If you’re in your 40s, build a business on these trends.

- February 9, 2026 (about 1 month ago) • 54:11

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	Alright, Sam. Today I have six trends I'm watching that I want to tell you about. My spidey sense is tingling on these trends, and I just need somebody to talk to — you're my guy.
00:08	Sam Parr	How masculine of you to say, "That's tingling." I love that.</FormattedResponse>
00:12	Shaan Puri	My spidey sense is throbbing right now — I'm gonna call my doctor after this. Alright, first one: alcohol is in the gutter. I sent you this tweet. It says, "Spirit inventories are soaring," and it shows Campari and a bunch of other spirit brands [labels are in French, so I don't know how to pronounce them]. Basically, from 2011 to 2025 there's an up-and-to-the-right trend. It's basically a measure of inventory as a percentage of sales. It goes from what used to be under 20% to, in some cases, 60%, 70%, 80% — a crazy rise. This lines up with my lived experience: in our social circle and our age group, drinking ain't cool anymore. Being healthy is cool, and drinking isn't.
01:09	Sam Parr	When are you gonna learn that when you see me do something health-wise, you should just expect that it's gonna be popular in three years? I gave up booze in 2013 or '14 — I think '14 — so yes, I didn't actually think this was gonna be that popular. I did not think this was going to be a trend. But we actually wrote about this. My old company, The Hustle, had a newsletter called "Trends", and we wrote about the rise of nonalcoholic beer. It was actually Steph Smith — who we all know is an amazing, very smart person — who pitched me this idea. I was like, "I don't... I don't buy it. I think this is insane. I don't... I really don't believe it, but go ahead, write the article." A lot of people have been calling this, and I actually, even though I'm sober, did not think this was going to be as real as it is.
01:52	Shaan Puri	And so, I think there's an interesting question, which is: I don't think people fundamentally just become better-behaving over time. I think they substitute.
02:01	Sam Parr	Yeah, they're just using drugs. Yeah, so what's the substitute... I...
02:05	Shaan Puri	I think that's the interesting question, right? So you had—you had non-alcoholic... non-alcoholic beers. We had, I think, the guy from—what is it called—Athletic Brewing Co. on the podcast. </FormattedResponse>
02:13	Sam Parr	Yeah, they're awesome.
02:14	Shaan Puri	We, you know, Kin Spirits — there have been all these startup brands in the non-alcoholic space. But then you have just straight substitutes. So weed is probably a winner. Where else have people gone? Where are people getting the behavior? What jobs-to-be-done were previously done by alcohol that are now being done by something else? It’s literally just TikTok scrolling. People are not going out because they're at home on their phones. And when you're not going out, you're not drinking as much.
02:42	Sam Parr	What I'm noticing in my life is this. I could never tell if I only hang out with people who don't drink because I don't drink, or if it's truly more or less popular. Then there's—nicotine [the speaker said "zin"; interpreted as nicotine]—I mean some type of non-smoked nicotine, so vaping. None of my friends vape, but everyone does some type of nicotine use. The second one is the rise of psychedelics. I have a crazy amount of friends who are regularly—and I mean like every six months—doing some type of "journey" that they call it, which I think has a different set of issues. Then I think exercise, to be honest. It just seems like more people are into exercising.
03:23	Shaan Puri	Have you seen this company called Ultra? I think they're kind of like a Zen-type company. Ultra, founded in 2025 (last year), just raised $11,000,000 to scale non-nicotine "focus pouches." They've basically taken the nicotine concept and are branding it as a "focus tool." They've already sold 1,000,000 cans in six months and claim the number one position among nicotine-free pouches globally. While Zyn dominates the nicotine pouch market, Ultra is targeting a different segment: high performers who want cognitive enhancement without addiction. It's a $16 can. Their round is led by "blah blah blah" — I think Austin Reif maybe is in this, or he was.
04:03	Sam Parr	Definitely. I think he was bragging about it. Yeah, he's...
04:06	Shaan Puri	Very bullish on this company.
04:07	Sam Parr	The website says "Powering top performers at Facebook, Goldman, Sequoia." It's pretty funny that that is considered cool now.
04:17	Shaan Puri	Your cracked-out friend's secret weapon.
04:19	Sam Parr	Listen, when you and I were just getting started in San Francisco, it used to be a thing that people would protest at the Google bus. I even remember there was an era where they were flipping over Smart cars because they thought that Smart cars represented techies for some reason. I don't — I don't understand that. But do you remember that? Now they're trying to be cool by saying that people who work at Ramp "chew our nicotine" [transcription unclear]. That's just crazy. Times have changed.
04:45	Shaan Puri	By the way, you were also early on the nicotine trend. </FormattedResponse>
04:47	Sam Parr	Yeah, except I didn't. I was a... I was a... I was a skull guy. I loved — I loved tobacco.
04:52	Shaan Puri	I remember before we went on stage. We were doing our first live show in Vancouver or Victoria [unsure which city], and you and I didn't really have a good idea of what we were getting into. We saw this entire theater full—I don't know, 2,000–3,000 people. It looked grand; it was overwhelming. You have a photo of it. It was like four stories high of people, and it was a dark theater. We peeked out from behind the curtain and saw that. Then, immediately, it was me, you, and Andrew—and both of you started scrambling for drugs. We were both like, "Can we get a pouch? Can someone go get—"
05:26	Sam Parr	Can you run across?
05:27	Shaan Puri	I ran across the street real quick to get a nicotine pouch, and I was like, "What—do you? Did you not need that until two seconds ago? What is happening right now?" Then you both popped in a pouch and went on stage. It was incredible.
05:37	Sam Parr	Yeah, that's a substitute. I think I would actually just swallow the nicotine spit. You stick it in there and you swallow it — that's what the hard southerners do. But the lack of alcohol, to bring it back to that, is a bit surprising: that it's so widespread. I haven't been around drunk people in so long. Have you?
05:58	Shaan Puri	No, but I just assumed it's because I'm, like, in dad mode. I didn't realize how... you know. I thought these are all bubbles, right? So I thought, "Oh—myself, just kind of in dad mode: yeah, I'm not drinking out there." Then I thought, "Well, my tech friends were all biohacking—Brian Johnson—but we're in a bubble." But then you see this, and this is the global inventory/stock of these alcohol companies. It made me realize maybe this behavior is not just limited to my bubble. It's taking place in the community because we're all too small of a group to affect the actual trend lines.
