why Pickett, he wrote that book. He said that there's no way the rich, poor gap ever comes back into balance because once you're wealthy, you have such an advantage. And the advantage isn't just capital, it's capital and network. And one of my strengths is I like people, I like cheering people on, I like talking about people and it makes it easy to make friends and network. And through that network, you learn stuff.

• 39:15Sam Parr?

  So my, I'm, uh, for our podcast, my listeners will make fun of me. I, I own a company now that's does well and hopefully that's going to be a huge home run, but my liquid net worth, I just do, um, basically the S and P 500 and bonds.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  You, you invest like you're a, like a, a white guy from Missouri.

• 39:33Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah. Look, it's worked out.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  White bread, boring.

• 39:36Sam Parr?

  Which, which means I've, I've outperformed about a 90% of hedge funds. So it's worked out, uh, but like.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  Listen, it's been a great.

• 39:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I've like, I started making money in the greatest bull market of all time. And, um, do you, for your personal finances, uh, do you have any boring stuff? Or are you always, are you active for the whole thing?

• 39:54Speaker 00

  No, I, listen, I have a chunk of money in, you know, these credit funds, like the one Pete ran, uh, which are private credit funds, which, you know, roughly have, have done 10% plus a year compounded. And if you can compound a piece of money at 10% a year for a long period of time, you get rich real quick. And so I have some in private credit. I have a lot in my own company, uh, that I trade currencies and stuff on my own. And then I have a bunch of private equity investments and venture investments. I own a chunk of Bojangles, the chicken company that got announced yesterday that, that they're, the group that owns it is putting it up for sale. So hoping, hoping that sells for a high price.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  But I haven't really ever done bond stocks, partly because that's what I do.

• 40:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  And my money has often been tied up in the enterprise that I'm engaged in. At Fortress, I owned a lot of Fortress stock.

• 40:49Sam Parr?

  I guess you've been illiquid like for a large portion of this.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  I probably have run the lowest liquidity to net worth ratio of anyone who's been on your podcast.

• 40:59Sam Parr?

  Can you tell me more about that?

• 41:01Speaker 00

  You know, it's not necessarily what I would want it always. I've always had a lot of faith that I'd make money. And so I've always either wanted to live a big life and also make a lot of investments and so.

• 41:09Sam Parr?

  So you spend, you just spend a lot?

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Spend a lot, live large, I invest large and I always think I'm going to win. And so in 2021, we thought we were going to be able to take Galaxy public and I was going to get a lot of liquidity. And it turned out we took a little too long to get into the SEC queue. Administration change, Gary Gensler shut the door. And so for four years, no liquidity out of Galaxy. You know, my other stuff, I made some good investments, some bad investments and didn't really change lifestyle. And you slowly start burning the furniture of liquidity, right? And so we just did a, we just did a deal. We took some chips off the table in terms of liquidity.

• 41:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, you live life on the edge. I mean, I think that I admire like your ability, like I'm adrenaline seeking too. But I'm also way more risk adverse than you, I think. And I, but I admire people who are into risk because I think it's held me back.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  I think one of the things that people say you blew up twice. I, listen, I, I had a personal shit to deal with and I lost my job at Goldman Sachs. Or actually, to be fair, I resigned, but that was embarrassing because I was on a high flyer track there and I loved Goldman Sachs. And so that, that was painful. Coming back from that gives you a lot of confidence that.

• 42:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  You can fall down and like you can lose money. It's not the end of the world. You're gonna, you gotta learn how to get back up and being a wrestler teaches you that. Like no wrestler wins every match. Kale Sanderson. Did in college, but then he lost in international. Like, you know, no one wins every match. And learning how to come, and I lost a lot. Learning how to come back from losing is one of the most important things. Cause losing doesn't mean you're a bad guy. It doesn't mean you're shit. It doesn't mean you're not competent. It just means you lost that game. And I think Nadal, when he left tennis, gave the best. He was like, you know, I think he lost 48% of the points he played. And he was the greatest tennis player of all time, or one of the top three.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  That process of stumbling and coming back. And I think a lot about how I have managed to do that myself. Because I often am asked to help people to think through it.

• 43:20Sam Parr?

  What, like a downfall and like a rebirth?

