Two Millionaires on the Worst Mistakes They Made Early

Shaan Puri

Alright it's a new year but it's the same old us and we wanted to do something for you guys so we wanted to do a mailbag of fan questions so people have written in questions we are gonna answer them you ready to jump in sam

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

alright here we go question number one what is the biggest mistake you've made in your business that you have not spoken about publicly yet and how has it shaped your decision making

Sam Parr

man I've got a great one for this tell me if your experience has been with this so I tend to hire ambitious young people and I take chances on them and I hate to say it but the majority of the time that is a horrible plan and it's significantly better to hire more experienced people and pay them a lot more money and I get way better results

Shaan Puri

so when was this mistake is this like I've been making this mistake forever or this is not man

Sam Parr

look this is like my mistake it's like the american dream you know like give me your your your broken your weak and your and your like ambitious

Shaan Puri

I can fix him

Sam Parr

yes and like I always wanna do that because I'm so you know I'm into the romantic idea of that and just I recently you know at our at hampton we've hired like significantly more experienced people and they cost like 2 or three times more than a young and upcoming person but the results are like five or 10 times better right and and and I just make this I always my I get so emotional and I always find the people say hire high agency people or hire these people whose growth rate is really high but in general it's just kinda better to say hey you already did this at this other company do do it here please

Shaan Puri

so we were just going through a hiring process I wanted to hire somebody on my content team and we found this kid who was great he sent him this like wonderful video like he made this video application that was super funny and it was well done and I was like yes this is my kind of guy young green yeah he used to do this you know he just graduated but like this video is amazing I gotta talk to this guy talk to him I like him good dude and right before we hired him you know we asked a very simple question which is like so we want this to go well right we want this to be great and we want this to work and so like does it make sense to just go with somebody who has never done anything even remotely like this or are there people in the world who have done very similar things that we could go talk to first and should we not like lean in that direction and as soon as we had that like very simple sanity check because I'm like you I fall in love with the the sort of angel investing in people idea it's like the like the raw up and comer never done anything found this diamond in the rough why do I like that it's not for generous reasons it's because it's like I feel cool that I found that thing yeah right it's like finding a needle in a haystack the diamond in the rough but that's in it it is like I have a such a low hit rate with that right by definition you're gonna have a low hit rate with that strategy and if it matters and if there are people who have done it before that are way more proven in this category like why are you not going in that direction so I've definitely had that that same mistake sometimes

Sam Parr

it can work

Shaan Puri

and when it does work it's the best story

Sam Parr

it's the best but like check this out this strategy that I've been doing has been working well so I love hiring consultants and agencies but I'll say I'm only gonna hire you for two months and I'm gonna you're gonna do the work for the first thirty days but then the second thirty days it's just you teaching me what to do and so I have found experience of like getting like a young ambitious high agency green person and teaming him up with an agency and I have had some results with that but in general just hiring more experienced people and paying them more money it's just typically the way to go and that sounds so duh but I've that's the biggest mistake that I've made

Shaan Puri

well most businesses just figuring out what are your own leaks in your bucket and then of course to other people who don't have that leak they're like what I mean it's obvious right but you have to know what are my biases and and in your case your biases are like I like to be cheap as hell when I build my companies this was like how you were before with the hustle at least it's like

Sam Parr

of course

Shaan Puri

get the cheap office put the you know get the free desk off craigslist you know our dog will be security and you know like you're like I'm gonna build this the frugal way and then secondly what if I found a guy like me just a lovable fuck up who could be fixed and it's like yeah you know so those are biases that would lead you too far in that direction it's not to say you never hire a junior person but too often defaulting to that and so you gotta know your bone biases

Sam Parr

what about yours do you have one

Shaan Puri

I wrote project selection so my theory my theory is this if you are hardworking and you are sufficiently talented then the only variable that matters is project what project you pick to work on right because if you're gonna work really hard on it and you're talented then either you're gonna be a 10 out of 10 person working on a two on it two out of 10 opportunity or a 10 out of 10 person working on a 10 out of 10 opportunity and I think I have picked some real dog shit projects in the past so I tried to start a sushi restaurant chain which like restaurants are one of the worst businesses sushi would be one of the worst types of restaurants to do and by the way that makes no sense for me as a person to do the second one I tried to make the next hit social media app I tried to make the next twitter the next you know facebook the next snapchat and I spent six years going after that as a project to select and god that is hard to do

Sam Parr

you tried to make us hit social media app which frankly you don't really use social media you use twitter but like seldomly to to be honest even though you're good at it and two you eventually made a streaming video game like or that's who your market was neither of us know or play video games or like streaming

Shaan Puri

or had ever streamed a video game in my life yeah dude I made a I made a craft beer app for craft beer enthusiasts dude I can't spell beer like you know I I like beer is gross it makes me burp I don't know like I don't like it so I just picked all these terrible projects that were bad founder fit just weak mark market opportunities in general right so this is like very very poor projects so I started my ecommerce brand is a clothing brand

Sam Parr

you've seen me dress clothes you love clothes

Shaan Puri

you've seen me dress yeah you know what I'm doing and that one worked but it's such a grind because ecom and fashion and apparel and inventory it's like dude one of the like worst projects you could select so I think I've been together just those projects I just mentioned and by the way those are just the the ones I remember just off the top of my head there's some other doozies in there those are ten years of my professional life I've only had seventeen so the the majority of my professional life has been spent on really poor project selections and and everybody who's talented knows opportunity cost is the biggest cost so every year I was working on one of those it was a year I wasn't working on something that was a better fit for me

Sam Parr

the good news is sean that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and you've taken enough swing

Shaan Puri

that it's worked out I've talked before about the way that I know how to make money about how to build a money making skill about how to leverage your time and energy and the team at hubspot actually went through the video where I explained all that and turned it into a free downloadable cheat sheet on my four rules of how to make money now this is not you know get rich quick advice it's just core principles foundational principles about building wealth things that I wish I knew when I was you know just getting started and so if you wanna download it it's in the description below it's totally free you can go get it thanks to the folks at hubspot for doing the research making this document and making it available to all you guys alright back to this episode so this is from dan from la

Sam Parr

I've been a fan ever since the pod was promoted in the hustle I think that was four or five years ago I'm dying for another sars list episode my wife currently works at waymo but time to jump to the next five to ten xer I'm tired of waiting throw a brother a bone give me one company that you think would be perfect for the sarah's list now let's let's tell the listener here's what sarah's list is so my wife sarah was looking for a new job and we came up with this idea where let's see if you can join a company that has something like a thousand employees so you can make a great living in terms of like work life balance because there's some stability presumably and you can make a pretty decent salary but even still there's enough growth left where your stock can 10 x and and hopefully make you worth millions in her case it worked she did that with airbnb she joined airbnb when they were I mean it was a huge company it was like a $18,000,000,000 company with I forget 4,000 people and it grew to be a I think a $100,000,000,000 company and her you know dollars 250,000 a year stock grew to like a million dollars a year stock something like that and so sean and I have made maybe three different lists where we predicted what the next sarah's style company are so can we list

Shaan Puri

love this because you wanna be a millionaire everybody does I don't know I I haven't actually met anybody who doesn't want want that but not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur that's huge risk not everybody has the winning idea not everybody wants to be the the brilliant investor who finds the the the gem at a early price and this path was basically like no you're not like the hotshot exec getting this insane package you just join as a normal employee into a clearly good company that's already in a stable position you're gonna get health care there's like you know there's systems in place there's a nice office to go to so you didn't make any of those crazy sacrifices but just by even if you had a $50,000 a year stock grant right so let's say your total comp was gonna be a 180 k 150 k and of that you know a 120 is is cash and then the rest is stock and you get that every year for four years normal vesting cycle well over those four years that $200,000 of stock could become a million dollars of stock just by the company naturally growing at the rate it's already growing at and I thought what a hack when I saw that you when you when you said that sarah did this and that you guys are somewhat intentional about what company to pick to go to she worked at facebook then airbnb we decided to christen this as sarah's list

