Two Millionaires on the Worst Mistakes They Made Early

- January 8, 2026 (2 months ago) • 01:11:37

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	Alright, it's a new year, but it's the same old us. We wanted to do something for you guys, so we're doing a mailbag of fan questions. People have written in questions, and we're going to answer them. You ready to jump in, Sam?
00:13	Sam Parr	Yeah.
00:19	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?"
00:28	Sam Parr	Man, I've got a great one for this. Tell me if your experience has been similar. I tend to hire ambitious young people, and I take chances on them. I hate to say it, but the majority of the time that is a horrible plan. It's significantly better to hire more experienced people and pay them a lot more money, and I get way better results.
00:49	Shaan Puri	So, when was this mistake? Is this like—I've been making this mistake forever? Or is this forever, man?
00:55	Sam Parr	Look — this is like my mistake. It's like the American Dream, you know: "Give me your broken, your weak, and your... ambitious young. I can fix him." Yes. I always want to do that because I'm so, you know, into the romantic idea of that. Just recently, in Hampton, we've hired significantly more experienced people. They cost two or three times more than a young, up-and-coming person, but the results are like five or ten times better. I get so emotional about this. People say, "Hire high-agency people," or hire those whose growth rate is really high. But in general it's just kind of better to say, "Hey — you already did this at that other company; do it here, please."
01:42	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 this wonderful video—this video application that was super funny and well done—and I was like, yes, this is my kind of guy. Young, green. He just graduated, but this video is amazing. I gotta talk to this guy. Talk to him. I like him. Good dude. Right before we hired him, we asked a very simple question: "We want this to go well, right? We want this to be great and we want this to work. So 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 lean in that direction?" As soon as we had that very simple sanity check—because I, like you, fall in love with the angel investing in people idea—I realized something. It's the whole thing of finding the raw up-and-comer who never done anything, finding the diamond in the rough. Why do I like that? Not for generous reasons. It's because I feel cool that I found that thing. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. But that strategy has a very low hit rate by definition. If it matters and there are people who have done it before—people who are way more proven in this category—why are you not going in that direction? I've definitely made that same mistake sometimes.
03:13	Sam Parr	It can work... and when. [trails off]
03:15	Shaan Puri	It does work. It's the best story.
03:16	Sam Parr	It's the best, but check this out: this strategy that I've been doing has been working well. I love hiring consultants and agencies, but I'll say, I'm only gonna hire you for two months. You're gonna do the work for the first 30 days, and then the second 30 days it's just you teaching me what to do. I've found value in getting a young, ambitious, high-agency, green person and teaming them up with an agency — I've had some results with that. But in general, just hiring more experienced people and paying them more money is typically the way to go. That sounds obvious, but that's the biggest mistake I've made.
03:52	Shaan Puri	"Well, most businesses are 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? In your case, your biases are like, I like to be cheap as hell when I build my companies. This was how you were before, with the hustle. At least it's like, "Of course—get the cheap office, get the free desk off Craigslist, our dog will be security." 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?" 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. So you gotta know your own biases."
04:36	Sam Parr	What about yours? Do you have one?</FormattedResponse>
04:38	Shaan Puri	I wrote "Project Selection." My theory—my theory is this: if you are hardworking and sufficiently talented, then the only variable that matters is the project—what project you pick to work on. If you're going to work really hard on it and you're talented, then either you're going to be a 10-out-of-10 person working on a 2-out-of-10 opportunity, or a 10-out-of-10 person working on a 10-out-of-10 opportunity. I think I have picked some real dog shit projects in the past. 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. By the way, that made no sense for me as a person to do. Second, 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.
05:31	Sam Parr	You tried to make us hit a social media app, which, frankly, you don't really use. You use Twitter, but seldom, to be honest, even though you're good at it. Secondly, you eventually made a streaming video game — or that's who your market was. Neither of us knows or plays video games, nor do we stream. </FormattedResponse>
05:47	Shaan Puri	I had never streamed a video game in my life. Dude, I made— I made a craft beer app for craft beer enthusiasts. Dude, I can't stand beer... like, you know, I don't like beer. It's gross; it makes me burp. So I just picked all these terrible projects that were a bad founder–market fit—just weak market opportunities in general, right? These were very, very poor projects. My e‑commerce brand I started is a clothing brand.
06:12	Sam Parr	You've seen you, me—love clothes.
06:14	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 ecommerce, fashion, apparel, and inventory—it's like, dude, one of the worst projects you can select. I think I've been stuck with just those projects I mentioned. And, by the way, those are just the ones I remember 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 [years]. So the majority of my professional life has been spent on really poor project selections. 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.
06:53	Sam Parr	"The good news is, Sean, that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, and you've taken enough swings that it's worked out."
06:59	Shaan Puri	I've talked before about the way that I know how to make money — about how to build a money-making skill and how to leverage your time and energy. 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. This is not "get rich quick" advice. It's just core, foundational principles about building wealth — things I wish I knew when I was just getting started. If you want to 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 of you. Alright, back to this episode. This is from Dan from LA.
07:36	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 Sarah's List episode. My wife currently works at Waymo, but it's time to jump to the next 5- to 10x company. I'm tired of waiting; throw a brother a bone. Give me one company that you think would be perfect for Sarah's List. Now, let's tell the listener: here's what Sarah's List is. My wife Sarah was looking for a new job and we came up with this idea: 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 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 10x 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 already a huge company; it was like an $18 billion company with, I forget, 4,000 people, and it grew to be, I think, a $100 billion company. Her, you know, $250,000-a-year stock grew to, like, a million dollars a year in stock, something like that. So Sean and I have made maybe three different lists where we predicted what the next Sarah's-List-style companies are, and we...
08:44	Shaan Puri	I love this because you want to be a millionaire—everybody does. I don't know; I haven't actually met anybody who doesn't want that. But not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. That's a huge risk. Not everybody has the winning idea. Not everybody wants to be the brilliant investor who finds the gem at an early price. This path was basically like: no, you're not the hotshot exec getting an insane package. You just join as a normal employee at a clearly good company that's already in a stable position. You're going to get health care, there are systems in place, and there's a nice office to go to. You didn't make any of those crazy sacrifices. But even if you had a $50,000-a-year stock grant... let's say your total comp was going to be $180k–$150k, and of that, $120k is cash and the rest is stock, and you get that every year for four years (a normal vesting cycle). Well, over those four years that $200,000 of stock could become $1,000,000 of stock just by the company naturally growing at the rate it's already growing. I thought, what a hack. When I heard that—when you said that Sarah did this and that—you guys were somewhat intentional about which company to pick to go to. She worked at Facebook, then Airbnb.
10:12	Sam Parr	The question is: why haven't we done this again? I have an answer, which is — and I think you're going to agree — it's so much harder to predict what the winners are right now. Compared to Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Rippling, and those software companies, they experienced fairly steady growth. With all these new AI companies, it's impossible to predict what's going to hit, and it's also impossible to predict whether they are actually going to have longevity or be sustainable.
10:36	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah.
10:37	Sam Parr	Yes.
