We spent 48 hours with MrBeast + 11 Billionaires
Billionaires, Basketball, and Business Lessons - January 29, 2025 (about 1 year ago) • 43:40
Transcript
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Shaan Puri | > "Alright, Sam. We just had an *insane* weekend together. We lived in a house for a weekend with twenty-five other founder‑entrepreneur types. Probably five to ten of them were billionaires, and a bunch of others were close.
>
> We didn't just talk or hang out — we literally slept under one roof, sat in saunas together, played basketball together, and went to Walmart together a bunch of times." | |
Sam Parr | my airbnb had bunk beds so we we bunked we bunk bed together | |
Shaan Puri | It's as close as two men can get. So, yeah — we had an experience, and I have in front of me several sticky notes of **golden lessons learned**.
I phrased each of them... I don't know if you did this, but I phrased each of them to make it fun. Because nobody wants to hear your vacation story. That's one of the great rules of storytelling: "Never tell a vacation story," because it's so fun for you, but they weren't there — nobody cares.
I think we should tell the biggest lessons learned with the story that backs them up, so it's real, not just a generic lesson. I phrased all of mine like it's Confucius — like, you know, Bruce Lee whispered this into your ear. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I dig that.
To give the background: basically, I think about three years ago you tweeted out, "I wanna play basketball with interesting people." I think MrBeast DM'd you, and you were like, "Wait — is this real?" You ended up phoning him, and he was like, "Yeah, come to my place. I wanna meet interesting people."
The first year, you and Ben organized it. It was about 19 of us in an Airbnb, and we were like, "What are we gonna do?" So we played basketball.
The second year you organized it a little bit more and you had an itinerary. This year, you guys *killed it* — it was awesome. It was an amazing event. | |
Shaan Puri | I do like meeting interesting people when I go to conferences or events, but I just hate conferences or events. I get a pit in my stomach when I have to go, even though I know it's good for me and that I'll meet some cool people in the end. I just hate the format. I hate the structure.
So I thought, instead of just complaining about it, what's a structure I would like? I didn't know at first. What if it was just doing the thing I love—**playing basketball** with those people? We basically play ball all day and then we talk at night. That was the core idea: to use **basketball as the icebreaker**. | |
Sam Parr | and you broke your knee in the first two hours | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, yeah. So this was an event where you could tear up your knee and be done in the first hour. I still had a good time. That means it must have been a good event, because normally that's pretty brutal.
I did have a little *pity party* for myself, but I feel better now. | |
Sam Parr | are we allowed to say who was there | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I think we could say some of the people that were there yeah let's go for it | |
Sam Parr | So, **MrBeast** — you know, everyone knows him as the guy on YouTube with 100 million subscribers. I think he's a *paper billionaire*. I think that's public. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, he's **one of the youngest billionaires in the world**. I think he's 26 years old, and he's worth a few billion dollars ($1,000,000,000+).
He's **one of the most famous people in the world**, **one of the most recognized entertainers**, and when you hang out with him, he's also one of the most intense. | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | He's fun to be around. He just wants to play and goes all in.
Someone said this once about Elon: "He's playing — he's playing life as if the simulation theory is true." Elon has a simulation theory: "This might just be one of many simulations." So he therefore just goes all in because, okay, whatever — "let's make this the most entertaining version of that simulation."
I think that's how Jimmy plays life, too.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | So, we were with him. It was one of the founders of **Airbnb**, who—on paper, according to **Forbes**—is like the 100th or 90th richest person in the world.
It was another billionaire who was one of the first investors in **Tesla** and **SpaceX**. It was the founder of **Reddit**. It was **Jesse Itzler**, who's on the podcast. **You Me Al Doan**, who runs a quilting company that does nine figures a year. | |
Shaan Puri | tons of people anyway david | |
Sam Parr | Perel, Nick Huber — it was awesome.
Alright. A lot of people watch and listen to the 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 listeners have a full‑time job and want to start something on the side — a *side hustle*.
A lot of people message Sean and me and ask, "Alright, I want to start something on the side — is this a good idea?" What they're really saying is, "Just give me the ideas."
Well, my friends, you're in luck. My old company, *The Hustle*, put together 100 different side‑hustle ideas. They've 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 explains how to start them, how to grow them, and offers ideas for 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. Which one do you want to start first?
Yeah — let's do it. Alright. | |
Shaan Puri | I got one for you. Here's one of the lessons I picked up — this is about the business ideas these guys were thinking about.
So if you're out there and wondering, "Where's the opportunity? What should I be working on?" here's what I picked up from some of the most successful people in America:
> "Fish where the fish swim, not where the fishermen stand."
> — Confucius (aka me) | |
Sam Parr | did you just make that up | |
Shaan Puri | you you saw me write it these 5 minutes before we we were well I | |
Sam Parr | thought you had heard that did you hear that somewhere else | |
Shaan Puri | there's a scratch out on it right | |
Sam Parr | I I but did you get like chinese food last week and that was like a fortune cookie | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, I've had my share of *kung la jigga*. Alright — let me just tell you some of the ideas I heard from people who were at this event.