Sam Parr

I think we came up with 30 companies a couple of them were home runs so I think rippling figma andral I don't even remember

Shaan Puri

I was tool yeah the cursor there's been others yeah

Sam Parr

now the question is is why haven't we done this again I have an answer which is my my and I think you're gonna agree it's so much harder to predict what the winners are right now because compared to airbnb and uber and lyft and rippling and these software companies they were fairly steady growth with all these new ai companies it's impossible to predict a what's gonna hit and it's impossible to predict are they actually going to have longevity

Shaan Puri

sustain yeah yeah yeah

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

the hot companies today are like they're they're so proud to be the fastest growing fastest a 100,000,000 in arr but it's like dude that happened in four months or five months like that's that's not the same like sure footing that you could stand on it's not a stay stable foundation where where as you could see these things that have been going for seven years just compounding steadily and you could predict that the next seven years will probably be more compounding steadily but I do have an answer do you have an answer for this for dan from la

Sam Parr

my okay so it sounds so boring there's probably two of them that I would predict one of them I heard I heard Scott galloway make the same argument so I'm just stealing his one was your old your alma mater amazon I I do think that you can get incredibly wealthy still yeah amazon

Shaan Puri

yeah that's a crazy pick dude they've

Sam Parr

been amazon

Shaan Puri

what what is amazon

Sam Parr

they've they've underperformed the market they've underperformed the market and I have

Shaan Puri

no saying it's currently a $2,400,000,000,000 company so you're saying it's gonna be a $10,000,000,000,000 company the first ever

Sam Parr

yeah because I think that when I use my alexa it's still so stupid it's like it doesn't understand ai or when you like use amazon.com and like search for stuff the ai is still horrible

Shaan Puri

amazon is a wild pick

Sam Parr

I don't know what else do you have okay

Shaan Puri

here I I have two for you I thought you there's one a layup we're we're both investors in this one company I thought you were gonna say that

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah that one's pretty good

Shaan Puri

okay so I'll give you mine and then I'll then you can you can use that one too to

Sam Parr

I don't know if their valuation is public so careful what you say

Shaan Puri

though I think it is it it it was okay so my pick would be neuralink okay why neuralink well first I think if you're gonna join a company maybe join the company by the greatest entrepreneur ever of all time which is elon musk undo un undisputed at this. I would say and so the elon index of companies has just performed at this absurd level whether it's tesla it's spacex it's xai now is is now like a a ridiculously valued company neuralink is what's next so neuralink is one of these companies that is doing something that very few like there's no because they say no com no competitors to this there's like five competitors total in the world and they're all way far behind what is neuralink doing they're putting chips in your brain that today help a quadriplegic person be able to use a computer just with their thoughts and by the way this isn't just like a pie in the sky idea like there's a guy you could watch him streaming himself playing video games on twitch using his mind as the controller and it's pretty insane they're do they've done it in like monkeys now they've done it in a in I think two humans now and it's just getting better and better where it's becoming less invasive also I think now he he just tweeted out there's like a I think there's like a surface more surface level implant that they could do that rather than going so deep into the brain can you even

Sam Parr

work here like can you go like how do you get a job

Shaan Puri

what it's a company

Sam Parr

is it okay

Shaan Puri

so neuralink I think when I initially said this on sara's list it was like a $2,000,000,000 valuation it's now at 10,000,000,000 so it's already had one sara's list jump of five x it's gonna have another there this is this is going to be a huge company like if you think about computing so computing went from computers to laptops to mobile phones and the next one is probably some version of glasses or a watch some version of that that's what's coming next and then what comes after that is the computer in your mind right like just attaching yourself to the computer so that you can literally just think and you have access to the internet just from your thoughts now some people will say this is dystopian some people say they don't want this guess what once the first people start to have the chip in your brain you will be the equivalent of like a turtle if you do not and so this is the game theory of this is that we're all gonna end up with this because if anybody does it they're gonna be a god amongst men right

Sam Parr

dude you're like you're like one of these guy I think you're like you don't like taking I'm gonna make a prediction you never said this are you the type of guy who doesn't even like taking medicine

Shaan Puri

I don't take much medicine no

Sam Parr

that's what I thought

Shaan Puri

take any supplements don't take medicine yeah

Sam Parr

exactly what I thought the guy who doesn't even take medicine like advil or something like that you're saying you're gonna be putting a brain chip in your brain

Shaan Puri

again you have to right like what I already basically have the computer attached to my hand if I'm honest it's in my hand eight hours a day it's in my pocket right it's attached to my body at all times if I don't have my phone on me I kinda panic right so it is in some ways already a third limb but we're we're you know once this goes to the. Where I can just have it you know in my mind again it's not really gonna be that much of a choice because the people who have it are gonna be like walking around like gods compared to the people who don't and by the way he's doing the tesla model so the the tesla model the tesla business plan was you first do the really expensive sports car high cost low production volume sell it to just rich enthusiasts who want something cool a cool toy and then the cool toy becomes more and more mainstream and more and more you know eventually you get to the model three which is now like a mainstream car with neuralink he's doing it where first it's gonna solve the problems for people who are quadriplegics the next one he's going for is people who are blind and you know like people who can really improve the quality of life and eventually it'll get to it's kinda like a phone it's like a consumer device we all just do for fun right but it but it's inarguable that you should not be helping people who are paralyzed you know have more more function because because of this technology

Sam Parr

they have a cool so the reason I was like could you even apply to work there is because I had never like seen their job openings I thought it was I thought it was like a project I didn't realize it was like a proper company yet because if you go to the ceo's linkedin he says like manager of a family office but they do have a careers page and they're hiring for a bunch of roles in san francisco or or fremont and austin and their jobs page is pretty cool it says you don't have to be a brain surgeon to work at neuralink and then it lists all the open roles they have so that's pretty okay yeah

Shaan Puri

I'm excited there's there's a content creator role there's a junior accounts payable specialist right you can work at these companies

Sam Parr

dude I talked to a guy who worked at facebook in pr I think he said he was the four hundredth employee and he was in pr and he said that they did things where you know I had a large company amazon or hubspot had this too where you get I forget exactly do you get a discount on the stock or if you buy the stock they match it or something like that as a perk like $20 a year nothing like crazy and he told me he did that + he like just stayed for ten years and he said he made $90,000,000 excellent so if you're listening to this and you are an accounts payable person this definitely looks cool that is a good fit

Shaan Puri

I thought you were gonna say I thought you were gonna say owner for your answer so owner which is valued kind of in the billion dollar range I think the last round they raised was a billion dollars I'll just tell you two things one when I got introduced to the investment for owner the person who my friend who introduced it said by the way this is the he goes hey I think you should meet this company why well it's the best founder I've ever invested in and probably the best company I've ever invested in so I was like okay well that's a incredibly strong recommendation within like ten minutes the ceo emailed me and now this is normal they'll say hey you'd love to set up a time to chat here's my calendar maybe we could maybe we could grab coffee next week we'd love to tell you about what we're doing this guy adam was a savage he goes hey sean great to meet I just forwarded you our last three investor updates so you can get a sense of how things are going and you know like if you've ever seen that slide that says if they don't have revenue they'll talk about users right or like if they don't have profit they'll talk about revenue if they don't have revenue they'll talk about users if they don't have users they'll talk about potential right or products features

