Greatest Hits of 2021 (Vol. 1)

On this episode, we bring you some of the best and most popular moments from My First Million in 2021. Let us know how you like the episode and if we should do greatest hits in the future! _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes: (01:10) - Michael Jordan's house (12:45) - Mob tours (19:00) - Dopamine detox with Andrew Wilkinson (26:30) - Shaan's goal setting framework (30:00) - Betting on yourself w/ Ariel Helwani ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More Clip 1 (1:10) - MJ's house Clip 2 (12:45) - Mob tours Clip 3 (19:00) - Dopamine Detox w/ Andrew Wilkinson Clip 4 (26:30) - Shaan's Goal Setting Framework Clip 5 (30:00) - Betting on Yourself w/ Ariel Helwani

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

• 0:10Speaker 00

  What is up my friends and welcome to my first million's greatest hits, volume one. I don't know. It's been a minute since we've done one of these, but for those of you who don't know who this is, my name's Jonathan Barshop. I work behind the scenes here with Sam, Sean and Ben. And in this episode, we compiled five of the best moments of 2021 and are going to be serving them to you in just a bit. But first, I just want to give you all a huge shout out for helping us grow the pod this year from 100,000 downloads in January to over 2 million monthly downloads this past month. So just insane growth. And that's all because the reviews y'all have been leaving on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and all the clips that y'all have been creating. So we ran a clip contest this past month and a few of y'all have gone like crazy viral, getting millions of views on TikTok. So just nuts. So I wanted to give you all a quick shout out, say thank you, but that's not why you're here.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  You're here for the goods. So without further ado, let's dive into a few of the best moments from 2021. So this first clip is from episode 158. I still think this idea has a ton of legs, but the idea is to buy Michael Jordan's home and turn it into a museum. Let's give it a listen.

• 1:10Sam Parr?

  Sean put something on here that I actually think, I was telling a friend as I was researching, I actually think that this is one of the better ideas that we and you, you've ever come up with. The Michael Jordan thing.

• 1:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You want me to explain it? Okay. So I've been looking at this house for a long time. Michael Jordan's house has been for sale for like a decade and it hasn't sold. And this is his house, kind of like in Illinois, near Chicago, where, you know, Michael Jordan was on the Bulls. And he had this 56,000 square foot home in Highland Park. And so this thing, originally he put it up for sale in like, I don't know, nine years ago for $30 million, $29 million. And now it's, you know, the price has been cut in half and the thing is still not selling. And if you look at the photos, you could just go, it's like on Zillow. So you can go look at the photos.

• 2:04Shaan Puri?

  He's got like an indoor basketball court, you know, the gate leading up to the driveway has this big 23 number like embossed in it. He's got, you know, everything you would want, like huge, you know, closets, because he's got, you know, all his Air Jordans or whatever. And so his house is, it's pretty unbelievable, right? There's, there's all kinds of.

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  Epic shit here, but it's not selling and it's not selling for I think a couple of reasons. It's like, you know, it's very custom to Michael Jordan. Like it's just, it's like it was custom made and in many senses. So, you know, the other rich people don't necessarily want to live in a house that's like made for another dude. It's also, you know, it's very expensive for the area. The property taxes are really expensive, all that stuff. But I was thinking, okay, the price is now cut in half. Now it's, now it's a $13 million house or 12, you know, $13 million home that you could buy. 13, 14. And now it's in range where maybe there's something fun you could do with it. Now you might be getting a value buy. So I was thinking, all right, there's a bunch of people, obviously, that are basketball fans that love Michael Jordan.

• 3:07Shaan Puri?

  There's a bunch of, you know, new ways to crowdfund that we've been talking about. NFTs or Kickstarter or different crowdfunding platforms. So the question is, should we buy Michael Jordan's house? Should we start a crowdfunding campaign and buy Michael Jordan's house? So if you could get 5,000 people to each put in $2,500, then you could own a fractional share of Michael Jordan's house. You could, you could own a piece of this history and we could just buy it out, take it off the market. And we could own this thing. And then the question is like, what do you do with it? And so I wanted to brainstorm with you. A, should we buy Michael Jordan's house? And B, what could we do with it if we did buy it? What do you think?

• 3:50Sam Parr?