You mentioned **Jesse Itzler**, and I think one of the public things he's done is he got really into racing — like running endurance races. He just followed his curiosity. | |
Sam Parr | hundred mile races | |
Shaan Puri | He started doing **100-mile races**. While he was doing those races, he noticed that the runners attempting these amazing physical feats were drinking coconut water. Coconut water was a big—like a big part of that *niche, super-niche* community, and he became a believer.
He spent time hunting down what he thought would be the best coconut water company, ended up finding **Zico** coconut water, partnered with them, and Zico is now a big success. They ended up selling, I think, to **Coke**, and they're in **Whole Foods**—you know, it's one of the big coconut water brands. He found it when he was small and just exploring these uncharted territories.
Here are some other ones I heard. There was somebody there who was making "100 of $1,000,000" a year selling board games [unclear phrasing]. I've never even had that on my bingo card—I didn't even know that was an option. I did not even know that you could do that.
There was somebody there investing **$1,000,000** into women's sports. And not even just women's sports— they're trying to do things now where you can buy a piece of a college program. I didn't even know you could do that. *"That's for sale?"* What the—what is this? What is that for sale? Where is this listed? Is that...? | |
Sam Parr | [Unclear: "listed"] I went to a talk recently with this billionaire who owned, like, the *Timberwolves* — *Mark Glassery*, or something. He was talking about "the box," and he was talking about how he's trying to buy college [unclear: remainder of phrase]. "Do you buy the rights?" | |
Shaan Puri | "They're going to, like, the University of Alabama or wherever, and they're just like, 'Cool — we'll give you $500 million for the Alabama sports program, and we want to own 51%.'" | |
Sam Parr | but do is that what | |
Shaan Puri | they're trying to do | |
Sam Parr | do they buy the future earnings is that what it is | |
Shaan Puri | I think what's going to happen is—again, it's uncharted territory; you don't know exactly how this will play out. The short version is the college will spin out its athletics program as its own business entity. They'll sell equity in it and use that equity to finance all of their sports—women's lacrosse and other programs that aren't going to be big revenue generators. They'd use it to fund all their programs and maybe even some school needs. The costs would then be borne by the private equity owner, and the athletics operation becomes an asset that didn't exist before. These college programs can make a lot of money from media rights and related revenue, but they weren't even for sale before.
There was somebody who said, "Seven years ago I just got really obsessed with water." I thought, "Me too." But he clarified: "No, no, I got really obsessed. Do you know what kind of water you're drinking?" I was like, "No—like, is this bad with microplastics? What's going on?" He said he got obsessed and started studying where the cleanest, healthiest water comes from. He realized that water was going to become like oil—people would increasingly want not tap water, but bottled or canned water. That water would have to come from somewhere, and he wanted to find the best sources.
So he went to West Virginia and bought this aquifer [spring]—this giant water source. | |
Sam Parr | what | |
Shaan Puri | And he was like, "You see that drink you're drinking right there? It's, like, some brand — a popular brand." Then he said, **"That's our water; they use our water, so that's good water."** I was like, "What?" This was just a *side quest* he went on, and, again, it was curiosity-driven. | |
Sam Parr | was this one of the billionaires | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah—based. I mean, not a billionaire, but yeah, close enough.
There's a guy there, Al, who started a quilting company with his mom: **Missouri Star Quilt Company**. They sell fabrics for people who want to make quilts. His co‑founder is his mom. | |
Sam Parr | I have a planned vacation, too.
So he owns this— the company is called *Missouri Quilting Company*. He did a podcast three years ago with us where he explained that he bought a town. Hamilton— is it Hamilton, Missouri? He bought a town of about 1,800 people, where they own every building, and they're building the "Disneyland for quilting." | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, just the thought of that. First, to go into *quilting*—smart guy. Like, you know, he could've done any business, but he goes into quilting. | |
Sam Parr | it's like what are you doing man you're throwing it all the way on quilting | |
Shaan Puri | He does a business with his mom, right? Again—independent thinking, not just following the herd.
So he starts the business. His mom runs the YouTube channel; he handles the business side. The business keeps growing, and then it's like, "You know what? We could create the *Disneyland for quilting*." He literally goes and buys a town. Again—who's selling that? Can you do that? How do you do that? And that just kept happening: people were playing games that didn't even seem popular.
Another lesson there is that a person had sold a piece of their company to *Churnin*. Churnin is now kind of known. I first heard about it maybe ten years ago, and Churnin is this really interesting... | |
Sam Parr | They're most famous for **TCG** — you know, *Peter Chernin* was the CEO of Fox. He's like a "big swinging dick"; he's been a baller for years. But they're most famous, among normal people, because they bought **Barstool** [Barstool Sports] when it was nothing and helped make it something. | |
Shaan Puri | Correct. They just had this, again, independent thinking where they were like, "Hey, I think these things that other people see as small—kind of toys, things that aren't going to make a lot of money, you know: media, brands, blogs, YouTube channels—I think these things are going to be big."
They had this thesis, which was *content to commerce*. It's like, "I think if you're kicking ass at content, you're going to be able to, instead of just making your money through ad revenue and sponsorships, sell stuff to those people."
