The $150B dollar business hiding in plain sight

Unsexy Business Ideas Database: https://clickhubspot.com/kpfm Episode 844: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about how one of the richest families in America makes its money. — Show Notes: (0:00) The Cargill family (13:15) projects vs empires (15:00) family meetings create family dynasties (22:55) Jevon's paradox (29:00) the story of Luddites (39:19) Where's the opportunity (49:00) the phrases we tell ourselves (52:00) The ice king — Links: • The Medici effect - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591391865 — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — 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 - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/ Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge 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.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  When I Googled this family, the words came up were silent dominance, middlemen at planetary scale.

• 0:18Shaan Puri?

  All right, Sam, I have a, I have a Billy of the Week for you, an MFM classic. This is not just any Billy of the Week. This is one of the biggest Billies in America. One that I wasn't really that aware of. I think you will know more than me about this, but I would say most people don't.

• 0:33Sam Parr?

  Wait, can I guess?

• 0:35Shaan Puri?

  Let me read you, let me tell you three things about it, then you can take a guess.

• 0:38Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 0:38Shaan Puri?

  All right. It is the largest private company in America for the last 40 years.

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  It is owned 88% by the family and has produced more billionaires in one family than any other company ever. They do more revenue than Goldman Sachs, Nike and Starbucks combined.

• 0:59Sam Parr?

  Ooh, is it Mars or Coke?

• 1:02Shaan Puri?

  You're in the right neighborhood.

• 1:04Sam Parr?

  Estee Lauder?

• 1:06Shaan Puri?

  Okay, you left the neighborhood briefly. Come back to the other neighborhood of like

• 1:11Shaan Puri?

  rich redneck families of America. It is Cargill.

• 1:17Sam Parr?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:18Shaan Puri?

  So the Cargill family, so I didn't really know anything about this family. Can I just tell you a little bit about their story and what they do? Because this is a dominant business story of all time.

• 1:28Sam Parr?

  Wait, first, tell me, why did this interest you? Why did this catch your attention?

• 1:32Shaan Puri?

  Remember when I was at your house and you were like, there's this closet here, by the way, that we found. There's this extra storage room that we didn't even know until we lived here for two months. That's how I felt, finding out that one of the most wealthy families in America, and I don't know their story. That's how I felt. As the host of My First Million, I just felt like I needed to right a wrong.

• 1:51Sam Parr?

  Okay, I understand.

• 1:52Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, how did I find it? There was a Reddit thread that was, tell me about billion dollar industries that I probably don't know about. And it was like, the first one was sand, and the second one was this, and the third one is this, reinsurance. It's like, well, there's insurance companies and then they buy insurance. That's called reinsurance. And then the reinsurance, guess what? They have reinsurance companies behind them. It's just insurance all the way down, baby. And so I was reading through this thread and then one was Cargill and I was like, oh, Cargill. So what they did, so the story is, um, back in the day, as America was, was sort of getting its feet and railroads had been, had been, uh, started to get built, farmers needed to offload their crops, their grain. Um, and they needed to sell them. So they could either sell it individually. So the farm could try to sell individually to a buyer and figure out how to transport it there.

• 2:37Shaan Puri?

  Or they could work with a middleman. And so Cargill became the biggest middleman on the planet for basically just initially storing grain. So they would go right next to where the railroad is. They would build what's called a grain elevator, which is basically a giant storage facility for grain so that it wouldn't spoil very quickly. And the farmers could come drop it off. They would get like coat check, they'd get an IOU that says, I will pay you when your grain sells. Or they would just buy it at a flat rate, like wholesale and be able to flip it. So you could choose as the farmer, which one you wanted to do.

• 3:07Sam Parr?

  This is what my father, my father does for a living, by the way.

• 3:10Shaan Puri?

  Oh, so maybe you should have known.

• 3:13Sam Parr?

  He does it with onions, onions. But yes, my, my father's a, a broker. That's what he does.

• 3:18Shaan Puri?

  Does he store or he just calls one size, hey, I got 75 bushels of?

• 3:23Sam Parr?

  This, well, it's fresh produce. So the storage is like a day, but yes, there's a, yeah, there is a place where they sit for like 24 hours before a truck comes and gets it. Yeah, but yes.

• 3:33Shaan Puri?

  And what's interesting about this for me from a, from a business perspective, is you always hear this idea of like, you don't want to be the middleman. Oh, you can always cut out the middleman. And in this case, the middleman became worth more than everybody else. And actually, if you look at many businesses, you know, um, there, there's many businesses where the middleman becomes a quite a valuable business. And so there's an interesting question of why. And in this case, it's because the middleman was a physical, was physically in the middle. They literally built the grain elevators that would store the shit right next to the railroad. And so you needed to transport it. You needed to get to the railroad. Who else had it? Like, nobody else was going to build that. So anyways, they started doing that. They, they then go, you know, further and further and further. So, you know, at one point they're like, hey, the shipping barges are so inefficient where we're shipping the grain.

• 4:17Shaan Puri?

  Uh, when it's not traveling by rail. So we'll build our own shipyard, our own ships. They end up producing ships for the US Navy. They bought the biggest like meat, uh, like poultry company. And now they control like a huge percentage of the meat industry, of the grain industry. And so they built this like empire and nobody really knows them. And the, and the basically it's just a family that's, that owns this thing. 88% owned by the family. There's like 20 or something billionaires in the family now. They have this rule called the 80/20 rule. So 80% of all profits will get reinvested back in the business. 20 goes out as dividends to the family and they hire, for the last, you know, 20 years or so, that they've had professional CEOs running the company. It's not like family run anymore.

• 4:56Sam Parr?

  And the profit per year, according to Wikipedia, I think it's like five or six billion dollars.

• 5:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that was like during like the kind of peak COVID stuff when, uh, you know, when Ukraine was getting attacked and, and, you know, Ukraine produces a lot of grain. And so their prices spiked. I think it's like three billion in a, in a normal year right now.