  So the whole NFT thing, I wouldn't do that. I think that, I think you've had two ideas here. One is to buy his house and two is to do the NFT thing. One of those ideas is great. I think the other one is over complicating it. I would 100% buy it. And the reason why I think it's such a great idea is immediately after you, seeing you write this, my thought right away went to Graceland. You know what Graceland is?

• 4:15Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 4:16Sam Parr?

  That's funny that you don't know what that is. It's because it's such a big deal in my family. Or Elvis is at least. So Graceland is Elvis Presley's house. Uh, it's in Memphis. It's in downtown Memphis. It's actually in a pretty crappy neighborhood now. Or the neighborhood is not nice. And it's like, kind of gross, but it's just like a cutesy thing to do if you visit Memphis. And I went and did research on it. And so around 600,000 people a year go to Graceland. Which brings in something like, where I have the numbers here. Okay, so Graceland, just in attendance. Uh, just in ticket sales, brings in $21 million. So it's, yeah, pretty wild, just on tickets.

• 4:56Shaan Puri?

  600,000 visitors a year, uh, $36 a ticket, right?

• 5:02Sam Parr?

  Yes. And I got interested in this. So I thought, what are the most visited homes in America? So I came up with a few and I want to fill you in on them. So the White House doesn't count. Because you can just, you, I think you can get a tour, but you could also just walk outside of it. But Graceland, 600,000. The second one, I'm, you guys are going to make fun of me. I don't know how to pronounce this. What, is it Monticello?

• 5:22Shaan Puri?

  I think so.

• 5:23Sam Parr?

  Okay, Monticello, that's, uh, Thomas Jefferson's house. And so the interesting thing about this place, as well as a few other I'm going to mention, is that they're nonprofits, which means all of their numbers are public. And so, uh, the revenue for Monticello, which includes a ton of investment revenue, was around $200 million in 2010. But around, uh, 8 million, 7 million came just from ticket sales. So 8 million a year in ticket sales, which is crazy. And they have around 500,000 people. Another, uh, most visited home is never, uh, like homes that people drive by, Neverland Ranch, people don't go there. But the other, another great one is Mount Vernon, which is, uh, I think, uh,

• 6:03Sam Parr?

  what's our first president? George Washington's house. Uh, and they do in, in, in, uh, food sales alone, this is crazy, just in food, $17 million a year. Is that crazy?

• 6:17Shaan Puri?

  This is insane.

• 6:19Sam Parr?

  The whole operations, and then they do $15 million a year in admission sales. And in total, they do about $51 million a year in total income, which includes 10 million from contributions. Is that crazy?

• 6:34Shaan Puri?

  No, that's absolutely insane. So let me ask you, these, okay, so this, all of a sudden, this starts to get really interesting, right? Because I think Michael Jordan is on par with Elvis and, you know, Thomas Jefferson, Michael Jordan's got TJ beat by a long shot. So, you know, MJ over TJ, I think is, is part of the, the slogan that we have when we, when we buy this thing. But if they're doing this much in traffic, I gotta know, is there something else? Meaning like, are these in really like popular areas where there's already just a lot of tourists or something like that? And this is just a pit stop because, you know, Michael Jordan's house in a neighborhood, you'd have to only be going to go to this place.

• 7:10Sam Parr?

  I looked up Michael Jordan's address. Guess how far away it is from Chicago airport? One of the most popular airports in the world.

• 7:16Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna guess 45 minutes.

• 7:19Sam Parr?

  20 minutes.

• 7:22Sam Parr?

  It's 20 minutes away. Okay. So it's at like, have you been to Memphis? Memphis is like, there's not that much going on in Memphis and all these people are going to Memphis.

• 7:31Sam Parr?

  People are, Chicago's what? The fifth most populous city in America or maybe third, something like that? Something is interesting here. So what I would do is I wouldn't do the NFT thing. I would raise two or three million dollars from a bunch of rich people. Or I would try to use my own money if I had two or three million dollars that I wanted to spend on this. And I would buy it and then it would probably cost a fair bit of money to get it set up. It would probably cost a lot of money, another many more millions. But then you'd have to convince collectors to lend you the stuff and you create a Michael Jordan museum.

• 8:08Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 8:09Sam Parr?