Sam Parr

if they

Shaan Puri

don't have features they'll talk about potential and it's basically like the ladder of proof of like what do you actually have and I can tell you what you have because I based on what you choose to reveal and so similarly a founder that just says here's the last three investor updates was it was just like oh let me just show you I have I have a straight flush so here's my cards because the investor updates will tell you all the numbers about the company because he sent me the last three I know the trajectory of how fast they're growing across those three updates I can see how the ceo communicates and I can see what they care about what their priorities are so so I was like I made the investment without ever talking to the guy instantly once I read those three updates and since then every update is just like hey so we're crushing it here's here's another gigantic number here's how much growth we had just this quarter or this just this month instead of like what most companies do in a year

Sam Parr

check this out this guy adam I don't know how old he is I think of him as like a 22 year old because I'm dog

Shaan Puri

he was born in 1999

Sam Parr

that's insane

Shaan Puri

he was born during y february

Sam Parr

one time he like messaged me about his brother he's like my brother's looking for a project to do and I thought it was like a kid and he's like yeah he's a content creator and like his brother has 30,000,000 followers on tiktok or something like that I don't know if you saw that but then he wrote this update yesterday I read his update yesterday and I was reading it and he was explaining how it was the company was killing it and he was like you know we also had a little bit of churn in december and that really bothers me and I thought like okay he's bothered because the product sucks or something he goes I'm bothered because that means that these businesses likely went out of business like these like so basically sorry owner dot owner serves small small restaurants that's their customer they it's like an ordering platform for restaurants and he was like we had some more churn or some churn in december and it was all because they likely went out of business because that's when these restaurants tend to go out of business I guess is at the end of the year and I read that line and it was pretty cool because he's like kind of a terminator like he says like here's where we said we were gonna go here's how we exceeded it here's where we said we were gonna go here's where we exceeded it like constantly throughout each category of the company and at the end he was like we had we did have some churn and that is part of the bad news and then because they went out of business and that makes me he goes I think he said and that devastates me I'm so saddened that like these guys and it was that was really cool

Shaan Puri

yeah I ignored that I was like I'm just gonna think this guy's a terminator I'm not even gonna think of the human side of this that he actually cares to because you know

Sam Parr

you need both

Shaan Puri

you can't have both he also yeah this guy seems very likable you know he can't he can't just have everything I refuse to accept that

Sam Parr

let's do another question which one do you wanna go to

Shaan Puri

let's do this one I I don't think you wanted to do this one which is why I have to do it okay alex from brooklyn says gentlemen every culture has its quirks the japanese make you take your shoes off at the dinner table the french chicks don't shave their pits and my first million is home for asking blunt financial questions and sam you are the king of blunt financial questions so it's our turn to return the favor I won't ask you for the number but is hampton over or under 10,000,000 in revenue in 2025 alex from brooklyn

Sam Parr

over and that's all I will say because it's one of the businesses it's my only company and I just wanna shut up and just quietly build for the next decade and just keep on trucking and maybe after ten years I'll come out and reveal some more information but yeah it it it's done really well

Shaan Puri

there you go alright good job alex you you put sam on the hot seat alright next one alright I just watched the jesse yitza episode and sean playing the piano had me kinda wowed it's nuts what you can do in a year if that was your masogi for 2025 what is each of yours for 2026 dave from mexico city yeah put some respect on an american living in I don't even know what the cdmx whatever that is

Sam Parr

that's mexico city you hillbilly that's mexico city

Shaan Puri

cdmx how does that stand for mexico city I

Sam Parr

think it's some spanish like I don't know it's a it's a spanish way of I don't know the city of mexico dave I

Shaan Puri

don't know sorry dave I didn't pronounce

Sam Parr

you correctly dave I I speak spanish too

Shaan Puri

alright so by the way did you have a a masogi in 2025 did you do that

Sam Parr

yeah I I trained so the. Of a masogi so here's the here's the thing people forget about masogi is it's supposed to be so hard that you have a high chance of failing and we don't talk about the failure enough but yes I trained for a 50 mile run and I just like fucking got hurt and destroyed my achilles and I couldn't do it so I did it and I failed okay now let me recap something so on two days ago sean put out this video of him going to jesse itzler's house you prefaced it by telling him what you did so basically jesse itzler front of the pod amazing guy you flew to his house in atlanta and very it seemed planned but it was very spontaneous that you played piano for him and his wife sarah blakely a very famous entrepreneur they were in tears you told us about the video and then it finally got released it was awesome but I have a bone to pick everyone's saying how amazing this is and all this stuff and they're like you inspired me because you played this beautiful song and people were literally in tears and earlier this year you said you're gonna start playing piano I'm pretty sure you've been playing piano for years and years and years and like you did not just pick this up from scratch

Shaan Puri

no I haven't been playing for years and years and years I did as a kid my my parents did buy a piano and they probably got us I don't know a couple months of lessons when I was maybe eight or something like that but I had by the time I'm I'm like 38 now I'd like forgotten everything so when I started this year I started I started from scratch this year but yes technically when I was but I

Sam Parr

remember you I remember us being somewhere and seeing a piano and you sat down and I thought you like played a song

Shaan Puri

I did know how to play two things on the piano so I knew how to play the intro to james bond goldeneye like the like just like the like like but like a one hand song type of thing and I think I also knew the beginning of fur elise which is like a kind of a classic piano song through muscle memory but I couldn't like didn't know how to read sheet music didn't know how to do the notes didn't know like what the key I didn't know what the keys were called type of deal right I just had memorized because you know at some. Some my sister or somebody had showed me like hey watch push these push white white black black white black and like that'll sound like james bond like that was the level I was at

Sam Parr

well it was very good okay and so the question was what was the question what's your mussogee gonna be this year

Shaan Puri

what's it gonna be this year for each of us

Sam Parr

do you have one

Shaan Puri

I have one I'm trying to figure out the exact way to frame it but I I think I told you this I deleted all my social media apps all the consumption so I said I'm I'm going to go dark in terms of consuming like I basically was like how do I trade consuming stuff that people put twenty seconds of thought into right like a tweet people put about twenty seconds of thought into it to doing things that people put like twenty years of thought into which is books and so I deleted reddit I deleted twitter I deleted instagram I deleted facebook I deleted all those apps and instead I just if I open up my phone I wanna kill kill boredom I have to open up kindle it's like the only thing left to do on my phone is kindle and so I'm I basically made a list I was like alright here's the '26 for 2026 right like the 26 books I wanna read in 2026 and and I have kind of a hit list these are books honestly I've probably owned for years have thought about reading have heard really good things about but hadn't actually read and so I started that a couple weeks ago so that's going good the only other one that that might count here is I have this life bucket list idea of coaching a high school basketball team and so like in walking away from business like not focusing on business for a season which is three months and so I started that last month and it goes our season goes till till february but basically take like there's like a local high school basketball team and I've become an assistant coach and it's like we wanna go to the state tournament and and win and that's the goal

Sam Parr

I know your first game you got spanked I think you said the second game went better

Shaan Puri

yeah we are yes what are we now six and three so you know we're we're doing alright we're getting better as a team and right now it's all about like just can we improve but I'm basically spending like I don't know I'm at this I'm basically going to practices and games you know four days a week roughly and just me like I get my coach's whistle and my little whiteboard and I drive to this high school and then it's just I'm doing it I'm doing the actual thing I'm like coaching this high school basketball team I'm an assistant coach I'm not the head coach