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Come back. Part of it is take some time off and do some work and understand like, what the hell happened? Like, how do you? Most people don't spend enough time figuring out who they are. Like, like literally trying to understand like who they are and why they're that, who they are. It's always your parents. You've got a relationship with your mom and your dad. Whatever the story was, dad disappeared. Processing that, right? That's the human condition, right? And trying to understand what moves you. Some people get there and like, ah, the whole world. Other people just make progress getting there, right? I think I've made progress. I'm not sure I've ever gotten to enlightenment by any, not even close. But I keep making progress and going on that journey.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  And there, there's lots of ways to go on that journey, right? It's through getting a shrink, through meditating, through prayer, through ayahuasca or psilocybin journeys. Like there's, there's radical ways, there's subtle ways, there's taking time by yourself. But it's investing in yourself. Most people don't invest in themselves. I always asked a room full of 800 wrestling coaches, how many in the last five years? It's been one week with just themselves and not one hand run up? Not one.

• 44:35Sam Parr?

  You do that now?

• 44:36Speaker 00

  I try once a year to spend a week by myself.

• 44:40Sam Parr?

  My friend Chris, um, who, who has a public trade company, he's like, man, I screw up all the time. And I always try to journal, what's the lesson to be learned here? And I thought that was like a really good way, uh, of asking himself that question. What questions are you asking yourself during that, during that seven day solitude?

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Well, I did the silent meditation, uh, in Cardiff, England. You sit there for freaking 11 days meditating. You can't read, you can't do music, you can't exercise, you can't even masturbate. I mean, it literally is. For 11 days. Your back hurts, you starve.

• 45:18Sam Parr?

  Do you set goals like this, like, like to have such a full life where you're running a, I don't know how many people work here, 200 people, a lot of people.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  600.

• 45:26Sam Parr?

  600, oh my God, I didn't even realize it. And you have all the, you have a lot of shit going on, but then you're like, I do this week meditation and then this party here. Are you setting, like, at the end of the year, this is what a win would look like?

• 45:40Speaker 00

  We do, we do set goals. We've got a management team that's got agenda of things that we want to happen. And I think the crypto business is in such an interesting, both crypto and the data center business, we have two businesses. Both are at the forefront right now of like explosive change. And there's a ton to do in both of them. And so when I think about my time for the next six months, Galaxy is going to get a ton of my time. There's been times when we first started, it was a smaller business, my philanthropy got a ton of my time when I started doing criminal justice. So I've dialed back my participation in philanthropy solely because this 600 person baby needs a lot of energy.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  And so I do think of it that way. But my brain, you know, like, how do I have fun? Think of if I make this much money, what are we going to do with it? So my son and I are brainstorming on like a cool project, fantasy project that you would do if you actually had X hundred million dollars to give away to one thing, you know, what could you do to make New York City better? And so like, like, and I'm on perplexity, I'm trying to figure out, I'm working with people. And so. I multitask in that respect, but I got goals. There was that do what I say, do what I do. I'm much better talking about like the meditating and the exercise. And this is where the discipline.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  My wife wakes up every day, 6:30 and meditates an hour and meditates an hour at night and doesn't miss. I'm just like, she's like a metronome. And I'm like, I know that would be good for me. And I do, I take once in a while when I'm stressed, like in meditate.

• 47:22Sam Parr?

  But it doesn't seem broken.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, when I break, I figure out how to fix myself, but no, I don't feel broken.

• 47:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but on this other podcast you did, you were like, oh, I went to a therapist the first time ever. And, and the thing was like, I gotta love myself and forgive myself. And you're like, that was like a huge breakthrough. And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, well, playing armchair expert here. But I'm like, you're doing it again. You know what I mean? Like, dude.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  People have a hard time changing patterns. One of the things you'll learn as you get older is that you see very few people that actually do enough of the hard work, that they, they do change. And most of the time you see those people is when they literally hit some horrific rock bottom, that the only way to live is to change. Right? That's the whole AA cycle, uh, where they just give up and say, okay, I'll do what you tell me to do because I gotta change. Change is hard. Even subtle change is hard. And again, if someone's living their fullest life, maybe they don't want to change. Right?

• 48:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, I love hearing about this shit because I think that, um, I think that, you know, this is gonna sound pompous of me, but in my head, I'm like, I can be like, you know, he's, you know, I'm 35. So I'm like, okay, he's 25 years ahead of me and like I.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  And we both can't hear.

• 48:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we're both a little bit deaf and I came from a blue collar, like, uh, family. And I, I think you talked about Princeton about, uh, like, you're like, oh my God, I thought I was the shit. And then I got around people that like, kind of were the shit. And I'm like, oh, fuck. And so like, I've like, thought that like many, like I hadn't been in New York City until I was like 26 years old. Hadn't been on the airplane until I was 21. And so like, I always felt like these, um.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  That line in New York, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. There's nothing like New York City because you're never gonna be the guy.