They followed that *content to commerce* thesis and went out and bought brands. They bought Barstool—content ends up being this juggernaut with commerce. They bought Exploding Kittens, Meateater, and Surfline—all these niche content brands.
We had a guy on the pod, "The Plant Daddy." [podcast] | |
Sam Parr | I met with them a couple times. There were early discussions — you know, three meetings that I had with *The Hustle*. I was like, "What the fuck do you guys know? Didn't get that one right." Turns out they know a lot. They know a lot. | |
Shaan Puri | did he just like | |
Sam Parr | slide a | |
Shaan Puri | p and l across the table and he's like I'll leave you 3 minutes of look at this | |
Sam Parr | They told me this story, and I was like, "You're full of shit. You don't know what you're talking about." Like, "Do you? You're talking about my company, right?"
It's like... they were right. I think the premise was correct, but I... I didn't have that confidence that we're talking about now. | |
Shaan Puri | And, dude, they made a fortune because the market overlooked these brands. These brands were not valued like high-flying tech companies, but they became, you know, multi-$100 million to $1 billion brands. *I really admire what TCG did because* | |
Sam Parr | yeah they're the best | |
Shaan Puri | there's so many investors that all love to sound like they're smart and contrarian and they're all just what's your thesis ai the you know ai is gonna be the future of everything right it's like okay you're not wrong in that but like there's something really impressive about somebody who looked at just like this magazine or this blog or this | |
Sam Parr | They did it with Doug DeMuro, who was on our podcast. We've had a bunch — we've actually probably had three or four people who sold their company on the podcast to those. | |
Shaan Puri | Guys — right, right. And they've been right. They've been right in a very, very big way, so I'm very impressed by them.
To me, that's the principle: **fish where the fish swim**. Fish where the real opportunity is, not where the fishermen are standing — not where all the entrepreneurs are huddled up.
This... *sports cookie* says, "Man does not sell chocolate — he must become chocolate." [*possible transcription: "sports quote"*]
Okay, so what does this mean? Three years ago, when we did the first version of this event, Jimmy — aka **MrBeast** — had launched his chocolate brand, **Feastables**. It was like, "Okay, selling chocolate to little kids." I had the opportunity to invest, I think at a **$40 million** valuation (the Series A), and I passed. | |
Sam Parr | in in like the beast empire or chocolate | |
Shaan Puri | in feastables itself so just kinda thought about it I was like I don't really get I didn't really know much about the chocolate industry I thought his involvement was gonna be like this normal influencer brand is I'm doing my thing I create my content oh my manager hands me this hey buy this smile ding yeah put it down move on with life so I thought he's just gonna influence it I thought he's just gonna hold it up and buy it I didn't what I didn't realize is that this guy was gonna go so deep into the world of chocolate and end up knowing everything about chocolate end up running this company like an absolute maniac founder if I had known that if I had known he was gonna bring his his full intensity at this I probably would have thought about it differently I thought he was just gonna hold up the chocolate bar and see how many people clicked the link I was dead wrong so I wanna tell a a quick story you were there for for one of the walmart runs right | |
Sam Parr | no but I have a bunch of walmart stories | |
Shaan Puri | so we're sitting there we're about to record he walks in he's like hey before we do this do you guys wanna go to walmart which I realized like at the time sounded like sort of a strange request nobody's ever asked me on a on a mandate to walmart we walk in and he takes us to the chocolate aisle and basically gives a like 10 minute master class on the chocolate industry right there in the aisle and while he's doing it he's not just like explaining like well this is how it works this is how we do this is our revenues this is whatever he's also simultaneously restocking the entire aisle like he pulled the cartons up to the front because they were like 3 inches recessed they were pushed back too far some of the bars had fallen over they were crooked he straightens every single one of them out he puts the right flavors in the right spots if a bar was crinkly or broken he's like he'd throw it to his chief of staff and be like hey can you buy this I wanna have like we should only have good bars no broken bars up front and he would basically restock the thing but his hands were moving at a speed which showed you this is not the first time this guy's done this so he restocks it one of the popular flavors was out and so he takes out his phone and he's like oh I have a badge and so he just badges into the back of walmart and goes and gets the box himself and restocks it and I was like does any vendor get to do that he's like no not exactly but they know like I like I just do this I care I really care and it kind of 2 things stood out to me the first was obvious which was when high intensity obsessive people wanna win they do the same things that the rest of us do with the knob dialed up to 12 like they just they just take the knob and they just crank it past even where you think it could go and and for example he was like I think you were there he was telling the story about like missing a flight or something like this | |
Sam Parr | He told a story about how, apparently, he flew to DC and had a connecting flight to North Carolina — wherever he lived. He said, "You know what? *Screw it.* I'm driving from DC to Greenville, North Carolina."
It's normally a three-hour drive, but he noticed that there are fourteen Walmarts along that route. He said, "I'm gonna stop at every single one of them to learn." That turns a three-hour drive into, like, a twenty-hour drive.
At one point he told me, "I have scanned..." I guess he's got some app where you scan things in Walmart and it teaches you about each SKU. He said he scanned every single product in Walmart.
