From selling ACs to becoming the tourism king of Jamaica

- February 20, 2026 (29 days ago) • 45:46

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	If you're like me, you're going to get inspired by this story: a white dude from Jamaica who built an incredible multibillion-dollar business and lived life on his own terms. That's the headline. This is my Billy of the Week.
00:17	Sam Parr	So, this is a...
00:18	Shaan Puri	Guy who created something called Sandals. Now, let me tell you the story. First, we just have to look at this picture, because "I'll be damned" if this doesn't look like a young Sam Parr. Look at this guy — is this not you?
00:31	Sam Parr	Yeah... this guy's—you? Is he actually—he's Jamaican?
00:35	Shaan Puri	So he lived in Jamaica. Here's the story. His name was Gordon Stewart. He was born in Jamaica, and his mom called him "Butch" because he was chubby—so he became known as Butch for the rest of his life, which is amazing. As a young kid he did all kinds of odd jobs and little hustles. He helped out the fishermen, then he bought a boat and started making money boating the fishermen around and repairing boats. He would skip school altogether. He said later, "I didn't want to be a businessman; I want to be a fisherman—just a rich fisherman." That led him into business. Along the way, living in Jamaica—where it's obviously very hot—he realized that as air conditioning (AC) became more common, AC was going to be huge in the Caribbean. Things take time to diffuse from different places; maybe AC was normal in the States but not yet in the Caribbean. So he saved up $3,000 and started a company called Appliance Traders Limited. The idea was to import AC units from the U.S. and go door to door selling them himself. He decided to focus on B2B—convincing business owners to install AC. For them it wasn't just about comfort; having AC would increase sales because customers would prefer to spend time in a cool store. Great idea. He looked for ways to differentiate. He tried selling door to door and hired some local island boys to help, but he was up against giants like General Electric and Westinghouse with much larger sales forces. Instead of trying to outcompete them on the same terms, he asked a better question: What can the big companies not do? He realized they couldn't match speed, and they didn't care about service. So he decided to offer something daring: if you called him, he would have AC installed within eight hours. He started with that vision and worked backwards to figure out operations—what he'd need to make that possible: local crews, a call dispatcher, prioritizing the most recent calls, and systems to deliver the eight-hour service. The second promise was service: these ACs run constantly and break down. He offered to fix all AC units at no extra charge—if it breaks, he fixes it fast. Nobody else was offering that. Because of those two things—speed and service—he dominated the Caribbean market. He took over Jamaica, built a powerhouse, and that was how he made his first fortune.
03:23	Sam Parr	How much did it make?
03:25	Shaan Puri	I don't know his net worth at this time, but it's enough that he could go to Montego Bay and buy a rundown hotel that everybody else ignored. So, in 1981 he bought a resort called Bay Rock. At the time, people thought he was crazy because tourism was not that popular in Jamaica and crime was very high. The hotel was run down and had a bad reputation, so he was buying a kind of rundown, distressed asset. But he had a vision. He said, "I love it here. I think people will love it here. I just have to find a positioning for this." This is where Butch, the marketing genius, starts to inspire me.
04:00	Sam Parr	"What's Montego Bay? I'm not— I mean, it's a city in Jamaica." </FormattedResponse>
04:04	Shaan Puri	I think it's a city. It's a place—an area. I don't know if it's a city or town or whatever you call it, but yeah, my sister got married there. I should probably know this, but...
04:10	Sam Parr	But it's in Jamaica. It's a thing, got.
04:12	Shaan Puri	Okay, so he has his vision. He's like, "I want to give Americans a carefree, luxury Caribbean vacation." He asks, "What's the worst thing about a vacation?" and answers: "You don't know where to go, you don't know what you're going to get, and then costs add up — you get nickel-and-dimed." People feel like they may not be able to afford it, and that will stop some people from coming. So he's like, "Let me do it instead: upfront you get one price and everything is included, and I'm going to standardize luxury." He felt there wasn't luxury in this area.
04:44	Sam Parr	So, the first thing he does.
04:45	Shaan Puri	He rebrands the Bay Rock to Sandals because he's "like that" already — Sandals embodies relaxation and being on the beach. Then he starts studying other hotels. He's a shameless copycat: "I'm gonna go study all the other hotels in this area and other islands, and I'm gonna steal the best ideas from each." He visits Club Med and thinks, "Oh, it's good, but it's a little too spartan. I feel like I'm gonna make a mess here and be in trouble if I do that. I want luxury, but you should still feel like you're here — you can have a good time here." He notices details: "Oh, I like the way they serve this champagne. Oh, what is this thing? A whirlpool? We're gonna get one of those over here." So he starts importing innovation from all these different places.
05:27	Sam Parr	Wait, really quick — have you seen that meme where it's like, "if you're going up against a deal," or "if you're going up against this guy in a deal, you're gonna get screwed"? It's a guy with a fat wallet wearing Wrangler blue jeans, and he's a chubby guy with a big watch. You know that meme?
05:43	Shaan Puri	And new, yeah.
