Start This Business If Want To Survive The Ai Apocalypse

- August 26, 2025 (7 months ago) • 53:06

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	I think the theme of this episode today is basically anti-digital, anti-tech, anti-AI ideas. I have an idea for you, but the... [audio cuts off]
00:14	Sam Parr	Way? What?
00:14	Shaan Puri	Alright. So, Hampton, you've got this community of CEOs in different cities, and it's great. You're doing well, and it mostly started off online. I'm so glad you shifted to in-person, which I'm sure was hard—painful but necessary. I've just been thinking about some of these AI-proof ideas. I think it's an interesting lens: what doesn't really make sense for AI to improve or disrupt? And we joined a country club...
00:47	Sam Parr	Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:48	Shaan Puri	I thought I could just keep...
00:50	Sam Parr	Going—hold on.
00:51	Shaan Puri	I just kept going. I didn't think the TSA agent would ask me for my passport there.
00:57	Sam Parr	"Who's we?" Like you and your wife? Your family? Or... okay — you and your wife, like a golf club?
01:02	Shaan Puri	A golf country club, even though I don't play golf currently.
01:05	Sam Parr	Okay — the stereotype in my head is a golf course and chicken tenders.
01:12	Shaan Puri	I think it's a lot of that. There's a great...
01:13	Sam Parr	"Pool. Okay."
01:14	Shaan Puri	It's great — amenities: tennis court, pickleball, etc.
01:17	Sam Parr	Okay.
01:18	Shaan Puri	Look, I don't want to talk too much about the country. What I'm trying to say is, from a business perspective, I'm breaking fast.
01:22	Sam Parr	Did you have to interview? Did you have to interview? Did they Google "we have"?
01:25	Shaan Puri	An interview is scheduled in a few days. Yeah.
01:27	Sam Parr	Oh my god, the hardest part by...
01:29	Shaan Puri	The way is, there's a dress code.
01:33	Sam Parr	"Under Armour on it? Are you allowed to wear Under Armour?"
01:39	Shaan Puri	I was like, "Okay, get a full tank." But how about a muscle tank? You guys good with that? That's actually how I showed. </FormattedResponse>
01:43	Sam Parr	Up for.
01:44	Shaan Puri	For the first tour... So, anyways, yeah — I'm a little fish out of water.
01:47	Sam Parr	Wait, what are they going to ask you in the interview? Are they going to—like, are you going to... You shouldn't. You can't tell them you host a podcast called "My First Million." I mean, it's so tacky. </FormattedResponse>
01:57	Shaan Puri	"Be honest: they reject me."
01:59	Sam Parr	Don't be honest — what are you, insane? You have to lie. Look, my wife really wants... she—
02:06	Shaan Puri	Knows a lot — a lot of the moms from the school go there, whatever. Alright, so let me get to my... here. Yes, yes — to everything you're thinking. Insane. Alright, let's just agree. Let's just agree on all of those things that are every thought in your head right now.
02:20	Sam Parr	How much is it going to cost? What's your monthly? All right.
02:22	Shaan Puri	What's the membership fees? It's something like you pay $7,500 just to initiate—just to get your foot in the door. Okay, that's not even the dues. There's a $500 application fee, then it's like a $77,500 initial "join the club" fee. Then you pay something like, I don't know, $700 or $1,000 a month as a member. And that's to not even get to play golf. That's like a pleb member—you don't get to play golf. If you play tennis, you gotta use your left hand or something. You don't even get everything. We're joining as the basic member. I was looking at the numbers and I was like, okay, so they're probably close to 2,000 members at this club. So 2,000 members times, let's call it, $10 a year average membership fee—which again doesn't even include the golf—is a $20,000,000 annual recurring revenue business. That's just for the right to go pay for food and drinks and to have the right to shop there. Everything else I think mostly operates breakeven. They do events like weddings and birthday parties that make some money too. But I'm pretty sure this country club is pulling in something like $20–$25 million a year in recurring revenue, not including all of the margin they have on food, beverage, golf, etc., which might be closer to like 10%. I just thought, man, this is an incredible business. I've seen a few of these now. I saw that one when I first moved to San Francisco—the guy I was working with, Michael Birch, he created The Battery in San Francisco, which was like: San Francisco didn't have a Soho House, so he created The Battery...
04:03	Sam Parr	"Was that good? Was that a good business?"