10:37	Shaan Puri	The hot companies today are so proud to be the fastest growing—fastest to $100,000,000 in ARR. But did that happen in four months or five months? That's not the same sure footing you can stand on; it's not a stable foundation. By contrast, you can see companies that have been going for seven years, just compounding steadily. You can predict that the next seven years will probably be more compounding steadily. I do have an answer—do you have an answer for this for Dan from LA?
11:05	Sam Parr	My—okay, so it sounds so boring. There's probably two of them that I would predict. One of them—I heard Scott Galloway make the same argument, so I'm just stealing his. One was your old—your alma mater, Amazon. I do think that you can get incredibly wealthy. Amazon. Yeah.
11:22	Shaan Puri	That's a crazy pick, dude. They've been... is Amazon? What—what is Amazon?
11:26	Sam Parr	No — they've, they've underperformed the market. They've underperformed the market, and I... but
11:29	Shaan Puri	You're saying it's currently a $2,400,000,000,000 company (about $2.4 trillion), so you're saying it's going to be a $10,000,000,000,000 company (about $10 trillion) — the first ever?</FormattedResponse>
11:36	Sam Parr	Yeah, because I think that when I use my Alexa it's still so stupid... it doesn't understand AI. And when you use Amazon.com and search for stuff, the AI is still horrible.
11:47	Shaan Puri	Amazon is a wild pick.
11:48	Sam Parr	"I don't know. What else do you have?"
11:50	Shaan Puri	Okay — I have two for you. I thought there was one, a layup. We're both investors in this one company. I thought you were gonna say, "yeah."
11:56	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah — that one's pretty good.
11:57	Shaan Puri	Okay, so I'll give you mine, and then I'll get—then you can, you can use that one too.
12:02	Sam Parr	Don't. If their valuation is public, be careful what you say.
12:04	Shaan Puri	I think it is... it was okay. So, my pick would be Neuralink. Why Neuralink? Well, first: if you're going to join a company, maybe join the company associated with the greatest entrepreneur ever of all time — Elon Musk, undisputed at this. The "Elon index" of companies has performed at an absurd level: whether it's Tesla, SpaceX, or xAI, they've all delivered huge value. Neuralink is what's next. Neuralink is doing something that very few others are doing. There are maybe five competitors total in the world, and they're all far behind. What is Neuralink doing? They're putting chips in your brain that, today, help a quadriplegic person use a computer just with their thoughts. By the way, this isn't just a pie-in-the-sky idea. There's a guy you can watch streaming himself playing video games on Twitch using his mind as the controller — it's pretty insane. They've done it in monkeys, and I think in two humans so far. It's getting better and better and becoming less invasive. Also, [Elon Musk] just tweeted about a more surface-level implant they could do, rather than going so deep into the brain.
13:27	Sam Parr	Can you even work here? Like, can you go? How do you get a... what? </FormattedResponse>
13:31	Shaan Puri	It's a company.
13:33	Sam Parr	Is it okay?
13:33	Shaan Puri	So, Neuralink. I think when I initially said this on Sarah's List it was a $2 billion valuation. It's now $10 billion. So it's already had one Sarah's List jump of 5x. It's going to have another. This is going to be a huge company. If you think about computing: it went from desktop computers to laptops to mobile phones. The next step is probably some version of glasses or a watch — some version of that. After that comes the computer in your mind: attaching yourself to a computer so you can literally think and have access to the internet from your thoughts. Some people will say this is dystopian. Some will say they don't want it. But once the first people have the chip in their brains, you will be the equivalent of a turtle if you do not. So the game theory here is that we'll all end up with this, because if anyone does it they'll be a god among men.
14:26	Sam Parr	"Dude, you're like one of those guys. I think you don't like taking things. I'm going to make a prediction — you never said this: are you the type of guy who doesn't even like taking medicine?"
14:34	Shaan Puri	"I don't take much medicine, no."
14:35	Sam Parr	"That's what I thought."
14:36	Shaan Puri	Don't take any supplements. Don't take medicine.
14:38	Sam Parr	"That's exactly what I thought. The guy who doesn't even take medicine—like Advil or something—you're saying you're gonna be putting a brain chip in your brain?"
14:46	Shaan Puri	Again — you have to, right? Like, 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. It's attached to my body at all times. If I don't have my phone on me, I kinda panic. So it is, in some ways, already a third limb. But once this goes to the point where I can just have it in my mind... again, it's not really going to be that much of a choice, because the people who have it are going to be, like, "walking around like gods" compared to the people who don't. And, by the way, he's doing the Tesla model. The Tesla business plan was: first do the really expensive sports car — high cost, low production volume — sell it to rich enthusiasts who want something cool, a cool toy. Then the cool toy becomes more and more mainstream, and eventually you get to the Model 3, which is now a mainstream car. With Neuralink, he's doing it so that first it will solve problems for people who are quadriplegic. The next group he's going for is people who are blind — people who can really improve their quality of life. Eventually it'll get to... it's kind of like a phone: a consumer device we all just use for fun. 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.
16:03	Sam Parr	They have a careers page, which is cool. So the reason I was like, "Could you even apply to work there?" is because I had never seen their job openings. I thought it was a project; I didn't realize it was a proper company yet. If you go to the CEO's LinkedIn, he lists himself as "manager of a family office." But they do have a careers page. They're hiring for a bunch of roles in San Francisco, Fremont, and Austin. Their jobs page is pretty cool — it even 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, I'm on board.
16:31	Shaan Puri	There's a Content Creator role. There's a Junior Accounts Payable Specialist, right? You can work at these companies.
16:39	Sam Parr	Dude, I talked to a guy who worked at Facebook in PR. I think he said he was the 400th employee and he was in PR. He said that they did things—large companies like Amazon or HubSpot had this too—where you get a discount on the stock. I forget exactly, but they match it if you buy the stock or something like that as a perk, like $20 a year, nothing crazy. He told me he did that and just stayed for ten years, and he said he made $90,000,000. So if you're listening to this and you are an accounts payable person, this definitely looks cool. That is a thing.
17:12	Shaan Puri	Alright, I thought you were going to 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 $1 billion. I'll just tell you two things. One: when I got introduced to the investment for Owner, the person — my friend who introduced it — said, "By the way, this is... 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." I was like, "Okay — that's an incredibly strong recommendation." Within ten minutes the CEO emailed me. Now, this is normal: they'll say, "Hey, I'd love to set up a time to chat. Here's my calendar. Maybe we could grab coffee next week; we'd love to tell you about what we're doing." This guy Adam is a savage. He wrote, "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." Have you ever seen that slide that says: if they don't have revenue they'll talk about users? Or 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 or products and features; if they don't have features they'll talk about potential. It's basically the ladder of proof — what do you actually have? I can tell you what you have based on what you choose to reveal. Similarly, a founder that just says, "Here's the last three investor updates" — it was like, "Oh, let me just show you; I have a straight flush." Here are my cards. Investor updates tell you the numbers about the company. Because he sent me the last three, I knew the trajectory of how fast they're growing across those updates. I could see how the CEO communicates and what they care about — what their priorities are. So 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, we're crushing it. Here's another gigantic number. Here's how much growth we had just this quarter" — or just this month — instead of what most companies do in a year.