• 49:08Sam Parr?

  Like I go home and I'm like, I'm the man. And then I go into New York, I'm like, and I'm like looking at apartments and I'm like, I'm nothing.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  But, but it's, it's both so liberating and so awesome because, I mean, you go to a Knicks game.

• 49:20Sam Parr?

  Oh dude, we were supposed to do a podcast. And you canceled and that night I turn on the TV, I see Timothy Chalamet, I see the Jenner girl, and then I see Mike. And I was like, "That motherfucker, we were supposed to do a thing." And then I was like, my, my wife was like, "Can you blame him?" I'm like, "No, I can't."

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Knicks in the playoffs is as much, this city erupts.

• 49:43Sam Parr?

  Dude, you were, you had like, there was Timothy and then you.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  We got good seats.

• 49:47Sam Parr?

  You were like the man. How much does a playoff seat cost? Where, where, where he, I imagine his were free?

• 49:53Speaker 00

  So those seats are free. And if you want to buy front row in the playoffs, you know, they can cost as much as 50, 80,000 dollars.

• 49:59Sam Parr?

  That's what I thought.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  The second row, the guy who sat next to me, I think, paid 15,000.

• 50:03Sam Parr?

  Wait, yours were free?

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Well, no, ours, we have season tickets.

• 50:06Sam Parr?

  Okay, got it.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  And so you just pay the normal, whatever Knicks charge you for playoff tickets.

• 50:11Sam Parr?

  That's crazy, man.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  And so.

• 50:12Sam Parr?

  Do you see Ryan, you know who Ryan Cohen is?

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:14Sam Parr?

  Billionaire Ryan Cohen, I don't, I mean, I don't know him, but I know who he is. And I saw him sitting right in front of you during a game and like Jalen Brunson like fell in his lap and he didn't break eye contact from the beautiful woman he was with. He just like, he had the conversation the whole time.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Those seats are fun because you always have the celebrity sitting in front of you. I went to one game, just a regular season game and Davido, the Nigerian superstar, you know, there's, there are two guys in, in Afro beats, right? Davido's one of them. The other guy's Burna Boy was there and I didn't know who he was, but he had a great chain. I like chains. And I'm like, "Dude, where'd you get that chain?" He's like, "Ah." And I went to get a beer and I was like, "You want a beer, a Coke or something?" And he did it one. When he came back, he turned around and he's like, "You know, no one's offered to get me a beer in a long time. And I really appreciate that." And we started talking. I had no idea he was this mega star. And he posted a picture and then his uncle texted me and was like, "Dude, dude, that, that guy knows more about crypto.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Get to know him." And so he came on, he was on our podcast.

• 51:14Sam Parr?

  No shit.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Became friends with him.

• 51:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's the, that's the power of gift, like the gift of gab, I think, is what my father calls it. He did the same thing. But it's sort of like, it's like this weird blue collar grit or like hospitality, but with like big number swag.

• 51:28Speaker 00

  People, people are scared to be nice to people. I don't want to, I don't want to hurt. The guy sit in front of you, you know? Ask him where he had his Jane. Like, most people like to be at.

• 51:37Sam Parr?

  And you end up doing some type of business with him?

• 51:39Speaker 00

  No, no, just he came and got our podcast. He invited me to Nigeria. I, I, I made a huge mistake. He invited me to his wedding in Nigeria, which turned out to be like the coolest looking thing of all times. But it was like a week before my daughter's wedding and I didn't think I could go and miss.

• 51:52Sam Parr?

  But haven't you noticed the pattern of like this, all these silly, small interactions have been like, I think you said with the Ethereum purchase, you like bought a Gulfstream or something crazy. And like it, like, it's just funny that serendipity. I guess serendipity might happen to everyone, but not everyone capitalizes off of it. And I've noticed a pattern where like, there's so many like, you're like, oh, I just happened to do this. And it like, I've heard that like 12 times.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  You know what? I love, I love other people's stories that you must as well, if you want to do the podcast. And so I get excited for other people. Uh, like you need to have it or you're like, that's frigging so cool. And I wanted to know his story and you know, I didn't realize he grew up a rich kid and, and uh, even the relationship with the dad, it all fascinates me. And I think if you show interest in people and you're open with yourself, it opens up a lot of, uh, you know, opportunity. And it's not, it's not a strategy. It's not like I think about doing this. It, it comes from partly being raised with seven kids. It partly comes from, you know, feeling loved your whole life. Uh, mom and dad love you, your friends love you, you know? And so you feel comfortable in your own skin.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  The gift you can give your kids, the gift you can give your employees is for people to feel comfortable in their own skin. When I went to Princeton, my great insight, uh, you know, I had this roommate who was Gloria Vanderbilt's son. Unfortunately, he ended up committing suicide later on in life and it was so painful. He was such a nice kid.