06:30	Sam Parr	If I had to guess, it's going to be cyclical. If I had to guess, this will make a comeback.
06:34	Shaan Puri	Similar to black turtlenecks under jackets.
06:37	Sam Parr	Well, look, Sean.
06:39	Shaan Puri	Bringing that one back, single-handedly.
06:41	Sam Parr	"A turtleneck is a pedestal for the face, and I'm just trying to show off what God gave me — put it on a pedestal. I like it. Somebody said 'pedestal,' which took away some of that... that... that."
06:56	Shaan Puri	That's "unisequack" that you had there. It's ten.
07:00	Sam Parr	Degrees in New York City. Listen, there's this article that I read about a turtleneck. It said, "When a man wears a turtleneck, he's asserting—or he's advancing the situation—and that situation is himself. He's advancing the situation." That's...
07:15	Shaan Puri	Incredible. That's the best branding since "The Situation" from Jersey Shore, which was an all-time nickname he gave himself. </FormattedResponse>
07:25	Sam Parr	Alright, so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want us to tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. A lot of people message Sean and me and say, "Alright, I want to start something on the side — is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?" What they're really saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, my friends, you're in luck. My old company, The Hustle, put together 100 different side-hustle ideas and appropriately called it the "Side Hustle Idea Database." It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas. Frankly, I went through them — they're awesome. It tells you how to start them, how to grow them, and things like that. It gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database and it's in the description below — you'll see the link. Click it, check it out, and let me know in the comments what you think.
08:12	Shaan Puri	Let me give you a better one. Alright — Vultra, another trend you might have been early to as a former fitness influencer, so...
08:20	Sam Parr	Yeah, I could tell you all about that.
08:22	Shaan Puri	I heard this for the first time when we were doing a podcast with Hormozi. I went to his office and we talked for probably two to three hours. We covered a lot of business stuff, but by the end I was done asking him about business. I wanted to talk about other things. So I asked him, "Are you nerding out? What are you really interested in — what's letting your freak flag fly? What's getting you off on the nerd level?" He said, "Vultra — I forgot what I called it. There's a category for these." [term unclear] He explained it was, like, resistance-based... and then told me about this device, this fitness piece of gym equipment. The way he described it was great. He said, "Some guy's Instagram feed is sports, some guy's Instagram feed is girls, my Instagram feed is just niche gym equipment." He kept saying, "This thing is incredible." He was telling me about it, and I thought it was pretty fascinating, so I filed it away and took a look. I was watching this guy—what's his name—Home Gym Reviews or something like that.
09:22	Sam Parr	Luke Mitchell. So I want to tell you all about it, Coop.
09:24	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he was talking about it; somebody else was talking about it. In general, all of my training has been — the number of times my trainer has said the words "eccentric load"... I'm just like, "Okay, I don't know what it is. I don't know why the eccentric load is so important, but it's definitely super important, and the two go together." So, let's explain what it is.
09:43	Sam Parr	Yeah. So basically, if you're looking at it, it looks like the size of a red brick used for building a house. Imagine you have a home gym or any gym with a squat rack. Now imagine having this brick that you can attach to various points on the squat rack. You could then attach a pulley or a handle to it. It's sort of like a portable cable machine, except instead of a full cable machine it's just this brick-sized pulley that I imagine magnetically creates resistance. You could set it to provide, say, 400 pounds of resistance and then pull. It's special because it's very precise, I believe.
10:17	Shaan Puri	Right, so there are a couple things here. One: you nailed it — it's a Bowflex that's the size of a shoebox, or even smaller. That's pretty cool: they put a cable machine inside such a small device. First, it has a small footprint. That's a big deal because most gym equipment is enormous and bulky. Second, the precision you're talking about is that you can change where the resistance happens during a movement. For example, if I pick up a pair of dumbbells and they’re 60 pounds, it’s 60 pounds on the way up of my curl and 60 pounds on the way down. But muscles work differently in the concentric (curling up) versus the eccentric (bringing it back down) parts of the motion. Your eccentric strength is typically higher — somewhere between about 20–60% more load than your concentric strength. If you’re using dumbbells, you’re limited by your weaker part (the concentric), so the more important eccentric portion is often undertrained. What this machine lets you do — which is kind of great — is change the weight dynamically. You could say, “on the way up give me 100 pounds, but on the way down make it 150.” That precision in changing the resistance curve through the movement reportedly leads to incredible progress and gains. I don’t know how real all those claims are — I don’t want to make a claim I can’t back up, and I’ve never used this device — but in theory that makes total sense to me. I think this is a game changer on multiple fronts: it’s a game changer in size because now you can have a piece of equipment anywhere, and it’s a game changer in how precisely you can load different parts of a movement. </FormattedResponse>
12:09	Sam Parr	Well, you still need an anchor, so you still need a squat rack, but...
12:15	Shaan Puri	Could be a wall. It could be a tree. It could be like anything. It doesn't need to be—it could be.
12:18	Sam Parr	A tree — yeah. As long as it could hold, like, 300 or 200 pounds of force. </FormattedResponse>
12:23	Shaan Puri	Yeah. I think it goes up to... I think the max resistance is like 200 on their main SKU [stock-keeping unit].
12:28	Sam Parr	Yeah, but you could use this in lieu of a bench press. You could actually use this as a bench press, but you would need two of them — one on each [side].
12:34	Shaan Puri	Right. So, the size is a big deal. The potential gains you could get by changing the eccentric and concentric loads are significant. And then the third is the weight of it. The bulk of the cost of gym equipment is in the fact that you're shipping about 1,000 pounds to someone's house whenever you have to do this, or 1,000 pounds to a gym. Now, if you have this thing the size of a brick—well, it's also the weight of a brick, pretty much, because the resistance is from the cable and pulley, not from actual weight in the box. So I think this is a big deal, and this might change the way that gyms are made, how home gyms work... people, it actually comes...
13:11	Sam Parr	With a battery, you charge it. So the way the technology works is it has some type of battery, and you do have to charge it — I think after every session. But it is incredible how you can get 200 or 300 pounds — I think it's 200 pounds — of force from something this small.