19:04	Sam Parr	And check this out: this guy Adam—I don't know how old he is. I think of him as, like, a 22-year-old.</FormattedResponse>
19:08	Shaan Puri	Old he was because I'm born in 1999.
19:11	Sam Parr	That's insane.
19:13	Shaan Puri	He was born during Y2K.
19:15	Sam Parr	One time he messaged me about his brother. He said, "My brother's looking for a project to do," and I thought he meant a kid. He said, "Yeah, he's a content creator," and then added that his brother has 30 million followers on TikTok. Then he wrote an update yesterday. I was reading it and he was explaining how the company was killing it, and he wrote, "We also had a little bit of churn in December and that really bothers me." At first I thought he was bothered because the product sucks, but he clarified that he was bothered because that churn likely meant those businesses went out of business. Their customer is small restaurants — it's an ordering platform for restaurants — and he said the churn in December was because those restaurants tend to go out of business around the end of the year. I read that line and thought it was pretty cool because he's kind of a terminator: he goes through each category of the company and reports performance, constantly showing how they met or exceeded their targets. For example: > "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." At the end he acknowledged the bad news: "We did have some churn." Then he added, "That devastates me. I'm so saddened that these guys..." That final sentiment — his genuine sadness about the small restaurants — was really cool.
20:25	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I ignored that. I was like, "I'm just gonna think this guy's a terminator." I'm not even going to think of the human side of this—that he actually cares too, because, you know, you can't have both. Also, yeah, this guy seems very likable. He can't just have everything. I refuse to accept that. </FormattedResponse>
20:40	Sam Parr	Let's do another question. Which one do you want to go to?</FormattedResponse>
20:43	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. 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. 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
21:07	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 want to shut up and quietly build for the next decade and keep on trucking. Maybe after 10 years I'll come out and reveal some more information. But yeah, it's done really well.
21:24	Shaan Puri	There you go. All right, good job, Alex. You — you put Sam on the hot seat. All right, next one. I just watched the Jesse Itza episode, and Sean playing the piano had me kinda wowed. It's nuts what you can do in a year. If that was your misogi for 2025, what is each of yours for 2026? Dave from Mexico City — yeah, put some respect on an American living in CDMX... I don't even know what that is, CDMX, whatever that is.
21:44	Sam Parr	"That's Mexico City, you hillbilly. That's Mexico City."
21:48	Shaan Puri	CDMX — how does that stand for "Mexico City"?
21:51	Sam Parr	I think it's some Spanish — I don't know. It's a Spanish way of saying "I don't know." The city of Dave, sorry. </FormattedResponse>
22:03	Shaan Puri	Dave didn't pronounce.
22:04	Sam Parr	"You're correct, Dave. I—I speak Spanish, too."
22:09	Shaan Puri	Alright. So, by the way, did you have a misogi in 2025? Did you do that?
22:13	Sam Parr	Yeah, I trained for a misogi. Here's the thing: people forget that a misogi is 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, fucking, got hurt and destroyed my Achilles. I couldn't do it. I trained for it, and I failed.
22:30	Shaan Puri	Okay.
22:31	Sam Parr	Now let me recap something. Two days ago, Sean put out a video of him going to Jesse Itzler's house. You prefaced it by telling him what you did. So basically: Jesse Itzler — friend of the pod [podcast], amazing guy — you flew to his house in Atlanta. It seemed planned, but it was very spontaneous: you played piano for him and his wife, Sara 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 they're like, "You inspired me because you played this beautiful song and people were literally in tears." Earlier this year you said you were going to start playing piano. I'm pretty sure you've been playing piano for years and years; you did not just pick this up from scratch.
23:15	Shaan Puri	No, I haven't been playing for years and years. I did as a kid. My parents bought 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. By the time—I'm like 38 now—I had forgotten everything. So when I started this year, I started from scratch. But yes, technically, when I... [sentence trails off]
23:36	Sam Parr	"I remember you. I remember us being somewhere and seeing a piano. You sat down, and I thought you played a song."
23:44	Shaan Puri	I did know how to play two things on the piano. I knew the intro to James Bond's "GoldenEye" — the one-hand kind of thing — and I think I also knew the beginning of Für Elise, which is a classic piano piece, through muscle memory. I couldn't read sheet music. I didn't know the notes or what the keys were called. I had just memorized the patterns because, at some point, my sister or somebody had shown me, "push white, white, black, black, white, black," and that'll sound like James Bond. That was the level I was at.
24:25	Sam Parr	Well, it was very good. Okay. So the question was—what was the question? "What's your massogi gonna be this year?"
24:31	Shaan Puri	"What's it gonna be this year for each of us?"
24:32	Sam Parr	Do you have one?
24:34	Shaan Puri	I have one—I'm trying to figure out the exact way to frame it—but I think I told you this: I deleted all my social media apps. All the consumption. I said, "I'm going to go dark in terms of consuming." I basically asked myself: how do I trade consuming stuff that people put twenty seconds of thought into—like a tweet—for doing things that people put twenty years of thought into, which is books? So I deleted Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook... all those apps. Now, if I open my phone to kill boredom, I have to open Kindle. It's like the only thing left to do on my phone. I basically made a list: "Alright, here's the 26 for 2026"—the 26 books I want to read in 2026. I have kind of a hit list. These are books I've probably owned for years, thought about reading, heard really good things about, but hadn't actually read. I started that a couple weeks ago, and it's going well. The only other thing that might count here is a life-bucket-list idea: coaching a high school basketball team—walking away from business, not focusing on business for a season (which is three months). I started that last month; our season goes till February. Basically, there's a local high school basketball team and I've become an assistant coach. We want to go to the state tournament and win—that's the goal.
26:02	Sam Parr	I know your first game—you got spanked. I think you said the second game went better.</FormattedResponse>
26:06	Shaan Puri	Yeah, we are. Yes. What are we now, 6–3? So, no — we're doing all right. We're getting better as a team, and right now it's all about: can we improve? But I'm basically spending... I don't know. I'm going to practices and games, you know, about 4 days a week. It's just me: I get my coach's whistle and my little whiteboard and I drive to this high school. Then it's just — I'm doing it. I'm doing the actual thing. I'm coaching this high school basketball team. I'm an assistant coach; I'm not the head coach.
26:36	Sam Parr	I have a two-year-old girl and a two-month-old little girl, and I had underestimated how difficult it would be. Even though I have grandparents around and people helping out, and my wife is running the show, I underestimated how challenging it was. 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 6 a.m. I've always been, ever since I got into fitness, pretty good at maintaining a fairly fit state. Right now I'm at the lowest point of that "fairly fit" era, so I just need to eat my protein, go to bed early, and wake up early. It's rudimentary, but it has had the biggest impact on my day's productivity. I don't really want to set a big goal right now because I am kind of hanging on.