04:05	Shaan Puri	Well, I think he undercharges dramatically. He didn't need the money per se — he sold his company for $800 million, so he knew he wasn't doing it for the money; he was doing it for the social side. I think he didn't want to make it an "only rich tech guy" thing, so he priced it initially at $2,500 a year — like $200 a month. That's literally less than Equinox, you know. Now I think it's $3,000. This is still pretty low.
04:29	Sam Parr	One time I went there — I think with you. I'm not exaggerating; I swear to God, this is the truth. There was a booth with a pretty, blonde-haired woman, Snoop Dogg, and a monk wearing an orange shawl, all sitting together. It looked like the Dalai Lama, Snoop Dogg, and a hot blonde.
04:48	Shaan Puri	And.
04:49	Sam Parr	They were sitting like this—leaning in and having a conversation. I don't know what it was about; it could have been world peace. It was... it was crazy. I saw that in real life, and I was like, "This is the craziest thing I've ever seen."
05:02	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I've seen Elon there. I've seen Jay‑Z there. It's crazy. So I saw that model and Soho House. I don't know if you saw — it just went private. A private equity group came and basically took it private at $2,700,000,000. They think that in 2025 it'll do something like $150,000,000 of EBITDA, but it's a little confusing. They said it's not profitable currently, and the 2025 forecast is, you know, like $150,000,000 in EBITDA [speaker also said “a 100,” unclear phrasing]. I started thinking about these clubs, and I was like: why doesn't Sam Do [unclear name] get into this business with Hampton? Right — why not, in your core one, two, three cities, get some real estate, create a physical space, and top up on the members? Then anytime a member is traveling to New York, L.A., Chicago, Austin — wherever you want to put your hubs — they have a physical place to go: to work, to eat, to meet, to do whatever.
05:58	Sam Parr	So I have an answer. For one, operationally I think it's silly for me to — my main business is creating wonderful core groups where people talk. The business you are talking about is hospitality and real estate. I think the answer is that there's a world where we will do it, but it needs to be its own business. You shouldn't mix them. A company I was inspired by, called Chief, is doing what we're doing but mainly for women executives. They had a lot of real estate, and it dragged them down significantly. There's this weird surge going on, particularly in New York, where over the last year or so there have been something like 15 or 20 new social clubs or coworking spaces that have popped up. Have you heard of Zero Bond? That's an example. There are so many of these social clubs among young, 20-something Gen Z—this is a phenomenon that's absolutely killing it. It's not new — social clubs have been around forever. Since the Gilded Age, people have been forming social clubs, even back to Benjamin Franklin's "Junto," where he would meet up with his friends. What I'm noticing is a whole niche of coworking spaces that combine this social-club kind of aesthetic. Let me give you a few examples. Google "The Malin" — it's the word "The" and then M-A-L-I-N. Before I had my office here, I rented a space there. It's a very niche coworking space, absolutely beautiful inside, with three locations. Whenever I was there it was buzzing. The target demographic for these places seems to be good-looking freelancers — everyone who worked there was, you know, a "hot freelancer."
07:52	Shaan Puri	They're like, "Good news and bad news." "Good news: we like that you're a freelance designer." "Bad news: there's one other requirement."
08:00	Sam Parr	Yeah, I didn't fit the ICP, but they still let me in... </FormattedResponse>
08:06	Shaan Puri	They let you in just to see why—why you don't belong.
08:10	Sam Parr	Yeah, they let me hang out. There's another guy in my core group — his name is James Street. Go to this website: thelighthouse.com. My friend owns an agency called Whaler. It's a huge nine-figure-a-year digital agency based in LA, so it's all hip and cool. They created a little project called The Lighthouse (thelighthouse.com). I think they call it a creator's campus — in other words, it's basically a coworking space for creators. Instead of just normal desks, they have cool studios, kind of like the one I'm recording in, where someone can just record. In the first year of business they've done eight figures in revenue with one location. I'm seeing this pop up over and over. Another one is Newhouse — go click Newhouse. They call themselves "the work and social home for creatives." These guys are selling to everyone I've just named. They're basically taking a sliver of what WeWork is and who it's for, and combining that with what you're talking about — social clubs. Scaling "cool" is very challenging. That's what SoHo struggled with: you can't scale exclusivity well unless you own a variety of brands, like Louis Vuitton and Hermès. If you own multiple luxury brands, it's okay if each one doesn't grow aggressively. Scaling utility, however, works wonderfully. That's where positioning something as a coworking space works really well — especially in New York, but I'm seeing it in a lot of other places. These social-club/coworking hybrids are thriving. We were told that WeWork and businesses like that were kind of silly and that the economics wouldn't work. They might not become an $80 billion company — whatever WeWork raised — but they can still be amazing companies. A lot of people will say you need $1 million and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode of this podcast, you know that's completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew to something like $17–$18 million in revenue. I started it with about $300. My current company, Hampton, does over $10 million in revenue. I started it with basically no money — maybe $29 or so. So you don't actually need investors or a fancy business plan to start a company. What you do need are systems that actually work. At The Hustle, we put together five proven business models you could start right now with under $1,000. These are models that, if you do them correctly, can make money this week. You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, back to the show.