13:25	Shaan Puri	Well, I think I just sold myself on it—on this pot. I'm very curious about something like this.
13:31	Sam Parr	Did you go down this rabbit hole when you were making your home gym?
13:35	Shaan Puri	I tried to go down the rabbit hole; it was the wrong rabbit hole because the people who are interested in this are too interested in the gym equipment. I'm interested in the MTV Cribs—or what's it called, Pimp My Ride—it's like, "Hey, how do I turn a kind of generic space into a cool space very quickly?" And what are the most bang-for-my-buck materials? I'm not trying to stuff it with equipment because the way I train—our training model—is much more functional, movement-based. I don't want 15 bulky, static machines or racks that I need to work on.
14:12	Sam Parr	Yeah, look — on one hand I'm like, dude, 45 pounds is 45 pounds regardless of how nice it is. I lift things up and I put them down. That's what the exercise is. But on the other side, there are gadget nerds, and I'm one of them. I'm in the category of people who just love browsing gym stuff. There's this guy named Coop Mitchell who I met in 2019 or 2020 when I was building my home gym. He's been reviewing gear for years and it’s a really good channel. It was hilarious — Hermosy did a video with him, and this was the one time I've seen Alex actually asking the questions. You know, people are usually always asking Alex the questions, so it was really cool. They were nerding out for about 30 minutes about this Vultra thing.
14:52	Shaan Puri	Well, you were my version of this. When I was building my home gym, I was like, "Hey, tell me what I need to do," and you were like, "Hey…" I was like, "What do I need to do for the flooring?" </FormattedResponse>
15:02	Sam Parr	Horse stall mats.
15:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you were like, "Hey—get these horse mats. It's a go-to barn website."
15:07	Sam Parr	"Yeah."
15:07	Shaan Puri	And get these things that horses like to poop on or stand on. I was like, "What? Are you sure?" I bought them. They're amazing. They're great.
15:13	Sam Parr	They're amazing.
15:15	Shaan Puri	Yeah — if they get out of, what do you call it... alignment, or...
15:19	Sam Parr	"I have a solution for that."
15:20	Shaan Puri	Total pain for that. Oh—okay, I need this. </FormattedResponse>
15:22	Sam Parr	So, have you ever looked inside a garage or a barn when the framing comes together—where the two-by-fours meet to form the angle of the home? They usually use this piece of metal that has nails on it. You put those on the bottom of the mats: you lift the mats up, put these little things in, and it nails them down.
15:42	Shaan Puri	"So then they don't move, is that?"
15:43	Sam Parr	The idea: Imagine something that looks like a Post-it note, but it's made of metal. On top of the metal — on the Post-it part — are tons of little tacks, tiny nails. You set it on the ground, place the mats on top of it so the seam comes together, and then you smack it down really hard.
16:03	Shaan Puri	I see. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I needed that.
16:05	Sam Parr	I think it's called a... I appreciate that. You'll find it in the roofing section of Home Depot. What's — what's the third trend?
16:15	Shaan Puri	Next trend: physical AI. I think you're going to hear this phrase a lot. When people normally say it, they're referring to robots — humanoid robots. I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about almost gimmick devices where you can just put AI in anything. Here's an example: have you ever seen ads for this thing called Plaud [spelled P‑L‑A‑U‑D]? I bought this thing. I don't use it — just as an anti-endorsement. I think it's kind of junk. But this company has done $100,000,000 in revenue on this device.
16:59	Sam Parr	"Oh, I have heard of this. The promise of it is amazing."
17:03	Shaan Puri	It's so... maybe it's better now. I maybe ordered the early version, and it was definitely a Wish.com‑type of experience. But the premise of this is it looks like a business card — or this is what it did: it looked like a business card. It basically is a physical meeting recorder. You could bring this to any meeting, put it on the table, and it'll record your conversation. It's something you could use for your own notes, just talking out loud in your home office. If you're at a meeting with somebody, I think the big use case they mention is student notes. Students bring this to class lectures, and I think that's where they found really fast growth: “Oh cool — if I go to class this thing will record it and it'll transcribe it.” It's like what Fathom and some of these other meeting recorders are doing for the business world, but applied to classrooms. So this thing kind of took off. There are a lot of products in this genre now — for example, teddy bears that come with essentially ChatGPT inside. I have a couple of these for my kids. They're still in a janky state, nothing that I would say this is good yet, but it's definitely where the puck is going.
18:13	Sam Parr	"This wasn't one of them incubated in your buddy's."
18:16	Shaan Puri	Yeah, Finc has one that was being incubated there.</FormattedResponse>
18:19	Sam Parr	It had the best launch video I've ever seen. It was basically this nerdy, engineer-type guy sitting there, and then the bear says, "Far Khan, you're such a nerd — you're always talking to a bunch of robots." He's this nerdy guy having a conversation with a robot. It was hilarious.
18:35	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's the idea. So it's a talking toy. I think Fateen is the guy who's Fateen.
18:43	Sam Parr	In.
18:43	Shaan Puri	It’s called magicaltoys.com. They gave me a really early prototype of this thing — you could literally see the bear on the front and then there was a control board dangling out the back with open wires. So I got the earliest prototype. I don't know how good the newest one is, but again, this is where the world is going: your toys are going to be able to talk to kids, to teach your kids. They're going to be interactive in an open-world way. A lot of toys today are interactive, but it's just hard-coded: you push this button, it sings "Itsy Bitsy Spider"; you push that button, it says "hello." Well, toys can do anything, and once this works it's going to be kind of amazing. When my kids ride in our car — we have a Tesla, and Tesla has AI built in — I would say on half the rides we just open the AI and we're like, "Hey, we're playing 'guess the animal' — come up with animals, we're going to guess." Or we ask questions, like "Where does the Earth come from?" or other questions my son has. I'm like, "This is pretty hard to say — what's older, the sun or the moon?" Things like that. Then she explained, "Who invented chocolate?" We learned this the other day. Do you?
19:49	Sam Parr	Do you know who invented chocolate, by the way? No idea.
19:52	Shaan Puri	So, this is kind of a crazy story. Thank you, AI, for telling me this story in the car. So, chocolate was initially... they took the cocoa beans. Or it was like, "Where does chocolate come from?" It's like, "Oh—there's cacao trees."