27:31	Shaan Puri	Yeah. Although 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 are seasons where you're in recovery mode. There are seasons where you're in, you know, nesting mode, where you're just like: > "Look, all that matters is protecting the nest because there are these baby eggs here right now, and that's all that really matters. I don't need to distract myself with a random hunt over here; I need to stay at the nest." So I think knowing the season 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 when you're so wired toward achievement of random goals.
28:23	Sam Parr	You didn't do a good job of warning me, though — you should have warned me. I didn't realize how challenging this would be.
28:29	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. Yeah, I did.
28:35	Sam Parr	I don't understand. Sometimes it feels like my wife is my roommate. I barely have gotten to know my little girl because of my new baby—because I'm with the eldest. So it's my job to take care of her, and you have to take her out of the house because she's going to grab the pacifier out of her mouth, you know what I mean? </FormattedResponse>
28:51	Shaan Puri	It's definitely a second-baby blindside for dads. The first baby is the one you think everything's going to change and it's going to be like, "Oh my God, my life's going to get really crazy." And then it's like, "It's alright — I got this." This is not so.
29:02	Sam Parr	Life's different, but not crazy.
29:03	Shaan Puri	So you get this false sense of security, and then when the second baby comes it's like... nobody — you had already given up. You'd already stopped worrying about it, in a way. The second one is the blindside, especially for the dad. For the mom, who you didn't realize how much she was carrying the team, now she has to focus on the new baby. That means the existing kid is your kid, and all of their needs and all of their time are on your clock. That is a big wake-up call.
29:33	Sam Parr	Just getting her socks on — that can be an ordeal. These small things that I used to dismiss... frankly, I'm not drowning, but my cup is a bit full.
29:46	Shaan Puri	Alright, here's another question. So this — 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 U.S., brother? In all seriousness, what is the "F U money" purchase that you want if this is a home run? This is Tarek from the Bay — I guess that's the Bay Area.
30:11	Sam Parr	So when I moved to New York City, I got this really big, nice apartment, and I love it. I've gotten so much joy having family come and stay and be comfortable that I have my eyes set on something. Over the next couple of years, I want to buy a huge, lavish apartment — like a $15,000,000 or $25,000,000 place. That is something I definitely want. But more than anything, I saw this photo — a 15...
30:36	Shaan Puri	"Or a $20,000,000 apartment is your goal?" "Yeah, yeah. Why an apartment? If $5,020,000,000, shouldn't you be getting, like, a city block?"
30:44	Sam Parr	No, brother. It sucks.
30:46	Shaan Puri	One of the brownstones, at least, is like an apartment.
30:50	Sam Parr	I don't want a brownstone. I've rented one before, and I don't like them. I like having a doorman.
30:54	Shaan Puri	"What's the dream building? Is there a dream building in New York that's the cool one to be in?"
30:58	Sam Parr	Well, it's different flavors. There's this thing called Billionaires' Row, and it's right next to Central Park. That's where a lot of the really rich tycoons live—Bill Ackman lives there. A fancy apartment there can be $100 million. 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 opulent. I mean, anything that's $20 million is opulent, but those are the "master of the world" type of apartments—clean and cool looking. What I'm really working toward is something different. I don't like Donald Trump, but I saw this photo of him working in his office: he'd just left a meeting with a bunch of his employees, and his wife and two boys—Don Jr. and the other son—came up to him while he was working. The cool part was that they lived in the same building—he owned the building—and they lived where he worked. The kids could see him working, and he was able to do things with them. It was a total life integration, work–life integration. That's my dream. That's really what I'm working toward. I really want to do that.
32:03	Shaan Puri	"Wow. I never took you, Sam, to be the penthouse kind of guy."
32:07	Sam Parr	I'm not a penthouse type of guy, but I guess I am. I just said I wanted to buy a penthouse.
32:11	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I think—you just said, "That's your dream."
32:12	Sam Parr	Yeah, I think by definition.
32:13	Shaan Puri	You're like, "I'm not."
32:14	Sam Parr	A penthouse.
32:14	Shaan Puri	Type of guy. Yet, we used to have this funny thing on the pod where it was like, "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. What are you doing, telling the truth over here, bro?
32:37	Sam Parr	You know what? It's rooted. It just so happens that I live in Manhattan, but really—if I lived in, let's say, Louis, Missouri—I would say: "I want the fattest house in the cul-de-sac that has a soccer goal in the back, a basketball goal, and all the kids play in my yard." That's really what it's worth doing. It just so happens that I live... yeah.
32:54	Shaan Puri	"Sounds so much better."
32:55	Sam Parr	Just so happens that I live in Manhattan. In order to do that, you have to spend $20,000,000.
32:58	Shaan Puri	By the way, this Gary Vee "buying the Jets" thing—I've talked about this before. To me, this is like a master class in personal brand. I always say for a personal brand you want the five D's. One of the D's is "what's the dream?" If your dream is, "I want to make so much money—I'm going to be a billionaire," it just sounds greedy. What Gary did, which is brilliant, is say, "I want to buy the Jets." There's a lot of brilliance here: it gives him the air cover to pursue a bunch of money without seeming greedy. He didn't say, "I want to buy the Yankees." He wanted to buy this lovable loser—his childhood team, the New York Jets—that's never done anything, and try to turn them around. So there's a nobility to the mission and a likability to it. It's a turnaround project; everybody likes an underdog deal. It's something a lot of people remember about him—something he dreams of doing. I think Gary doing that is yet another example of him really understanding marketing and personal brand.
33:55	Sam Parr	So, Sean and I like the UFC. After every fight, Dana White does a press conference and he lists, like, five or ten stats: who got Fight of the Night, who got the bonus, and then one stat he always lists is how much money they made at the gate. It's supposed to mean "this is how many fans came to the fight," but the tickets aren't cheap. I went recently and bad seats were like $800. It's pretty funny that he's using that stat as, "Look how many people are coming." It's like, "Dude, no — this is how you're just charging so much for a ticket, and you're bragging." It's sort of like what Gary says. I've noticed in Gary's videos people will be like, "Hell, 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."
34:45	Shaan Puri	"Million net worth—450 million in net worth. Yeah, you know what I mean?"
34:50	Sam Parr	Alright, let's do another question. Or do you have one of these, Sean?</FormattedResponse>
34:54	Shaan Puri	I don't—do I have it? It's gotta be authentic, right? So, I don't actually have one. To me, I'm like: I bought back my time. That was the first, important purchase—buying my own time back, buying my freedom. After that, you invest in health. I got a trainer, I got a chef—I'm doing everything I can for health, for me and my family. After that... I don't know. I guess it'd be fun experiences. I don't really have a burning desire to purchase some really expensive thing. Morgan Housel wrote something in his book that really resonated with me. He says: > "There are two ways to use money. Number one is as a tool to improve the quality of your life..." I nodded—yeah, that makes sense. That's buying your time, hiring a nanny, getting a personal trainer, or something like that. "...and the other is as a measuring stick." I realized that all the big-money purchases—the things that require tons and tons of money—tend to be measuring-stick things. I've almost run out of money-as-a-tool-to-improve-my-life ideas. I've done a lot of the big ones. So I guess I don't really want to switch into that gear of using money as a measuring stick.