• 5:12Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 5:13Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, so, so you're close to a billion dollars a year of profit that goes just straight to the family. And it's been doing that for like, whatever, 50 plus years. And so I want to tell you a little bit of something. So first I was like, I was like, what do they actually do? Cause now, you know, when these corporations get so big, so large, they just have their hand in everything. And you would see these comments like, you know, they're just everything on your plate, anything you eat in a, in a package. Cargill had a hand in it. They're, they're controlling the food supply. The people think of like Monsanto style, like evil companies. And so just, I want to read you this paragraph. So imagine you eat a hamburger. Cargill probably sold the farmer, the seed and the fertilizer to grow the grain. They bought the grain from the farmer and stored it at their grain elevator.

• 5:57Shaan Puri?

  They shipped it on their barge that they built in their ships that they built to a processing plant where it's processed into animal feed. And then they, they feed that to cattle who they then slaughter. They, they then store the meat at their meat packing plants. Sell the beef to the restaurant. By the way, the restaurant has to buy their salt. They sell like all of the salt to all of the fast food chains in the country. And then the corn syrup that they processed out of the corn gets put into the ketchup. The soybean oil that's used for the fries, the starch that's used in the milkshake, that's all Cargill. And isn't it crazy how like one company can have a hand in so much of your day to day life? And when you're, when you think you're eating at some farm to table restaurant, you, you're really not escaping them because

• 6:39Shaan Puri?

  they control the underlying ingredients that are used, the fertilizer, the seeds, the grains, like all of it that gets fed to the cows. Like it all come, it all goes back to the source. And, uh, isn't that kind of incredible?

• 6:52Sam Parr?

  And the family is so big and so profitable. They also own a thing called Garda Capital Partners, which is a $10 billion plus size hedge fund.

• 7:02Shaan Puri?

  Correct. Cause they have to hedge commodities, uh, you know, on behalf of the farmers and for themselves as well at this point.

• 7:08Sam Parr?

  So they own like a little bit of everything, including mines, because they need to get their own chemicals and minerals to make all of these things. This is incredible.

• 7:17Shaan Puri?

  No famous founder, you know, their office was famously this like chateau looking thing on a lake in the middle of nowhere. Um, and like that was their, it's called the Lake Office, if you Google it. And it's just quiet. You know, like how they say like money talks, but wealth whispers? This is, this is wealth whisper shit. You know what I mean? Like, who's the founder? What does he look like? Who's the CEO? What do they talk about? How come they're not on CNBC? Do they do podcasts? No, they don't do podcasts. You know what I mean? Like, it is, it is true, like quiet dominance. And actually it was part of their strategy for a long time was to be quiet about it, just to not attract competition and to build this monopoly position in the logistics industry.

• 7:57Sam Parr?

  This is cool. I've known, I've seen their logo and whenever I look at like the largest privately owned companies in America, it's always been there. I never understood what entirely did they did, because it's one of those things where you say what they do. And it sort of makes sense, but it's like a B to B thing. So like, you don't entirely understand exactly what it does. And they say like, they sell chemicals and I'm like, I don't know what that means. You know, that's so, that's so vague. But when you look at the numbers, they do $150 billion a year in revenue. That's just so massive. And I bet you that they like, uh, own so many more things that you wouldn't even realize. Like, for example, like the Walmart family owns like, have you heard of Rafa? It's like a cool bike D to C company.

• 8:44Sam Parr?

  They own, like, they're just like, they're just rich people. They're just like deal man. They just own shit.

• 8:48Shaan Puri?

  They just go to the website to buy one and then they just keep pushing plus on quantity until they own all of them. Like we now have the shop.

• 8:55Sam Parr?

  That seems like something that this family would do is like, you don't realize it. And then if you wanted to get like conspiratorial, which I have not done any research on it, I'm sure that there's like 10 or 20 really interesting conspiracies about how that either they're, they're pulling the strings behind, you know, it's like the, uh, there's something going on with this family, which I'm just making it up. I have no idea.

• 9:16Shaan Puri?

  A journalist once described the family as secretive, inbred and suspicious.

• 9:22Sam Parr?

  I'm in.

• 9:26Shaan Puri?

  Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through, they pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable uh, ideas that we have brainstormed and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. In 1980, they did a survey, and by then it was already a dominant company and they did a survey. Ninety-four percent of farmers had heard of Cargill, but only half of them knew what the company actually did. And then amongst politicians, lawyers and journalists, who they call opinion leaders, fifty percent have heard of them, but only 10% understood what the business was.

• 10:09Shaan Puri?

  Because they have this sort of sprawling empire like you described, people don't really fully understand what they even do. You just sort of know that they're important.

• 10:18Sam Parr?

  I had a friend who, I think it was Cargill that she went and worked at because they obviously make so much profit that they were trying to invest in like new seed-related agriculture-related D to C. Like, I think they invested, like, we had talked about that one D to C milk company. Like, they would look at things like that, like anything like interesting. And she said it was awesome working for them. She said it was a great company.

• 10:41Shaan Puri?

  Well, definitely, there's a section called the dark side in my notes here. So let me just tell you some things from the dark side, just to be fair here. When you have like global crop production, you're gonna have this, which is like accusations of child labor, like in Brazil or in Ivory Coast and things like that. They're said to have better intelligence than the CIA, so they have, basically they have a spy network of, around crops. So like, they know more about the state of crops in real time than the US government does around the world, because it's like life or death for their business. You know, they've had like different like E. coli breakouts and stuff like that. Again, if you're touching most of the food supply, then like anything bad that can happen in food is gonna happen to you. People just generally feel like they're monopolistic, so you know, they, do they care about worker safety, number one?

• 11:26Shaan Puri?

  Probably not, probably not in the top three things that they care about.

• 11:29Sam Parr?

  But they're Midwesterners. They're probably really sweet.

• 11:36Shaan Puri?

  But it's crazy to go from like a single grain shed to now controlling 25% of the entire US export market for grains. And it's like pretty crazy.

• 11:46Sam Parr?

  So they, it started 160 years ago. You and I did a talk recently and you were like, we were explaining like some of our preferences. You were like, I like projects. I like starting something and then potentially selling it. But like, I love the starting phase. I love handing it off to someone and then I love it potentially ending and starting something new. And I was saying how I love things that could potentially go for 50 to 100 years. Not that I've actually done that. I've actually done the same thing as you, projects, starting and selling. And I'm so fascinated by companies that can last this long. And this one in particular is one that seems like they've kept it together pretty amazingly for 160 years. That's crazy. So they started before the Civil War. And it's still around. Isn't that incredible? And I just, I just find that so fascinating.