05:45	Sam Parr	Yeah. New Balance. Bush Stewart looks like this guy. I could see him doing research, where he's at a bar and he sees something interesting and goes, "Hey, miss — you know, you've been a lovely waitress. Can you bring over that song, bitch? Let me—let me look at that margarita maker. What is that? Tell me about that thing. Hey, can you do me a favor, doll? Go ahead and order me about twenty of them, will you, please, darling?"
06:05	Shaan Puri	Exactly. It's the famous Sam Walton story. Sam Walton—who created Walmart, of course—would study every other retailer. What helped make Walmart so great is that he stole anything good that any other retailer did. There's a great story of Sam Walton in Brazil. Someone was walking down the aisles of a store and saw a man lying on the ground. They thought he was dead and cried out, "Oh my God, help—this guy's dead; he's passed out." That man was Sam Walton. He was not dead. He was measuring the distance between aisles using his body length because he didn't have a ruler with him. He was like, "I like this spacing—what is this?" so he laid down. </FormattedResponse>
06:47	Sam Parr	"He used his body to measure things. It's about from shoulder to knee."
06:50	Shaan Puri	They didn't understand what he was doing. Butch was basically doing this: he decided to rebrand it as "couples-only." One of the things he realized was that a lot of these resorts had mixed crowds. You look around and see the lovebirds, and then you have the families — and they interrupt each other. The families don't want to see people making out, and the couples don't want kids running around. So he asked, what if, instead of being okay for everybody, I made it great for one killer use case? He rebranded the resort as couples-only: adults, romance, no kids. This was a radical positioning at the time — nobody was really doing it — but it gave the brand a clear identity. Then he poured millions of dollars into advertising, which most people would not do. He had not proven the concept; it wasn't like he was taking profits and reinvesting them. He reinvested because he simply had a belief in the idea.
07:41	Sam Parr	Well, had he raised money for this?
07:43	Shaan Puri	No — this is the money he made from the AC company. So he's like, "Spend bigger to earn bigger." Later he had this great line. He ends up building, I don't know, 30 resorts or something like that in Jamaica, and he's done, you know, millions of square feet. He says, "The most valuable real estate — and the hardest real estate to build — is the one in the consumer's mind." That's always where I start. I was like, "Oh, I love this guy — just an old-school ad man. Just a classic ad man."
08:11	Sam Parr	He's the type of guy who's never read a book about advertising in his life. He listened to one TED Talk, and that's what he bases his entire education on.
08:19	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah — exactly.
08:22	Sam Parr	Alright, so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. A lot of people message Sean and me and ask, "Alright, I want to start something on the side — is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?" What they're really saying is just give me the ideas. Well, friends, you're in luck. My old company, The Hustle, put together 100 different side-hustle ideas and have appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly — I went through them; they're awesome. It gives you how to start them, how to grow them, and things like that. It gives you a little bit of inspiration, so check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below — you'll see the link. Click it, check it out, and let me know in the comments what you think.
09:09	Shaan Puri	And the other cool thing he does is he basically revitalizes Jamaica. He ends up employing about 10,000 Jamaicans and is loved in Jamaica for what he did for the local economy. How he treated people there was a big change when he brought tourism. He goes on a buying spree, buying more and more failing hotels across the Caribbean. He was super hands-on: he'd go stay there, eat the food, sleep in the bed, check the pillows, and make detailed notes about anything that needed to change. If a customer complained that the champagne wasn't chilled enough, he would make sure that by the next day all the fridges were recalibrated to the right temperature. He would let the customer know, "Thank you — we know, we changed it for you." He was always tweaking, and that was one of his core philosophies: > "I'm not gonna get it right right away, but I'm gonna tweak and tweak and tweak until I get it there." Hotels are known for their repeat rate. You can tell the quality of a hotel not by the number of stars but by how many guests come back and stay again. Sandals would have, for decades, a 50% repeat rate, which was unheard of in the industry — people loved going there. He took all these measures to build the business. After he ran out of buying the distressed hotels that already existed, he decided he needed to buy new, great beachfront properties. One thing he realized was that so many beaches were unknown to most people, so he would rent a helicopter, fly over the island, look for undiscovered beaches, scout them, buy the land, and build the hotel on them. It was a brute-force, first-principles approach to building a luxury hotel.
10:54	Sam Parr	And now his kid is running it, so is it an independent business?
10:58	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he passed away in 2021. I'm not so sure what's going on with the business since then, but he kind of left that — that's his legacy, basically, in Jamaica. His kids said they know all these wonderful things about him, which is another great test. How great of a man are you? Do your kids want to be around you? What do they have to say about you? It seems like, at least from the outside, that he did a good job there. He also did this crazy thing with the airlines — do you know the story?
11:27	Sam Parr	Well, on his Wikipedia it says that he owned Jamaican Air.