20:03	Sam Parr	Like a nasty bean, right? It's like...
20:04	Shaan Puri	You take this nasty bean—it's bitter. But if you roast it and do whatever, then add sugar, add butter, and all this stuff, it becomes like milk chocolate that we all like. So I was like, "woah, woah, woah, woah, woah." </FormattedResponse>
20:14	Sam Parr	Yeah. How does one who...
20:15	Shaan Puri	Who would've thought of that? Who would have taken the nut and made the chocolate bar at the end? That sounds like an insane leap. The AI was like, "Well, here's the progression: first they took the cacao thing and put it in a drink. It was a spicy, kind of bitter drink—more like coffee—but they believed it had benefits, so it became really popular for that." Then this doctor—named something Fry—believed in the medical benefits of the drink. He had stopped being a doctor, and his family had built an industrial plant to make the drink. To increase demand, he experimented with turning it into a bar, like a snack bar. The bar was too bitter. The bitterness was okay in drink form, but it didn't work as a bar. So he said, "Well, just add a shit ton of sugar and see if we can make this good," and he created the chocolate bar.
21:06	Sam Parr	"That's pretty awesome."
21:07	Shaan Puri	So, physical AI — small, little, one-off devices. Chips baked into toys, chips in different objects around the house... I think this is going to become more and more popular.
21:18	Sam Parr	When you said "physical AI," there's this guy who just applied to join Hampton. It's called thehandy.com. Have you seen The Handy? </FormattedResponse>
21:26	Shaan Puri	I think I've been to this website. It might be saved—bookmarked. Alright, I'm here. What am I... what am I looking at? "It's someone—'male interact' [unclear]." Oh, okay. Alright, it was what you were joking about. I thought that was like a... oh, yeah.
21:41	Sam Parr	Goodness, get your
21:42	Shaan Puri	Mind out of the gutter. It's actually going to save lives. Nope — it's not.
21:46	Sam Parr	No — I'm being as clinical as one could be. I'm just going to read you exactly what it says: > "The number one male interactive stroker. The top-rated male sex toy with perfect sync to adult videos on VR."
21:55	Shaan Puri	Top-rated — how and where is what I wanna know. Let's get some sources cited on that.
22:01	Sam Parr	But it says they've sold 200,000 of these things on the website.
22:06	Shaan Puri	So this guy applies to Hampton, and you're like, "Instant acceptance — skip the application process, come on in." </FormattedResponse>
22:12	Sam Parr	Well, we do these weekly meetings where we discuss who has applied and whether we have a good group for them or not. It's pretty funny to be like, "Yeah — the handy guy..." It's just kind of a... yeah. It's definitely weird. It's pretty funny.
22:28	Shaan Puri	There's a tab on the website, so it's like "Products", "Bundles", "Accessories", and...</FormattedResponse>
22:34	Sam Parr	Then the last tab of...
22:35	Shaan Puri	The navigation menu just goes "oh, oh."
22:42	Sam Parr	This is weird. Oh—I think I know what they're saying... This is...
22:45	Shaan Puri	So, I don't think this is AI, but maybe.
22:49	Sam Parr	It could be "someday." What's the fourth?
22:51	Shaan Puri	Okay, so my next trend is "Too Many Podcasts, Too Little Time." I don't know if you've seen...
22:58	Sam Parr	Is that what a trend means?
23:01	Shaan Puri	There's been this insane explosion in the number of high-quality podcasts produced by high-quality people. One that caught my eye is by T. I. Morris — the podcast is called "Relentless." Shout-out to him. I don't know him, but I thought it caught my eye.
23:20	Sam Parr	I've had so many people reach out. There's a guy named Mark Brazil who I like—he's got a podcast. He was like, "Does everyone know how much money can be made in podcasting?" All these people are discovering how strong this medium is for engagement.
23:34	Shaan Puri	"Alright, so let's look at this podcast. Do you see what I'm looking at?" "Yeah."
23:38	MFM	"With, like, you've got a Cybertruck tonight if you can get a training run on these GPUs in 2012."
23:43	Shaan Puri	"So, this guy—just describe what you're seeing."
23:45	Sam Parr	"Wow, he's actually recording a podcast outside on a huge building."
23:49	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and I think, by the way, it's not that hard. I think what he's doing is like those apartment complexes in San Francisco where there's a rooftop thing with a shuffleboard and a grill that nobody's going to use because it's cold. And if you had friends — which you don't — they could hang out here, but they won't, because it's cold.
24:08	Sam Parr	Our version of that—when Sean and I started making it as a podcast—was, "Let's just make our love seats bright red."
24:16	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's what I'm saying — we were like cavemen in the podcasting game right now. So this guy basically has this fireside chat, literally by the fire. He's talking to some technical staff member at xAI. The guy's sharing a bunch of Elon stories, so, you know what? I'm in. Guess what? I'm definitely in on that, and I'm listening to this. The next podcast I see is Joe Lonsdale, who's a billionaire and — you know — probably going to be in the top ten richest people on Earth at some point. Joe Lonsdale's talking to Joe Gebbia, the guy who created Airbnb. They're in a warehouse, it's well lit, and they're talking about, you know, Joe's time at the White House now because he's the Chief Design Officer of America. And I'm like, there's been this absolute explosion of podcasts and...
25:05	Sam Parr	It's.