Sam Parr

I have a a two year old girl and then I have a two month old little girl and I have underestimated leading up to it how difficult it would be and even though I have grandparents around and people helping out my wife is helping and you know obviously running the show there I have underestimated how challenging it was and so frankly I kind of feel like I'm holding on right now my goals are simple I'm trying to eat 200 grams of protein a day and get out of bed at 6am so I have pretty small ones because I I've always been or you know ever since I got into fitness I've always been good at maintaining a fairly fit state right now I'm at the lowest of my fairly fit era and so I just need to eat my protein and going to or going to bed early and waking up early it's this is so rudimentary but it is just has had the biggest impact on my day's productivity and so my I don't really wanna set a big goal right now because I am kinda hanging on

Shaan Puri

yeah although I I do think those are big I know a lot of people who have that goal and don't do that thing that is actually quite difficult to do both of those things that you just mentioned if you actually did those those are high leverage things also I'll say two things one I think it's great to acknowledge the season you're in I think people want everything to be constant and there are seasons where you're able to be full out there's seasons where you're in recovery mode there's seasons where you're in you know nesting mode where you're just like look all that matters is like protecting the nest because there's like these baby eggs here right now and like that's all that really matters I don't need to distract myself with a a random hunt over here I need to stay at the nest and so I think knowing the season and and not beating yourself up about that is something that ambitious sort of type a people struggle with it's like you gotta give yourself some grace you know when when you're when you're so wired towards achievement of random goals

Sam Parr

you didn't do a good job of warning me though you should have warned me I I didn't realize how challenging this would be

Shaan Puri

well everybody says the same thing it's like oh it's man to man defense now there's two of you and two of them like you get to

Sam Parr

know understand like sometimes it feels like my wife is my roommate and like like I barely have gotten to know my little girl because my new baby because I'm with the eldest like right so it's my job to take care of her and like you gotta like take her out of the house because she's gonna grab the pacifier out of the mouth you know what I mean

Shaan Puri

it's definitely a second baby blindside for dads because the first baby is the one you think everything's gonna change and it's gonna be like oh my god my life's gonna get really crazy and then it's like that's alright I got this this is not so bad

Sam Parr

different but not crazy

Shaan Puri

so you get this false sense of security and then when the second baby comes it's like nobody you you had already given up you'd already stopped worrying about it in a way and the second one is the blind side especially for the dad because for the the mom who you didn't realize how much she was carrying the team but now she has to focus on the new baby and that means existing kid is your kid and all of their needs and all of their time is like you know on your clock and and that is very that's a big wake up call

Sam Parr

just getting her socks on like that's like it it can be an ordeal do you like just like these small things that I just kind of dismissed so I'm I'm frankly I'm not drowning but I my cup is is a bit full

Shaan Puri

alright there's here's another question so this is what is it gary v it's the gary v one alright so I like this one gary v wants to buy the jets sam you're working hard to grow hampton now why are you doing all this are you trying to buy all the pawn shops in the us brother in all seriousness what is the f you money purchase that you want if this is a home run this is tarek from the bay I guess that's the bay area

Sam Parr

so when I moved to new york city I got this like really big nice apartment and I love it and I've gotten so much joy having family come and stay and be comfortable that I have my eyes set on I do in the next couple years wanna buy a huge like lavish you know 15 or $25,000,000 apartment I do that is well that is something that I definitely want but more than anything I saw this photo

Shaan Puri

a frame of 15 or $20,000,000 apartment is your goal yeah

Sam Parr

yeah why apartment

Shaan Puri

yeah for 15 to 20,000,000 shouldn't you be getting like a city block

Sam Parr

no brother it sucks

Shaan Puri

like you know like one of the brownstones at least like it's an apartment

Sam Parr

I don't want a brownstone I've I've rented one before I don't like them I like having a door man

Shaan Puri

what's the like dream building is there a dream building in new york that's like the cool one to be in

Sam Parr

well it's different flavors so like if like there's like this thing called billionaire's row and it's like right next to central park and that's what a lot of the really rich like tycoons like bill ackman lives there it's a $100,000,000 for the a fancy apartment there it's insane it's just absolutely insane how rich some people are and how much this real estate costs that's not my flavor that's like opulent I mean it's all opulent if it's $20,000,000 but that's like you know like you're the the master of the world type of apartment and it's all clean and cool looking but what I'm really working to do I saw I don't like donald trump but I saw this photo of him working at his office and he he was like had just left a meeting with a bunch of his employees and his wife and two kids the boys I forget their name don junior and the other guy they came up to him while he was working and the cool part was that they lived in the same you know he owned the building and they the building and they lived in the same building where he worked and the kids could see him working and and he was just able to do stuff and it was like a total life integration work life integration that's my dream that's really what I'm working towards I I really wanna do that

Shaan Puri

wow I never took you sam to be the penthouse kinda guy

Sam Parr

I'm not a penthouse type of guy but well I guess I am I just said I wanna buy a penthouse yeah

Shaan Puri

I think think you just said that's your dream

Sam Parr

yeah I think by definition

Shaan Puri

you're like I'm not

Sam Parr

a penthouse type of

Shaan Puri

guy yet we we used to have this funny thing on the pod where it was like you know we're just two entrepreneurs with big dreams sean wants to buy the lakers and sam would love to buy a lake I feel like you were so much more likable then not not like manhattan sam you just lost like 30 points of likability with that answer then why what are you doing here telling the truth over here bro you know what it's rooted it just

Sam Parr

so happens that I live in manhattan but really if I lived in like let's say saint louis missouri I would say I want the fattest house in the cul de sac that has like a soccer goal in the back and like a basketball goal and like all the kids play in my yard like that's really what it's worth doing it just so happens that I live yeah

Shaan Puri

that sounds so much better it just

Sam Parr

so happens that I live in manhattan in order to do that you have to spend $20,000,000

Shaan Puri

by by the way this this gary v buying the jets thing I've talked about this before to me this is like a master class in personal brand so I always say like for personal brand you want these five d's one of the d's is what's the dream and if your dream is I wanna make so much money it's like crazy I just wanna be a billionaire it just sounds greedy right so what gary did which is brilliant is he's like I wanna buy the jets now there's a lot of brilliance in this one it gives him the air cover to go try to pursue a bunch of money without just seeming greedy he didn't say I wanna buy the yankees he wanted to buy this lovable loser his childhood team the the new york jets that's never done anything and try to turn them around and so it's like there's like a nobility to the mission there's this like likability to the mission where it's like a turnaround project everybody likes an underdog type of deal and it's something a lot of people remember about him like something he he dreams of doing and so I think that gary doing that is is is yet another example of gary really understanding marketing and personal brand

Sam Parr

do you know how so sean and I like the ufc and at the ufc every after every fight dana white does a press conference and he lists like five or or 10 stats so who got the fight of the night who got the bonus and then one stat that he always list is how much money they made at the gate and it's supposed to mean like this is how many fans came to the fight but the tickets are like $2 like I I went recently and it was like $800 for bad seats and it's pretty funny that he re he like is using that as like look look how many people are coming it's like dude no this is how you're just charging so much money for a ticket and so you're like bragging it's sort of like when gary says like I've noticed in gary's videos people would be like help let me help you buy the jets and achieve your dream that's so much better than people saying let me put more money in your pocket and become a billionaire

Shaan Puri

million net worth to 450,000,000 in net worth you know what I mean

Sam Parr

alright let's do another question or do you have one of these sean

Shaan Puri

I don't you have it it's gotta be authentic right so like I I don't actually have one you know to me I'm like I bought back my time that was the first purchase you know first important important purchase buy my own time back buy my freedom and then it's like you invest in health so it's like I got a trainer I got a chef I got the like doing everything I can for health for me and my family and you know after that like I don't know I've I guess it'd be fun experiences like I I don't really have like this burning desire to go purchase some really expensive thing you know morgan hounsell wrote this thing in his book that really resonated with me he goes there's two ways to use money number one is as a tool to improve the quality of your life and I nod yeah that makes sense right that's buying your time that's buying a a nanny it's about you know getting a a personal trainer or something like that and the other is as a measuring stick and I realized that like all the big money purchases like the things you would need tons and tons of money for they tend to be measuring stick things like I've almost run out of like money as a tool to improve my life ideas you know I've done a a lot of the big ones and so I guess I don't really want to switch into that gear of money or as money as a measuring stick