  And that's how you do this. And the companies that we've just mentioned, Graceland, Monticello and Mountain Vernon. So those, obviously those folks lived in the 1700s or probably died in the 1800s. So they've been around, those properties have been around as tourist destinations for a hundred plus years. But They've done 50 million in revenue, which is a shit ton, but even if you've just done two or three million dollars in revenue and you could do that and adjust for inflation for 50 plus years, kind of like Graceland has done it for 60 years, that's incredibly fascinating.

• 8:45Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, I'm with you. So I think you're shitting on the NFT thing a little bit, but it's not about NFT. What I'm saying is crowdfunding. So I think that there's a benefit to crowdfunding, which is that crowdfunding is a way to make the story more viral. It's a more PR worthy story that, you know, people from the internet, people from Reddit, whoever, got together and bought Michael Jordan's home off the market for $15 million. They raised $15 million and bought the house versus a rich guy went to his rich friends, raised some money. The second thing is those become, you know, your evangelist to spread the word and to come make the pilgrimage to go see Michael Jordan's house. And I think you could do two or three things with it. I think you could make it a museum that's

• 9:28Shaan Puri?

  like a modern museum that we've been talking about, like the Museum of Ice Cream or something like that, where the tour is very heavy photo based. And so you're going through and it's all these different photo exhibits of, you know, you in Michael Jordan's bed and, you know, wearing, you know, a pair of his Air Jordans or standing in a pair of his giant Air Jordans or something like that. And you make it like a museum of ice cream where you're going to walk out with, you know, 10 photos that are Instagram worthy at the end of it. I also think-

• 9:59Sam Parr?

  Give people background on Ice Cream Museum.

• 10:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Brady, you can pull the latest numbers, but I think these guys raised at like $100 million plus valuation. And if you ever go to one, they're pretty cool. It's, you know, it's not the most amazing thing. Honestly, I was a little bit disappointed, but the photos do turn out cool. It's a museum that you walk through. So it's like a guided path and you go through maybe like 13 different rooms and every room is something cool and you get a little, you know, you get an ice cream cone of some flavor and then you can take photos next to some like exhibit that they've set up. And the idea is not for you to look at the art like a traditional museum, but for you to like take a photo in the art and post it on Instagram and that's their marketing. That's the free marketing that they get. And so Museum of Ice Cream, oh yeah, here, Brady has it. They raised $40

• 10:47Shaan Puri?

  million. They raised a $40 million Series A at a $200 million valuation last year. And I think this could be bigger. I think this could be much, much bigger as a brand. The other thing- The other thing that you could do is, uh, sports cards are having this incredible boom right now. And I think what you could do is you could have certain collectors put their collection, um, uh, in, in the house. The house could be basically the vault to store some of the most rare memorabilia in the sports world. Signed basketball, shoes and sports cards. And that could be part of the museum and you, you basically store it and you, um, you store it for some of these collectors. So I think, I think there's a bunch of stuff

• 11:28Shaan Puri?

  you could do to make this work, but the idea is like, can you buy this thing for 13 million? Put another four or five million into, um, you know, getting it all set up. And then could you make $5 million a year? Could you make $10 million a year? Like you're saying these other guys do, um, as a pilgrimage for, you know, tourists going to Chicago and basketball junkies?

• 11:47Sam Parr?

  I think the answer is definitely yes. And I think it's so interesting. Um, I found a, I found another example of one and it's called the, um, it's called the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And it's a nonprofit and all they do is buy national, um, historical buildings. And they're historic. I looked at their numbers. They've been doing like 50 or 60 million in revenue for years. And I'm still trying to figure out how to entirely read, uh, nonprofit statements, but they have a buy, a line item that's revenue less expenses, which I guess that just means profit. I mean, I don't know how they define.

• 12:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Sam Parr?

  I don't know how they define either of those, but it was 26 million. And it's been doing that for years. Is that nuts?

• 12:39Shaan Puri?

  So I like this idea. I like this idea a lot. And I kind of want to dig a little further into how these, um, homes, home museums work. Cause I think this is pretty interesting.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  All right. This next clip is from episode 178 and the fellows break down how a retired NYPD cop is making millions through guided tours.

• 12:56Shaan Puri?

  A retired NYPD officer will guide you through New York. And it's a guided mafia and crime walk. I'm like, wait.

• 13:05Sam Parr?

  I've been wanting this for so long. This is so cool.