• 12:31Sam Parr?

  And like, part of me is like, well, when I die, like, why do I care about legacy? Like, we talk about legacy a lot and I was reading something the other day and like, why the, or someone said, like, why do you care about your legacy? Like, who gives a shit? You're dead. And I was like, okay, yeah, I understand that perspective. Like, we can have the dichotomy of caring about that and then also like, how cool would it be that the thing that you can create can employ 160,000 people 150 years after you're gone? Like, I don't know. I think that's awesome. I think it's kind of romantic and exciting.

• 13:01Shaan Puri?

  It's kind of like, two people can love running and one person's trying to run the 100-meter dash and the other person's running, you know, one of these like ultra marathon 100-mile races. And they're both like, yeah, I love running, but, and that's what I do. And that's kind of like, in the business sense, there's, there's different ways to approach it. There's the, what I call the projects approach, which is you kind of go in knowing like, hey, I'm gonna have like five great at-bats in my career. And I hope each one is a really fun chapter and I'm gonna seek variety in those.

• 13:32Sam Parr?

  It's sort of like being an author. You're like, all right, I got five years of research and writing and then a break and then I do it again.

• 13:39Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And then there's other people that are brick by brick, laying a foundation for an empire. And you know, I respect both, but I know which one I want to do. And I think you know which one you want to do too. I think you want the, you want the like empire.

• 13:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna have the grit to pull it off, but I for sure love the idea of the result.

• 13:57Shaan Puri?

  Do you think the people who do this, is it a temperament difference? Like, they're wired differently, therefore, you know, fast twitch, slow twitch muscle type shit? Where it's more of inherently who you are? Or do you feel like you might have the base wiring to do it, but you then need to adopt the systems, right? Like, for example, it's not like one guy ran this for 100 years. Now he passed it to his son, his son kind of screws it up. Then the next son sort of saves it out of bankruptcy. And then by, by now, professional CEOs run it, but they've instilled values and systems and like ownership controls. But, you know, now the heirs are marine biologists and they're doing other things. They're not running this company that, but the company, the entity lasts.

• 14:38Shaan Puri?

  So which one, where do you think you might fail? Is it the wiring or the systems?

• 14:43Sam Parr?

  I think the wiring. You start off a certain way, but not always. For example, I think there's a lot of them that would have sold if they could have, but the opportunity just didn't present itself and they just said, screw it, I'll just keep going. And then I think what happens a lot of times is a few things. Like, if you had to build a business and you never thought about selling, there's a world where you would do some wacky stuff that would make the business incredibly profitable, but incredibly not sellable. Like, you would acquire assets or businesses that don't entirely make sense to one particular buyer. And then you get big enough to the point where you're like, yes, this is a hodgepodge of stuff and it works for us, but no one buyer would ever actually take this. So like, but then I also think that it comes down a lot to the family. And I think that there's something special around family meetings.

• 15:25Sam Parr?

  We've had Rob Dierdick on here. He talked about that. I actually follow some people on Instagram and they talk about like family meetings.

• 15:30Shaan Puri?

  Explain what you mean. What is, what's a family meeting?

• 15:32Sam Parr?

  So the way that I grew up is probably very similar to the way, potentially, you grew up, but the way a lot of Americans grew up, which is your parents never talked to you about money. If you asked them, like, how much do you make? They would say like, that's none of your business. And there was very little transparency and there was probably very little culture creation in terms of like, here's explicitly my expectations of you, here's our family's culture, here's our values. And what I've been learning about, and frankly, what I like, is this idea of a family meeting where you get the children and everyone in the same room, monthly, quarterly, annually, something like that. And in the same way you run a board meeting, you run a family meeting where you say like, here's the values that we stand for.

• 16:14Sam Parr?

  Here's how we did last quarter, last month, according to what we said we wanted to achieve. And what about the future? What would you guys like to do? Let's, let's talk about this and here's the money that we have to spend on whatever dreams and ideas that you have. And let's discuss if it fits within our family credo and mission. And there's actually like a way to do that and I aspire to do that with my family.

• 16:33Shaan Puri?

  My two-year-old is like, taking minutes, taking meeting minutes, a board observer.

• 16:38Sam Parr?

  I just think there's something special about being explicit about stuff. I think that a lot of times when you're growing up, there's these things that you say, well, we never really talked about blank, but my feeling was this.

• 16:49Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:49Sam Parr?

  But what I would like to experience is like saying like, we are actually gonna speak what we intend to do and how we will do it and what resources we have to get it done and we'll have a conversation. And I think there's something very special about the families who pull that off.

• 17:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's explicit versus implicit. So it's not even like, don't talk about that. It's more just it didn't get said, right? And it doesn't get said, not for malicious or secretive reasons. It's just, we were busy. I don't know myself what, you know, it's like, I'm not sure I really know the answer to all these things. And it's easier to just not even think about it, right? It's like if you ask somebody, well, what do you really want? Watch people just immediately just start to flounder. And it's such a simple question. Don't you think you should know what you really want?

• 17:33Sam Parr?

  When I'm meeting new people and I want to make them feel like I care about them, it sounds like I'm being nefarious. But I mean, like, I'm trying to like get to know someone. I'm like, hey, in the next six months, anything interesting you want to get done in life or career or family-wise? And they'll be, and half the time people are like, I don't know. And it's like, the conversation is them discovering it and it's kind of exciting.

• 17:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. So I think, I think being explicit, I'm like you, I'm a over-communicator. I'll take the negatives that come with that because I think the positives are so overwhelming. But how do you do it in a family is kind of interesting. I was at a friend's house and he has this like crest on the wall. And he's like, oh, that's our like family crest. And I was like, oh, like my family, we didn't have one. Like, I guess my ancestors dropped the ball. He's like, no, like, we made this. I painted that like, you know, five years ago. And we just decided, what are we all about? There's four quadrants on the crest and we said, it's this, this, this and this, and this is our sigil. That's our animal.

• 18:27Sam Parr?

  I love that.