I don't know if he was exaggerating — if someone heard "oh no, I've scanned all of them" you'd be like, "oh, so it's like saying it's one thousand degrees outside; you're just exaggerating." But with him I was like, "I bet you literally have scanned every single one of them." | |
Shaan Puri | In the podcast we did, he said, "Yeah, we want to do a thing where you buy every item in Walmart for somebody in a video." He added, "But it's **$16,200,000**" — he knew the actual cost of the total inventory if he bought one of everything in Walmart. I forgot what the number was.
I don't want to make this just a Jimmy love fest, because there was another guy who was a top seller in Target. | |
Sam Parr | yeah man I heard him nerding out it was wild | |
Shaan Puri | He took us to the shelf and said, "This shelf right here..." He was going to give us a tour of Target and show us how the store works. He said, "This shelf right here is the most profitable shelf in Target. It has the highest profit per square inch," which is how Target measures success. He was giving us a Target master class.
We asked, "Are you also in Walmart?" He said, "Yeah, we're in Walmart, but we're not doing so well."
I asked him, "What's exciting for you coming up?" This guy runs a $1,000,000,000+ company. I assumed he was going to say, "I've got some board meetings to line up" or, "I'm taking the family to Aspen." Instead he said, "Actually, I'm working the next three weeks as a Walmart associate." I was like, "What?" He went on, "Our sales in Walmart are not the same as in Target, and I have been trying to figure out why."
What I found remarkable is that you expect the people who are the busiest, the most accomplished, the highest net worth, to be above these tasks. Jimmy restocking the SKUs himself. This other guy going to be a Walmart associate for three weeks. They don't have to do any of this, but they do it anyway. They're not just doing it now that they're successful — that's how they got here.
**The first really big takeaway from this whole thing was the intensity with which certain people play the game of business, and how that leads to success.** | |
Sam Parr | That guy who you're referring to was the quietest person there.
When I was hanging out with him, he said, "Can I get you guys' opinion? You know, I'm thinking—I'm thinking about potentially making some type of business move which would value us at this valuation." We were like, "What valuation?" and it was in the billions. We were like, "Do you know who we are? Why are you asking us this question? What are you talking about, man? I don't know who you asked this question to."
But he was the most humble person there, and he was crazy successful. It was pretty wild—that guy who you're talking about.
Alright, I have one: **confidence beats IQ**. So, you know, there are a lot of really successful people out there. When I read Warren Buffett's biography, he does the opposite, where he is like, "Oh, you know, I'm just this guy," and it's like, "Dude, you're a bonafide..." | |
Shaan Puri | aw shucks downplaying them | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, it's like you're a *baby genius*. He was, like, when he was four he was making $10 a month selling Pepsi.
But in general, the group of people we had there—there were some people, for sure, who are geniuses. I think **Jimmy**'s one of them, actually. When you talk to him, you know he's brilliant. **Mario** from **Oscar** was one of them too. Mario co‑founded a company called Oscar, which is a health insurance company—one of the hardest things ever to do. It's publicly traded and worth about $4 billion, so he's like the man.
He doesn't even speak English as his first language—it's his second language. He's from Germany, so imagine. | |
Shaan Puri | he's just genius | |
Sam Parr | *Dude,* imagine going to Germany and **revolutionizing** the German health care bar. You know what I mean? It's pretty wild. | |
Shaan Puri | extra degree of difficulty from just go to someone else's motherland and fix their shit | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, which is wild. But you know, he was a genius. In general, the wealthiest people there, I noticed, were not even close to the smartest.
Here's an example: one of the billionaire guys was there. He goes, "Man, **AI** is just gonna change the world, you guys. I don't think you guys get it. I use it every day." I was like, "How do you use it?" He goes, "I could show you right now," and he pulls out his phone and talks to **ChatGPT**. He says, "Hey ChatGPT, you know, I have a question," and he starts reading a question to it. Then he's like, "Now watch how amazing it is," and it repeats the answer.
I'm like, "Oh, so you're saying that you just use ChatGPT all the time?" He says, "Yeah." I was like, "Well, have you trained it?" He goes, "Train?" — like he didn't know that you could do these things.
This particular guy ran a company doing $1 billion a year in revenue. I guess what I mean is the percentage of intelligence greater than me or you or someone else there versus impact or net worth was not proportional — it wasn't totally aligned. | |
Shaan Puri | Totally, totally, totally agree with that, which is that when you sit in a room like this, two things happen.
First, you just get to sample — like it's Costco and it's noon at Costco — and you're just getting to sample different lifestyles. "Oh, what do you do? Oh wow, you seem kinda stressed out. Gotcha, not interested in going down that aisle. Yeah, but you seem like you're having a lot of fun. What do you do? How do you think about this? You got kids too, how are you doing both?" You get to sample people's lifestyles when you hang out with them like this for, you know, 48 hours straight.
On top of that, you also get the measuring-stick thing, which kinda sucks, because you're measuring yourself against some of the most creative, successful, ambitious people in the world. A big part of it is you're trying to figure out the diff, right? It's like those little children's games — these two pictures: what's the difference between these two pictures? On one side is me and on the other side is them, and I'm always looking at what's the difference.