11:31	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So he realizes at a certain point—he's like, "This is paradise," but the experience to get to paradise is hell. "This is heaven"—well, that's hell. Air Jamaica was this failing airline: the brand sucked, the service sucked. You sign up for this vacation because of the glossy ads—he was buying ads in Playboy and Cosmo and anywhere he could sell the idea that if you're in love you go to Sandals. Not just that it's a nice vacation, but it's a symbol of how much you love each other: you go on a Sandals vacation. Like the way diamonds are a girl's best friend—"diamonds are forever." Diamonds became a symbol for "do you commit? Are you all in on this?" He did that with the vacation. But the airline experience sucks—getting here and going home sucks. That's the first impression and the last impression the consumer's going to have. So what does he do? He buys the airline and takes full control—vertically integrates the experience. He admitted the airline was a tough, bad business, but he had an advantage: he owned the resorts. He basically used the airline as a giant flying billboard to the resort. He said, "I will just market my resorts. I'll bundle the flights and hotels. I will use it to advertise my resorts so that you want to stay there. I will do service and kind of lose a little money or break even on the airline as long as I give you a first-class experience down to my resorts where you're going to spend a lot of money." If they get off the plane angry, it doesn't matter—he's already lost the game before they step foot on the beach. Again: I love this guy.
13:09	Sam Parr	Brian Chesky. My wife used to work at Airbnb, and Brian Chesky would give these talks about— I think he called it a 10-star experience. He has this famous one-star... or is it 12-star? He would ask, "What's a one-star experience?" A one-star experience is when you book, you do a booking, and we leave the key out on the mat and it's just fine.
13:29	Shaan Puri	"And there's rats, and it doesn't look like the pictures. Yes — that's one star."
13:33	Sam Parr	And a five-star is like Michelin-restaurant-style service. He's like, "But what's six stars?" People start getting creative. They're like, "Get picked up in a limo," and whatever. "But what's eight stars? What's ten stars?" He goes all the way up to twelve stars. For him, it's a really cool exercise to think about what extreme hospitality looks like. He made this argument, and this was pre-COVID. COVID changed everything at Airbnb because they had to focus on different stuff — it was, you know, an existential crisis. But he used to say that he wanted to launch an airline. I was thinking, "What could the tagline be for that?" It would be: "When you fly with us, the vacation starts at the airport." Right? I was like, "Oh, that's so interesting. We could actually make that a thing, because when you — [inaudible]."
14:19	Shaan Puri	That — or he said that.
14:20	Sam Parr	I said that not to him. I was just thinking it might...
14:22	Shaan Puri	That Airbnb job offer might come back around 20 years. That's...
14:27	Sam Parr	A good one, right? I was thinking about, like, when— you know— if you fly first class or you go to the lounge, you're like, "It's pretty cool; the vacation has started now." Sometimes you get there early and you have to wait three or four hours, because I'm an early, early arrival at the airport. It's kind of like... are... </FormattedResponse>
14:43	Shaan Puri	Four hours early.
14:44	Sam Parr	Like three hours. But if there's a delay... I don't know, dude. I get there early.
14:49	Shaan Puri	Are you crazy? What are you doing?
14:50	Sam Parr	I've never missed a flight in my life. The time with you was the closest I've ever gotten, but no—I don't miss flights. "How early do you get there now?" I guess I get there... TSA kind of changed things, but yeah, I'm always at least a two-hour-early guy.
15:04	Shaan Puri	I like to slide in 50 minutes before the flight and see if I can get to TSA in the next 20–30 minutes. That leaves me another 20–30 minutes to get on the plane easily.
15:14	Sam Parr	But if I have lounge access, I'm like, "Look — I'm just gonna eat there. I'll eat my lunch or dinner there, and then we'll get on the plane." So that's my slogan: "The vacation should start at the airport."
15:27	Shaan Puri	"Alright, we need a trademark. We need a trademark on this."
15:29	Sam Parr	"That's pretty good, right?"
15:30	Shaan Puri	That's really good.
15:31	Sam Parr	Yeah — that has a ring to it. I enjoy reading about hotel businesses. You know, I had a fling with my own little hospitality business; it was an Airbnb. That went horrible, but I read a bunch of books on this. Have you ever heard about Hares Entertainment? It was a—no, Hares was a casino, and this was...
15:53	Shaan Puri	Like in Vegas.
15:55	Sam Parr	Yeah, so it was a casino, but this was before casinos kind of became hotels. I was reading a book called The Caesar Palace Coup. Around 2018, all these hedge funds owned little bits and pieces of Caesars Palace, which I think was the largest casino-hotel management company in the world. The book is about the greed and what it took to buy it, and the eventual downfall. It also talks about the founding. It was founded as Harrah's Entertainment, and then another hotel merged with it and they created Caesars Entertainment. Up until the 1990s or early 2000s, hotels were just hotels and casinos were simple businesses. Then Harrah's — and thus Caesars, after the merger — hired a 40-year-old mathematician from Harvard. He had no management experience and no experience running a company. His name is Gary Loveman. He came in and made it his math playground. He dialed it in. Within two years of him being CEO, they had the system down — I think around 2001, before the internet was super popular — so that when you called to book a hotel, based on their data and math, they would know to offer you an upgrade or $50 in free gambling. It was all statistical: they knew that if they gave you a free room, they'd get you hooked on gambling. He basically invented this idea of—I'm not sure what the exact phrase would be—using data and math in a "moneyball"-type way for hotel guests.