• 18:28Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, you could just do that? You could just be a university? Like, I could be Hogwarts right now? The hell? Like, and I came home and I was like, shit, I'm gonna start doing stuff like this. And so I actually haven't made the crest, but I have done a few other things, like I gave for each of my kids. They have like a way, like, it'd be like Sam's way. So for example, one of my kids, it's like, one of them says, try, try and figure it out. Oh, that's the Sam way. And I've said that so many times that now, the great father moment is when he'll just be like, well, I just did it. I just did it the Sam way. And he's using it as shorthand for like, I didn't give up. I tried, tried and until I figured it out. And my daughter has a different one.

• 19:04Sam Parr?

  That's really beautiful.

• 19:05Shaan Puri?

  And then we have one that's like for, like, the idea of gifts. So I told them, I was like, I was like, yeah, like, everybody has like some gifts that you were given. And my son loves like Pokemon and things like that. So he kind of understands the idea that like super, you have a superpower and like every, every character he watches in a show has like a special power. I'm like, yeah, like, well, you have one too. He's like, really? What's mine? And I'm like, well, yours is that, you're this. And I just get to declare, I give them a reputation to live up to. You know, one that they're today quite inconsistent in, but there's moments. And all I do is I just highlight those moments. I pretend the inconsistencies don't exist. And I just keep reinforcing that until it's their identity. And I do that for each of them individually. And then one of the downsides is like, I make one sound so good. I'm like, Dwight, can I just say that the other one has the same?

• 19:49Shaan Puri?

  Because then it feels less special. I have to give the other one equally those. But you can also do, you know, it's a little tricky. It's not perfect, but man, this shit works. It is really powerful. And so there's a version of that that's completely non-business related. But in creating this like family dynasty idea of how do you instill a culture first in the home, before you ever try to go do it, you know, in the office.

• 20:12Sam Parr?

  And I think the likelihood that anyone's children ever want to work in their business is very low. And so like, if that even happens, I think, and they get along, that's like a miracle. And so what I've noticed, that is important. Also, creating long-term trust. So I talked about this a little bit with the Hearst organization, Hearst Company, which owns like GQ is like a famous magazine they own, but they also own like a hundred businesses that you'd not even heard of and they, including like, they own half of ESPN or whatever. And one of William Randolph Hearst, one of his great inventions was he created this trust within the family that was pretty ironclad and it was very long-term thinking.

• 20:48Shaan Puri?

  Trust like a actual legal trust? Or you mean trust like the feeling?

• 20:52Sam Parr?

  Legal trust. So for example, for him, it was like, you cannot dispute this trust. And if you do dispute it, you're out of the will. And like the trust basically just says that like Hearst, I don't forget the exact number, but Hearst hypothetically will have eight board seats. Family members are always two. I think it was like, you cannot argue with how much money you receive. Money is given out equally. If you want more profits, you cannot argue about it. If you do argue about it, you're out. Like things like that, like these things that were quite good in terms of like making it last for a long time. Same with John Rockefeller. He did that, he did that the same way. One of the great things about reading about John Rockefeller, he was this madman businessman. Think of Jeff Bezos, a polite guy, but like a ruthless businessman. His son, John, also John, he was a great dad.

• 21:36Sam Parr?

  They were both great, he was a great dad and a great son, and they loved each other very much and they showed a lot of mutual respect. And so what I'm noticing about a lot of this stuff, it's built on mutual respect. It's built about empowering and having these very explicit conversations. And that was a big takeaway from reading about him.

• 21:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's interesting. You gotta find like these blueprints. It's kind of what I went back to when I was asking you about like the long-term thing. Like you have to get to know your wiring to know where you're gonna, you're gonna naturally have things come easier to you that are difficult for others and other areas that are gonna be difficult for you. And you better figure out how you're gonna work around it, either by patching up those weaknesses or getting people around you who complement those. And then you gotta learn the systems, you know, on top of it. Like what are the habits? What are the, what are the actual systems on top of that to get the results I want?

• 22:22Sam Parr?

  But then there's like a wild card. Like for example, I have a billionaire friend whose son is a homeless drug addict. Like they've tried numerous times to get this kid on the right path to the point where they're like, we're either, we just gotta let you figure it out. And unfortunately, that might mean death, but like it's a very challenging tragic situation.

• 22:40Shaan Puri?

  The family crest didn't help?

• 22:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like it's pretty crazy. You could have, I think, what's the phrase? You're the happiest of your saddest kid?

• 22:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you're only as happy as your saddest child, yeah.

• 22:52Shaan Puri?

  Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

• 23:19Sam Parr?

  I went on this rant about like phrases and why they're really important, the phrases we tell ourselves. So for example, like using the phrase like, I might as well, where it's like, well, I've already eaten bad today, I might as well eat. It's like, no, you, that's just a convenient phrase. You should not might as well do that. Or

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  It is what it is, is my, is my, my favorite one. It is what it is, is the, is the, the complete surrender of, of a power of agency of anything. It is what it is, just replace it with, just say, it is what I make of this. So then you say, all right, well, what am I gonna make of this? You know, like it is what it is, is crazy.

• 23:54Sam Parr?

  Can I tell you about a phrase that you're unfortunately need to know about and you're gonna see everywhere online? I also want to rebrand it. So this thing is called the Jevon's Paradox. Have you heard of the Jevon's Paradox? It's not even a paradox. A paradox means like, an example of paradox is like, can God heat a burrito so hot that even he can't eat it? Like this is, this is more like, like

• 24:16Shaan Puri?

  What's that paradox called? The retard paradox?

• 24:19Sam Parr?

  That's a paradox. This isn't even a paradox. It's just like, like a, like an economic like principle.

• 24:25Shaan Puri?

  Okay, okay, here, let me read, let me read the actual definition. An economic principle stating that as technology makes use of a resource more efficiently, the total consumption of that resource actually increases rather than decreases. Okay, so as something becomes more efficient, you would think you're using less of it because you're being more efficient, but in total you use way more of it because the demand explodes. Okay.

• 24:44Sam Parr?

  And I'll give you, I'll give you a ton of examples. I want to rebrand it to Jevon's Paradox because

• 24:49Shaan Puri?