11:04	Shaan Puri	There are two other interesting ones I want to show you. One is slightly related — it's like a Soho House for families with kids. I think it's called "Beginning Clubhouse."
11:15	Sam Parr	"Dude, it's in, it's in, it's in New York, right?"
11:19	Shaan Puri	"Yep. Dumbo—where? What? What is Dumbo? Is that Brooklyn?"
11:22	Sam Parr	Yeah. Brooklyn—it's like... this is where yuppie parents who wear Carhartt.</FormattedResponse>
11:28	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So they're opening this up—there's a Soho House, but it's kid-friendly. A lot of these private clubs tend to be only for, like, either single young people or people whose kids are grown up, and families aren't really welcome. As somebody who's had four- and five-year-old kids my entire life, the reason we got our membership is we just need a place to take the kids. A reliable spot where they're going to have some fun and I can have them fenced in, you know what I mean. They have stuff for the kids, and I can just chill and take care of whatever. Need food? They have food. Want to swim? You can swim. Want to chill or play some games? You can do that too—whatever you need. I thought that was kind of interesting. The other one I thought was interesting: the guy who started Wag.com has a new business. Have you seen this? He's starting a new thing in Denver. When I first heard it I kind of laughed. His name is Jason Metzler. He's basically building multifamily housing—just places to rent—but it's called—I forgot what it's called—like "Live Pet Play" or something, "Live Pet Work." Basically, what he realized was that in Denver there are more pet owners than parents with kids. He thinks—and I think this is true nationwide—that there are more people with pets than people with kids. For those people, housing is often very limited. A lot of places don't let you have a pet, and if they do, it's an inconvenience. Nothing about it is built for life as a pet owner in a city. What these guys are doing is different. They have dog grooming, and when you rent your unit, the unit has a doggy door. There are grass areas at the bottom and on the rooftop to take your dog out. There are dog walkers in the building, so you get, like, 20 dog walks a month and two nights of dog sitting. They're targeting specifically that demographic of person. I thought that was pretty interesting. It's basically normal multifamily housing, but how do you charge an extra 30 to 40% of rent every month? Well, if you make it a plus for somebody who's dog-obsessed—dog owners, I think—they spend something like $66,000 a year just on their pet alone. The inconvenience of living in a place that's not pet-friendly is a daily nuisance, so I think there might actually be something to it.
13:51	Sam Parr	This—that's interesting.
13:53	Shaan Puri	Because all real estate is just a question of: can you buy it where everybody thinks it's worth X? You buy it because everybody thinks it's going to generate X dollars of net income. But you can do 1.3x or 1.2x, and if you do that — if you buy a $20,000,000 building — you've increased the value of the building maybe by $10,000,000 or $12,000,000 if you're able to do that well. So I just think this was smart, because normally the way they do these value-adds is you have to build more units. That's how you're going to generate more income: "I'm going to have to spend a bunch of money to build more units." This was like, no — I'm just going to position it as being great for this type of customer, and I know that that type of customer is willing to pay a little more for these additional perks, services, and spaces.
14:37	Sam Parr	How much money did this guy raise?
14:39	Shaan Puri	I saw he's raising money for the building itself, not for the "head co." [head company]. It's a real estate play, right? He's like, "We're buying this building — it already generates this. We're going to add these things, and then it'll generate this once we have it rented." We have confidence it's going to be rented because, you know, here's all the demographic trends in our favor. </FormattedResponse>
14:58	Sam Parr	I always get nervous when tech people go into real estate — that always freaks me out. I tried to do the same, by the way. I had an internet company and I tiptoed into real estate. I bought some properties, and I want to put this on the record: my hit rate for anything I've done on my own, real-estate-wise, is 0 for 3. I have lost money on every single one of them.