17:26	Shaan Puri	Dude, this is sick. I've never heard of this guy, Gary Loveland. After nine years on the faculty at Harvard Business School, he left to become COO of Harrah's, then became the CEO of Caesars for twelve years. That's crazy. He's a minority owner of the Boston Celtics. He focuses on the use of analytics to influence customer behavior.
17:48	Sam Parr	Yeah. Up until him, it had never been done. He was a famous faculty member at Harvard, and he would teach all this methodology. Then one day Harris was like, "Hey, we'll hook you up big time. We'll give you access to the private jet so you could fly down on a Monday, come home on a Friday. We're gonna roll out the red carpet for you—just do what you want." He did what they wanted, and eventually they said, "Alright, brother, you're now CEO." It worked great. It was crazy—within three months of him joining the company they saw massive improvements, and then within a year or two he implemented... it was all data-driven.
18:20	Shaan Puri	He's like, "Cherries in the vodka — we're gonna put cherries in the vodka." And everyone's like, "We don't know." The data says, "Put cherries in the vodka — slot machine sales are gonna go up by 3.3%," right? I mean, a casino is one of the most well-optimized places. It's like you are the sponge and the casino is ringing you out.
18:40	Sam Parr	Well, he's the guy who did that. So now, I think he's chairman or vice chairman—something like that—of Aetna, one of the largest insurance companies.
18:48	Shaan Puri	Oh, good. Yeah—perfect, just what we did. </FormattedResponse>
18:51	Sam Parr	It's the same — it's the same as math. It's just... if your goal is just to maximize profits, you do this math equation.
18:59	Shaan Puri	This is like when I learned the tobacco companies own Kraft Foods, or whatever. It's like, "Oh — the children's food is owned by the cigarette company. Oh, great."
19:09	Sam Parr	Yeah, like Annie's goldfish is owned by the same guy who's making cigarillos.
19:15	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. So this guy is kind of a genius. I want to tell you about this genius thing that I've been thinking about. It's not my idea — that's just the idea of geniuses. Let me just tell you a story here. I'm going to read from — I think this is a Financial Times article — so I'm just going to read you a couple of the intro here because it's amazing. > "Sam, I want you to imagine you are Stacy Tang. You're a Chinese woman who has always wanted to be a manager at a pharmaceutical company in Beijing. You receive a phone call — on some Squid Game shit — an unknown number calls you and says, 'We like your son.' You have a 15-year-old son. They say, 'We believe that he might be qualified for the genius program and we'd like to give him a test.' > > "Now it's also COVID — it's peak COVID, 2022 — people can't meet in person. So they said, 'Stacy, I know you might be concerned about COVID. You're a good mom; fear not. We're going to put him in the back of this van and we're going to drive around the city, and he's going to do math problems in the back of this van. We'll know by the end of the ride if he's qualified or not. We'll dump him off on the street if he's not, and if he is, you'll see him in a couple years.'" And like, Stacy would feel... you might be...
20:32	Sam Parr	I would say, "What color is the van, and what corner should I leave him at?"
20:37	Shaan Puri	Exactly. That's exactly how Stacy felt. She says, "I wasn't worried about an abduction plot. In any other country I would be, but not here." She goes, "I was weeping — I was weeping with joy."
20:47	Sam Parr	Not mid-COVID. Who fully trusts in China mid-COVID, of course.
20:52	Shaan Puri	I was weeping with joy, and I sent my boy right away because I knew... what I knew was this was a golden ticket to the...
20:58	Sam Parr	"Best Educational Resources of China" [article]. Stacy is a very optimistic woman.
21:03	Shaan Puri	So Stacy and her son were part of this program that China's running right now, where they have 100,000 kids that they've identified as possible geniuses. They put them through what they call the genius program. What they do is, at a young age they identify certain aptitudes for math, for science, etc., and they say, "We'd like to invite you to the genius program." The RSVP says "yes" or "yes," and then you go — you send your kid. It's a few-year intensive study program. You get to skip all your normal school. You get to skip the college entrance exams; you don't have to take any of those. You're basically in math boot camp, and you are going to be studying with the brightest and the best. They are trying to produce incredible talent in China. So you might be wondering, "Well, how does that work? Is it working?" Natural question: is it working, Sam? Do you like TikTok's genius program? Sam, have you ever heard about Taobao, which is essentially their PayPal genius program? Have you heard about their Groupon genius program? Have you heard about their super-app genius program? Have you heard about the brothers who are behind their big NVIDIA-competitor genius program? Have you ever heard of DeepSeek? They were in the news recently — they created that big algorithm, didn't even have access to the best chips, and somehow outperformed all of the OpenAI models. Genius program.
22:22	Sam Parr	It's like a Thiel Fellowship run by the government.