  Give it a little flavor?

• 24:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, because it was created by this guy named James Jevon, who was a British guy. And I think that it'd be cool to have a wonderful economic principle be created by an American brother. So I want it to be one of ours, not one of theirs. So right around the mid 1800s, James Watt creates this new thing. It's a new variation of the steam engine, which is basically the, the steam engine that like everyone came to love and know. James Jevon was basically this guy in the 1800s. He wrote a book in 1865 called The Coal Question. And he basically says, I have a feeling that because of how amazing this new steam engine is, that Britain potentially is gonna get rid of all of our cheap coal and we're gonna have a problem. We're gonna have a coal shortage because everyone else was like, what are you talking about?

• 25:35Sam Parr?

  The steam engine makes things significantly more efficient. Therefore, like there's only a set amount of work needs to get done. Like we're just gonna use less coal. And he goes, no, brother, that ain't gonna happen. We're gonna use way more coal because everyone's gonna want one of these steam engines. And he was exactly right. And this is where things get really freaky. And this is actually what I want to talk about. It expands in a way that you cannot even comprehend. And so let me give you a really simple example. Eli Whitney, he was this guy from Yale and he was like, I want to make it rich. I have this idea. So he goes down to the South of America. At the time, slaves would pick cotton and they would get cotton and it would take them hours to separate the seed from the cotton to the point where they could only produce about a pound a day of cotton that was usable, one person.

• 26:19Sam Parr?

  And he comes up with this little handheld device where you can kind of like put cotton in there and kind of cranks it and it gets the seeds out to the point where one slave could produce 50 pounds of cotton. They made it 50 times more efficient. And so some people were kind of happy in a weird way. They thought, okay, maybe this might mean slavery won't continue to grow and that's like, we won't import more slaves. That's kind of, that's kind of good. The exact opposite happened. Over the next like 30, 40, 50 years, cotton got so cheap that in the South of America, particularly in Mississippi, where a lot of like slavery eventually got really bad, they actually started calling it King Cotton instead of King George.

• 26:58Sam Parr?

  And so America's best export was cotton and it got so strong that we had to import like eight to 10 times more slaves that we, than we currently had at the point, at that point, pre Eli Whitney, in order to keep up with all this demand for cotton. And one could argue that the reason why slaves, slavery in America lasted as long as it did was because of cotton and the demand. And that's one of the reasons why it was like our economic engine. And so this thing, this idea of this paradox, it's quite strong. And so the reason why it's relevant right now is because what's one product that AI is making significantly more efficient? Code. Previously, code was very expensive to make. So you have to raise all of this money from venture capital.

• 27:40Sam Parr?

  You have to hire all these engineers, you gotta make stuff and hopefully three, five, 10 years that code is actually working and makes a profit. Well, Jevon's Paradox, it comes into play here because my opinion is this. A lot of people are saying that AI is gonna put people out of work. I think it is the exact opposite. I believe that code will get more cheap, therefore demand will increase a significant amount to the point that we can't even understand. For example, Gutenberg invented the printing press. When he invented the printing press, people were thinking, you know, maybe people will read like two times, three times, five times more books than they're reading now. And Gutenberg, this guy creates this printing press, I believe in the 1400s.

• 28:24Sam Parr?

  And the offspring of that, like on the extreme end, is this idea of the Kindle. One could even argue that like reading text on a page, like on a computer screen is like a way further down, but like it didn't make five times more books. It made like, it's infinite. Like it doesn't create like 10 times more. It's like, it creates a whole new thing. What I have noticed, I have noticed this with the cotton gin. I've noticed this with the creation of the steam engine, which then on went to create the railroads, which created a massive boom in America. When technology makes a product that already has some demand more efficient, there is turmoil amongst those who are directly impacted. For example, have you ever heard of the Luddites?

• 29:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, people who don't adopt technology.

• 29:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so now it's used as an insult. Back then it wasn't. So the history of the Luddites is basically right around when in the Industrial Revolution, there was a machine invented that allowed people to weave cotton, sorry, wool into yarn much faster. Previously, there was like five or 800,000 people in England who did this by hand and they're considered craftsmen. This new machine comes in, they get put out of business to the point, they create a fake character called Ned Ludd. And in England, this group of people go around smashing these new machines and it starts ruining the process of creating this new like wool to the point

• 29:41Shaan Puri?

  And they were like, on behalf of Ned Ludd, right? Like this, this, a person that you couldn't attack because he wasn't real.

• 29:48Sam Parr?

  It was a fake person and it was so serious that it was a capital punishment in England. So if you got caught breaking one of these machines, they would put you to death. And so this idea of like, there was like five or 800,000 people who are willing to risk their lives in order to ruin new technology. That's like the history of Luddites. But my point being is when there is a new creation, there is a subset of people that are screwed. For example, when switchboards went away in America, there were, in the 1970s, there was like 800,000 telephone operators, mostly women, that those, they, they didn't exist. Those jobs didn't exist. But in general, more technology that creates a more efficient process creates new jobs, sometimes because of increased demand, sometimes. The other thing is that because there's new industries created that we can't even comprehend.

• 30:33Sam Parr?

  And so my opinion, AI is actually gonna create a net positive, not a net negative, which I previously thought.

• 30:41Shaan Puri?

  First of all, excellent monologue, highly informed, highly entertained. I enjoyed that. This, you told me you were reading about the Industrial Revolution because you were trying to figure out like, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. What happened in the past? What did we say? What did we think then? Does that sound like what we say and think now? And what actually happened?

• 31:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like one that came out like 10 or 15 years ago, that's now popular again, that I read a while ago, is called Americana. And it goes through breakthroughs in American capitalism. So like different inventions. And you'll notice that people have the same fears consistently.

• 31:16Shaan Puri?

  So let me ask you a different question. One of the most dangerous things in business is to think, well, this time it's different. Those are very dangerous words. This time it's different. However, it's also dangerous to say, it'll be just like last time. You have to almost consider both possibilities.

• 31:32Sam Parr?