36:03	Sam Parr	Yeah.
36:05	Shaan Puri	"But you enjoy that penthouse, Sam?" "Yeah. I'm sure people will think you're very cool." "Alright, let's go to the next question."
36:13	Sam Parr	Do you remember the kid's house when you were younger? The one with the open door, like a campus where everyone could just hang out? Yeah. I've aspired to be that forever. It just so happens 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 I missed? So when Sean started MFM, the first 50 episodes—maybe a lot of people don't realize this—MFM is now like some number between 700 and 800 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 I came on, it was just like 5,000 people listening. We basically just talked about our friends, and so for the OGs, or they would...
37:09	Shaan Puri	We had them on and were like, "Hey, what's up? What are you up to?" You know, that sort of deal.
37:13	Sam Parr	Before, we were chasing clout. We were just hanging out with our buds.
37:17	Shaan Puri	Once we figured out the YouTube algorithm, things changed. But before that, we invited our friends on the pod a lot.</FormattedResponse>
37:22	Sam Parr	Okay, let's do an update. So, Sully, do you want to talk about Sully?
37:26	Shaan Puri	Okay. Sully is Suleiman Ali. He's one of our friends and one of my best buddies. There's a question later that I think will be a good explanation of who Sully is. He's an entrepreneur. He built a company called TinyCo, which was like mobile games — think Candy Crush. He licensed the IP for Family Guy, so he made the Family Guy mobile game, the Harry Potter mobile game — those types of things. He sold TinyCo for a bunch of money — nine figures. He then helped his brother start and sell Native deodorant. The Ali brothers are prolific, and they've both been on the podcast. Sully did something I really respect and admire: he was able to understand what matters. He's in his forties and had been super successful. When you're successful, winners have options. You get deals put on your plate every day — things you could invest in and make a bunch of money. You have people who want to come work for you and start companies with you. You gain more knowledge about how to win in the game of business. It's very tempting to keep chasing more success because success feels great and you're good at it. There might be other areas of your life where you aren't getting that same feedback loop of "I'm awesome" and "my results are awesome." 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. The first thing he did was start working out religiously every day. I started asking, "Hey, what are you working on today?" He said, "I don't know, but I scheduled my workout. That's the most important thing that I do."
39:00	Sam Parr	Dude, he takes more workout classes than a 23-year-old Manhattanite woman who works in PR.
39:06	Shaan Puri	He takes the same classes that she takes, also.
39:09	Sam Parr	He introduced me to Rumble Boxing, and I think my boot camp... he </FormattedResponse>
39:16	Shaan Puri	He loves the classes, started doing that, and then he was like, “I want to have kids—that's the next chapter.” He just had a kid and 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, but 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 at your tap and thought, “I don't want to drink tap water; I want clean water. I don't want water that has heavy metals or chemicals in it,” you're not alone. A lot of people don't even know the water supply in most cities is very interlinked with the sewage system—it's a pretty gross thing to drink tap water. Yet we all bathe in tap water and put it all over our naked bodies. Ramon has built a company around clean water for the home. He started with a filtered shower head—how do you shower in water that's going to be clean for your skin and good for your hair? The product is called Afina, and he's expanding into other categories for clean water in the home. Ramon has basically gone back to what he knows best: how to sell stuff online, but he's moved to more noble things. When he first came on the podcast, he was selling essentially soap‑opera spoilers—like what's going to happen tomorrow on The Young and the Restless. He sold that company for like $9 or $10 million. It was a blog, basically a soap‑opera spoilers blog.
40:43	Sam Parr	The Opera blog — it was only two years old — sold for $10,000,000 when we talked about it. This was, like, such...
40:48	Shaan Puri	A viral 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. Now he's selling things that actually improve people's lives a little bit more than the "soap opera spoiler." So that's Ramon right now. </FormattedResponse>
41:03	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 million. He also started a dog-ramp company called Sausage Dog Central, so dachshunds could use a ramp to get up into an SUV. Insane. It grew to $18 million. Now he's doing Afina, and he's a single dad. His son's about to go to college — his kid is like the most well-mannered, well-behaved kid. That's probably the best thing he's ever done. Imagine: he's been a single parent since his boy was two years old, and now his kid is still thriving. Jack Smith — Jack Smith is our buddy. On paper, he basically sold his company at the age of 29 or 28 for $850 million. It was called Vungle. Now the intangibles: if you meet Jack Smith, he's very quiet. 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 like to play on computers." He won't tell you more. In terms of what you said, Sean, about people wanting to flex — he is the most non-flexing person I've ever met in my life. He's very special, one of my best friends. He now lives in Portugal. 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.
42:25	Shaan Puri	"It's like digital detox meditation, right?"
42:28	Sam Parr	Yeah. So he bought 50 acres of land. Check this out: he has a mobile home that he mostly lives in and this little... I think he has a house that he now— I think they've rented a house nearby. But for a little while they were living in a tiny home: him, his kid, and his wife. He and his wife are both tycoons — they're both incredibly successful people, and they live very, very modest lives. They're dedicating everything right now to building a retreat so people can get into, I don't know, whatever you do when you meditate: self-awareness, calmness... yeah, whatever. Those don't like you either, dude.
43:07	Shaan Puri	Alright, yeah. I got one that's a tactical, practical business question. 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."
43:44	Sam Parr	Have you read... I think it's called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield?
43:49	Shaan Puri	War of Art
43:50	Sam Parr	I was reading The War of Art, and he talks about the difference between an amateur and a professional. An amateur might say they have "writer's block" or that their creativity just hasn't come to them. A professional, on the other hand, sits down the same day and gets to work. They write regardless of how they feel; their emotions that day don't impact their work. They go to work because they're a professional. The things I've noticed that hold a lot of people back are when they think about making money—or, in Ben's case, or sorry, Sam's case—about what to do next. I think they don't think of themselves as company builders. When you're thinking about what to do next, you have to ask: How do I get enough traction to hire people, create a team, and build a proper company with a culture that solves a problem and has recurring customers? I've noticed this especially with a lot of real estate agents, because they're often one-off people—it's a one-person business, often with just an assistant. I have a bone to pick 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. That's a somewhat vague term, but to me it means employees who are all working together on a mission, creating an asset that has significant value—not just something that pays your salary.
45:12	Shaan Puri	So are you suggesting he take his current job—where he puts in hours and gets a commission from selling homes—and start to think, "Why don't I turn this into more of a brokerage? Why don't I create a real estate team?" "We're not gonna sell... I sell 20 homes a year, but we could sell—why couldn't we sell 300—if I were 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?"
45:39	Sam Parr	John Rockefeller, who I think is the best businessman ever, famously said, "I'd rather have 1% effort from 100 people than a 100% effort from me." I think that is true. The name of the game in creating a lot of value—something sustainable—is to create something that involves getting other people organized and having them do a lot of the work. That sounds very simplistic, but I don't think that's how a lot of people think about it.