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

but you enjoy that penthouse sam

Sam Parr

yeah I'm

Shaan Puri

sure people will think you're very cool alright let's go to the next question dude do

Sam Parr

you remember do you remember the the kids' house when you were younger where it was like the open door where it's like a campus you just everyone can like hang out yeah I've I've aspired to be that forever it just so happens that you have to spend a lot of money in manhattan to do it alright let's do this one early on you guys had a ton of friends on the show as guests give us ogs an update on the ogs where's sully where's ramon where's jack smith is there anyone else that I missed so when sean started mfm it the first 50 episodes maybe a lot of people don't realize this mfm is that like some number between seven hundred and eight hundred episodes I don't remember exactly the first some number I don't know 25 or 50 it was just sean interviewing people and all those people were being interviewed and also you and I when it was just when I came on it was just like 5,000 people listening we basically just talked about our friends and so for the ogs

Shaan Puri

they went or we had them on and be like hey what's up what are you up to you know like that that sort of deal

Sam Parr

before we were chasing clout we were just hanging out with our buds

Shaan Puri

once we once we figured out the youtube algorithm things changed but before that we invited our friends on the pod a lot

Sam Parr

okay let's do an update so sully do you wanna talk about sully

Shaan Puri

okay sully is suleiman ali he's one of our he's one of our friends he's one of my best buddies there's there's a a question later that I think will be a good good explanation of who sully is but he is an entrepreneur he built a company called tinyco which was like mobile games so think like candy crush but he licensed the the ip for family guy so he made like the family guy mobile game the harry potter mobile game those those types of things sold tiny for a bunch of money 9 figures he then helped his brother start and sell native deodorant so the ollie brothers are prolific and they've both been on the podcast sully did something that I really respect and admire which was he was able to understand what matters so he's like sully's in his forties he had been you know he's been super successful and when you when you're successful like winners have options you get deals put on your plate every day things you could go invest in and make a bunch of money you have people who wanna come work for you and you know start companies with you you have more knowledge about how to win in the game of business and it is very tempting to just go and go get more success because success feels really good and you're good at it and it's very tempting to do that because there might be other areas of your life that you're not so good at where you're not getting that same feedback loop of I'm awesome and this is awesome and my results are awesome and what sully did which I thought was great was he didn't make the mistake of just chasing more success he started to look at those other areas so first thing he did was he started working out religiously every day like I started being like hey what are you like what are you working on today he's like I don't know but I scheduled my workout that's the most important thing that I did

Sam Parr

he takes more like workout classes than like a 23 year old manhattanite woman who works in pr

Shaan Puri

and he takes the same classes that she takes also

Sam Parr

he introduced me to like rumble boxing and I think my christmas boot camp was is and

Shaan Puri

soul sleep he loves the classes because he started doing that then he was like I wanna have kids like that's the next chapter I wanna have kids so he just had a kid and he has resisted the ai wave to focus on having a kid for now we'll see what he does I think he wants to take a very big swing in the world of ai and robotics we'll see what happens but he he's a first time dad so that's the sully update ramon is doing a very cool company called athena if you've ever looked in your house and looked at the tap and your tap water and you're like I don't wanna drink tap water I wanna drink clean water I don't want water that has heavy metals in it chemicals in it you know a lot of people don't even know your the the water supply in most cities is like very interlinked with sewage system like it's a pretty gross thing to drink tap water but we all bathe in tap water we put it all over our naked bodies and so ramon has built a a company that's around clean water for the home and so it's started with a filtered shower head so how do you shower in water that's gonna be clean on your skin and good for your hair it's called athena and he's going into other categories with clean water for the home and so ramon's basically gone back to what he knows best which is how do I sell stuff online and he's just moved to more noble things he started with when he first came on the podcast was he was selling essentially soap opera daytime soap opera spoilers so like what's gonna happen tomorrow on the young and the restless and he sold that company for like 9 or $10,000,000 it was a blog with a software company

Sam Parr

a soap opera blog and he only it was only two years old he sold for $10,000,000 when we talked about it this was like such a viral story

Shaan Puri

a dutch kickboxer he's never seen a soap opera in his life but he just loves to sell stuff online he loves to figure out how to get traffic from one place to another and how to sell and now he's doing he's selling things that actually you know improve people's lives a little bit more than the soap opera spoilers so that's that's ramon right now

Sam Parr

you guys should go listen to his episode early on so basically yeah he started a soap opera business that he sold for 9 or $10,000,000 and he started a dog ramp company so like if you're it was called sausage dog central so sausage dogs can like use a ramp to get up in an suv and sane grew to 18,000,000 now he's doing athena and he's a single dad and his son's about to go to college or getting gearing up to go to college and he his his kid is like the most well mannered well behaved kid so that's probably the best thing he's ever done is be imagine he's been a single parent since the his boy was two years old yeah and now his kid's has been but is still thriving jack smith so jack smith is our buddy jack smith so on paper he basically sold his company at the age of 29 or 28 for $850,000,000 it was called vungle now the intangibles are if you meet jack smith very quiet you'll have to you'll have to pull anything out of him he won't tell you anything if you ask what he does for work he'll say oh I I like to play on computers like he won't tell you he he's the in terms of what you said sean about people wanting to flex he is the most nonflexing person I've ever met in my life he's very special one of my best friends he now lives in portugal and he's building he just bought 50 acres of land on the coast of portugal and he's building a meditation center that's what he's doing

Shaan Puri

like it's like digital detox meditation right

Sam Parr

yeah so he bought 50 acres of land and check this out he has like a mobile home that he mostly lives in and this little like he I think he has a house that he now I think they've rented a house nearby but for a little while they're living in like a tiny home him and his his kid and his wife and very him and his wife are both tycoons they're both incredibly successful people and they live very very modest lives and they're dedicating everything right now to building a retreat so people can like get into I don't know whatever you do when you meditate self awareness calmness yeah whatever those whatever those folks are either too yeah

Shaan Puri

alright I got one that's tactical practical business question so it's a this is this is from ben's brother ben's my business partner this is from his brother sam he says I've been a realtor for the past decade I've had good success I made $300,000 a year for about a decade but I hate how it just doesn't seem to be compounding so I've decided it's time to make a change everything is on the table buying a business buying a franchise flipping houses getting a job I'm not looking for specific prescriptive advice on what I should specifically do but I'm looking for you guys to tell me how you would think about deciding the type of thing you'd look for next and how you would attack it

Sam Parr

have you read the I think it's called the war is it war on art by steven pressfield

Shaan Puri

war of art

Sam Parr

war art sorry and he talks about this idea of the difference between like an amateur and a professional and like an amateur maybe says that they're have writer's block or that their creativity just hasn't come to them whereas a professional they sit down at the same day and they get to work and they just write regardless of how they feel you know their emotion that day doesn't impact how they feel they're they're they're a professional you go to work the things that I've noticed that have held a lot of people back is when they think about making money or in ben's case or sorry sam's case live like what to do next I think that they don't think of themselves as a company builder I think that when you're like thinking about what to do next you have to think how do I get enough traction to hire people to create a team and to create a proper company with a culture that solves a problem and has recurring customers and I've noticed this like with a lot of real estate agents per in particular because they're one off peep you know it's like a one person business oftentimes with just like an assistant and I have a bone to pick a lot of times with these one person companies that we talk about online all the time they're incredibly interesting but in general in order to build a lot of value for yourself you have to create in my opinion a company and that's sort of this like vague term but in my head what that means is like employees who are all working together on a mission and who are creating an asset that has a lot of value not just creating something that pays your salary