  I'm not saying that, by the way. What I'm saying is that human nature is human nature. And there's something special about the 30 to 60 hour a week, work week, that has happened for centuries. And also, time and time again, there's this idea that I always come back to. I used to be a beekeeper and bees are really interesting. With bees, if you get one hive with one set of bees, you just stack that over and over and over again. Bees fill up space. They just fill up space. And the same way, whenever you've gotten a new home, anyone has experienced this. They get to this new home, they previously only had a thousand square foot. They get to a 2,000 square foot, they say to themselves, I'm never going to fill this place. And then magically, over the next three years, they go, how do I have so much junk?

• 32:14Sam Parr?

  That is a, like, the human need to expand, to grow, to fill space is innate. It does not go away. And so that is what I'm saying is the same every single time. Not the how. I don't know how this is going to happen. That's sort of the point of my monologue is that I don't know, but I know it will happen.

• 32:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And not to be too abstract here, but the one thing I don't get, or the one thing I haven't figured out with, with that, I buy everything you said, all this new demand will get created. We'll want, we'll want code in places we didn't have code. So yeah, it'll be more efficient to get code, but net, net, you're going to have way more code, way more people creating code. In this case, if AI is so good at doing, AI is a technology that basically is the technology of doing work, like generic work, human work. It's like basically a model of the brain. Like, who's to say that AI won't also fill those jobs? Meaning like, yes, it creates all this demand, which creates new job opportunities, new industries. But who's to say that AI also isn't the one who supplies that demand also?

• 33:14Shaan Puri?

  Because, you know, the printing press, these were more rigid technologies that could do one thing. AI is weird in that it's this like flexible, general thing that can do so many things. So who's to say it doesn't also become the supply?

• 33:26Sam Parr?

  There's a few ways to look at this. The first is like, you could say, well, is this going to be like hot water? So for example, when hot water was invented, this idea that you could like take showers every day, like a king, like that was incredible. And so hot water surged and water heaters were put in every home in America. But you know what happened? We sort of figured out how much hot water we need. Like, we don't actually need that much hot water today than we did like 50 years ago. So it took off and then it kind of got flat, right? But another example is electricity. When electricity was invented, it basically became like a base unit of measurement for life. Where if physics dicta, if physics, if it can exist in physics, there's a way that you can uniquely use electricity to make it happen.

• 34:11Sam Parr?

  I think potentially code is going to be like that, where it's going to be a unit, a measurement, where you can find infinite ways to get done what you need to get done. And I do not think that it's going to be like water, where it's going to be like, all right, we figured it out. We don't really need that much more hot water.

• 34:27Shaan Puri?

  Well, why are you saying code instead of like intelligence?

• 34:30Sam Parr?

  I'm just kind of working through this, to be honest. Like, I'm so like, but I was trying to think of like, that's like a unit. Intelligence is, I don't understand how to like quantify it. But now, this is actually interesting to you potentially. There is always a point of turmoil with these new technologies. And I've been trying to actually break down, is there like a formula that you can figure out? Will the economy boom? Well, I think it will. I think that's inevitable. But like, how long will it take? So for example, the railroads came about and that's, and like, there's like this weird chart, that if you look at like how many railroad tracks were laid and how the average person's protein consumption went up. Because like, what the railroad did was they made America smaller and it created like

• 35:13Sam Parr?

  towns that didn't exactly have to be where they were anymore. And it created this massive like booming economy. However, it took 50 years because we had to create railroads, which is a very labor intensive thing. We had to create steel, which was like entirely new invented. And so there's this equation where it's like the breadth of the technology, meaning how many people does it impact, multiplied by this, like the intensity of how it impacts you, multiplied by like the time of co-invention, and that equals like the length of turmoil that someone will go through. With ChatGPT growing as fast as it has, there is a world where the tumultuous period is relatively short compared to past breakthrough technologies.

• 35:56Shaan Puri?

  And if you knew the turmoil, either when, how, or how long, what would you do with it? Because you said there's like an opportunity. What's the opportunity?

• 36:05Sam Parr?

  Like, if you knew that like the, like, it's only going to take us three to five years to like figure this thing out to where we're humming again, you can make bets on that.

• 36:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Actually, you know, one of the kind of Jevon's paradox plays over the last few years has been Nvidia, because what a lot of people thought is, hey, people are buying these GPUs, but each training run, each algorithmic improvement that the labs are making is going to make, you need less and less of these GPUs in order to train these models. And Jensen went on, on TV saying was, he was like, you're right, the training is going to become more efficient, but the inference is going to go up by 1 million percent, or whatever, 1, 1 million X. And people were like, 1 million X? And he's like, 1 million X. And it's kind of what you were saying at the beginning, which is that when these things

• 36:58Shaan Puri?

  do diffuse, the demand goes up, not by like some kind of easy to understand percentage or multiple, but like in a mind boggling way. Where, you know, when, from the time of the printing press to now, like, if you were trying to market size, how many people will create text and how many people will read text? You couldn't have thought of Twitter, right? Twitter would have broken your brain. It didn't make any sense, but that's kind of what happens. And so he's been saying that about inference, which is like, when you, when you query AI, when you use AI to do something, you use inference. And he's like, inference is going, is basically, people don't understand like how, how much there, how big the inference need is going to be for the world. It's like, you know, mind boggling.

• 37:40Sam Parr?

  I think what's going to happen over the next six months is, and this is partially for listener, because I think you potentially might know this, is I think the popular smart people, which I think we're relatively popular, I don't think I'm that smart, but I think the popular smart people, the narrative is going to change. It's not, and this is, and it's self-serving to have this narrative, particularly if you're a president or whatever. But the narrative is going to change, that this is going to be a massive net positive. And they're going to cite Jevon's paradox and they're going to cite everything that I've just said, which isn't particularly unique. And nothing I'm saying is unique.

• 38:15Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I see this all the time. It's like, yeah, this is going to be great for you if you make it great for you. I think people are just sitting back as like the recipient of this. And it's like, is this hand going to slap me? Or is it going to put, you know, grapes in my mouth? And it's like, well, it depends. Like, it depends what you do. Are you learning how to use this shit? Are you paying attention to what's going on? Are you thinking about how you can use this in your field? Are you talking to smart people? Are you moving where the puck is going or not? Like, I feel like people are so passive about like what's going to happen, as if everything is happening to you. And that none of this is happening potentially for you. And that you have no agency to be generative and democratize this technology for yourself. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury.