25:05	Shaan Puri	Just in every industry — in the sports industry this is the same thing. I grew up; the first podcast I ever listened to was Bill Simmons. I used to listen to him back in 2007 in college when he used to, like, have to download from the RSS feed. He had Ronald Jenkins doing his intro music type of deal. Now sports podcasts are like: here's LeBron—he has his own podcast called Mind the Game where he's sipping wine talking to JJ Redick, the future Lakers coach, and they're just talking X's and O's. And then, oh guess what—Max Kellerman, he's not on TV anymore. So Max Kellerman goes from the number one TV show to now creating a podcast with Rich Paul, LeBron's longtime friend and the number one sports agent in basketball. They're gonna talk shop. So the amount and the type of people who are getting into this industry, the quality of production and sets—our friend Chris Williamson is doing IMAX 4K stuff. Your phone starts rumbling when an insight happens. I don't know what he's doing with production value. Then you have the volume, the overall volume that comes from this. I think it's because of what you said: podcasts went from niche and nerdy to now kind of cool. Cool people do them. People think you can make a lot of money doing them, which I think is not as true as people think. And I think there's this big problem which I call the shelf space problem. A podcast is great when you have listeners because it's like an hour in their ears; it's habitual and it becomes part of their day—when they're commuting, at work, doing chores, going for a run, or at the gym. I'm glad we're that for some number of people. But the reality is you only have so many idle hours where you're going to listen to podcasts. The number of podcasts might have gone 10x, 50x, etc., over the last ten years, but the number of podcast listeners and listening space hasn't gone up in the same way. I think that dam has broken. Now what's happened is a couple things are going to happen: there are going to be too many podcasts that are bad and boring—so that's happening already. I think there's going to be disillusionment when people realize how much time, money, and effort goes into podcasting well and you don't get fame and money back. And then I think the trick, what's happening with the savior in this case, is clips. I think podcasts are just becoming clip farms.
27:26	Sam Parr	That's not where real engagement is.
27:28	Shaan Puri	But I think that's what all these people are going to use as their moral victory — "Oh, look how many people like that clip on Twitter or TikTok." They're going to make the pod a clip farm, and whether anybody listens to the pod or not doesn't really matter. I mean, TBPN is doing the best at that, but that's where I think all this is going.
27:48	Sam Parr	I think that what a lot of people... okay. We have, I think, made mistakes on this path a lot as well. A lot of people think that just because you see the video — and that's what gets your attention because it is cooler — the reality is, like you just said, it's in our ears. A lot of the shiny stuff really doesn't matter. The content just needs to be good, it needs to be consistent, and it has to have a unique perspective. It is all in your ear: audio is what matters more than anything. There've been times where we've talked about something at minute 55 of this podcast and people on the street will bring it up. They didn't watch that on YouTube; they were listening to it while they were working out. In fact, if you're listening to this in your ears, go to Spotify right now and tell us what you're doing. I'm curious in the comments. But people aren't watching these things. What do you mean, "people aren't watching these things?"
28:41	Shaan Puri	People are definitely watching these things.
28:43	Sam Parr	No, no — they're not watching it here. If you look at the time spent, for example, on our Megaphone platform and compare time listened versus time watched, the average engagement — the average time on YouTube versus Spotify or some other type of feed — is significantly longer.
28:59	Shaan Puri	So we'll put numbers around this. Our average time on a YouTube video is about 15 minutes.
29:04	Sam Parr	Yes — fifteen minutes.
29:05	Shaan Puri	And the audio is about 40 to 45 minutes.
29:08	Sam Parr	Yeah.
29:09	Shaan Puri	So, you need three views for every one listener of audio if you want the equivalent amount of time spent. Even that's not exactly right, because the one person who listened for 45 minutes has a deeper sense of connection, trust, and fandom than three people who watched 15 minutes each.
29:28	Sam Parr	YouTube is very simple to grow. It's not like there's a complex formula behind growing on YouTube—it's still challenging, but simple. Growing an audio feed is very hard. We've tried for so long and have hit many plateaus multiple times. Growing audio is extremely challenging, although it is significantly more consistent in listenership. It does not grow fast in most cases.
29:57	Shaan Puri	I think you're right. I don't think you're right, though, that the clips and stuff don't matter. </FormattedResponse>
30:02	Sam Parr	"No, I didn't say that. I didn't say they don't matter — they matter significantly less."
30:08	Shaan Puri	Right. I guess what I'm saying is I think that the people who are going to play that game are actually playing a different game. They can do very well in that game and get all the results they want out of it, but it's very different. It is, literally, just a new game. It's the same way that, seven years ago, if you're making prestige TV or movies and you looked at Ryan Trahan and Mr. Beast and thought, "He painted a circle and these six strangers have to stay in it, and every three seconds something changes on the screen" — that's not art. No. That's not Breaking Bad. That's not Game of Thrones. You're not going to get the... well, you could say all those things.
30:47	Sam Parr	No, but I'm not criticizing it for that reason. I'm criticizing it because of the physics — the mechanics of it. Oftentimes, the equation of influence involves time spent, and so the amount of time you have spent with someone... meaning the...
30:58	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so I wonder if it's going to flip... Or I wonder if volume is the other variable in this. If you just—okay—but you're going to see my face 30 times, so every time you're going to see that.
31:09	Sam Parr	It could be. </FormattedResponse>
31:09	Shaan Puri	I wonder if that works. It might work now.
31:11	Sam Parr	You just need to do it a lot. Your clips are 60 seconds. Our podcast — you said the average episode length is 45 minutes, and there are two a week. The volume has to be the game. You better be Walmart; you better be turning that shit out.
31:23	Shaan Puri	Yeah, alright. I'll do two quick ones. Peptides—peptides everywhere. I think peptides are gonna be here, there... everywhere. I think you're gonna put peptides in your nose, I think you're gonna put them in your mouth, I think you're gonna put them in your butt. Peptides are everywhere. It's a classic: what the nerds are doing on the weekend, everybody's gonna be doing soon. Arguably they already are, because Ozempic and the GLP-1s—those are peptides. But I'm just seeing people I would not expect—people I don't count as biohackers—who are very interested and jumping through a lot of hoops to get peptides, because you can't just get peptides easily and in a trustworthy, frictionless way. So a great proxy for demand is: are you willing to break the law or do something sketchy for the thing you want? Well, that's what's happening with peptides. I have, you know, friends—cousins' brother-in-law—like I have people who are not like...
32:16	Sam Parr	Dude — just outing him. God. Yeah. He's like, "I got shoulder pain." Did he have a BP of 157? [BP = blood pressure]
32:22	Shaan Puri	I don't know which one he's on, but yeah — he does. He probably doesn't even know which one he's on. He's like, "I got pain. This guy gave me this acronym, and if my shoulder feels better, I feel younger." I got friends sending me pictures of themselves, just absolutely ripped on the, like, you know, the new version of the Wolverine stack. </FormattedResponse>
32:36	Sam Parr	Yeah — what's that? What's that one called? For research, we should find out what that is and start putting it in our bodies.