Shaan Puri

and so are you suggesting he take his current job where he's like I put in hours and I get a commission out of it selling a home and start to think about like well why don't I turn this into more of a brokerage or why don't I yes create a real estate team and we're not gonna sell I sell 20 homes a year but we could sell why couldn't we sell 300 if I was able to hire other people like me maybe even better than me at selling homes and organize us all under one brand as a company rather than me as a broker

Sam Parr

john rockefeller who's I think the best businessman ever famously said I'd rather have 1% effort from a 100 people than a 100% effort from me and I think that to be true where the the name of the game to creating a lot of value in something sustainable is to create something that involves getting other people organized and them doing a lot of the work and that sounds very simplistic but I don't think that's how a lot of people think about it

Shaan Puri

yeah so I I my answer would be it's kind of like eating late at night it's like are you hungry or are you just bored and a lot of a lot of what people think is hunger is actually just boredom and so similarly I think sam wants to do something different he's basically saying like I've been a successful realtor for a long time but I'm ready to buy a franchise flip houses like go do something completely different whereas I think you first would wanna question the question the initial assumption which was I'm you basically said I'm making 300 k a year for about a decade but it just doesn't seem to be compounding well why not I've seen many brokers make way more money if the goal is to make way more money or to work way less I know many brokers that have done what you said which is productize themselves or make a company out of what they're doing make a team out of what they're doing and scale it and so I think that would be the first instinct but I guess my my general advice for anybody who's trying to figure out what to do next is go talk to 20 people because the goal is to work backwards from a specific idea not forwards from uncertainty and what I mean by that is you go talk to 20 people who you think are having success in one way or one flavor or another now what does that mean that means you go talk to friends or your friends are friends you go talk to local businesses once you realize that everything around you is a product made by a business then you can go find the owner of that business and you can just chat with them or you can study what they do from afar you wanna find people of similar backgrounds to you like other realtors who then pivoted and did something bigger and better out of it what did they do and you're just searching for a blueprint that you can copy paste for yourself and then you're gonna of course you're gonna tweak it as you go but you're gonna sort of steal like an artist you're gonna find something that already works and work backwards from that so I I think that's the the first thing is like have you okay you just talked about buying a franchise go talk to 20 franchisees and see is that like do I want the life that they have does it seem like do I want the inputs of the life not just the output right because yeah everybody wants success but do you want to do the things that they have to do in order to get the success does that sound sound like fun to you does it seem like things you're actually good at is that the type of work you wanna sign up to do 3,000 times those are questions you gotta ask yourself and so I would go and try to look for blueprints I'd look for first the people like me what did they do and then you know maybe go a little bit further out on the weirdness scale and find other other things and once you go look at those blueprints something will scream out at you of like some combination of that looks fun to try I think I could do that I like the I like the lifestyle that that comes with with doing that and that will give you more direction on where to go and so I think people don't really think about business as blueprints they think they need to be original and instead I think you should largely look for existing blueprints that many people have done and say which one of those do I wanna do

Sam Parr

do you know this guy sam

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah I've talked to him a bunch this is ben's brother

Sam Parr

well I guess we're gonna have to follow-up the mystery

Shaan Puri

oh there's one other thing that this is specific to ben's brother that is a challenge for him he doesn't make time to search so every time I talk to him I'm like great what are you thinking about now and he's like made so little progress in the time and the reason why is because he's got his job then he also bought into like a restaurant he owns a piece of a restaurant he spends a bunch of time trying to make sure that restaurant doesn't fail because he doesn't want that restaurant to fail and I'm like so how much time are you dedicating to this he's like oh like you know whenever I have free time say how much free time you got not a lot and so I think you if you wanna actually make a change you need to first clear your plate a little bit and create some space to actually work on the thing and work on the thing in like dedicated religious time that's like as sacred as your work as sacred as going to the gym as sacred as other things you make time for and so I think for him he's gotta find you know two three hours a day that he's gonna just spend through this and specifically mark it off on his calendar and be like I might sell less homes this year and I'm okay with that trade because I'm working on building the next thing I think people don't really make specific concrete time they try to hope that like in the extra time I have and this you don't have extra time

Sam Parr

that's a great great answer can I pick the last one

Shaan Puri

yeah go for it

Sam Parr

this is hilarious this is a great one so this is from peter j one of my favorite american traditions is that when you get arrested you get one phone call that has to be one of the highest stakes calls ever I almost wanna get arrested just to feel the rush of that one phone call rule when they place the phone call when they place that phone in your hands anyway what's your one phone call when it comes to business when you need advice or you're in a tough spot who's that one call you're going to make and why that's a good question and that's a great

Shaan Puri

question peter j

Sam Parr

yes do I I definitely have one do you

Shaan Puri

I have one you go first

Sam Parr

do you know who barry diller is barry diller is the founder of iac you know he's like a deal maker whatever that phrase is supposed

Shaan Puri

to be phone call isn't he like 85

Sam Parr

he's not my phone call he but he's like a guy who like kinda knows everyone and he is just like he like is he owns this huge conglomerate and he's just a little bit of a business savant when it comes to like numbers a little bit like ari emmanuel where he just kinda like knows deals and he just knows numbers and he spots value and he organizes people around it austin reif is one of those two guys but at the age of 30 austin reif is one of my best friends austin reif started this company called morning brew I had a company called the hustle both daily business newsletters they were a little bit more finance we are more entrepreneurial tech but when we were both getting going I hated him I wanted to kill him not because of him just because we were competitors we both sold our company and we both were in the same core group of hampton one of the reasons I moved to where I live is because I'm down the street from him he's one of my best friends I love him like family and he is probably the smartest businessperson I've ever met because a he I do think he is like genius level I'm pretty sure he got like a perfect school in the sats but b he approaches things with the perfect balance of something must have soul and you must love it and you must be passionate but then from any problem that I have he's very very good at taking away the passion and the energy and the emotion away from the actual logistics and he's very pragmatic he's the best person I've ever experienced when it comes to asking advice on on a certain issue it sounds like very similar honestly to sully

Shaan Puri

yeah that's a great one my answer is sully no no secret here my my rule for for the person you would call right if you think about the the the jail phone call you would want three things one they have to care I want this to be like the dad from taken when his daughter is taken and he's like oh okay it's on now right that you want the person when you come to them with your personal life problem then it becomes their personal life problem and sully is like that like he had a friend from high school who was like a dentist I think I don't think he talked to him in several years and he was like hey you know I know you're in the business world like you know we've gone our separate ways since high school but like I'm trying to sell my practice like any tips for me and suddenly like flew out there and made it his mission to help his friends sell his dental practice business and have this incredible outcome

Sam Parr

when was this

Shaan Puri

this is a couple years ago two years ago maybe

Sam Parr

that's incredible

Shaan Puri

and so second they need to be wiser than me so I want you to have seen 10 times more data points and be better at putting together those data points so that when I come to you with noise and panic you just see the signal you know what to ignore and what to focus on and then lastly I want that person to basically live rent rent free in my head afterwards which is what I have now which is if if I'm I don't even need to call him anymore it's just oh what would sully say oh he'd say this okay I'm just gonna do that thing right that's as simple as it's become I spent enough time with him to know what he would say in 90% of these

Sam Parr

situations can I give you a fun two fun facts about calling people from jail I used to be a a problematic person and I had to experience this a couple times the first thing that I've realized you people learn this the second time they go to jail you have to write down the phone number of the person you wanna call on your hand because you don't remember any any yeah