• 38:59Shaan Puri?

  They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like, very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards, one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fistfight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank.

• 39:41Shaan Puri?

  Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Callum N A, members FDIC.

• 39:45Sam Parr?

  The reason I was studying the Luddites is I think that same movement is already happening right now and it's going to continue to happen. You know, you saw like at this recent college graduation speeches, like Steve or Solomon, I forget his first name, Solomon, the CEO of Goldman, was like talking about AI and everyone was booing.

• 40:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, people walked out, right?

• 40:05Sam Parr?

  The reason I'm bringing this up is if you go back and study the Gilded Age, which I, that's one of my favorite eras, as well as the Industrial Revolution, it's all just repeats itself. Everything's repeating itself. It's, it's like, it's very, very, very similar over and over and over and over again. This is all quite predictable. Not the time and the how is, who knows? But like the general trend, it's all been there, done that.

• 40:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. That's crazy to me that it's become like a high status thing to do to be anti data centers and AI and things like that. It's like really bizarre.

• 40:40Sam Parr?

  But that's not fair. I don't think that's fair. I don't think we should dismiss it. I think they're stupid. I understand their sentiment. Can you imagine being 18 or 21 years old? First of all, if you're 21 years old, you fucking graduated high school during COVID. That sucks. Okay? The world changed dramatically over the last four years, the point where you, you were expecting to get a job at Deloitte and, or as a law clerk or whatever, like, and they're like, nah, we don't need you, dog. Like, there is anger, which I understand, but I think that the way that they act is dumb.

• 41:12Shaan Puri?

  You're asking me to put my mind in the mind of a loser and I just can't do it? It's just not possible to do this? The loser thing is just not acceptable in my mind and I, I'm sorry, I just, I just don't have the ability. Maybe you can. Maybe you can go in the mind of a loser, but I just, I simply can't.

• 41:27Sam Parr?

  I think they're wrong, but I have empathy for it. I understand that feeling and I think they're stupid.

• 41:37Sam Parr?

  Dude, there was one point where like ATMs had just gotten invented and these people who were like the bank tellers, it was like a big deal. That was like a big job and they revolted. They were like, F this, you're gonna put us out of business, this or that. And do you know what happened? Way more banks went up. Way more banks were created or branches, like physical locations, way more. And so I just think if I'm telling these young people, I would say, it might suck for a minute.

• 42:06Shaan Puri?

  Dude, if you're young, you have no excuse. Okay, I can get it if you're like 65 and you're 75 years old or whatever and you're like, oh my God, there's a lot of change. It's gonna be really hard. I've been running my business. It's pretty difficult for me to reinvent right now. Like, I have a lot more understanding for that. If you're 18, 19, you didn't know anything anyways. You know, hop on this train. This train is exciting. This train has like so much room to run. You know, you sort of have to look at the counterfactuals, right? So you might say, well, it's gonna be harder than ever to get a job, or this, or that. It's also true that more people than ever are gonna create new things. More people than ever are gonna become successful. More people than ever are gonna become millionaires out of this. And so it's entirely possible to have that result if

• 42:48Shaan Puri?

  you choose, if you do the actions that will get you to that result. So I guess I just have very little empathy for like the younger folks. This should be easier, come more naturally for them. They have less invested and less sunk costs and less rigidity of the past to even like be tied down to. So I don't really understand that. And the other side is like, is this serving you? Like, is that attitude serving you in any way? Like, forget arguing who's right and who's wrong. Like, at some point, you just have to ask, does this belief serve me or not? And I don't believe that that belief serves you. I also don't believe that you can control it. Just like Ned Ludd and the Luddites found out, it didn't matter how many windows you smashed, this shit's happening. It's like getting mad at the weather. It's like, it's gonna rain, whether you shake your fist at the

• 43:33Shaan Puri?

  sky or not. Like, you have zero chance of slowing down AI. The AI freight train has left the station. It is happening. And so all you should really worry about is what you can control, which is your reaction and response to the new playing field. Trying to argue that the new playing field is bad is sort of stupid to me. It's like, again, like yelling at the weather. You don't get to have a say in that side of things. The New York, who is it? The governor, the mayor, whoever it was, that was like proudly like, we have banned data centers in New York state. They were like so happy about it. You know, politics is already very performative, but like, man, taking so much smug pride

• 44:15Shaan Puri?

  in like banishing the technology that's gonna create where all the growth is coming from in the economy is sort of, you know, silly.

• 44:25Sam Parr?

  And one that's being popularized now is data centers use electricity and use water. And I actually have no idea if that's true or not true. But whenever I see these things, I'm like, we should actually learn if that's the reality. Because I have a feeling that like the Super Bowl is significantly more inefficient than a data center. And yet, we celebrate that. Like-

• 44:47Shaan Puri?

  Anybody who has this feeling and you're like, man, Sean's really not empathizing with my, this guy's being a jerk about this. He doesn't understand how hard it is right now for me. Just watch this clip. Just need to watch this clip of this guy with no legs completing the last man standing race, which is like this insane 26 hour fitness event. And he's crawling, he's using his, he's pulling his wheelchair through the mud, using his arms, finishing this race. And anybody who's got an it is what it is attitude, go watch this on loop. This should be your commencement speech instead of, you know, just sitting there smug and walking out of it because some guy said two letters you didn't like.

• 45:28Sam Parr?

  I usually think of Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark. That's mine.

• 45:32Shaan Puri?

  In moments like this?

• 45:34Sam Parr?

  I think, look, they walked across an unknown territory for two years with a three month old baby. They could do that and that baby still lived. I can do this.

• 45:44Shaan Puri?

  That's what I need. Actually, that should be a service when you're in Disneyland as a dad and it's like hour seven and it's so hot. The kids are crying cranky after you spent a thousand dollars taking them to the happiest place on earth and you're pushing the stroller and you've got the turkey leg dripping down your arm, the juice of that thing and you just hate your life. You need the Sacagawea example.

• 46:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You're like, look, kids, the story of Moby Dick is real. These guys floated across America on a raft for 90 days before they were discovered. Okay? If they could do that, we can get to McDonald's without crying.