32:44	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. So I just think peptides are this thing that's going to be a big deal. If you use proxies for demand — people who are willing to jump through hoops and go through untrusted [channels] — imagine once somebody makes this easier to access in easier form factors: get it to gummies, get it to pills, get it to different form factors. As that happens over the next 10 years, I think peptides will become a normal part of everyday life for people, in the same way you take protein supplements and vitamins, and medicine when you're sick. I think you're going to have enhancements through peptides.
33:21	Sam Parr	"I'm shocked that you're so interested in this, and I think that you will never take this, right?"
33:26	Shaan Puri	Sometimes I'm a user first and then I become an investor. Sometimes an investor first becomes a user. In this case, I'm an investor. I'm looking at it as an investor. I haven't made any investments yet, but I'm hunting.
33:35	Sam Parr	"Would you take it?"
33:36	Shaan Puri	I try not to be early to experimental, like health stuff. I think the risk–reward doesn't really make a lot of sense. But would I? Yeah... at a certain point, I would. And I—at that, you know, I'm happy to be late to certain parties.
33:51	Sam Parr	I would challenge you about investing. I do not think that these are particularly good businesses. I actually don't take a lot of stuff anymore, but I used to dabble with everything because I love trying new things. Then I just found what works and I repeat that. I don't run one of these businesses, but I am an investor in one of them and I was a customer. People jump from one to another very easily. There's not really a reason to stay with someone for a very long time because, in most cases, they're just selling the same thing. Anytime you see a discount, or a doctor is going to be more liberal about what they prescribe, you can just tell someone, "Give me this," and you switch. It's very easy. Oftentimes, even though people say, "You have to take these things for life," people don't. You just do it for twelve months, you feel good, and you're like, "I'm gonna bail — I'm gonna get off of it."
34:41	Shaan Puri	I'm glad that this is contrarian. I thought it was going to be just too consensus, so I appreciate that this is not consensus.
34:46	Sam Parr	Well, we've invested in one that's killing it — Hone Health, correct? They are killing it. But I guess what I'm saying is, I've seen, for example, we had More Plates, More Dates on Merrick Health — I think it was called. He has one of these companies, and it just... I've tried a bunch of them. They just seem like they're mostly similar, and I don't understand how you get locked in with someone for years. [Note: company names transcribed as "Hone Health" and "Merrick Health" and the appearance "More Plates, More Dates" may be uncertain.]
35:08	Shaan Puri	Well, I think most people are not you. You're in the early adopter/experimenter cohort of people. Money is never made on you; money is always made on the early majority and late majority.
35:19	Sam Parr	So, you know how people—have you seen those videos of people celebrating that they got their first customer? I'm usually on the other end of that. I'm the one who's like, "Here, I'll give you my money and I'll take a risk," and then I bail on it for six months. What's the sixth one?
35:34	Shaan Puri	Okay. Sports betting and the consequences. This is a trend that is in plain sight, but I think people underestimate how big — and how bad — this is going to be.
35:43	Sam Parr	I'm shocked to hear you say that — and also I'm very happy to hear you say that. I think there was an article in The Economist, and they talked about how sophisticated sports-betting companies are. Basically, the headline was: "Whenever you make your first bet, they know — to a high degree of certainty — what type of customer you're going to be." They manipulate you, and the rest of their customers, down to an amazing science in order to get the most money from you.
36:10	Shaan Puri	Right. One gambling consultant told The Economist: > "By the time a customer places his first bet on the sportsbook, we are 80 to 90% certain we know the lifetime value. We know how big of a sucker you are from the first bet." They mathematically monitor players and create new risk scores every six to eight hours. Basically, they're trying to figure out: is this customer going to become profitable for us? How do we keep the profitable players out and keep the unprofitable players in? Okay — so what else is interesting about this? There's new data about Calshi and Polymarket.
36:45	Sam Parr	How are those two different, by the way? So they're both in the... [sentence unfinished]
36:48	Shaan Puri	Prediction market — basically, it allows you to wager on the outcome of an event. Unlike a sportsbook, where the house sets the odds, a market poses the question and you take the "yes" or "no" side. Based on the volume of dollars placed on each side, you're essentially competing in a free market against other participants. There have been some incredible results from this. It is more accurate than the news. Many people go to the news to get a sense of what's happening or what will happen, but the news is far less accurate than looking at what Polymarket — with skin in the game — says the odds are. The odds change in real time as new information arrives. Take incentives as an example. The incentives of a journalist writing for The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal — these extremely prestigious, supposedly truth-seeking platforms — are: how do I get as many clicks as possible on this headline? How do I make sure nobody unsubscribes because I said something they don't like? Their incentive loop is driven by clicks and subscriptions. Contrast that with the incentives on Polymarket. Someone betting "yes" is risking money; they will win or lose based on being right or wrong. The stronger my conviction, the more money I will place on a wager. If my conviction is based on gut or superstition, over time I'll lose money and be pushed out of the market. If my conviction is based on research, insider information, or in-depth analysis, I will make money and accumulate more capital to bring to the market over time. That's the category. Now what's interesting: [Polymarket and comparable platforms] are doing over $2,000,000,000 a week in sports betting volume.
38:57	Sam Parr	And what percentage of the revenue do they get?</FormattedResponse>
38:59	Shaan Puri	They're taking... I don't know. It's less than, like, a—it's like a... whatever percent, 1.2%. I don't know what it is. Some very, very small vig [vigorish] that they take on the transaction.
39:09	Sam Parr	And how much did they do in a week?
39:11	Shaan Puri	2 billion on just sports. So, what's happened is these things started with questions like, "who's gonna win the election?" and "are we gonna end up in a war in Ukraine?" Those are very informational—they're meant to inform, or in some ways act as a signal or a hedge against, for example, stock market performance. But sports betting is so popular that, as a percentage share of action, it's taking over these platforms. They're essentially becoming sports betting apps that operate in a loophole of regulation: you can't offer sports betting, but you can run prediction markets about sports.
39:51	Sam Parr	And this is legal in all 50 states.
39:53	Shaan Puri	Yeah—sorry, I shouldn't say that. I'm not as well versed in it. Kalshi is based on the way they're regulated, because prediction markets are regulated by the commodities market. That's why, if you open the Robinhood app you can just "bet on any game" right now — it's powered by Kalshi. I think they're going to switch off of Kalshi at some point. Why are they giving Kalshi so much volume?