• 13:10Shaan Puri?

  So here's the description. I'm just going to read it word for word. First, let me say that most gangster tours in New York are total BS. This experience comes right from the horse's mouth. No tour guide, no filter. Get real stories while visiting notorious gangland locations as we walk from East Village to Little Italy, experiencing what it was like to associate, to be an associate of New York's famous mafia families. You'll hear firsthand accounts of the New York, New York City mafia and crimes in New York and taste local cuisines. So I, I, I saw this. I was like, this is such a good idea. I, I think I saw that this crime walk was making a lot of money. So it was very successful, which is not a surprise to me. I, I would do this if I was, you know, in New York. This is, this is great.

• 13:52Shaan Puri?

  But a couple of things kind of, here's the business idea. So first is this is cool. Quick reaction. Then I have an idea.

• 13:57Sam Parr?

  Well, on, okay. So this, first of all, I just sent this to my wife because we're moving to New York for a little while. I said, we're doing this. Second, he charges around 120 to 130, depending on the date per person. And in the description, he says that he has had 8,000 guests. So $123 times 8,000 is a million bucks.

• 14:17Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So a mill, I think that's what I, that's what originally caught my attention was here's a, who has built an experience? I think that was my kind of curiosity. Who's built an Airbnb experience that had made a million bucks? Right? Cause this is a big platform. Certainly somebody's doing well. Uh, and so, so this is kind of how it caught my eye. Okay. So what's the idea? The idea is I think this is a cool thing for a retired cop to do. Also could be applied to retired kind of anything. Anybody who has a cool job, like whether you're a SWAT officer, you know, military veteran, firefighter, whatever it is. I think there's a lot of people who, a lot of people who are like me, we're like little weaklings that spend all of our days behind a desk.

• 14:58Shaan Puri?

  And we want this like safe way to taste, you know, an adventure and like what the real tough world looks like. And so that's why like Spartan Race and stuff, that's why they do well. And similarly, I think that these like kind of crime walks would be, would be cool. So then I took it a little bit further. Well, why don't people do this with more things? So why don't you take every? Physical venue where something interesting is happening. Breweries do this, right? Breweries say, hey, we got this brewery. But we also have this side business of people come through. They get a tour of a brewery. They get to see how it's made. They get to taste the beers. They get to take some photos. They get to buy our shit on the way out. And they've turned brewery tours as a like additional income stream for breweries. So why doesn't this happen for more things?

• 15:40Shaan Puri?

  Like when I visited, uh, you know, the warehouse for my wife's, you know, e-commerce business. I was fascinated. It's like this 80,000 square foot place. You get to see all these forklifts coming around and how it works, how the fulfillment works. When an order comes in, how does it get put in the mailer? How does it get taken out of here? And so I think that for everything, factories, warehouses, police stations, firefighter stations. I think they should all have this as a business. I'll tell you another version of this. That's cool. Are you a basketball fan? Do you know who Coach K is?

• 16:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Duke guy. So I know I'm, I'm, I'm not an idiot, but I'm not a fan.

• 16:13Shaan Puri?

  So Coach K, who is the Duke basketball coach, he's the most famous college basketball coach, probably of all time. Uh, and he was the men's Olympic coach for the dream, uh, the, the, the latest dream teams, or routine teams like LeBron and Kobe and all those guys. So he's a pretty popular guy. And, um, he does a thing every year called Coach K's Fantasy Camp. So here's how this works. Coach K's Fantasy Camp, you pay $10,000 and you get to go. Who are these people? They are, you know, Duke students who like, you know, there, there's a bunch of Duke students who are like kind of investors now, CEOs of companies. And, uh, they were big basketball fans. Now they got a bunch of money. They're kind of in their 40s or the, you know, 50s and they pay to go to this thing. What is it? You go for the, for I think a five day program or something like that.

• 16:57Shaan Puri?

  You go back to Duke campus and you live like a player. So you stay in the dorms, I think, or you, you know, you stay kind of on campus or right next to campus. Um, there's like a, a bus that basically brings you onto campus and you, you come into Cameron Indoor Stadium, which is the Duke basketball stadium. It's like the hallowed ground. And, um, Coach K takes you through a camp where you, you're, you know, you're on the court, you're shooting, you're doing the drills that the players do. You get the motivational talk that Coach K gives. He brings in old players to come, oh, that's Carlos Boozer. Oh, that's JJ Reddick. They play the sounds. When you come out and like, you know, you've got your dad bod, like your fats coming out the side of the jersey.