• 46:21Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you a very inspiring entrepreneurial story, just to leave on a high note? Have you ever heard about the Ice King? Frederick Tudor, you know this guy?

• 46:30Sam Parr?

  Not personally.

• 46:32Shaan Puri?

  All right. So Frederick Tudor. So this guy's known as the Ice King. This guy, basically, he lives in the northeast of the US. So he lives near like Boston or something where it gets cold. And, you know, Boston gets cold in the winter. There's tons of ice. And he realizes, he learns that in South America, they never have snow and they never had ice. And so he has this brilliant entrepreneurial idea. He's like, I'm gonna sell ice to the South Americans. And this is pre-refrigeration, pre the freezer being invented, right? Because so he's basically goes out wherever there's like a frozen lake and he would get blocks of ice. And he would figure out how to transport it on boats to South America and go try to

• 47:15Shaan Puri?

  sell this stuff. And he was like, I will sell, I'm not selling ice, I'm selling winter. And people were like, how are you gonna even try smelting? And he's like, so he starts getting in the lab and he uses wool to wrap that. He realizes like, oh, I can cover it with sawdust and sawdust will preserve this ice for like a little longer. And he would start the thing with like 200 pounds of ice. And by the end, he would have like, you know, 70 pounds left, but he would still sell that 70 pounds. And then when he got there, people didn't understand what to do with the ice. He would sell the ice and then people would come back complaining, being like, it melted, dude. He was like, what are you talking about? That's what it does. It's ice. It's hot outside. They didn't get it. And he's like, okay, I just got on this boat for like a month and brought them ice and they didn't want it. I have to get them to want it. I have to build the desire in their mind. And so

• 48:00Shaan Puri?

  he goes and he figures out, what's the key product? What's my hero, hero product here? He's like, I need to sell cold drinks on a hot day. So he goes to the bartenders and he says, look, I'm gonna chip you off a little ice here. This is free for you, but you need to start serving rum cold in a chilled, chilled drink. And so he gets the bartenders free ice. They start giving people ice out of, you know, cold drinks. And guess what? Once you've had cold, cold rum, you never want to go back to that warm piss again. And so the demand starts to get built. People start to want ice. And this guy builds this amazing trade. He pioneers new methods of refrigeration and freezing in order to transport the ice and ultimately puts himself out of business because people realized, oh, wait, we can just freeze water and make ice ourselves. And then the ice trade kind of collapsed.

• 48:45Shaan Puri?

  But Frederick Tudor for a day was the man.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  I'm always, I'm also always interested how you got interested in this. Cause sometimes those stories are equally as good.

• 48:54Shaan Puri?

  So me and Diego, who's right over here, five feet away from me, one of the things we do is we try to read as many books as we can. And so he's been reading this book called The Medici Effect. So this was one of his stories. And I was like, wow, that's an incredible story.

• 49:05Sam Parr?

  I'm happy you're reading books now.

• 49:08Shaan Puri?

  That's condescending, but I like it. I appreciate it.

• 49:12Sam Parr?

  I did not say that. I mean, I said what I just said, but you previously said that you normally don't make it past the table of contents.

• 49:21Shaan Puri?

  I normally don't open the book. I buy the book with great enthusiasm and I really don't even open them. I've actually, you'll appreciate this. I'm creating a bookshelf. So you'll see my office is gonna change soon. So I'm creating a bookshelf that is like a Trello board. So it's basically a progress bar bookshelf. So I have all the books I bought. That's my ice box, my pipeline. And then a book moves into like the reading phase. And then it moves physically into the completed phase. And then there's the hall of fame of like great books, which will be like the few, the rare, the ones I would actually recommend to anybody else.

• 49:53Sam Parr?

  It's sort of like one time Steph Smith told me she invented a water bottle that reminds her to drink more water. And I was like, just chug the water. Just sit down and read the book.

• 50:05Shaan Puri?

  Are you sure? My bookshelf not being a progress bar has not been the thing holding me back? That's what I've been telling myself. So my old boss, Emmet from Twitch, he would tell me this, because I have a tendency to do this, where I will overarchitect a solution to something. And I will convince myself that like, this elaborate way will be the solution instead of the obvious. And so he would just listen to me talk and I would tell him 15 minutes what I'm, this great idea I have. And then I'd be like, it's great, right? And then he would say, simply, he'd go, have you tried solving the problem?

• 50:43Shaan Puri?

  He's like, have you tried actually just solving the problem? And then he would say things like, the only way out is through, Sean. And I was like, oh, wow. I was like, yeah, I'm kind of an idiot. He goes, no, actually, he goes, I'm a partner at YC and this is the most common advice I give to YC startups. They'll say exactly what they're planning to do. And then I'll ask them, have you tried solving the problem? And they'll be like, what? And it's his like shock value way of reminding you that like, in many situations, the only way out is through and you're trying to find a way around. There is no around. There's only through.

• 51:16Sam Parr?

  I waste so much time like charging my AirPods, looking for the holster to hold my iPhone, making sure that like this. And I'm like, dude, just, you're just going for like a 30 minute run.

• 51:26Shaan Puri?

  I will buy, I will, I do this the other day. I was going for a run. I doordashed. You know the little arm, plastic like blood pressure monitor where you put your phone? And I was like, well, I certainly couldn't run without my phone. So I guess I'll just wait 45 minutes for this thing to arrive.

• 51:42Sam Parr?

  For your 15 minute run.

• 51:44Shaan Puri?

  Four hour, four minute run. I was gonna run a half a mile.

• 51:49Sam Parr?

  Do the same shit all the time.

• 51:50Shaan Puri?

  It's one song. I could have just hummed it.

• 51:58Sam Parr?

  What was it like? Come, my lady. Come, come, my lady. You're my butterfly.

• 52:04Sam Parr?

  Sean's like running. Like, is this guy singing Hoobastake to himself?

• 52:12Shaan Puri?

  Why do people listen to us? Why do they listen to us?

• 52:15Sam Parr?

  That's the part.

• 52:28Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast. Cause if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast, another podcast. And let me tell you, another podcast you should check out, it's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q and A sessions with successful business leaders, or hearing keynote presentations, or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.