46:05	Shaan Puri	Yeah. My answer would be: it's kind of like eating late at night—are you hungry or are you just bored? A lot of what people think is hunger is actually boredom. Similarly, I think Sam wants to do something different. He's basically saying, "I've been a successful realtor for a long time, but I'm ready to buy a franchise, flip houses, go do something completely different." But you should first question the initial assumption. You basically said, "I'm making $300,000 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, many brokers have productized themselves or made a company or team out of what they were doing and scaled it. That would be the first instinct. My general advice for anyone trying to figure out what to do next is: go talk to 20 people. The goal is to work backwards from a specific idea, not forwards from uncertainty. What I mean is: go talk to 20 people who you think are having success in one way or another. That means talking to friends or friends-of-friends, or local business owners. Once you realize everything around you is a product made by a business, you can find the owner and either chat with them or study what they do from afar. Find people who have similar backgrounds to you—other realtors who pivoted and did something bigger. What did they do? You're searching for a blueprint you can copy-paste for yourself. Of course you'll tweak it as you go, but steal like an artist: find something that already works and work backwards from that. If you're considering buying a franchise, go talk to 20 franchisees and see whether you want the life they have. Ask yourself whether you want the inputs of their life, not just the output. Everybody wants success, but do you want to do the things they have to do to get that success? Does that sound like fun to you? Does it play to your strengths? Is that the type of work you want to sign up for 3,000 times? Those are questions you have to ask yourself. Look for blueprints. Start with people like you—what did they do? Then maybe go further out on the "weirdness" scale and explore other things. Once you look at those blueprints, something will probably scream out at you: "Some combination of that looks fun to try. I think I could do that. I like the lifestyle that comes with it." That will give you more direction. People often think they need to be original in business. Instead, you should largely look for existing blueprints that many people have followed and ask: do I want to do one of those?
48:50	Sam Parr	Do you know this guy, Sam?
48:52	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. Talked to him a bunch. This is Ben's brother.
48:56	Sam Parr	Well, guess we're going to have to follow up.
48:57	Shaan Puri	Oh, there's one other thing that is specific to Ben's brother that is a challenge for him: he doesn't make time to search. Every time I talk to him I'm like, "Great — what are you thinking about now?" and he's like, "I've made so little progress in that time." The reason why is because he's got his job, and then he also bought into a restaurant — he owns a piece of it. He spends a bunch of time trying to make sure the restaurant doesn't fail, because he doesn't want it to fail. I'm like, "So how much time are you dedicating to this?" He's like, "Oh, like, you know, whenever I have free time." I ask, "How much free time you got?" He says, "Not a lot." So I think if you want to actually make a change you need to first clear your plate a little bit and create some space to actually work on the thing. Work on the thing in dedicated, religious time — time that's as sacred as your work, as sacred as going to the gym, as sacred as other things you make time for. For him, he's got to find, you know, two or three hours a day that he's going to spend on this and specifically mark it off on his calendar. Be like, "I might sell fewer 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 in the extra time they have... and the truth is, you don't have extra time. </FormattedResponse>
50:07	Sam Parr	"That's a great, great answer. Can I pick the last one?"
50:10	Shaan Puri	Yeah, go for it.
50:11	Sam Parr	This is hilarious. This is a great one. So, this is from Peter Jay: > "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 want to get arrested just to feel the rush of that one phone call—when they place the phone, 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 is... great, great. </FormattedResponse>
50:43	Shaan Puri	Question — Peter Jay
50:44	Sam Parr	Yes. Do you? I—I definitely have one. Do you?
50:46	Shaan Puri	"I have one. You go first."
50:48	Sam Parr	Do you know who Barry Diller is? Barry Diller's the founder of IAC. You know, he's like a "deal maker"... whatever that phrase is supposed...</FormattedResponse>
50:55	Shaan Puri	Too... he's my phone call. Isn't he, like, 85?</FormattedResponse>
50:57	Sam Parr	He's not my phone call; he's a guy who kind of knows everyone. He owns this huge conglomerate and he's a little bit of a business savant when it comes to numbers—a little bit like Ari Emanuel. He just kind of knows deals, he spots value, and he organizes people around it. Austin Rief is one of those guys. At age 30, Austin Rief is one of my best friends. Austin Rief started a company called Morning Brew. I had a company called The Hustle—both daily business newsletters. They were a little bit more finance-focused; we were more entrepreneurial and tech. When we were both getting going, I hated him. I wanted to kill him—not because of him personally, but because we were competitors. We both sold our companies and we were in the same core group in the Hamptons [core friend group]. 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. He is probably the smartest business person I've ever met because, first, I do think he is genius-level—I'm pretty sure he got a perfect score on the SATs. Second, he approaches things with the perfect balance: something must have soul—you must love it and be passionate—but for any problem I have he's very good at removing the passion, energy, and emotion from the logistics. He's very pragmatic. He's the best person I've ever experienced when it comes to asking advice on a certain issue. He sounds very similar, honestly, to Sully.
52:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's a great one. My answer is Sully — no secret here. My rule for the person you would call: if you think about the jail phone call, you 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." You want the person, when you come to them with your personal-life problem, to make it their personal-life problem. Sully is like that. He had a friend from high school who was a dentist, I think. He hadn't talked to him in several years, and the friend said, "Hey, you know, I know you're in the business world — we've gone our separate ways since high school, but I'm trying to sell my practice. Any tips for me?" Sully flew out there and made it his mission to help his friend sell his dental practice and achieve this incredible outcome.
53:03	Sam Parr	When was this?
53:04	Shaan Puri	This is from a couple years ago — two years ago I made it.
53:06	Sam Parr	"That's incredible."
53:07	Shaan Puri	And so, second, they need to be wiser than me. I want you to have seen ten times more data points and be better at putting those data points together 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‑free in my head afterwards, which is what I have now. If I'm— I don't even need to call him anymore. It's just, "What would Sully say?" "Oh, he'd say this." Okay, I'm just going to do that thing. That's as simple as it's become. I spent enough time with him to know what he would say in ninety percent of these situations.
53:39	Sam Parr	Can I give you two fun facts about calling people from jail? I used to be a problematic person and had to experience this a couple of times. The first thing I realized — and people learn this the second time they go to jail — is that you have to write down the phone number of the person you want to call on your hand.
53:57	Shaan Puri	Because you.
53:57	Sam Parr	I don't remember any. Yeah.
53:58	Shaan Puri	Don't know anyone's phone number, you don't.</FormattedResponse>
53:59	Sam Parr	So the second time I did this—when I was getting arrested—I looked at my buddy and said: > "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 the yellow pages/white pages. The bad part—this might be different now; thank God I haven't had to experience this in over a decade—is that most cell phones don't accept collect calls. </FormattedResponse>
54:24	Shaan Puri	"So you just hit a dead end right away?"
54:26	Sam Parr	"Dead end. Dead end. So you have to figure out how to make it work."
54:29	Shaan Puri	"You gotta call someone with a landline who happens to be at home."
54:32	Sam Parr	I just googled it. I think Verizon accepts it, but most do not.
54:38	Shaan Puri	"That's ridiculous."