22:25	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So China already has this incredible population advantage: they produce 5,000,000 graduates in math, computer science, and engineering, compared to, I think, we have like half a million in technology and science fields in the US. So it's already 10-to-1—10-to-1 just in normal college graduates. But now they're looking for the cream of the crop. They are basically trying to create this homegrown talent pipeline of math geniuses, computer science geniuses, etc., and it's working. They started this program many years ago. At the time, China didn't have a very notable math or science achievement record at the international level. There are these things called the Math Olympiad—it's sort of like the Olympics for math. The first year they sent a team of three and they got a bronze, and they were excited. The next year they sent about six and got two medals. Now they basically sweep all the medals every year. They dominate these programs: they send the most participants and have the most wins. Their AI program is similar. If you walk into an OpenAI office, you'll see tons of Chinese PhD AI researchers who now work in the US. But for everyone you see here, there are, you know, a hundred still in China working at Chinese companies and Chinese labs. I was pretty inspired by this whole thing. There's one anecdote in the story: if you go into a normal Chinese public school, there's a blunt slogan on the wall. This is not even the genius program—this is just a normal elementary public school—and it's a reminder for the teachers and staff. It just says, "Produce talent quickly and early." I thought about that because I send my kids to school, and the teachers and staff do not have a philosophy about producing talent quickly and early. What's our slogan? "No Child Left Behind." That was the famous education program that we launched... I don't know, when Bush was president or something like that.
24:34	Sam Parr	Exact opposite.
24:35	Shaan Puri	It's the exact opposite. It's about: don't discriminate; don't make anyone feel left out. In San Francisco, they were doing this thing where they were getting rid of the gifted and honors programs because it made the other people feel bad. We basically are taking the exact opposite with the sort of inclusion focus and the "No Child Left Behind" focus. Whereas other countries are taking this idea of: your job is to produce talent quickly and early — the goal is greatness, and let's be competitive about it. What's going to happen over a twenty-year arc? You're going to get more and more... they're going to win. I thought this was pretty interesting. I wanted to hear your thoughts on this.
25:16	Sam Parr	"It kind of begs the question: why doesn't Facebook have—what's it... Well, yes, but what's it called, the D-League for the NBA? The G League. Yeah, the G League, or the minor leagues, you know?"
25:28	Shaan Puri	Triple J baseball, yeah.
25:30	Sam Parr	Yeah — why don't Google, Facebook, and the top 200 schools have a "farm team" where they identify 14-year-olds who are promising? They could say, "Would you like to come to school here forever or for free? You can choose to work at our company afterwards, but just so you know, you have a job here if you choose to." We would educate you and get you up to date — up to speed on all the stuff.
25:55	Shaan Puri	Totally. Actually, when I first moved to San Francisco, this was the thing I was pitching investors. I was like, "I think I should go create Google U, and my dream would be to be the dean of Google U." They were like, "I can't." I think it's crazy that these giant companies don't have their own talent farms. Right? Why wouldn't they try to produce talent?
26:11	Sam Parr	We wrote a story at The Hustle about this kid named Michael Praisman. Michael—if you hear this, what's up? He was a 15-year-old who had a rags-to-riches story. He somehow got Mark Zuckerberg's attention at the age of 14 because he wrote a viral app. He made the news because Zuck said, "Hey, do you want, like, an internship here?" That led to a full-time job when he was only 16. Now I think he's on the AI—what's it called—the "super team," the "super intelligence" Facebook team, which is like a $100,000,000-a-year salary. Insane stuff. We wrote the story because of how remarkable it was that Facebook hired a high school kid.
26:48	Shaan Puri	"We need more Doogie Howser shit, right?"
26:50	Sam Parr	"Like, why don't we do that?"
26:52	Shaan Puri	Where's our competitiveness? So you have the Thiel Fellowship, right? That's a thing, and obviously there are little programs all around. Dude, I remember when I was in seventh grade: Duke University did what I didn't realize was essentially just a marketing campaign. They had created something called the Duke TIP program — the Talent Identification Program. I lived in Texas, and suddenly Duke had my school send us all to the cafeteria to take a little test. Then you got a little merch bag with Duke gear. The results came back and said, "We think you're talented." Bro, I think I rode that for like seven years, and then I went to Duke. That thing really influenced me in some weird, subliminal way — like maybe I am special, maybe I can do this, maybe I should go pay Duke $200,000 to go to school there. I did all those things. I'm surprised that more of that stuff doesn't exist. I kinda want to create something like this because I think it actually creates inflection. Now, the China one is more like boarding school, right? And there've been other countries that do that, but I feel like we...
27:54	Sam Parr	"Need our own versions of these... where?"
27:56	Shaan Puri	What does the American talent pipeline look like, and where are we identifying the best and the brightest? On some Ender's Game stuff—inviting them to the academy and then letting them duel and compete in a pretty hardcore way. Because, look, hardcore is not for everybody. But there are some people who only thrive in hardcore situations. They want to play the game at the competitive level. Basically, what we do with youth sports—AAU and travel ball and stuff like that—do that for the genius kids. Do that for the makers, right? I think that maybe it exists; I'm just not aware of it.
28:28	Sam Parr	"Have you heard of Birthright?"
28:30	Shaan Puri	"I love Birthright."
28:31	Sam Parr	Crazy. So, for those listening—I learned about it because I was dating a girl who went on Birthright. I don't remember what age I was... like 21 years old.
28:40	Shaan Puri	Do you remember when she told you about it? What was your reaction? You were like, "What?"