15:21	Shaan Puri	Yeah, well, operating it yourself is always different, right? You tried to be the real estate developer. You tried to execute the project plan yourself, and you're just at the beginning of the learning curve. I probably — in the last 12 months — my best investment across everything (and I mean all the AI stocks and all that) has been my real estate investments. But I'm not the one operating them.
15:43	Sam Parr	Yes, investing in other people's stuff.
15:44	Shaan Puri	I'm not. I'm operating.
15:46	Sam Parr	Like, when I'm just an investor in someone else's work, it's been wonderful. I agree — that is wonderful. Anytime that I have tried to operate it... oh, for three, I've lost in every single one of them. And every single time I think, "What am I doing?" I can make a website for $0 and make more money than I've just made off investing seven figures, and having to work really hard and stress over making significantly less or no money. Have you seen any other of these social clubs that interest you?
16:11	Shaan Puri	No, but I just think it's going to be more and more popular. All of the trends seem to play in this favor. If you have remote work — which was pretty niche before and then became widespread — it's now under a "new normal," but it's still way bigger than it was before. You also have AI that's disrupting other types of businesses. There are generational declines in the number of young men dating, the number of people who are married, and the number of virgins. People with social anxiety and depression — all of those numbers are moving in the wrong direction. So things like run clubs or social clubs just seem to tap into core desires that aren't being met. Those problems are being really seen. I'm not surprised at some of the examples you had and some of the numbers. I think it's really impressive, but I'm not entirely surprised, because I think people do need this now.
17:04	Sam Parr	If I'm a young person listening to this and I wanted to get into this, I've been playing around with copywriting and an idea for this. It just doesn't work for Hampton — it's a little too aggressive. I was reading a book called Bowling Alone. It's all about how, in America up until roughly the 1960s, the average American was a member of a variety of clubs: the PTA, the Rotary Club (which most people don't even know what that is), the Elks Club — all these clubs whose names we recognize but aren't entirely sure what they were. The average American was part of about 1.8 of them. Voter turnout for the Kennedy election was an all-time high — I think it was about 78% — and the trust that the average American had in a random other American was also at an all-time high. Since then there's been a slow decline: club affiliation is really low, PTA participation is low (PTA is a good litmus test), voter turnout is low, and the amount we trust one another is low. There are all types of hypotheses as to why this is the case. One strong hypothesis is the suburbs. When you are out in the suburbs — when you don't live in an urban environment — you have less interaction with your neighbors and you don't really get to know them as much. It's more like, "this is my land, this is my territory; everyone else stay out and let me worry about me." That type of energy contrasts with living in a building or an urban environment, where you sort of have to understand, "we're in this together."
18:30	Shaan Puri	Right.
18:30	Sam Parr	And that's one of the theories. I was thinking if I wanted to start a club in this space, my tagline would be "Join or Die." The idea is that as AI and digital get more popular, young people crave human interaction more than ever. You will literally live longer if you have a community of other people you interact with on a regular basis.
18:55	Shaan Puri	Right.
18:55	Sam Parr	And so, I've — I was thinking that this line, "Join or Die," has been sitting with me for three or four weeks. You can do all types of campaigns around this idea: you owe it to yourself to be part of a community, and you have to get out from behind the screen. I think the average 22-year-old is yearning for this so badly.
19:15	Shaan Puri	I have a few notes on your tagline, but we'll do that offline.
19:21	Sam Parr	"You're not a fan of Join, or Die?" </FormattedResponse>
19:22	Shaan Puri	It didn't do it for me, but I'm sure there are others who will like it.</FormattedResponse>
19:26	Sam Parr	Dude, just imagine some pretty lady named Kaylee who's serving chicken tenders. She serves and says, "Thanks, Sean — enjoy your ten D's and fries. Join or die."
19:35	Shaan Puri	"Join or die" — this is a greeting. Well, I think Brian Johnson's got "Don't die," so you're almost infringing there, so we gotta be a little careful. Okay. I have another idea. I think the theme of this episode today is basically anti-digital, anti-tech, anti-AI ideas. Okay, and so here's another one that our friend Trung was tweeting about. Did you see this thing that he was tweeting about — Yonder?