Sometimes it's like a Mario or whatever — it's like, "Oh cool, his brain has an extra library in it. There's an extra wing that somebody donated to that brain." Alright, cool. I can live with that. I can sleep easy. But there were other people where it just seemed like they didn't limit themselves. | |
Sam Parr | that's what I mean | |
Shaan Puri | And they just kind of went for it, or their courage was simply a bit higher in supply than mine.
You're right: when you look at the difference, very rarely was the difference, "these people are smarter than me," or "they had some advantages I didn't have growing up." In fact, it was usually the opposite. It was like, "Damn — they had this huge chip on their shoulder because their dad wasn't around," and because of this happening, they were dyslexic. There's a bunch of people over there that were dyslexic. | |
Sam Parr | dude I wish I was dyslexic yeah | |
Shaan Puri | I know I always got was the goal it's just dyslexic | |
Sam Parr | dude every dyslexic guy there somehow was a good freestyle rapper | |
Shaan Puri | do you know | |
Sam Parr | what I'm saying | |
Shaan Puri | like not only rich but also cool in a group of of men held around together right | |
Sam Parr | "Yeah. I wish I was charismatic—like a dyslexic guy. That's crazy. It's like, if you're blind, you're a good piano player, and if you're dyslexic, you're the *most charismatic guy on Earth*." | |
Shaan Puri | yeah exactly I have a related? Which is I just wrote these two words I don't know if you can read this | |
Sam Parr | I am | |
Shaan Puri | My trainer has a clothing brand he created called **Superconscious Go**. One of the shirts he gave me is my favorite. On the side it just says **"I am."** Underneath it reads:
> "The two most important words in the English language — for whatever comes after them will define your life."
If you think you are destined for greatness, if you think you belong at that table, you will make different decisions along the way. It becomes sort of self-fulfilling. You’ll work at a different speed, take different risks, and go for it in a different way.
In several conversations I had at this event, I realized — damn — a lot of the downstream decisions start with the little voice in your head: the little director of your movie who's deciding, "What kind of movie is this?" Is this an indie? A tragedy? A comedy? Are you a joke, or are you the hero — is this a Marvel movie and you’re the hero saving the world?
I’m not saying one is better than the other, but you get to decide what that little voice in your head is going to tell you, because the director determines what happens in the story: where you stand, what you say — all of those things. A lot of what I’m seeing in how people live their lives and what they do differently comes from that little voice having a different script in mind for what their life is all about — the **"I am"** statement. | |
Sam Parr | Or, here's a small example: how about Jesse Itzler bringing his sauna?
He had two guys. I asked, "What do you guys do?" He said, "Oh, we bring these saunas. Whenever he wants to go [somewhere], he keeps the sauna hot." Then: "Whenever we go to a conference or something, this sauna's a really cool way to create a bonding experience."
Which it was, by the way — just chillin' in the sauna; it was frickin' awesome.
I said, "Wait, Jesse, you got these two guys whose job is to travel around with this sauna across the country to bring it to events? That's the coolest thing I've ever heard of." He replied, "Yeah, isn't it great? We get to hang in this sauna." I said, "Yes."
And that's another example of *intensity*, but on a more relatable scale. | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | alright I have one you could take your billions and shove it up your ass | |
Shaan Puri | is that seneca | |
Sam Parr | Put—yeah, put that on one of those *inspirational posters* that you see in your office.
There is this one guy who was one of the first investors in a variety of Elon companies, and presumably... | |
Shaan Puri | a a | |
Sam Parr | A billionaire, like, you know, investing in Tesla at a $60 [unclear figure—possibly $100,000,000] valuation. I don't know what that is; that's like 100,000 times, so something like that. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah we don't do public math | |
Sam Parr | yeah like a lot | |
Shaan Puri | it's now a $1,000,000,000,000 company | |
Sam Parr | That works. Yeah—it's a big deal.
There was this funny story where a guy was telling a story about working really hard and grinding. His kid was sick, and he said, "I had to take a week off to go and help my kid." That was a big deal because he had been working so hard.
Then this other guy came and said, "Do you know how you guys are all talking about working 16 hours a day on your companies right now? I'm doing that as well, but my company is my family and I have retired from business. I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family."
When he said that I was like—this is awesome. I imagine he was exaggerating a little bit because he probably still does some deal-making or something. I don't know him well enough to know. But I thought it was so cool when he said that, and I thought, *you have it figured out.*
Same with Jesse Itzler. These two guys—I'm not going to say the first guy's name, but Jesse also had the same energy—where I was like, "This is the way." This is all personal preference. Jimmy wanted to be Elon—cool, go do that. But when I heard this other way of talking, I was drawn to it.
After a certain point—after some number, whether it's $10, $20, $30 million, I don't know what that number is—none of it really matters. A lot of it doesn't really matter. Just having a good time with your family is something I really admired. I thought it was really cool that that guy said that.
It made me realize I was getting sucked into this vortex of *money, money, money* and *achievement, achievement*. When I saw these guys talk and felt their energy, I was more drawn to that than anyone else there.