54:39	Sam Parr	Maybe it has changed, but the...
54:41	Shaan Puri	Also—a lot, most of my friends, 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.
54:48	Sam Parr	It usually says it. It'll say, like, Bay Area or Sacramento County Correctional, or something like that. Do you know—what's crazy? I think one in five American men have been arrested at least once. Do you have any friends besides me who have been arrested?
55:06	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, of course."
55:08	Sam Parr	Good.
55:09	Shaan Puri	You have friends in dark places. I'm going to give you two times that Sully was on 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 were debating whether to take it or not. We were spinning in circles—writing pros and cons lists about why we would sell, why we shouldn't, or that we should sell only at a certain price. Is this enough? Is that enough? It was so confusing. We were tied up in a knot. So we called Sully. He listened to us for five minutes and then said: > "Put away the pros and cons list. Listen: you're selling your company. Do you want to sell your company or not? You should have a visceral gut reaction when I say 'you're selling your company.' Either that gut reaction is yes or it's no. If you don't know, don't do anything. You don't need to make any decisions here." Just simplifying it to needing a visceral gut reaction made it very clear to me what I wanted to do. I wanted to sell the business. That was the first time—lots of clarity in a very short amount of time. The second time was with my e-commerce business. I said, "Hey, you know a ton about e-commerce—your brother built Native deodorant, you helped him with that, and you've done e-commerce yourself. Can you help me with strategy? Can we do a call where I pick your brain on growth strategy?" I showed up ready to have a strategy talk. Five minutes before the meeting, Sully shared a Google Doc with me. The doc was a list of 40 shitty things about our funnel: our website, our email pop-ups, our welcome email flow, our SMS sequence, our Facebook ad copy. He had just gone through everything and written 40 things we were doing that could probably be done better. Then he said: > "This is the strategy. Look at your product, figure out everything that sucks, fix it, then do this again in two weeks. Do it again and again until there aren't that many things that suck anymore." That really shook me. I thought he was going to say something brilliant, but no—he just drilled into the details and asked why we were doing things a certain way. He pointed out things like: "This took three seconds to load—make that faster," "This is the wrong photo for this—put that photo up here," "This copy is weak—let's find better copy," and so on.
57:51	Sam Parr	Dude, the smart people I've noticed—or the people I admire—tend to be like... I don't know if he would fall in this category, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's, in the traditional sense, genius-level IQ, like a perfect score on the standardized-test type of thing. But they're also really good at just kind of being a caveman.
58:10	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's the midwit meme, yeah.
58:12	Sam Parr	He's incredibly brilliant. I've seen him talk about financial instruments in a very sophisticated way that I didn't entirely understand. It was as if he had read a textbook on it—particularly when you talk to him about tax structures and things like that. It's as if he had literally read the tax code. He's also given me straightforward advice. He'll ask, "Why aren't you doing this?" and I'll give some answer, and he'll say, "Well, do you want to sell?" I think, "Yes." He replies, "Okay, sell." He's done that with me many times. It's these rudimentary, almost childlike suggestions—honestly, like a child: you should do this because you want to do this.
58:54	Shaan Puri	There was a meeting I had with the now-CEO of Twitch. When I was at Twitch, we got acquired and this guy became my boss. His name is Dan Clancy. I went into Dan's office and he asked me some questions. He told me he was the new Chief Product Officer at the time (now he's CEO), and then said, "I want to tell you a little bit about how I work, how I operate. The first hundred days I'm just going to ask a lot of questions. I want to go meet people at the front lines, not talk to managers" — the usual first-hundred-days stuff. Then he said, "From there you'll see me work like this," took a marker, and drew on the whiteboard. He explained: > "Do you know what a sine wave is?" > > "It's this smooth, round thing." > > "A square curve looks like this." > [He drew a straight, flat line.] > > "I'll spend a lot of time at the 10,000-foot level — basically figuring out big-picture priorities: what matters, what are the three things we need to do to win, where are the key levers, what do we have to get right, what makes this whole thing work. I'll spend a bunch of time here, and then as soon as I find some problem I go straight down all the way to a level of depth that you will find confusing and amusing. You'll wonder, 'Why does he care about the pixels and the color and the copy and this and that?' Can I stay there for a little bit? And then I go back up. This is how I work. I will be at the 10,000-foot level, I'll drop down to 10 centimeters, I'll stay there, I'll go back to 10,000 feet, I'll stay there." Ever since I saw that, I realized — oh, this is what Paul Graham and those people meant when they said "founder mode." 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 dive down into the absolute simplest details of the problematic areas, roll up your sleeves, solve the problem side by side with the team, and then go back up for air.
01:01:04	Sam Parr	"Would this guy want to come on MFM?"
01:01:07	Shaan Puri	Yeah, we should have Dan on — that'd be fun.
01:01:09	Sam Parr	Actually, for you guys who are listening, you gotta Google this guy. First of all, he does not look like the CEO of Twitch. You would think—like, I would think he'd be a "Red Bull-looking" bro. This guy looks like he's 61; he looks like he's...
01:01:28	Shaan Puri	Got all the T-shirts from, like, the Grateful Dead tours.
01:01:31	Sam Parr	Yeah — he looks… wise, just because he looks older than the average Twitch user. He has long white hair and a goatee. He looks like he should be studying philosophy or giving a lecture on Man's Search for Meaning, but he's a Twitch guy. This is so fascinating to me. This guy looks awesome; I'd love to hang out with him.
01:01:51	Shaan Puri	He’s very wise. I remember once we had a one-on-one career talk. I had just been acquired into the company. My career plan at Twitch was: “earn this vest check and get the hell out of here.” That was the general mindset. I wasn't trying to think about my ten-year career at Twitch — that would be losing. I walked in wondering, What am I going to say? Do I need to fake the funk and tell this guy, “I really want this promotion, and in ten years I see myself here as a senior VP,” — when that wasn't true? Am I going to lie, or tell him the truth? And then would he be like, “F this kid,” and check out on me because I was checked out long-term at Twitch? Short-term, I was going to try, but long-term I wasn't going to be there. So I told him the truth: “Yeah, long-term I'm not here.” He goes, “Okay, great. So we don't need to worry about this pile of stuff. Tell me, what is it that you do want to do?” I started telling him something I'd told many people before: I wanted to start a university someday, and I laid out a very logical plan — first I need to do this, then get the capital, the network, and the skills. Those three things are the core components you need to pull this off. He just looked at me and said, “Yeah, I don't buy any of that.” I was like, “Oh shit, okay.” Someone who can call bullshit is generally someone you want as a friend. He said, “I don't believe in the deferred life plan. I don't believe you need to do all these prerequisites to go do the thing you want to do. More often, you're better served just going and doing the thing you really want to do. If you don't really want to do it, just say you don't want to do it, figure out what you do want to do, and go do that instead.” He just immediately cut through the BS. I had maybe ten interactions like this with him where I'd go into his office and come out with a nugget of wisdom that shifted the way I think. He's been around and done a lot of things — he worked early at Google, worked directly with Larry, and Sundar [Pichai] was a peer of his at the time. I was in that circle of up-and-comers who might be the CEO of Google one day — that's who this guy is.