• 53:14Sam Parr?

  Would that have been Anderson Cooper's brother?

• 53:16Speaker 00

  And Anderson's written about it.

• 53:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, I read Anderson's book on his mother is amazing.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Yes. And, you know, I'm a young guy. See, I'm meeting Gloria Vanderbilt and I'm like, oh my God, I'm on, you know?

• 53:26Sam Parr?

  Like with royalty?

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Uh, royalty and I'm the middle class guy and my mom had grown up in Queens and so.

• 53:31Sam Parr?

  Probably wore Gloria jeans.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Uh, but she knew the whole story. And after about six months at Princeton, you know, Princeton's a unique place in that everyone lives in the same dorms and they're kind of crappy dorms. Uh, there's not like a hierarchy of rich and non-rich. And in terms of living space and even quite frankly, social life. And you're like. They all shit on the same toilets we do. You know, they're, he's just, he's got his insecurities, he's got his strengths, just like. And the moment you realize. Everyone's kind of the same, everyone's a little bit insecure, everyone's got an imposter syndrome. Uh, everyone's trying to figure out who they are.

• 54:15Sam Parr?

  You had that realization in college?

• 54:16Speaker 00

  I had that realization in college, freshman year.

• 54:18Sam Parr?

  Man, so what I used to host these conferences called, um, my old company was, it was a newsletter company, whatever. It was like this media company and we owned trade shows and, or conferences, like a TED Talk. And I would, uh, I was 24 when I started doing it. And we would get like the founder of like WeWork or like Casper or Bonobos, like brands that, uh, or Zapier, which is now like a $10 billion company, these companies that were like, at the time, obviously before we knew WeWork, because we were, uh, we're like these like $10 billion or whatever companies. And I would play a little trick on them where I was like, all right, your talk is at noon, but you gotta be here for a mic check at like 10. And like, there's no mic check for conferences, right? Like it, like it works, the mic works, but I just wanted to be around them in the green room.

• 55:00Sam Parr?

  And I would hear these billionaires complain, it would be, I would just be sitting, listening with about four or five of them. And I knew like how big their companies were and I would hear them complain about stuff about like, I've had this CFO who I need to fire, but frankly, like I just hate the confrontation. Or like, you know, this one company had just raised $400 million and they were like, things are going horrible. I'm like, dude, I just read about you in the New York Times, I thought you guys were the shit. And I remember thinking that that was like the most like enlightening. Lesson I'd had probably in terms of business and how to live life, probably ever. And I was like, these people, they're, they have the same downside, they have the same issues I have. Yet they're still like just moving forward and doing it.

• 55:44Sam Parr?

  And I found it very freeing to know that the people I admire were broken.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Listen, every, everybody is, is going through a similar journey. Like there are very few people that are enlightened. I've met a couple.

• 55:55Sam Parr?

  I've met one or two.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  Um, we're all on this path. And so I think the lesson I learned at Princeton wasn't that. I was the same as everybody or is that I was no better or no worse than anybody.

• 56:09Sam Parr?

  Sure.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  I did some things better than people and I did some things worse than people, right? Wrestling is a pretty objective. This guy beat your ass. He's a better wrestler. And I've tried to keep that ethos my whole life. It's why at my parties, I got my friends. I got I got a real weird collection of people because I just like them.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  As opposed to a hierarchy of people. And I think that is what's brought me lots of joy. But it's also giving when I got to Goldman Sachs, I would walk into the boss's office. It'd be like, dude, I got this great idea. I thought I deserved to be there. Now, often he'd say, that's a stupid idea. Oh, okay. And I'd go back to my seat. But the guys around me were like, dude, how'd you have the courage to walk into the office? I was like, he shits on that same toilet as you do.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  And so part of that sense.

• 57:01Sam Parr?

  Were your parents confident?

• 57:02Speaker 00

  My dad was an all-American football player from West Point, but very quiet and

• 57:09Speaker 00

  stoic is the right word for him. Nice. He's become the kindest man in the world as he's gotten older, but he was tough, but kind. But my mother was very aspirational, the greatest storyteller, and she pushed us. Not in a direct way, but like in an indirect way, like, you know, we'd complain about some kid being able to do something and well, she jumped off a cliff. Would you do it? Right? And there was almost this like, we could be the Kennedys. I tease my mom all the time. She looked like Jackie O. She named my first daughter, my oldest sister Jacqueline, her first daughter. So we had Jackie, Robert, John John.