Shaan Puri

you don't know anyone's phone number yeah

Sam Parr

know anyone so the second time I did this when I was getting arrested I I I looked at my buddy I go I go hey can you run and grab the sharpie and write your number on my hand for me please that's what you have to do because cell phones don't show up in yellow book or you know yellow page white pages the second thing here's the bad part it might be different now thank god I've not had to experience this in in over a decade most cell phones don't accept collect calls

Shaan Puri

so just you hit a dead end right away

Sam Parr

dead end dead end and so you have to figure out how to make it work

Shaan Puri

you gotta call someone with a landline who happens to be at home

Sam Parr

I I just googled it I think verizon accepts it but most do not

Shaan Puri

that's ridiculous

Sam Parr

maybe it has changed but the also

Shaan Puri

I know know a lot most of my friend you know the real problem with this is most of my friends don't even pick up phone calls so it needs to be like a text from jail it usually says it

Sam Parr

it usually says it it'll say like like you know like bay area or sacramento county correctional or something like that do you know you know what's crazy I I think one in five american men have been arrested at least once

Shaan Puri

do you

Sam Parr

have any friends besides me who have been arrested

Shaan Puri

yeah of course

Sam Parr

good

Shaan Puri

yeah you have friends in dark places I'm gonna I'm gonna give you two times that sui was this call what I asked and what he said the first time I was trying to figure out if we should sell the milk road we had gotten an offer to sell the business and we were debating should we take it should we not and we were spinning in circles basically writing these pros and cons lists of like why we would sell blah blah blah and then like why we shouldn't sell or like we should sell but only at this price or that price is this enough is that enough right it was like so confusing we were just tied up in a knot so we call sully and he just listens to us for five minutes and he goes alright how about we put away the pros and cons list because listen you're selling your company do you wanna sell your company or not you should have a visceral gut reaction when I say you're selling your company and either that gut reaction is yes or it's no and if you don't know don't do anything you don't need to make any decisions here and just simplifying it to you need a visceral gut reaction what is that visceral gut reaction when I say this sentence it became very clear to me what I wanna do I wanted to sell the business so that was the first time that was like a lot of clarity in a very short amount of time the second one was my ecommerce business I was like hey you know a ton about ecomm you know your brother built native deodorant you helped him with that you you you yourself have done ecommerce I want you to help me with strategy can we do like a call where I kind of ask you questions pick your brain on strategy and we figure out like you know I wanna come up with a good growth strategy and so here I am and I show up to that meeting I'm ready to like have a strategy talk and five minutes before the meeting it just says suia shared a Google doc with you and the Google doc is a list of 40 shitty things about our website our email pop ups our welcome email flow our sms sequence our facebook ad copy like he just went and looked at our funnel and just wrote 40 things that we're doing that probably could be done better and he was like we get on the call and I'm like oh so like like should we talk strategy he's like this is the strategy the strategy is you look at your product you figure out everything that sucks you fix it then we do this again in two weeks and we do that again and again and again until there's like not that many things that suck anymore and like that's the strategy and that really just like shook me and I was like oh that's how winners operate got it I thought this guy's so smart he's gonna say something brilliant no he just drilled in and looked at the details and was like why are we doing this this took three seconds to to to load make that faster this is the well this is the wrong photo for this we should put that photo up here this copy is weak let's find better copy you know like that sort of thing

Sam Parr

dude the smart people I've noticed or the people I admire they tend to be like I I don't know if he would fall in this category but he it wouldn't surprise me if he's like in the traditional sense of genius level iq like like a perfect sewer on the standardized test type of but they're also really good at just kinda being a caveman

Shaan Puri

yeah it's the midwick meme yeah

Sam Parr

where they like are incredibly brilliant so I've seen him talk about like some financial instruments and stuff in a very sophisticated way that I didn't understand entirely where it was as if he had to like read a book on it like a textbook on it particularly when you talk about about like tax structures and things like that like it's as if he had like literally has read like the tax code but then he'll he's also given me advice he's like why aren't you doing this and I'll say like some like you know answer just like you did of like well do you want to sell I think yes okay sell like that type of like you know like he's done that with me many times where it's like just these rudimentary like very like child honestly it's like a child right it's like you should do this because you want to do this

Shaan Puri

there's a a meeting I had with this the now ceo of twitch when I was at twitch we got acquired this guy became my boss for a? Of time his name is dan clancy and I go into dan's office and he he asked me some questions he tell you he's he's like I'm the new chief product officer at the time now he's ceo but he's chief product officer then I wanna tell you a little bit about how I work how I operate you know first hundred days I'm just gonna ask a lot of questions I wanna go meet people at the front lines not talk to managers you know some standard kind of first hundred days stuff and then he goes and then from there you'll see me work like this and he took a wipe he put him took a marker and he drew on the whiteboard he goes do you know what a square line curve looks like and I was like sure don't and he goes you know what a sine wave is I was like yeah it's kinda like a up and down the like musicky heartbeat y looking thing right and he's like yeah yeah that's a sine curve and he's like it's this like smooth round thing a square curve looks like this and he basically drew like a straight flat line he goes I'll spend a lot of time at 10 at the 10,000 foot level basically figuring out like big picture priorities what matters you know what are the three things we need to do to win like where are the key levers what do we have to get right what makes this whole thing work and so he's like I'll spend a bunch of time here and then as soon as I find some problem I go like this straight down all the way to a level of depth that you will find like confusing and amusing like wait why does he care about the pixels and the color and the copy and the this and the that like the details of this area he's like can I stay there for a little bit and then I go back up and he's like this is how I work I will be at the 10,000 foot I'll drop down to 10 centimeters I'll stay there I'll go back to 10,000 feet I'll stay there and he's like that is how I work and ever since I saw that I realized oh this is what paul graham and those people met when they said founder mode this is what founder mode is founder mode is being able to simultaneously hold in your head the big idea the north star the vision the direction we need to go and then being able to dive down into the absolute most simple details of those areas that are problematic and like roll up your sleeves solve the problem side by side with the team and then go back up for air

Sam Parr

would this guy wanna come on mfm

Shaan Puri

yeah we should have dan on that'd be fun actually

Sam Parr

because I'm you guys who are listening you gotta Google this guy first of all he does not look like the ceo

Shaan Puri

of twitch

Sam Parr

you would think like I would think it'd be like a red bull looking like bro this guy looks like a like he's 61 and he's got

Shaan Puri

so a got all the t shirts from like the grateful dead tours

Sam Parr

yeah he looks a he looks wise just because he looks older than the average twitch user but he's got long white hair a goatee he looks like he should be studying philosophy or like giving a lecture on like man's search for meaning but he's a twitch guy this is so fascinating to me this guy looks awesome