Do you agree? | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah — 100%. I think when I go to events like this, my instinct is to figure out: "How do you win? How do you win? How do you win? What tactics, what techniques, what strategies, what approaches work?"
Instead, the better question almost every single time is **"What game are you even playing?"**
**Picking the right game matters way more than figuring out how to win the wrong game.** | |
Sam Parr | "Dude, there were people there who were like *mini Genghis Khans*. They want to dominate — they get joy out of war and domination." | |
Shaan Puri | They want to build cities. They want to dominate industries. They want to do that. That's one game you could play.
And, by the way, **no judgment** — great. Do whatever game you want to play. I just want to know what the games are so I can pick.
Other people were like, "I want to be CEO of my family full-time," and I'm like, "I've done a four-hour stretch with my kids." I think I'm more *45 minutes a day* — 45 minutes at a time, four times a day. That's my ideal.
So, okay, I'm not going to be CEO of my family because I would actually be miserable if I was a full-time, stay-at-home dad personally. But, okay, that's a game I could play.
Then I talked to Jesse and I was... | |
Sam Parr | like jesse what do you do like what | |
Shaan Puri | "What do you do every day now?" I'm training for races, I'm coaching my kids' sports, and I do public speaking because I feel like it keeps me sharp. I get excited to get up on stage and say some shit that lights people up.
He's like, "I'm selling calendars." He's like, "It's not gonna... I'm not making a fortune like these guys, you know. They'll do that in a day or two a week, or we'll do in a year." But I don't know — I like doing it. I'm doing what I want to be doing, and he was very at ease with that. He's at peace with that.
I think obviously some of that comes from maturity, but a lot of it comes from this: it's easy to be at peace when you're actually doing the thing that puts you at peace, when you're doing the thing you like. If you're kind of masquerading around trying to just do what you think you should be doing, I think that becomes very exhausting.
I'm with you that *figuring out what game to play* seems like the much, much more important question at every phase of your life. The game I wanted to play in my twenties is different than the one I'm playing currently in my thirties. That's probably going to be different than what I play in my forties and fifties, and I just have to kind of reinvent myself. | |
Sam Parr | Dude, there was one guy there who said he worked with Elon. Apparently he had to do a meeting or something with Elon, and the secretary told him:
> "Alright, you're gonna do this meeting, but I need you to know that Elon makes his companies make **$20,000,000 every hour**, so this better be **$20,000,000**." | |
Shaan Puri | I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with him [Elon Musk]. He said, "Elon would have a meeting, but there would be like 40 or 50 people in the room."
The reason wasn't that it made for a more effective meeting. It was because if the right person—the person we needed to talk to—wasn't in the room, it would be such a *colossal* waste of his time that they'd just fly everybody in. They'd schedule a 45-minute block so everyone would be there. That way, everyone's time collectively was not worth as much as *his* hour, which is such an upsetting topic. | |
Sam Parr | Like, it's hard to—it's hard to fathom this. Let me tell you a really quick one, which is: *hard work among this group is not universal.*
There was one guy — [you weren't there; Sean?] — who busted his knee in the second hour or something and had to stay at home for the whole session. There was this guy there who was explaining how hard he grinds. Then there was this other guy, one of the more successful guys, who said, "I work like 20 hours a week."
He explained, "Once my company's got to be like some type of predictable, stable—like, alright, if we just keep doing this for 10 years we're gonna grow 50% a year, hopefully; it's gonna... whatever." He said, "I started working 20 hours a week," and added, "I wouldn't work Fridays."
It was really interesting to see that not everyone worked hard. Did you get that sense from people? | |
Shaan Puri | the thing I pulled from it was some people were basically operating like monopolies and other people were not meaning there were some people playing a game where the competition is so vicious like you know like an easy easy example is youtube if you stop uploading the the game stop the music stops | |
Sam Parr | There's literally **one million** other businesses in that exact same space, doing the exact same exact thing—whoever, exactly. | |
Shaan Puri | "And every idea you put out there in a video, somebody else is going to copy it. A lot of people copy the exact videos and the exact script. It's all public information—it's super competitive. There's no gatekeeping.
Then there are other people who were like, 'All we had to do was get to this shelf space.' There was one guy showing us a shelf at Target, and he said basically seven years of the company was just hard work dedicated to getting on the shelf. But once you're on the shelf, it's almost impossible for anybody else to get on. All we have to do now is stay on the shelf.
By the way, this shelf right here—the little rack you're looking at—generates **$300,000,000** a year. You're just looking at it and thinking, 'Oh damn, wow.' One shelf in Walmart, one shelf in Target, is like the entire revenue stream of these online-only companies. But you're extremely defensible compared to other businesses, where the moment you take a break, you have the entire internet competing with you on that same thing. You know what I mean?" | |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah that that was an an interesting thing do you have | |
Shaan Puri | "I have a quick one: **Health is wealth.** In a roomful of very wealthy people—how many fancy clothes did you see? How many fancy watches did you see? How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about?" | |
Sam Parr | Everyone but **Joe Gebbia** looked *schleppy*. **Joe Gebbia** looked great—even in workout gear. He was wearing some nice shit. | |
Shaan Puri | dude he looks like he should be in like a taylor sheridan show like if he if he made an if he made an appearance on lanman I wouldn't even I wouldn't even blink | |
Sam Parr | Everyone besides him. Dude, do you know he's on the board of **Tesla**? I didn't know that either. He does a lot of interesting stuff.