20:00	Sam Parr	"No, what's yonder?"
20:01	Shaan Puri	Alright, so check this out. Have you ever been to, like, maybe a stand-up comedy show or a music festival? Yes — and they put your phone into a pouch.
20:12	Sam Parr	Steve, our buddy—he used to date a girl, like, ten years ago, who worked at this company. Do you remember this? No—she, like, told us all about this company, and I was like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of," and now it's huge.
20:23	Shaan Puri	According to Trunk—which I couldn't verify elsewhere—the hub pays to be like $300,000,000 this year in revenue just putting people's phones in pouches. This is a great example of one of my frameworks: anytime the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it creates demand for the opposite. Like Newtonian physics—every action has an equal and opposite reaction—every trend creates an equal and opposite trend. As we've become completely addicted to our phones, with about 6–8 hours a day of screen time, and me opening my phone something like 300+ times a day, this has become a huge business. The story here: a guy in San Francisco, a former soccer player, started this business. The origin story—like many startup origin stories—might be partly made up. The narrative goes that he was at a music festival where someone was taking pictures of another person who was intoxicated and sharing them without consent. He thought it was messed up—phones everywhere—and wanted people to be able to go to a concert and actually be present and free. He went to a lab, experimented with ideas—lockers, bags—and came up with a magnetic pouch. It's a small pouch about the size of a phone. It has a magnetic seal and can be unlocked by tapping it on a base—sort of like the anti-theft tags you see in stores that the cashier removes at checkout. He started hustling it, going door to door in San Francisco, pitching it to music festivals. He discovered that Dave Chappelle had been complaining about people recording his sets—material that's meant to be kept for specials getting leaked to YouTube. So he asked a comedy booker in San Francisco to connect him with Dave's team. He demoed it to Dave, who said, "I'll try this." After using it at one show, Dave loved it: people were more present, not on their phones, and his material didn't get leaked. Dave started using it... other musicians, which...
22:53	Sam Parr	That was huge. That was a huge deal. I remember when that happened in San Francisco. Dave Chappelle was making everyone lock their phones in a bag. Yeah.
23:00	Shaan Puri	It sounds.
23:00	Sam Parr	Like a lot of friends. Extreme.
23:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and anytime an idea sounds extreme, it's what Seth Godin would call "remarkable" — meaning worth remarking. It's an unusual thing, and so it continues to grow. But that was going to be a small business, right? Because how many stand-up comedy shows are there? How much do these comedians even make? What can you charge? Then the big break came with schools. Now 70% of their revenue comes from schools. For example, a Minnesota school district pays $500,000 to get these [programs/assemblies] for all the schools so that schools become a cell-phone-free zone — students have to lock up their phones to enter.
23:37	Sam Parr	Or leave it in their car.</FormattedResponse>
23:39	Shaan Puri	And then, you know, now they're focused during the day. They don't have that distraction. They're not texting each other; they're not bored in class doing that stuff. The stats bear this out: kids are happier, their grades go up, and the teachers are happier. They have a better environment. So they started doing this in schools all around the world. Isn't it crazy that this little business—putting your cell phone in a pouch—is now a $300,000,000 juggernaut? How cool is that?
24:05	Sam Parr	It's, for one, I would've thought this would never, in a million years work. Now it seems obvious. But back then it's one of those ideas where people were like, "Maybe you should go get a job," and "No—don't fool around with sewing these bags." Two: have you used one?
24:21	Shaan Puri	Yeah, because at comedy shows they always make us do it. I hate it, but you know...
24:24	Sam Parr	What—what emotion do you feel?
24:26	Shaan Puri	Rage and anxiety.
24:28	Sam Parr	"I feel rage and anxiety."
24:29	Shaan Puri	Because I can't get to my...
24:30	Sam Parr	It's like, remember one time when my wife was pregnant. I went to a Dave Chappelle show, and a lady handed me one. I was like, "Look, lady — my wife's three weeks pregnant. I'm not giving you my phone." I tried to hide it and sneak by, but she ran me down and she goes...
24:46	Shaan Puri	"You'll be fine, dude."
24:47	Sam Parr	I was three weeks away from giving birth, and I was like, "I'm not— I have to have my phone." She turned sideways and said, "Yeah, me too." She was super pregnant—really pregnant. The lady working at the counter said, "I'm pregnant too. Put the phone in the bag." I said, "Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am." But I felt extreme anxiety, which means I need to use it more than I thought.