Shaan Puri

I would love

Sam Parr

to hang out with this guy

Shaan Puri

he he's very wise I I talked to him like I remember once he was like so what do you wanna do like it was like a one on one like a career talk and I go in and you know I just got acquired into the company my career plan at twitch was like earn this vest check and get the hell out of here right like that was just like the general mindset I wasn't trying to think about my my ten year career at twitch that was like that would be losing so I walk in I'm like what am I gonna say do I need to like fake the funk here and tell this guy like I really wanna get this promotion and in ten years I see myself here as a senior vp blah blah blah blah like that wasn't true so am I gonna lie or do I tell him the truth but then like is he gonna be like f this kid and like you know check out on me right because I'm checked out on on the long long term with twitch short term I was gonna try but like long term I wasn't gonna be there so I told him the truth I was like yeah long term I'm not here he goes okay great so we don't need to worry about like this pile of stuff so tell me like what is it that you do wanna do and I started telling him this thing that I had told many people before that I wanted to start a university someday and like blah blah blah and I was like yeah and I had this like very logical like and in order to do that first I need to do this and then get the capital and the network and the skills and then those three things are the core components that you need to be able to pull this off and he just looked at me he goes yeah I don't buy any of that I was like oh shit okay okay what and you know somebody who could call bullshit is generally like somebody you want as a friend and he was like I don't believe in the deferred life plan like I don't believe you need to do all these prerequisites to go do the thing you wanna do I think more often you're better served just going and doing the thing you really wanna do if you really wanna go do it and if you don't really wanna go do it just say you don't wanna do it figure out what you do wanna do and go do that instead and you know just immediately cutting through the the bs I had like 10 interactions like this with him where like I go into his office and I come out with some nugget of wisdom that really like shifted the way I think because this guy has just been around done a lot of things like he worked early at Google he worked directly with like you know larry you you know sundar who's now like you know the ceo was like a peer of his at the time I was like in that circle of like 15 up and comers that were like one of them might be the ceo of Google one day like that's who this guy is

Sam Parr

I just think it's funny to imagine this guy having a meeting on like ishowspeed

Shaan Puri

well he's like gone on his stream there's like videos of him like going and hanging out with him and going on their streams and stuff but it's it is a fish out of water for sure but you know but props to him for doing it because it would be pretty easy to just retreat to the ivory tower and like try to be like this kinda corporate person behind the scenes and instead he's he's like no I'm gonna do this

Sam Parr

dan if you if this makes it to you we would love to have you on I know I'm personally trying to learn how to like be a proper ceo and like it sounds like you're amazing at all the things I aspire to learn this would be awesome if you came on this guy seems badass I also wanna know what he thought of you sean

Shaan Puri

I also wanna know that there there's one more I wanna do one more I wanna do so this question comes from brian from austin he says my guess is that there's been over a thousand business ideas shared on the podcast don't need a list just gut reaction what is an idea you wish somebody ran with that has been said before on the podcast you got five four three two one go and so I have one for this I don't know if if any ideas come to you initially for this

Sam Parr

you're gonna laugh at mine

Shaan Puri

what's yours

Sam Parr

so I like hardware just as a fan I like gadgets I don't know anything about them but we like people thought I was joking about like making a really good washer and dryer that's one but like we have see I have seen the matic have you seen matic it's like a a new roomba

Shaan Puri

new roomba yeah

Sam Parr

it's a thousand dollar roomba that I absolutely love we have seen like figure you know with robots that's like kind of like fits the stereotype of like these big things but we've seen nest I've seen all these like really cool gadget companies

Shaan Puri

all gadgets

Sam Parr

yeah yeah like the dyson they've got good job

Shaan Puri

with that oven it's like a fancy convection oven

Sam Parr

and not all of them like like june hasn't haven't totally hit

Shaan Puri

yeah I think it failed I don't know what happened

Sam Parr

I think it failed yeah but there are a handful that seems silly like a nest or like a a ring camera but they actually were so cool and they did revolutionize an industry and I always thought that could be one of them and so I'm I'm shocked no one has pounced on that what about yours

Shaan Puri

mine is not the biggest idea but it's one that I wish existed and I think would totally win if somebody had the right amount of hustle it's the youth sports combine so professional sports have combines where you go you get measured your height your weight your wingspan your vertical leap your strength your speed all of that well as I've had kids and as I've met most of my friends have had kids I have seen the absolute money hurricane that is youth sports and so the idea here was to create a city to city traveling tour similar to tough mudder but your goal is you go into a city and you say hey if you're a youth youth athlete if you're you know whatever it could be as young as whatever five years old all the way up to 18 years old come get tested get your 40 yard - your vertical leap your height your weight your body fat your all the attributes that go into becoming an athlete every city you go to I think you get somewhere between a 2,000 kids to show up easily I think you could charge a $120 a pop I think you could charge a little bit extra for either you know printed photo or for like storing your data you know for the long term if you just do the math on that so 1,500 kids let's say 2,000 kids something like that you're basically making $200 a weekend in every city you go to you do that fifty weeks out of the year you have a $10,000,000 a year business that is recur you know that is gonna dominate one angle and I think you could upsell training and camps and the data and like there's a bunch of other things you could do on top of that but to me I can't believe this doesn't exist with the with the amount of money I see poured into youth sports I cannot believe there's not somebody that's doing the fitness testing the standardized testing the sats for athleticism that I cannot believe that nobody's built I really wanna be a part of this if somebody wants to do it I don't want I don't want the hustler to do it but if if somebody else has the time and hustle I really wanna be a part of that

Sam Parr

what sports do you want your kids to be good at every parent has this this

Shaan Puri

is a great question so there's there's two factors here one is what are the sports that I love so basketball and the second is what are the sports that I strategically would choose so yeah for example baseball out I'm out yeah my son I don't want him to know what a baseball glove looks like I I I don't even want him to see it why because he's gonna stand around for three hours I'm gonna sit around for three hours nothing's gonna happen that is like the worst sport for for for you know a kid to be in like that I just took my kid skiing great time not gonna double down in skiing skiing is like this weather dependent location dependent equipment dependent like injury

Sam Parr

prone dangerous too

Shaan Puri

expensive dangerous impossible to access sport and so I'm like I'm

Sam Parr

not skiing recently and I saw old people going down these hills and they go so fast yeah it's crazy to me I get it families have

Shaan Puri

fun together it's fine as a hobby it's fine as a family vacation I don't want my kids to be doing it as a sport soccer my kids love soccer right now and I hate it I wanna get them out of it but I can't do it yet they they love it too much but the idea of soccer where like dude nobody scores in soccer you can be like amazing and you're just not gonna score there's like there's no there's so little reward in soccer it's crazy

Sam Parr

I had

Shaan Puri

a friend once whose parents sat him down when he was like in seventh grade and they're like look the big four we're not doing it you guys don't have the raw athleticism to to succeed at the at the higher levels of this you wanna play varsity you wanna go to college it's not gonna happen may interest you in water polo may interest you in these these niche sports where you're not gonna compete against the best athletes so I think there's a strategic part to it too but of course whatever my kids like great but I'm gonna try to expose them to sports like tennis which I think is a great sport for the mind and body tennis is is is the one that that we're definitely going for basketball is another because I just know it so well and you know I I I love I I had such a good experience that I can't I can't say no to that one

Sam Parr

tennis is ours it's one of the only sports where the men and women like appear equal in terms of like status

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

and you could play it forever

Shaan Puri

you could play it forever the best athletes don't go into it like hard work is not as super athleticism dependent so like hard work takes you a long way there it's a well it's a individual sport or it could be a team sport depending on how you wanna do it there's a huge mental component to it like controlling your own psyche and being like both competitive but like you know there's feedback loop at every single? That you have to like recover from so I think there's a lot of good things that you get out of tennis also martial arts would be the other one that I think is is pretty cool for kids to be in for a. Of time

Sam Parr

yeah if I could wave a magic wand my kids would be very interested in tennis and then I wanna do some type of individual fitness sport so that could be wrestling martial arts track and field cross country swimming something where you have to like it's just you versus a clock and it's just totally objective and you just gotta grit through it and dedicate a lot of time and just put in the hours

Shaan Puri

did you play team sports growing up any

Sam Parr

like as a kid yeah and I was alright at it I was never like terribly I mean you've seen me like play sports I'm not like terribly coordinated but I always had attributes where I could just I could always jump and run and I was strong but I was never like good enough where I could like catch a ball and like learn how to like like the skill part never it it was always very hard for me you know I always looked like a giraffe I was always like like a dancing giraffe I wasn't very coordinated

Shaan Puri

alright that's it

Sam Parr

that's the pod