• 17:32Sam Parr?

  Let's be fair yourself, bro.

• 17:34Shaan Puri?

  Here comes Duke and you get to run out and there's like no fans there because it's not real again. Anyways, this thing's awesome. He must make a ton of money off this thing and I wonder how many more people do this or could do this because it's a very interesting little niche.

• 17:46Sam Parr?

  Why don't you do it for every sport and, and I'm so into this. I don't know what, I don't know what I could do it with, but um, I, I'm on board.

• 17:55Shaan Puri?

  Here's, here's a version of this. If you're a hustler. Um, okay. So, so if you're a hustler, here's what you do. I don't think you could do this with LeBron James necessarily, but I think you could do this with a college football coach because college football coaches like, you know, at, at every program don't make tons of money.

• 18:10Sam Parr?

  Dude, or, or, or a really famous high school coach.

• 18:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Or, um, it could be a CEO of a company or, you know, whatever. And you basically create the same sort of fantasy camp, uh, mindset or the 4D tours. And it's like, hey, I will run this whole thing for you. I just want 20% of profits. Okay. So here's what I'm going to ask of you. When I bring people over at this time every week or once a year or whatever it is, you come out, you kiss babies and shake hands and, uh, let me do this. And so it's a way to attach yourself to an influential program, institution or person, and create this business line, uh, you know, from scratch because really you're just offering this to their, uh, their fans.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  All right. Shifting gears here a bit, this next clip is from one of our most popular episodes of the year with longtime friend of the show, Andrew Wilkinson. He comes on the show and talks about how a 30 day dopamine detox completely changed his life.

• 19:06Sam Parr?

  You're successful, uh, in terms of career and traditional sense of successful. You're a good friend. You'd normally come on a lot, but you just tweeted how you kind of like took off for all of August and you kind of bailed because you were kind of having a, a meltdown in which we all have had before, like a digital overload meltdown. Uh, and you just bailed, right?

• 19:24Andrew Wilkinson?

  Totally. It was, it was really, uh, it was bad. I mean, uh, it's interesting to think about like, I think this happened to everyone over COVID. Like their life just shifted in a weird way. Um, and my life just became crappy over COVID, which is weird because I had this amazing year. Like we took a business public, we raised a big fund, we got to work with all these interesting people. We bought some great businesses. I didn't die of COVID, like all these great things happened and yet I was totally miserable. Um, and when I look at it, When I kind of zoom out, my old day, I don't know if you guys, you guys know, but I live in Victoria, Canada, and I didn't even have an office. So I actually liked just working out of cafes. I would just go to the same cafe every day.

• 20:07Andrew Wilkinson?

  And I'd sit there with headphones on. Three or four of my friends would always work there. So it was kind of like cheers. There's always like interesting people to talk to. And my day was just broken up into a bunch of chunks. So any given day, I wouldn't really be on the computer or in one place for more than an hour or two. And my day went from that to sitting in a house on my computer all day on Zoom and doing email. And it just kind of made me miserable. So, so anyway, it just, I was totally bummed. And I started, um, you know, going on Twitter a lot because I was craving socializing. Um, and I, I went from like 20,000 followers to 170,000 followers.

• 20:47Andrew Wilkinson?

  So I got totally hooked into that. And on top of that, I'm, you know, email, uh, you know, checking stats, stocks. Uh, if I went to the bathroom without my phone, I'd feel like I was going to freak out, constantly listening to audiobooks, constantly listening to podcasts, no silence. So I just like hit this weird breaking point, August 1st, where I woke up and I was like, I'm not stoked to get out of bed. I'm not depressed. Objectively, everything is fine. I'm like, I'm just like, I have like anhedonia, like I'm just not excited about anything. So I just said, fuck it. I'm just gonna-

• 21:23Sam Parr?

  What, what, what's that word you just said? That was a good one.

• 21:26Andrew Wilkinson?