40:17	Sam Parr	If you were a politician, and you could—if you were the dictator—what would you do?
40:22	Shaan Puri	"Oh God, that's a lot of power. What would I do? Yeah — I'd have people feeding me grapes, and I'd have... this is pretty dangerous. I'm coaching this high school basketball team, and it's interesting because when you're around teenagers you get to see whether they're interested and what they do."
40:40	Sam Parr	"Do they talk about it all the time?"
40:41	Shaan Puri	They're talking about it all the time. They're like, "over-unders."
40:44	Sam Parr	That's crazy.
40:45	Shaan Puri	You know, they don't just watch the games — they bet on the games. They're probably betting very small amounts, maybe on their dad's account. I don't even know how they're doing it exactly, but it's definitely something they love to do and are doing a lot. The problem is sports betting. Take this from somebody who's wasted far too much of their life gambling, whether it's poker or sports betting: sports betting is one of those things that's dumb to do but easy to look smart doing. If you cherry-pick a good bet, you can share it, tell people about it, and you get to look smart for a moment. The real gains in life come from things that look dumb to do but are actually smart to do — that's where the real alpha of life is. Of course, there are obvious things that are smart and look smart too, and you should do those as well. Those are the highly competitive things people do, like going to college or trying to get a good job — looking smart is smart. I think the problem is sports betting falls into that "looks smart but isn't" bucket, and it's obviously super addictive. A lot of people will lose a lot of money, waste a lot of time, and get addicted. There are NBA players who get death threats constantly because some guy had a $200 parlay on them getting 11 rebounds instead of 9. Every day they go home from basketball — if you talk to any player, their DMs are just filled with angry voice notes and death threats from a guy who needed them to get an extra rebound for his parlay.
42:14	Sam Parr	"And you could do this for college sports too."
42:15	Shaan Puri	You could do this for college, which is toxic now at the younger level. It's crazy. I put this in my "Five-Two Tuesday"—like some guy's rooting for World War Three because he's going to win $390 on Polymarket, right?
42:28	Sam Parr	"I tend to — I would say I'm a very moderate person politically. I disagree and agree with people on both sides. I would also say I'm very pro-capitalist, and this is one of the few times where I'm like, no — I'm definitely not in favor of the market just doing what it wants to do. In this case, I definitely think that regulation would be nice. I don't exactly — I'm an idiot, I don't know how it needs to be done, but this seems very dangerous. I think what will happen is that a college or professional sports player is going to be murdered, or there's going to be something crazy that happens in politics where the person made the decision just to get the payout on the bet."
43:10	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and there's already been players who have lost their... whether it's college scholarships. There are NBA players who are getting fined or permanently banned from the league because they told their homies, "Hey, I'm out today; it's not reported yet," or worse. There've been guys who owe people money to the mafia from poker losses. In the poker games they're like, "Hey, to make it back I'm gonna pull a hammy in the first quarter—just bet my under; you'll make it back." But it's too obvious because somebody suddenly slams $50,000 on this obscure player's under, and then, you know, the NBA bans that player. They lose their $30,000,000 contract.
43:46	Sam Parr	I remember when we were younger. There was this one player — he was like the superstar quarterback for, I think, Ohio. What's his last name... like Owens [last name uncertain]. He got in trouble for getting free tattoos from a tattoo shop in exchange for some jerseys or something like that, and he was banned.
44:03	Shaan Puri	Oh, yeah — yeah, yeah. He was signing... he signed a jersey.</FormattedResponse>
44:05	Sam Parr	I think he got kicked out. It was huge — a huge deal; it was national news. He signed jerseys and gave them to, I think, a tattoo parlor in exchange for free tattoos. Do you remember that?
44:18	Shaan Puri	Known as "Tattoogate." Let's see... it was, it was Terrell Pryor.
44:22	Sam Parr	This was years ago, and this was a huge deal. I think he was the hottest guy going, and he did this — that was the biggest scandal I remember in years. It's gonna get way worse. It's gonna get way worse, dude. This is what they're doing. Instead of drinking alcohol, I'd rather people drink, by the way, than do this shit.
44:37	Shaan Puri	Yeah, gambling instead. So those are my trends. Give me a favorite and a least favorite.
44:42	Sam Parr	I think alcohol is going to get popular again with the next generation. I think it's... I'm gonna think that, whatever the generation...
44:47	Shaan Puri	Different generation.
44:48	Sam Parr	Yeah, whatever your parents do, you're gonna do the opposite. I think sports betting in the next five years is gonna be incredibly heavily regulated, and companies like Polymarket and Kalshi are gonna crumble.
45:01	Shaan Puri	"Wow — big, big predictions there."
45:03	Sam Parr	"Let me tell you one thing that I saw really quick. Yeah—did you see Hermozy and Tony Robbins do a podcast together?"
45:10	Shaan Puri	I didn't see it. I bet... I thought I saw it on YouTube but didn't click it. Is it good?
45:14	Sam Parr	Yeah, the reason it was good is I saw two things yesterday that I thought were pretty funny or interesting. One was Tony Robbins and Alex Hormozi, and it was basically a coaching session where Tony Robbins was coaching Hormozi. That was kind of cool because Hormozi is usually the one giving advice, and in this one, sure, he appeared...
45:30	Shaan Puri	A student.
45:31	Sam Parr	A student—so I was almost going to say the word "lost." I don't think he was lost, but he was like, "Here are my issues, help me." The second thing I saw was Scott Galloway. Is it Davos? Davos, Davos... I don't even know what it's called. Never in my life have I had a conversation about Davos. I don't give a shit, but I guess it's where the global superpowers meet and somehow decide who's going to win what. And Scott Galloway was like, "I think I'm just gonna go home. I'd rather be home with my kids than be here." Did you see that?
46:02	Shaan Puri	"No, didn't." I was like, "Was he—was there anything particular?" He was like, "Disoriented."</FormattedResponse>
46:06	Sam Parr	I'm gonna give you a takeaway: here's what's going on. But first, let me say—I think I'm just gonna leave. I don't really care. I don't care about this at all. I'm just gonna go.
46:14	Shaan Puri	Home and hang out with.