25:15	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly.</FormattedResponse>
25:17	Sam Parr	In my school district where I was living before, the board — I was paying attention — were going to vote on whether they should use this. And you want to know something crazy? It lost. Most parents wanted their kids to have their phone.
25:29	Shaan Puri	Right, yeah. There's an argument about whether it's about safety or personal property. There are arguments against it, but I mean, it seems like the market reaction is that it's working overall.
25:39	Sam Parr	Obviously, yeah.
25:41	Shaan Puri	And I just think it's such a simple idea. Also, I was watching something the other day, and Ed Sheeran was like, "I haven't had a phone for five years. Isn't that crazy?" He was like...
25:52	Sam Parr	What does that mean?
25:53	Shaan Puri	He was just like, "I don't own a phone." He said, "When I had a phone, people were just calling me or texting me all the time, or I was just using social media all the time. It was really hard to make music, so I just got rid of my phone." He added, "If someone needs to reach me, I have a manager who'll come find me if you really gotta get to me. But I haven't had a phone in five years." I was like, "Wow. That might be—like, when you read David Goggins' pull-up record. I thought the Ed Sheeran not having a phone for five years is up there with any sort of ultra race or pull-up record."
26:26	Sam Parr	Can I propose an "M"? Okay. </FormattedResponse>
26:28	Shaan Puri	"Oh shit."
26:29	Sam Parr	Yeah, listen. Last summer we did—what do we call it? What did we do? My first "Muscle Summer Bod" challenge... my first muscle—I have to think of a good name for this. But the challenge is: we're gonna— we should pick a Saturday or Sunday, or just one week we could do it. You have to go on a 12-hour walk, and you can't bring your phone or have a conversation with someone.
26:52	Shaan Puri	Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four-hour phone fast.
26:54	Sam Parr	No — a twelve-hour, I'm guessing. Dude, I promise you, it's not easy. I would bet so much money.
27:02	Shaan Puri	That walk—how far could you go?
27:05	Sam Parr	You... you have to be outside of the house, and your phone has to be in your bedroom or whatever. You can't be with your wife — you gotta be by yourself. You have to be by yourself. You can't have a conversation; you can't talk to a stranger. You just have to be outside by yourself, walking around wherever you live. It doesn't matter — just go sit in a park. But you have to be by yourself for twelve hours. I would bet my life that you can't do that.
27:26	Shaan Puri	"I’m not trying to kill you, Doug, but I think I could do that."
27:29	Sam Parr	I don't think you can. I—you would cheat. There's 100, I believe. Dude, you cannot just walk around and not have a conversation with someone without your phone for two [unclear: "for two"].
27:39	Shaan Puri	My kids are on my phone at least half the day because I use it to sedate them and subdue them—like a tranquilizer. So my kids are already on my phone all the time. I don't have my phone with me most of the time, but challenge accepted. I think we should do this: a phone fast. I mean, 12 hours just sounds like child's play to me, but... you know.
28:01	Sam Parr	I... you can't have a conversation, so you can—oh, by the way, you can't use your laptop.
28:05	Shaan Puri	No screen.
28:06	Sam Parr	"Yeah. No device and no conversations. You gotta be—you gotta be by yourself."
28:10	Shaan Puri	So, another—while I'm scrolling TikTok late at night, I see a video of this guy who says he went six weeks without looking at a screen. No computer, no TV, no phone—six weeks. He says, "I tested my memory before and after. I was about the 50th percentile in memorization. I'm now the 99th percentile." He adds, "It's not like I practiced memory. I was just not looking at my phone and not distracted all the time, and I [unclear: 'blurred'] to be more present. Now my memory is 99th percentile."
28:56	Sam Parr	I had to write a bunch of copy, so basically from after dinner—around 9 PM to midnight—I put my headphones on, plugged in, and just had to write and get the work done. It's a really fun way to get in the flow. I hadn't done that in years. It is incredible how hard it is to focus. When was the last time that you focused and shut out all the distractions? You turned off Slack, you turned off the... It's really, really, really rare that I do that.
29:19	Shaan Puri	Very.
29:20	Sam Parr	Rare — when I was in college, I would do that every single night, and it was awesome. That's when I would do my homework or my paper writing, or whatever. From Monday to Thursday, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. was work time, and it was a very rewarding experience to do it.