  Anhedonia. It means like an inability to feel pleasure, right? Like nothing, nothing would get me pumped. Nothing would give me a hit. Like, you know, you know, when you like, you're always, you go on Netflix, you're like scrolling endlessly for the perfect thing. You just can't find it. That's how my life felt. And so I basically, you know, it's the middle of August. I live in British Columbia. It's super beautiful. And so I just said to my wife, you know what? I'm out for the next month. Let's just go off to our cabin. We'll, you know, we'll go on some trips and I'm just going to totally check out. And I set a couple of rules for myself. I was like, no phone, no email, no computer, no podcasts, uh, no phone calls, no social media, no news. I couldn't even read nonfiction business books, right?

• 22:11Andrew Wilkinson?

  So it's pretty extreme. And I put on my Apple Watch, which has, you know, cellular. So I was like, okay, if there's an emergency, I can get a phone call. And I put my phone in a drawer and I just disappeared. I went up to my cabin and hung out with my kids. And honestly, for the first like, three or four days, it felt like there was like a bug in my brain. Like I was just like so, like, like something I I itch I couldn't scratch, like just so irritable as being a huge asshole. Uh, I was like slapping my pocket every five seconds to check stuff. I'd be sitting on the beach with my kids and I'd constantly be like, oh, I need to text this to a friend. I gotta, I gotta take a photo of this, right? So it was really weird, horrible

• 22:54Andrew Wilkinson?

  withdrawal. But then after like three or four days, I was like, holy crap, like this is really interesting. I started reading fiction books and just sitting for hours, uh, you know, enjoying a sunset, taking a silent drive, doing all this stuff. And I think it's kind of like, if you eat junk food all the time, like you're drinking Coke and having burgers and stuff all the time, and then you eat broccoli, it doesn't taste that good. Your brain is primed for like these extreme flavors. And then if you switch to broccoli, you know, you don't eat those things for a month, then you eat broccoli. Broccoli is like orgasmic. It's amazing. And so anyway, I did this for four weeks and I was feeling really good. And I came back to life, like I

• 23:39Andrew Wilkinson?

  kind of reintroduced myself into society and started going out and working and stuff. And it was really bizarre. Like, I, you know, would listen to a song that was playing in a cafe, and it'd be like the greatest song I've ever heard. I'd read some random article and it would be like fascinating and I'd just be completely, uh, like, just, you know, engaged with it. Um, and then problems I had to solve that would have pissed me off, like, seemed like no problem when I was excited to solve them. And I was kind of going like, man, why, why did that work? Like, what was it about that? And at the same time, like around then, I started listening to podcasts again.

• 24:19Andrew Wilkinson?

  And I listened to this podcast by Andrew Huberman, Huberman Lab, which I'm sure you guys have listened to. He's amazing.

• 24:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's, um, he's coming on the podcast.

• 24:28Andrew Wilkinson?

  Oh, amazing. That's, that's awesome. So he did this deep dive on addiction. And he did it with this woman, Anna Lemke, who's a Stanford addiction doctor. And I was like, oh, this will be interesting. It'll be about like heroin addiction or something and how they treat alcoholism. And I realized, you know, basically like she said, you know, something along the lines of, if you eat chocolate cake once a month, it tastes amazing. And you don't really crave it that much. You don't really think about it that much. It's very pleasurable. If you eat it once a week, you know, it's still enjoyable, but it's not as good. And you start having cravings. You start wanting chocolate cake. If you eat it every day, your brain literally craves it. And you're in pain until you eat it.

• 25:13Andrew Wilkinson?

  And when you eat it, it's not even that enjoyable. It just makes the pain go away for a little bit. And she compares that to like heroin addiction or anything. And so, you know, here we all are. We're stimulating ourselves with social media 24/7. We're constantly taking these hits and the hits become less and less enjoyable. And she talked about, you know, she's at Stanford, so she's treating students. And she talked about these kids that would come in and they're addicted to social media and video games. And they have no motivation. And so she said, look, I basically recommend a dopamine fast for four weeks. They can't do any of that stuff. They gotta go walk in silence, drive in silence, have quiet moments, not avoid those things.

• 25:55Andrew Wilkinson?

  And I realized that, you know, I'd basically done that, uh, for myself. And that's why I felt better. And I, you know, I was an addict. It's crazy.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  All right. So this fourth clip here is from episode 179. And Sean talks about how he approaches goal setting and self-talk.

• 26:09Shaan Puri?