46:14	Sam Parr	My boys — I really miss them. I thought that was cool because, on the Hermosy podcast, he basically explained that he's been experiencing a lot of success lately but feels empty. He said, "I've been experiencing a lot of success lately, but I feel empty." There's something you and I — I think maybe you say it more than me — talk about: seasons. Tony Robbins basically told him, "Dude, you've primed yourself to only care about being aggressive and succeeding and getting after it." You just told me that you said, basically, "every waking hour I'm working." The problem isn't that the work exists — it's okay for that to exist. The problem is that you don't also have these other states of life or other feelings where, for certain hours, you can turn work off and feel enjoyment. It was this whole idea of seasons. I think Scott Galloway was the same way: sometimes, "I get after it," and other times, "I want to enjoy life and be with my kids." I thought that was really interesting because we talk about work a lot here. The people who listen to this are listening because — I mean, the podcast is all First Million; it's like making money. I think we actually do a pretty decent job. That's one of the reasons why people like us — although it's not necessarily intentional — we laugh and we have fun. It was super interesting to see such a serious and successful person like Hermosy complain about not being happy even though he's succeeding. What I've realized — I realized this when I read Robert Greene's book Human Nature — is that humans are humans. You and I have been very lucky to talk to billionaires and all these successful people. Oftentimes, when they're on our podcast, we're asking them questions and they're giving advice, so they're not going to purposely appear weak. But we've become friends with a lot of these people, and it's really cool to see behind the scenes the people we look up to. It was cool that Hermosy did this — he showed weakness. He even cried a little on the podcast, which I didn't think he had that gear.
48:04	Shaan Puri	"My boy's got range."
48:06	Sam Parr	Yeah, he has range. I did not think that was gonna come.
48:08	Shaan Puri	Is it Jim Carrey in, like, a serious movie, or...?
48:10	Sam Parr	Something proportions, and I thought it was cool. I thought it was cool, and it was a really good reminder. I want to give that reminder to people: the people who you look up to — you and I — some people actually, shockingly, look up to us. We have hung out with people who we look up to on this podcast, and the people who others look up to we've had on this podcast. It's cool to see that everyone complains about the same shit and has complained about the same shit. Also, the advice I think that Anthony — or Tony Robbins — gave is sort of the same advice. "Anthony, we're friends."
48:41	Shaan Puri	That was incredible.
48:42	Sam Parr	Hey, dog — we're buddies. It's sort of been the same feedback on how to live life. Have you heard that song by The Byrds? I don't want to sing it because I look stupid, but it's like, "To everything — turn, turn, turn." You know that song?
48:59	Shaan Puri	I've never—I've never heard that. No.</FormattedResponse>
49:00	Sam Parr	No, that's crazy. Okay — this song was from the 1960s. Let me tell you an interesting fact: I was looking it up because I recognized it. I went to Catholic school my whole life; we had to read the Bible. This song is word for word a Bible verse. I'm not a religious person, but because I read the Bible so much as a kid, I knew it. > "To everything there's a season — > a time to be born, a time to die; > a time to kill, a time to heal; > a time to weep, a time to laugh." > > And further down the verse: "Now go and eat your bread, drink your wine, be merry; God has already approved what you're gonna do — whatever happens, happens." These are old issues that people have cared about for thousands (or tens of thousands) of years: work hard, sometimes enjoy yourself, sometimes be sad, sometimes be happy — there's a season for all of it. It's just so interesting to me that we all, myself included, complain about the same things, and we have for tens of thousands of years. The advice that Tony Robbins gave — like, "there's a season, be happy" — is literally the same advice from the Bible and from the song. It's kind of interesting.
50:06	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I've had an interesting conversation with this basketball coach. We had just played a game. The head coach of my high school basketball team is really young—he's 25 years old. This is his first head coaching job, and he got the recommendation from his old college coach. There's this guy who was his college coach; he's kind of a legendary community college coach. He coached at Diablo Valley for like thirty years. He's one of the winningest coaches and he's retired now. He comes to our games sometimes; he sits in the crowd up in the bleachers and just observes. Occasionally, after the game, after we talk to the players and hang out in the locker room, he comes down and gives us that old coach's wisdom. It's the best. That's my favorite time in this whole thing—I couldn't have predicted it, but it's my favorite time. We had just won a game we weren't supposed to win. We were the underdogs, we played amazing, and we won. Then we were playing the best team in our league coming off that win, and we thought, "Yeah, we're gonna do this," and we just got smacked. We lost by 50 points. It was embarrassing—we only scored 15 points in an entire basketball game. It's hard to do that. We were scared; we played scared. It was just bad. Coach comes in and he goes, "Two days ago you're unstoppable — you're the best team ever. Today you can't do anything right — you're the worst." He said, "The number one thing you're going to learn as a coach is that victory and defeat are liars. They're both liars. Once you learn that they're both liars, then you can become a great coach." I just loved that. It reminded me of my roommate in college, Trevor. His dad gave him a gift when he went to college. I went to Duke, and there were a lot of rich kids with parents who tricked out their rooms. Trevor's parents were both PE coaches in Wyoming for their whole careers. When they drove him out to college, his dad gave him a poster with a poem on it. It's the poem "If—" by Rudyard Kipling, and on it is the same line. I stared at that thing every day in college because it was the only thing on our wall. The line says: > "If you can meet Triumph and Disaster > And treat those two impostors just the same..." The last line is, "You'll be a man, my son." His dad gave him that poster, and I kind of, by proxy, got that poster too. It's the idea that the highs and the lows are liars—the wins and the losses are liars; triumph and disaster are impostors. Once you recognize that, then you're free and you can actually do what you need to do. So when you're talking about charm, being happy, success, and all these things, I think the challenge is that we think success is something real and final and lasting—that it's the meaning of all that effort. And we think failure is real and going to be lasting and that it means something. Once you realize that neither is real nor lasting, nor the meaning in the first place, then you're actually playing the real game.
53:37	Sam Parr	MFM Wisdom Corner
53:39	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, welcome to Guru Corner."
53:41	Sam Parr	"No advice given." Look—you just quoted an old coach. I quoted Tony Robbins in the Bible. I mean, no advice given, just messengers. Alright, that's it. That's the pod.

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