29:34	Shaan Puri	What was the... what was the GPA?
29:36	Sam Parr	"Dude, I swear to God, I graduated college with a 4.0."</FormattedResponse>
29:39	Shaan Puri	"Did you really?"
29:40	Sam Parr	I got a D in entrepreneurship class because I missed a presentation, but I got virtually A's in 100% of everything I took in college. That's... amazing. In high school I went to a bad school. I went to Belmont University — you'd never even heard of that. In high school I graduated with a 2.3 [GPA]. Then, when I got to college, I was like, "I'm gonna take this seriously." My nighttime work sessions were holy for me. It felt marvelous, and I never experienced that anymore. Do you ever experience that?
30:12	Shaan Puri	That absolute focus—phoneless focus. Yes. So what I started doing, and I would say my hit rate right now is maybe one out of every three days, I do this—legit, totally legit—which is: I wake up and I do it first thing in the morning. I go "no input." I don't look at my phone. I don't open up my computer. I grab a pencil and a pad and I'll do one of two things. Either I go for a walk first—if my dog's up, I'll take my dog for a walk and come back and then do this—or I'll just sit at this chair over here in this room and I just write. It's like "morning pages." I'll try to create something pre-input, and I'll do different things, so it doesn't matter what I create or what I write. I stole this from Tim Ferriss. He told me something about a creative "gym session"—just like the way you'll go to the gym. If I go to the gym I don't use my phone for most of it. You're just doing something for an hour, right? Doing that at a creative level. I've done it where I write jokes, because I learned this is how Seinfeld started his day for forty-five years. So I did that. I'll sometimes just write my food plan for the day—what am I going to eat, when am I going to work out—just kind of get that front and center. Sometimes I'll write a blog post, or I'll just write stuff I'm thinking about: little loose ends about each of the businesses, like, "Oh, you know, I should probably do that," or "No, we're being stupid about the way we're doing this," or "Wait, this is working; we're not doubling down on that; I need to have a conversation." I'll try to do that. But the biggest thing for me isn't just the focus—it's being pre-input to any Slack, Twitter, email, text, or anything.
31:53	Sam Parr	What time in the morning?
31:55	Shaan Puri	It usually starts at 7. Now that school came back on, I go at 8 and do a drop-off: I ride my bike, drop them off, then come back. So that has kind of cut it down now to basically only one hour instead of 90 minutes.
32:09	Sam Parr	"Yeah, I think we should do the MFM challenge. It needs to either be the 'walk thing' or morning pages. I think that's quite helpful."
32:17	Shaan Puri	Alright, so in the YouTube comments, settle the debate: write "twelve" or "twenty-four" — twelve hours or twenty-four? Just write "twelve" or "twenty-four." A no-phone — a phone fast, just like people do juice cleanses, or other... you know, silent meditation retreats, whatever. Ours is just a phone fast. And then Sam has this requirement that somewhere in that window you have to go be by yourself. What's the famous quote, like...
32:40	Sam Parr	"Yeah. All of your problems— all of man's problems— are because he can't sit in a room by himself." </FormattedResponse>
32:44	Shaan Puri	For thirty minutes.
32:45	Sam Parr	That's what I'm suggesting, right? But 12 hours...
32:47	Shaan Puri	Who—who said that? We'll name it after them.
32:49	Sam Parr	I don't know Abe Lincoln.
32:51	Shaan Puri	Pascal — this is the new Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal said this, so the new Pascal's Wager is: "Can you do this?"
33:00	Sam Parr	I think just sitting for 30 minutes and writing with a pen and paper is probably even more beneficial. I think that, like, you mentioned wanting to write a book, and in my head I'm like, "Man, writing a book would require 3 hours a day of just not talking to anyone and being zoned out." That is what's holding me back. I mean, I don't really want to write a book, but if I were to write one, that is the thing stopping me. It's not that it's a bad idea or that I can't write—it's that it requires 3 hours a day of silence, right? I think that's pretty messed up: that that is the reason why people can't do their best work.
33:38	Shaan Puri	I met up with Tim Urban in Austin. I'm a big fan of his blog, and he was writing a book at the time. I was asking him about his process, and he made it sound so simple. He said, "All I do—I wake up and for two hours all I do is write. I don't need a perfect day. I don't need eight hours a day. I need two hours, that's it. In those two hours I might write two paragraphs, two sentences, or two measly pages, but if I just do that every single day for a year it just stacks. You do that for 300 straight days, you've written a 600-page book." He also said, "I can just sit down and write the equivalent of two pages. It's not even like a—like a book page is even smaller than, like, a Google Doc page. Two hours. If you don't have two hours, then you're not serious about this." That really stuck with me, so I started. That's part of the inspiration.