  I have two kind of routines that are like this that I've probably never told anybody about. All right. So like, like most people write goals, like what they want to achieve, what they want to have. I want to have a mansion or I want to hit this dollar amount or I want to get promoted. And for me, I have a thing that's called, I wrote on it, who am I becoming? And the way I do it is because I think about myself like a, every year is like a software update, right? What's version, I'm 30, I just turned 33. What's version 33 of Sean look like, right? And I, I literally write this out beforehand. I write out the, like the notes, like, oh, I used to have this bug where I got jealous about people. That's fixed, you know, like, um, hey, I added this new feature. Now I can play the guitar, whatever, right?

• 26:50Shaan Puri?

  Like I treat myself like a whole new version upgrades. Anyway, so the, all those little bug fixes and features, they all add up to something. What am I trying to become? And it's like, kind of like a root philosophy, which is life is not about what you achieve or what you have. It's about who you become. And so I said, all right, well, what do I want to become? And I sort of wrote these four things out, right? I said, I want to become a person who is, uh, who is fit through healthy habits. I want to become a teacher, um, you know, the favorite teacher of millions of people. I want to be, um, you know, a, a great family man who lives in a house full of love. And I have like a last one, right? Like one more after that. So anyways, I have these four things that are like the things I want to become. And I do this thing in the morning when I like do my kind of morning routine, which is like my reminder for the day.

• 27:35Shaan Puri?

  Before I go and start just doing a bunch of work and a bunch of tasks and dealing with all the emails and shit that comes my way. I just walk in a circle in my office, which is a tiny, tiny office. I have like a, I don't know, eight by eight foot office. And I just walk in a circle and every circle is, I'm basically, I'm basically talking like I'm, you know, talking to myself or my own coach. About those, about those four things. So I'll say like, you know, I'm a great dad, you know, uh, even when things are going off the rails, I'm patient. That's when I get even more patient. I'm poised. I'm a great dad. I'm always there for them. They know I got their back. I'm a great dad.

• 28:11Sam Parr?

  You're sounding like Muhammad Ali.

• 28:13Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. You know, I said I was the greatest before I am. And so, so I do that. So I've been doing that now for like, I don't know, probably like a year. And I love it. It's just kind of fun for me. So that's the first kind of self-talk I do. The second kind of self-talk I do is, uh, what I call revision, which is. I fall off the horse a lot, like most people, right? Like, oh, I'm trying to get healthy. And then like, fuck, in the middle of the day, there's a bag of chips was there and I ate the bag of chips. Or like, you know, I say I'm going to be a patient dad, but then like, oh, like I've just lost it when, you know, she wouldn't let me change her diaper and then blah, blah, blah. And so obviously I'm not perfect. And so the other self-talk I do is revision at the end of the night.

• 28:56Shaan Puri?

  I just imagine that same scenario that happened. It only takes me 30 seconds. I just think back to that moment that I'm not proud of and I reimagine it in a way that I'm me acting in a way that I'm proud of. And that's it. I don't like, I don't like decide I'm going to do things differently. I don't like write it down. I don't like pledge to myself, I'll never do this again. I just imagine it going the right way and then I just go to sleep. And that act of reimagining things the way you want to see it is a form of self-talk in my mind. It's just like Rose saying I'm the best and imagining herself, you know, knocking out the other girl. That's kind of what I do for, you know, I'm not a fighter. I just do it in my daily, my daily life.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  So this fifth and final clip is from episode 231 with Ariel Helwani. Ariel is one of the most recognized faces in mixed martial arts. And in this clip, he talks about how he decided to bet on himself and jump into a super fringe sport at the time and how it's paid massive dividends 10 years down the road.

• 29:50Shaan Puri?

  You had quote unquote, good jobs at each of these stops. And then you said, look, this isn't it. I'm going to bet on myself and I'm going to go independent. I'm going to do my thing. So you have a strong dose of bet on yourself. You have another one that Sam, Sam coined, which is niches get riches, which is that I know you're a basketball fan, but you didn't go into the more established field, that one that had a career track that you could tell your mom, look, there's other people who have made it in this field. I could be the next whatever in basketball. You went for MMA, which is today fringe, let alone back in, you know, 2006 or whatever. Like, nobody was really, there was no blueprint or there was no like success stories doing what you were doing, I don't think at that time.

• 30:32Shaan Puri?