Everyone besides him looked like — we're like, we're like at a slumber party. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah well we we were also | |
Sam Parr | yeah but during the day | |
Shaan Puri | yeah that should be the title of this slumber party with billionaires so the but the health is wealth thing was very real there was a lot of flexing on stuff you're doing for your health what you're eating and not eating how much who's your doctor who's your what's your protocol they did | |
Sam Parr | no one was like that jacked or ripped or anything were were they other than joe | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I thought people were in pretty good shape. If you go to other industries — not the tech/internet *bubble* — and attend a conference with the wealthiest people in finance, oil, or whatever (pick any industry), their body shapes look a lot different. No — everyone looks way different. | |
Sam Parr | they look like a healthy 55 year old | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, basically our day was: go play basketball for three hours—an *intense* basketball game. Come home, go into a 250-degree sauna. Then, when you're tired of the sauna, go into this pond that was *freezing cold* in North Carolina and plunge for three minutes.
Then go back into the sauna, then back into the plunge. There's a masseuse doing body work and myofascial release for you. Then you're eating—*everybody's eating clean*. Every single person's eating clean while we're there. That was the norm.
I got that is not normal, you know. "If you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle, it's like basically doing heroin at this event." | |
Sam Parr | Dude, Nick Hubert and I got Taco Bell at midnight. We... we were being secretive. Yeah, like, we *didn't want to tell anyone.* | |
Shaan Puri | Secretly, dude... I took a *Feastables* bar. I hid it in my hoodie, crept over to my bedroom, and ate it in shame over there. Because what am I going to do — sit here and eat a chocolate bar in front of these men?
Dude, Hayes is 52 years old and ripped.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | He's great. This guy is on the Forbes "Self-Made Billionaires" list, and he's also just *ripped* for fun as a side quest. | |
Sam Parr | dude yeah yeah I mean he looked great and then | |
Shaan Puri | **Jesse's 56** and runs 100-mile races. How many 50-year-olds are ripped and run 100-mile races? **Nobody does that shit**, especially successful guys. | |
Sam Parr | Jimmy wanted to do a taste test. He had everyone gather around to compare Hershey's versus his stuff.
I pretended, "Oh wow, Jimmy, your stuff is great — I've never had this before." But at every Airbnb kitchen—did you see this?—there were literally 100 candy bars. I ate about 2,000 calories per night of his candy. I ate so much of it that I could tell you about all of it.
I didn't need a taste test; I was already an expert. I could tell you about all the flavors: the peanut-butter ones, the dark-chocolate ones. | |
Shaan Puri | the peanut butter ones you don't have to lick the wrapper for the taste test it's like no no no this is just how I'm thorough | |
Sam Parr | "Like, I'm already—Jimmy, I already know. I've eaten all of them. I had M&M's and Hershey bars on the plate on the way here... I could tell you about that." | |
Shaan Puri | The whole thing is, when he's hanging out with the upper echelon of the group, he's just like, **"Just try a piece of this one—you don't have to eat the whole thing."** But, you know, it's more for younger people... but whatever. | |
Sam Parr | that's what he's doing he goes it's for kids | |
Shaan Puri | "It's for kids, and he's like, 'He'll give you the *dark chocolate* flavor.' Yeah... I'm from there with *cookies and cream* all over my face — the cookies and cream one." | |
Sam Parr | it's like my daughter just learned this | |
Shaan Puri | is my favorite jimmy you have more of this one | |
Sam Parr | yeah my daughter just learned how to say more but I feel like this more more | |
Shaan Puri | more more more this one | |
Sam Parr | I was doing this all the time more more more | |
Shaan Puri | can I give you some of the negative ones | |
Sam Parr | how about the guy who goes at that? I was broke I think I only had like $20,000,000 | |
Shaan Puri | yeah it's telling some story well there was a hilarious conversation about prenups which is you know nothing more can be said except for there was an incredible conversation about prenups | |
Sam Parr | I was about to go outside. Someone and I were going to leave the sauna when someone said, "Hey, can I ask you guys about prenup dep?" | |
Shaan Puri | and we were | |
Sam Parr | like let's just sit right here I just wanna listen let's just listen | |
Shaan Puri | It was one of the most—like, the next three hours were some of the most entertaining few hours of my life. I don't think I've laughed that hard in five, ten years. I was literally *belly-laughing* and crying; it was shocking. | |
Sam Parr | **Setups:** People—billionaires are not like you and me. If you're listening to this, billionaires exist, and they are not like you. They are not like you.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Shaan Puri | I would say is the midwitt meme was in full effect I'll give you one example so the way we played our basketball tournament was 3 teams and we played and then it was supposed to be the you know the top two teams play for the finals but every but all the teams finished the same record 1 like we all had one win one loss after everybody played each other so I was like okay well which two teams advanced to the finals and so I but everybody's getting tired so I had to make something up so I was like alright we're gonna do a like a penalty kick shootout so what's the most exciting you know like thing in sports is it hockey or soccer where they do the shootout and it's not gonna take up a bunch of energy because like we're old guys and people are getting hurt we gotta like we can't play an extra game to figure out who's gonna go so we said alright everybody step up to pick every each team pick 5 guys they're gonna shoot a free throw and then the team that makes the least like pressure's on everybody's watching you so it was interesting 1 team my team was like this is a dictatorship like y'all are the 5 best to the other guys they're they're better than you these 5 are shooting | |
Sam Parr | who was the dictator | |
Shaan Puri | well I I was a dictator I didn't even think there was another way I was like of course we're just gonna pick our 5 best and do this like honestly I didn't even consider another method and I was the coach of my team because I had gotten injured I'm on crutches so I was like doing that the second guy the second team did merit based and the the third was like kind of like a volunteer voting system or whatever and in the merit based thing a funny thing that happened was one of the guys who's probably less good at basketball overall made it in the practice shot and one of the guys who was one of their better players on the team just happened to miss so I was like damn are y'all really gonna not have one of your best players shoot and have this other guy shoot I I was just watching I'm like I just wanna see what happens here I wanna see what happened with the egos I just need to know I need to see this the guy was like you sure you wanna do it | |
Sam Parr | he's like no no you should do it | |
Shaan Puri | "You made it. If you want, I'll do it."