28:43	Sam Parr	Yeah, and she wasn't even Jewish — she was ethnically Jewish, I guess. But basically, Birthright is a program. It's funded, I think, a little bit by the government, but a lot of it is funded by wealthy Jewish people. I also think a lot of wealthy Christian people fund it. Some of those Christians believe that, according to the Bible, when the end of the world happens the Jews need to rise first, and then the Christians go behind them. That's what the Book of Revelation says. So they believe, for a variety of reasons, that we need to keep Israel strong. I don't care about the politics — I'm just telling you guys the facts. A lot of Christians, I think, but also Bernie Madoff was a huge funder. A lot of people are funders.
29:22	Shaan Puri	It says 67% of the funding for Birthright is individuals, 27% is the government, and then there's a couple percent from other sources.
29:31	Sam Parr	And it's basically a free trip to anyone who could prove it. You'll have to tell me the exact measurement, but I think it's if you have a great-grandparent who's Jewish, so you could be not Jewish at all. Does it say what the requirements are?
29:46	Shaan Puri	Well, I just asked, "Does it count if I have a Jewish friend?" It replied, "No — that's not gonna get me there."
29:51	Sam Parr	Like, you identify as Jewish, but it's basically a very small percentage. They bring you on something like a three-week, all-expenses-paid trip, and they basically... [sentence trails off]
30:02	Shaan Puri	At least one Jewish birth parent or a recognized conversion. </FormattedResponse>
30:06	Sam Parr	Okay, so—just a parent: they bring you for, like, two or three weeks. I forget how long it is.
30:10	Shaan Puri	But they like business, yeah.
30:12	Sam Parr	But they give you a tour, and you see all the types of stuff. They basically— I remember when I was dating this girl; we broke up afterwards because she was like, "They introduced us to all these Israeli soldiers," and I was like, "Alright." The guys were really ripped—why did he take his shirt off? Why does he have that photo anyway? And, like, a small percentage of them then become more in touch with Judaism and in touch with Israel, and thus support Israel more. [unclear phrase: "good buddy siva"]
30:45	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's how culture lasts through generations, right? It's cultural experiences and exposure. Any culture can do this. They've just systematized it into this really cool opportunity for people.
30:57	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's awesome — it's pretty great. I would, because I think you have to be, like, 18... There's an age limit; I think it's 18 to 25. I forget what it is. When you're primed to want to go on a free trip, you're like, "Yeah, fuck it — I'll go." It's a free trip — hell yeah. Then you get there and you're like, "Okay, I actually do like this" or "I actually like that," right? So it's pretty cool, and I think that's kind of a good example... like the</FormattedResponse>
31:17	Shaan Puri	World's Best Timeshare Presentation
31:19	Sam Parr	Yeah, I think that's a really good way. This sounds bad — I don't mean it in a bad way — to indoctrinate someone into, like, a cause and get them long-term bought in. It is kind of an interesting model.
31:29	Shaan Puri	Yeah, love that. So what are you saying—"our own birth rate"? Where are you going with that?
31:33	Sam Parr	Well, no. What I'm saying is two things. First, I actually do think that America should have mandatory service. I think Scott Galloway said this; I've agreed with it for a long time — we should have mandatory service for the American military. I think that would be great. Second, I think that's a really good example of how you have—whatever we're calling this, like a "farm league"—of getting in with people at a young age. I wonder — it worked really well with Duke and you. I didn't go to a good school; I was from Missouri and I didn't go to a good college. But it's interesting why you aren't prompted a little bit earlier on to buy into a certain movement, like going to a good university or joining an interesting company.
32:09	Shaan Puri	Well, we're kind of saying three different ways that you can produce this — like a talent farm. 1) The China model. You identify promise and potential early, then you invest in that. They do deliberate, intensive practice. Those people with potential build skills in a more intense, more hardcore environment. That's one way you could do things. 2) The Duke example. Sometimes just creating a test or something like that — a talent-identification measure — makes people feel special and talented. That self-belief is worth something. It's not the same value as going to an intensive boot camp and capitalizing on it, but it's not nothing either. 3) Cultural pride and ties. How do you get that sense of pride, cultural connection, and enthusiasm? One idea is something like birthright. There are all these different ways you could do it. I started studying who else has done things like this. Have you seen the story of the Soviet — or are you familiar with the story of the Soviet Olympic program and basically how they did this?
33:14	Sam Parr	Yeah, and how they were just like, "this shit." Well, they also drugged him. That's why they won so many of the women's track-and-field records — a ton of them are from the USSR in the eighties. They're still the longest-standing records.
33:28	Shaan Puri	So, I didn't know the whole story, so I was kind of looking into this. It's pretty interesting. The Soviets were famously independent — kind of like, "we don't need to be part of the Olympics." They actually had their own fitness games. They had what they called physical culture, and they had their own event called the Spartakiad [their version of the Olympics]. But at a certain point, the Olympics had the network effect: the brand and the prestige. So even if we were winning our local thing, it didn't carry the same weight. They basically built a machine. They decided, "All right, we're going to enter the Olympics," but the way they did it was just so Russian — incredible. They built an incredible machine, and I respect that. What they did was the same thing: talent identification. They would start at age six to ten, measuring how long your arms are, how big your wingspan is, your reaction time, your body composition, and your flexibility for gymnastics. They didn't wait for greatness to appear; they went on a talent search and searched for greatness. Once they found it, they basically hacked the system. At the time, I think until around 1986 or 1988, the Olympic charter said you couldn't be a professional athlete.