01:03:59	Sam Parr	I just think it's funny to imagine this guy having a meeting, unlike IShowSpeed.
01:04:04	Shaan Puri	Well, he's gone on his stream. There are videos of him going and hanging out with other streamers and appearing on their streams. That's why it's funny — it is a fish out of water for sure. Props to him for doing it, because it would be pretty easy to just retreat to the ivory tower and try to be this kind of corporate person behind the scenes. Instead he's like, "No — I'm gonna do this."
01:04:23	Sam Parr	Dan, if this makes it to you, we would love to have you on. I know I'm personally trying to learn how to be a proper CEO, and 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 want to know what he thought of you, Sean.
01:04:38	Shaan Puri	I also want to do one more. 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." I have one for this. I don't know if any ideas come to you initially for this.
01:05:02	Sam Parr	"You're going to laugh at mine."
01:05:04	Shaan Puri	"What's yours?"
01:05:05	Sam Parr	So, I like hardware just as a fan. I like gadgets. I don't know anything about them, but people thought I was joking about making a really good washer and dryer. That's one. I've seen Matic. Have you seen Matic? It's like a new Roomba [robot vacuum].
01:05:23	Shaan Puri	New Roomba, yeah.
01:05:24	Sam Parr	It's a $1,000 Roomba that I absolutely love. We've seen companies like Figr, you know, with robots — that kind of fits the stereotype of these big things. But we've seen Nest; I've seen all these really cool gadget companies.
01:05:35	Shaan Puri	All gadgets.
01:05:36	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah. Like the Dyson — they've got a good...
01:05:38	Shaan Puri	A job with June Oven. It's like this fancy convection oven.
01:05:41	Sam Parr	And not all of them... June hasn't totally hit.
01:05:44	Shaan Puri	I think it failed.
01:05:46	Sam Parr	It failed, yeah. But there are a handful that seem silly—like a Nest or a Ring camera—but they actually were so cool, and they did revolutionize an industry. I always thought that could be one of them, and I'm shocked no one has pounced on that. What about yours?
01:06:01	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. Professional sports have combines where you get measured—your height, your weight, your wingspan, your vertical leap, your strength, your speed, all of that. As I've had kids and as I've met most of my friends who have had kids, I have seen the absolute money hurricane that is youth sports. So the idea here was to create a city-to-city traveling tour similar to Tough Mudder, but for youth athletes. The pitch: you go into a city and say, "Hey, if you're a youth athlete—if you're, you know, as young as five years old all the way up to 18 years old—come get tested." Get your 40-yard dash, your vertical leap, your height, your weight, your body fat, and all the attributes that go into becoming an athlete. Every city you go to, I think you get somewhere between 1,500 to 2,000 kids to show up easily. I think you could charge $120 a pop. You could charge a little bit extra for, either, printed photos or for storing your data long term. If you just do the math on that—so, 1,500 kids, let's say 2,000 kids—you're basically making [the speaker said] $200 a weekend in every city you go to. You do that 50 weeks out of the year and you have a $10,000,000-a-year business that is going to dominate one angle. I think you can upsell training and camps and the data, and there's a bunch of other things you could do on top of that. To me, I can't believe this doesn't exist given the amount of money I see poured into youth sports. I cannot believe there's not somebody doing the fitness testing—the standardized testing—the "SATs for athleticism." I really wanna be a part of this. If somebody wants to do it, I don't want to be the hustler to do it, but if somebody else has the time and hustle, I really want to be a part of that. [Clarification: the speaker said "you're basically making $200 a weekend," which appears inconsistent with the $10,000,000 annual figure and may be a transcription or numerical error.]
01:07:50	Sam Parr	"What sports do you want your kids to be good at? Every parent has..."
01:07:54	Shaan Puri	This is fun. This is a great question. There are two factors here. One is what are the sports that I love—basketball. The second is what are the sports that I would strategically choose. So, for example: baseball—I'm out. Yeah, my son: I don't want him to know what a baseball glove looks like. I don't even want him to see it. Why? Because he's going to stand around for three hours. I'm going to sit around for three hours. Nothing's going to happen. That is like the worst sport for, you know, a kid to be in like that. I just took my kids skiing—great time. Not going to double down on skiing. Skiing is weather-dependent, location-dependent, equipment-dependent... it's...
01:08:34	Sam Parr	So dangerous, too.
01:08:35	Shaan Puri	Explosive, dangerous, impossible-to-access sport. It's something like that.
01:08:40	Sam Parr	I went skiing recently, and I saw old people going down these hills. They go so fast — it's crazy to me. I get it.
01:08:47	Shaan Puri	Families have 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 want to get them out of it, but I can't yet; they love it too much. The thing about soccer is that nobody scores often. You can be amazing and still not score. There's so little reward in soccer — it's crazy. I had a friend whose parents sat him down in seventh grade and said, "Look, the big four — we're not doing it. You guys don't have the raw athleticism to succeed at the higher levels. If you want to play varsity or go to college, it's not going to happen." That was very interesting. In water polo and other niche sports, you're not competing against the absolute best athletes, so there's a strategic part to choosing a sport. Of course, whatever my kids like is great. But I'm going to try to expose them to sports like tennis, which I think is a great sport for both mind and body. Tennis is the one we're definitely going for. Basketball is another, because I know it so well and had such a good experience that I can't say no to it.
01:09:49	Sam Parr	Tennis is ours. It's one of the only sports where the men and women appear equal in terms of status.
01:09:54	Shaan Puri	Right.
01:09:55	Sam Parr	And you could play it forever.
01:09:57	Shaan Puri	You could play it forever. The best athletes don't go into it solely because of raw athleticism—hard work is not as super-athleticism dependent. Hard work takes you a long way. It's an individual sport, or it can be a team sport depending on how you want to do it. There's a huge mental component: controlling your own psyche, being competitive, and handling the feedback loop after every single point that you have to recover from. So I think there are a lot of good things you get out of tennis. Also, martial arts would be the other one that I think is pretty cool for kids to be in for a period of time.
01:10:28	Sam Parr	Yeah, if I could wave a magic wand, my kids would be very interested in tennis. Then I want them to do some type of individual fitness sport — that could be wrestling, martial arts, track and field, cross-country, or swimming. Something where it's just you versus a clock, totally objective, and you have to grit through it, dedicate a lot of time, and put in the hours.
01:10:48	Shaan Puri	Did you play team sports growing up—any?
01:10:51	Sam Parr	As a kid, I was alright at it. I was never terribly— I mean, you've seen me play sports; I'm not very coordinated. But I always had some attributes: I could jump and run, and I was strong. Even so, I was never good enough to catch a ball or really learn the skill part. That was always very hard for me. I always looked like a giraffe—like a dancing giraffe. I wasn't very coordinated.
01:11:16	Shaan Puri	Alright, that's it.
01:11:17	Sam Parr	That's the pod.

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Two Millionaires on the Worst Mistakes They Made Early

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