• 57:48Sam Parr?

  Do you really have a John John?

• 57:50Speaker 00

  A John, yeah, John.

• 57:51Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  Like, I was like, Mom, you named us after the Kennedys. I did not. My mom and dad got married right when Kennedy became elected, you know, I mean, it's.

• 57:59Sam Parr?

  Kennedy Kennedy is one of my, I'm a huge history buff. Kennedy, the Kennedy family. I've probably read 12 books about him. Thank God you aren't the Kennedys, right?

• 58:08Speaker 00

  But it was very aspirational. My mother was very aspirational. She wanted the best for us and she was a big cheerleader. She wasn't what you'd call like, you know, the Jewish mom or the Korean mom that pressured, pressured, pressured. But like, there was an internal sense of, of course you could do this. And I think all of our, my brothers and sisters picked up on that.

• 58:26Sam Parr?

  Are you nervous about raising rich kids? I think about that all the time.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  I thought about this when I became wealthy. I was like, there's nothing I can do about it. And so I had one rule to my children, be kind. And the only time I lost my temper, I had one son who was a whippersnapper a few times and was like tough on his brother. Then I was like, wow, where does that come from? Like, I would really, only a few times in my whole life with my kids, I lost my temper. And it was always when I thought they weren't being kind.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  But I didn't think you could fake, like, not being rich. Like, I worked a ton for my, when I was a young kid, because I was kind of part of the labor force. And if I wasn't mowing the grass, my mom or dad had to. If I wasn't doing the dishes, my mom or dad had, like, we had a labor force besides my kids. And so you couldn't, like, fake, you've got to do, this doesn't make any sense. And so I thought, and my wife probably did a better job than me, all you can do is model good behavior. If you want your kids to work hard, work hard. If you want your kids to be kind to the people that are in your house and the cab driver, be kind to them. If all you do is talk about money, your kids are only going to talk about money. If you talk about interesting things around the dinner table, your kids are going to talk about interesting things.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  And so parenting really is modeling. And, you know, by no means have I been a perfect model and my kids probably could give you 85 stories on how I haven't. But that was my philosophy. And they're going to be rich kids. And so, so far, they've turned out lovely.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  Fingers crossed, you know, they've all finding their own path and doing cool things and uh. I think it's much harder to be a rich kid than a poor kid. Like for us, our success was providing. It's going from here to there. It's, we wanted to make money so we can go on a date, so we can get laid, so then we can buy a house, so we can send our kids to school.

• 1:00:17Sam Parr?

  You want to be better than your parents and your parents want you to be better than them.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Sam Parr?

  And with my situation, I'm like, man, I got really lucky at a young age, which means compounding is like, it's like, and I feel actually sorry for my children. I'm like, the natural state is that you need to beat me, but I don't want you to feel the pressure that you need to do that.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  But they don't need to be. The, the book Sapiens was all about humans are people of narrative, right? I love storytelling. The narrative in America was the American dream is your kids are going to have a better life than you.

• 1:00:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  So that got built into our system.

• 1:00:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  At one point that's, you want your kids to have a good life. The European ethos is I just want my kids to have a good life. And as you get wealthier, I want my kids to feel self-actualized. I want them to have a wonderful life. Like at one point, if you're Bill Gates's kid and he's worth a hundred billion dollars.

• 1:01:05Sam Parr?

  Impossible.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  Like, well, I don't have 500, like it becomes idiotic. And then you're like, talking to a dude. And so I think the moment you get even half as wealthy as you, that narrative shifts. And it's like, how do I help my kids? How do I scaffold them to be self-actualized? Whatever that means. I got one son, he's quirky and smart and we have no idea what he's going to do. We had, my wife and I like gamble on it. We're like, God, what do you think? It can go from here to there. He's hopefully going to find his niche and be successful and we will cheer him on.

• 1:01:37Sam Parr?

  Appreciate you doing this. You're the man I really admire. I admire your business stuff, but I don't think that's what you're great at. I think you're great at like living a full life. And I think that there's only a handful of people who I, I, I know from the outside or I know personally where I'm like, I enjoy if like, life is like five different facets. I'm like, I really admire like up to four or even five of like the way they live life. Whereas there's a bunch of people who are like amazing at business and like, yeah, he's amazing at business. But like, I don't admire anything else about him. And so that's kind of cool to like be able to hang out and meet with someone who I, I put on that list of people who I. Really look up to and how they live all different parts of their life. So thanks for doing this and this is awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you.