Then the guy's like, "No. I mean, I don't know. I think I'm gonna do it." He's like, "Okay, go ahead and do it."
So the guy steps up, he shoots, and he makes it. The guy — who’s probably one of the weaker basketball players — *clutched it up* and has this awesome moment. His team advances to the finals.
I feel so happy for this guy. I'm like, "That was amazing." I'm glad that they kind of honored it. | |
Sam Parr | rudy moment | |
Shaan Puri | he had his moody moment he honored it he made it good for him that was awesome under pressure I love I wanted everybody to have like gold moments during the during the event but then after the final and this their team goes on wins the finals happy they're holding the trophy it's all good afterwards we're all like packing up to leave and he's like he goes up to that guy the other guy who sat out he's like hey I want can you and me go shoot free throws I wanna know if that was the correct like ev decision statistically and the guy's like no man you already made it like you already made it we already won like you're good dude you did it he's like no no no I need to know I need to know and he's like no like it's like honestly it's done I'm glad you did it you made it he's like I need to know and he's like alright so they go and they shoot and of course the guy who's played basketball his whole life makes more of the free throws in like the with the larger sample size and then the other guy was like kinda head down for like he's kinda bummed out about it for a second and I was like what a what an intelligently stupid thing to do right like he wanted to know like was this a positive ev decision was this statistically the correct move | |
Sam Parr | dude what does ev mean | |
Shaan Puri | **Expected value.** It's like if you're playing poker: you can bet your chips, and even if you lose, you're still happy because you made the right decision. Even if the result didn't pass, you're so funny—there's chances. And so, anyway, I was like, *"way to snatch—like, way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."*
There were so many of these little moments where there's this guy who's a total catch: he's smart, good-looking, ripped, successful—all these things. I just thought that a guy like this could walk into a coffee shop and the cute barista would want him to talk to her. I've always wanted to be that guy, you know? This guy could have been that guy. He could have been—it could be so easy for him to just meet someone amazing, and instead you wanna describe | |
Sam Parr | "Like, so—alright. I think what he did... what did he scrape? He built a program that scraped **LinkedIn**." | |
Shaan Puri | starts with the desired result he's like I want a beautiful intelligent successful woman or something like that I was there for the whole thing | |
Sam Parr | someone who fit his like heritage | |
Shaan Puri | and so he was like cool so he built a ai bot to crawl linkedin to then scrape all the like successful beautiful women like trained on images of women that he thought were beautiful | |
Sam Parr | Like every woman who was of a certain look in New York, who was, you know, between 22 and 30—or whatever—he had, like, a date of—he had "binders of women." | |
Shaan Puri | yeah he had binders of women it was hilarious and then he had this like whole system for how we could reach out to them with like it was amazing I don't I don't wanna go into all the details but like | |
Sam Parr | She had a dedicated iPhone.
He said, "This is my iPhone," and then, "I have two full-time engineers who have built this program that auto‑DMs them this particular DM on Instagram. Let me send her a voice note."
I asked, "You send her voice notes?"
He replied, "I have found that **voice notes convert better,"** and he showed me the voice note. | |
Shaan Puri | As he told this whole system, it's like, what's that thing called—the *Rorschach test*? Where you see the blot and you either see, like, a killer or an angel or whatever.
It was like some people were like, "This is the most impressive thing I've ever seen." Then some people—like the married guys in their forties to fifties—were like, "Brother, you're… you're doing too much here. You gotta just see a cute girl and go talk to her. It's okay. Let it roll organically, baby. It's gonna work better that way."
I just thought it was hilarious. I'm really late; I gotta go. I'm supposed to be speaking at something right now. I gotta jet—I just realized I'm way over. | |
Sam Parr | that's it that's | |
Shaan Puri | the pod |