  Like you are the kind of the success story of that niche. And so I want to hear kind of how you decided to bet on that, even though you have other interests, you have other sports that you're interested in as well. And then the last one is. There's this great phrase, which is, you know, you want to do the work that feels like, that looks like work to others, but it feels like play to you. So like, if I was going to interview somebody four hours a day, I would be exhausted. And I think you get, you pick up steam by energy, by, by your hour three, you're like, you're just hitting your groove and it gives you energy. So I, I think that's another example of where you, you kind of live, one of these principles that we talk about. But tell me about the niche thing.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  Oh, that spoke to my heart. That spoke to my heart. That's a great line. Uh, niches get riches, because I couldn't agree with you more. Um, when I got to Syracuse for the first time in my life, like when I went to Syracuse, I wanted to be the next Costas, Marv Albert, basketball, baseball, football, traditional guy. Hello, welcome to ABC Sports. I'm Ariel Hawani, World Series, Super Bowl. And for the first time in my life, I realized, wow, there's a lot of people in this world who are my age, who have the exact same dream as me, who are a little more polished, who have nicer hair, who don't have as big of a nose, and maybe don't have such a foreign name. Their name is John Smith, and they just kind of fit that Bob Costas mold. And I never, I never liked to follow, you know, the pack. And so I remember

• 31:54Speaker 04

  telling my parents in September of 2001, there's this sport called mixed martial arts, there's this organization called the UFC. At this point, it's not even eight years old, and I think it's going to be mainstream. And I think in 10 years, there's going to be some executive in some office, some older guy who's like, what is this crazy cage fighting sport? I know nothing about it, but apparently it's very popular. Who's the guy? Who's the voice? Who's the Howard Cosell of MMA? And I want to be that guy. Um, and amazingly, literally 10 years later, August of 2011, I was hired by Fox, and that was like my first big, you know, mainstream gig. Um, and so it kind of worked out in that regard. But I, I, I say this to young people all the time when they reach out to me, and they send me, you know,

• 32:38Speaker 04

  oh, I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to be, you know, Stephen A. Smith and all this stuff. In this day and age, You don't want to be a generalist. You, you, you, you, you're a fan of the New York Knicks? You're a fan of the New York Knickerbockers? I'm not going to go tune in to the radio, ESPN Radio now. I'm not going to go in my car, tune in and say, oh, I hope you guys talk about the Knicks Celtics game last night. I'm going to go on my podcast app and I'm going to go to the New York Knicks podcast, as niche as it gets, to hear an hour breakdown of last night's game. If I'm a big pro wrestling fan, I'm going to go to my pro wrestling podcast and listen to MMA podcasts, listen to business podcasts. The days of sitting in your car and hoping that they talk about something

• 33:23Speaker 04

  or listening to people just talk about god knows what, those days are over. And so it is actually a lot better, in my opinion, to go into a niche, to be the niche guy as opposed to being the generalist. Yeah, there's a couple of guys who will make it, Stephen A. and those guys. But for the most part, in my world, it's way better to be the niche guy. And I try to explain that. And, and within the niche, have your own niche as well. And so like my thing, interviews, I tell the people like, find your thing. There was a young guy, I always bring up Mike Bond, he works for MMA Junkie, and he's a lot younger than I am. His niche that he used to get in the door were stats and factoid. So he would have all these stats about all the fighters. Great. These days, maybe it's betting. Betting is super hot right now. Use that as your niche to get in the door. So yes, I, I couldn't agree more with that mindset.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  Um, and, and I would urge anyone in this day and age, this day and age of à la carte, you know, everything is à la carte, right? Podcasts, streaming, all that. The more niche, the better. You'll have way more success, rather than being just some guy. Like those days 50 years ago when you were a columnist for a newspaper, those days are over.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  All right, that is a wrap. Hope y'all enjoy those clips. If you want links to any of the full episodes, you can go check out the show notes. We got all the links there. And let us know on social what you thought about this. Do you want more, less? Do you like this short form content? You've been cranking out a lot of these style clips actually on the YouTube channel. So check that out if you want more of this. Um, but anyways, just want to say thank you all again. It's been an incredible year. You got a lot of exciting things in 2022, which we'll be announcing very soon. But in the meantime, hope you have a great rest of your day and see y'all soon.