34:47	Sam Parr	One of our past topics, Dipri Fontaine, was one of the biggest advocates to abolish that.
34:53	Shaan Puri	Okay, so great. The Russians basically just worked around it. They're like, "this gymnast—she's a student," "this guy—this hockey player—he's an officer." They had these job titles that were only on paper, but actually they were training full-time for this. Whereas the U.S. would be like, "I'm juggling school and my training." Obviously, somebody who's only training is going to get further ahead.
35:14	Sam Parr	Well, remember Mirko Cro Cop — one of the best. Yep.
35:17	Shaan Puri	MMA fighter, yeah.
35:18	Sam Parr	Yeah. He was supposed to be an ex-police officer. That was the shtick — that he was a... but he was really trained, I think, as a fighter from a former USSR state, and he trained full time. </FormattedResponse>
35:31	Shaan Puri	He's like, "I'm the Can Man. Anybody can get it right now."
35:35	Sam Parr	That's really funny.
35:37	Shaan Puri	Different boxers. Alright, so they do that, then they start drugging, right? So they're like, "Okay, what else can we do — PEDs" [performance-enhancing drugs]. So that became, obviously, a thing. They also did world-class — you know, I guess — progress and innovation in calisthenics and training programs and regimens that used progressive loads and deloads, and focused on how to peak at the right time. That's stuff that's, yeah, standardized today. They invented and kind of created it, and we had to go steal it from them basically — like, "How are they doing this?"
36:06	Sam Parr	In running, there's something called periodization, which is like: you start with heavy miles and then you slowly taper off, or you go to speed work. They helped invent that. They also helped invent the idea of training—lifting weights in cold atmospheres with the AC down to like 60°F and 55°F. </FormattedResponse>
36:20	Shaan Puri	What does that do?
36:21	Sam Parr	It just makes you stronger. I don't know the science behind it, but that was one of their theories.
36:25	Shaan Puri	I love how I ask as if that's my problem... It's been the temperature this whole time.
36:30	Sam Parr	No—they just came up with all these really weird things. I mean, they were lab rats, so they came up with a bunch of stuff, like volume training for weightlifting. They were the best weightlifters. A lot of the best are now old guys. Many of the fathers of bodybuilding in the '90s [unclear: "and february"] are all in their eighties now; they were USSR guys.
36:51	Shaan Puri	Right, and so they ended up dominating the Olympics. They were either first or second in medal count. There was a time when they really dominated. It was also interesting—why did they care so much? It was basically, "let's send a message." Physical dominance was a signal for dominance in other things. So this is why I thought the China thing is so interesting, because...
37:12	Sam Parr	Because it's the exact opposite. It's brain.
37:15	Shaan Puri	It's brain dominance, but even more—there's more at stake. It was symbolic: "we'll show the world what we're capable of." There have always been these symbolic victories, like being the first to climb Everest or reach the North Pole or the South Pole. Those achievements have objectively no value beyond bragging rights, and countries cared a lot about those bragging rights. Now with the AI situation, it's not just a symbolic victory. It's actual—total domination of the world's most powerful technology and will probably create the next global power. So it's all the same national-pride, bravado stuff from the Olympics, multiplied by real-world, tangible benefits and dominance.
37:59	Sam Parr	"Dude, I think it's great—like Blue Angels' bravado. This is like the greatest thing ever, I think."
38:06	Shaan Puri	"Sam's all in on bravado."
38:09	Sam Parr	Well, just think that having a common enemy is really good for bringing people together. I remember—post-9/11—I distinctly remember the week after. I was walking around the street and thinking, "There's something about this; I just feel a bond with strangers." Do you remember that feeling?
38:27	Shaan Puri	Well... a little different as a brown guy, but yeah.
38:29	Sam Parr	Yeah, you actually had the exact opposite of that experience, but I forgot about it.
38:33	Shaan Puri	That, like, "Oh, I was the common enemy." </FormattedResponse>
38:34	Sam Parr	"You were the enemy. You were the other."
38:36	Shaan Puri	The same. Great. Yeah, do.
38:39	Sam Parr	"I was the 'us' and you were the 'them.'" Have you heard of this thing? This is related to what you were saying about planting a seed in someone—that they're good. Have you heard of this called the Michelangelo effect? No? It's this psychological phenomenon where—basically—there have been a bunch of tests that have proven it to be true. We use this phrase with Hampton all the time. It's like a gift from the gods. The Michelangelo effect basically says that if you have two romantic partners, or a peer group, or a friend group, and they affirm each other and plant the seed in you—for example, if I say, "Sean, you are the man. You will be fit. You will achieve this. You will do whatever you want"—and we keep affirming each other, every time you hear that it's as if, when Michelangelo was doing the statue of David, someone asked him how he made this amazing statue. He says: > "The statue was there. I just chipped away at all the stuff covering that beautiful statue." So it's as if the greatness is already in you because I have put that label on you. Each time I affirm, congratulate, or tell you how amazing you are, I'm chipping away at the stone that's going to unveil this beautiful thing inside of you—which is whatever goal you want to become. They have found that, basically, if you are raised around fat people you are more likely to be fat. If you are raised around depressed people you are more likely to be depressed. If you're raised around rich people you're more likely to be rich. It's not just because of what your parents do—it's that you become what you are affirmed as and what you are told. It's called the Michelangelo effect. It's a really cool idea, and this has been studied by psychologists. They looked at a group of 50,000 people and asked, "What words are you using to talk to this person, and how do they end up—where do they become?" It's really telling. So it's a really cool idea that if I tell you at a young age that you are special, that you work hard, that you're going to be great, that you belong in this category, you are more likely to actually become that—simply from me telling you that you are.
40:38	Shaan Puri	That's amazing. My dad told me this story about something his dad did for him, and that's always stuck with me. So this is a little dad nugget of gold to pay forward.
40:48	Sam Parr	I don't want to cry. Not at all emotional today.
40:51	Shaan Puri	It's not that emotional, but maybe you're in that phase where, you know... the hormones, hormones.
40:57	Sam Parr	Happy to have a little girl, man. I feel like I want to tear up all the time.
41:00	Shaan Puri	So my dad was telling me: my dad grew up in India. If you look at it now, he lives in San Francisco and he's had this great life, but it's kind of unheard of—to go from a village in India to ending up here in one lifetime. He tells me the story and says, "There was one thing my dad always did for me." He goes, "My dad planted the seed in me that I was special, that I was different, that I was gonna go do great things." It didn't make any sense because I wasn't doing anything. I lived in this little dirt village. Nobody in our family had ever done anything like that. His dad worked at a factory. He told me how his dad would bring him to the factory and the boss would be there, like, "Oh hey, kiddo—who's the kid?" The boss would put a hard hat on him and say, "One day you can be here with us when you grow up." Then his dad would tell his boss, "Are you kidding me?" He'd say, "No—this boy, this boy's special. This boy's not gonna be here. He's not gonna be in a factory. He's gonna be in America. This boy's special. You don't know—this guy is really special. He's really smart. He's gonna do something amazing in America." He told him that since he was four, five, six, seven years old. He said his dad put this idea in him—that he was special and he was gonna do something, he was gonna go to America. His dad had never been to America; he didn't even know what America was at the time. He'd never been on a flight, never been on an airplane, but he had this idea and he said it so matter-of-factly and in front of other people—he wasn't even telling me, I just overheard it. I eavesdropped on that and I thought that was great.
42:49	Sam Parr	Ready to do.
42:50	Shaan Puri	That for my kids.</FormattedResponse>
42:51	Sam Parr	Great. Is that— is that the best? </FormattedResponse>
42:53	Shaan Puri	"That's the best."
42:54	Sam Parr	I do that with my kids all the time. We do daily affirmations in the morning. We say, "I'm bold. I'm tough. I'm smart."
42:58	Shaan Puri	"I'm brave, I'm strong, I'm happy, and I can do anything." We do this all the time. I want to tell you about a little tennis victory I had with my son. When he'd go into new classes he would always get scared—new soccer, new tennis, anything. As a parent it's very frustrating: you pay, you drive through traffic, you go there, and then your kid doesn't go in. Meanwhile, all the other kids are happily doing it. I'm bartering, bribing, threatening, ignoring, trying again. I'll say, "I'll go in with you," or "I'll jump on the trampoline, let's do this together," and then the teacher says, "Hey, can you leave? Parents aren't really allowed in here." It's been the same situation over and over. So we go to a new tennis class and, sure enough, he doesn't want to go in. I decide to try this a little differently. We just hang out and talk. I decide we're going to stay—I am not going to force him to go in. I start telling him, "You know, I get pretty afraid of doing new things too. I totally get that." I tell him that other people aren't unafraid; they have the scared feeling in them too—right here in their chest. I tell him, "But you get to decide: does this scared one win?" I say, "Sometimes the scared wins, and like today the scared won, but it doesn't always have to win. Sometimes you get to win." I told him this and then forgot about it. He didn't really respond—kids don't always verbally affirm like that.
44:31	Sam Parr	Yeah, not sure if he's even... what?
44:33	Shaan Puri	A wonderful lesson. He was just, you know, looking at the car he was playing with or whatever. Three weeks later we go to class — my wife takes him — and he goes in. She's like, "Oh, he went into tennis, no problem this time," after, you know, three weeks. Afterwards she's like, "Know what... good job. I'm so proud of you. How'd you do it?" And he was like, "I didn't want to let the scared win today." I was like, "Yes — total and complete victory in life. I did it, I did it. I'm not a terrible dad — I actually taught him something." So it was this huge, great moment in my life: hearing that that little seed, watered enough, eventually did bloom in his own words. I had actually forgotten about the whole thing, and he remembered it.
45:18	Sam Parr	What a wholesome episode, right? That stuff fires me up. Yeah — thank you for Dad Corner. I want to go and hug my kids. Alright, that's it. That's fun.

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From selling ACs to becoming the tourism king of Jamaica

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