34:24	Sam Parr	"Do you know who Robert Caro is?"
34:27	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, what did he write?"
34:29	Sam Parr	So Robert Caro — I think he originally was a journalist — and then his first big piece of writing was a three-book series on Lyndon Johnson, the president after JFK. Each book was about 800 pages. His world-famous work, though, was The Power Broker, about New York politician Robert Moses. Obama has since written the foreword for the most recent edition of The Power Broker, just to give an idea of how influential this book is. Many people regard The Power Broker as the greatest biography of all time. It doesn't matter if you're interested in Robert Moses the man or not — the fact that Caro packed every sentence with meticulous research (I think it's 1,400 pages) makes it a modern marvel. That's the clout of this book. He did detailed, sometimes quirky research. For example, if he was writing about a location he would go there and count the number of people coming in and out. When he wrote about it he'd note something like, "58 people came that day" — very specific. I went to a museum exhibit this past weekend that was entirely about Robert Caro writing The Power Broker. One main part of the exhibit focused on his process. He used a large desk calendar — you know, the kind with all thirty days on a single sheet — and his goal was simple: "All I need to do is write 1,000 words every single day." The words didn't have to be good; he could throw them away. But he had to write those 1,000 words every day to finish the book over the next three years and achieve his mission. They had the original notepad/calendar in the exhibit. He wrote things like "1,243 words today," "1,300" and marked a big X on the day. You see a chain of Xs. They showed August and he had missed one day because he had the flu, so the chain was almost unbroken. Jerry Seinfeld once referenced that chain of Xs. It was incredibly inspiring. Greatness, as exemplified by this book — one of the best biographies I've ever read — came from a very simple process: 1,000 words every single day. Of course Caro is a genius and there's all this amazing material, but that daily practice was probably the cornerstone of turning an idea into a great work. It's hard, but it's a very attainable, bite-sized way of approaching an epic project, which I found very inspirational.
37:18	Shaan Puri	I love that. There's another great one—have you heard the Steve Martin banjo story?
37:24	Sam Parr	"No, what's that?"
37:25	Shaan Puri	Okay, so the Steve Martin banjo.
37:26	Sam Parr	"He crushes — he crushes all the banjo."
37:28	Shaan Puri	So Steve Martin tells the story: he got a coach or a tutor who was honest with him. The teacher said, "You don't have a ton of natural banjo talent, just so you know." He was pretty frustrated with his progress. What he did was zoom out. I love this — it's such a powerful, simple mental trick. He thought, "Alright, I suck today and I'm probably going to suck tomorrow. I might suck for the next three months or six months." But then he thought, "Here's the thing: I really want to play the banjo. What if instead I just committed to playing the banjo for forty years? Because anybody who plays the banjo for forty years can't suck." That idea took all the pressure of being good off his shoulders. It let him say, "I'm just committed. I'm just going to do this for forty years, and of course I'll get good." Then he didn't have the daily doubts, hesitations, or moments where he wanted to give up because he reset his expectations. By the way, he wins a Grammy for a song where he's playing the band manager five or seven years later, so it obviously worked out really well. I love that forty‑year mindset because it applies to basically everything. I felt this with diet and fitness. It's easy to get frustrated — I was doing well, then I traveled and fell off the wagon for two days. Two "zoom outs" have helped me there. One is: it took me thirty-seven years to get in this shape, so it's okay if it takes a couple of days to fix it. The other zoom out is: instead of doubting "Can I do it? Will it happen?", think, "I'm just going to keep trying this for the next decade. Do I really think it won't happen if I give this my all for a decade?" No — of course it's going to happen. Of course I'll fix the habits, get a good workout routine, and do the things I know I need to do. I think it's very helpful because most people quit early — not because they're weak, but because they're beating themselves up and they have the wrong expectation of how long something takes or how easy it'll be, or whether they deserve it or whether it'll happen for them. If you knew it was going to happen — like when your Uber says it's nine minutes away — you don't panic that it's nine minutes away. You just accept that it's nine minutes away and you see it coming toward you. But if you're doing some project and you have no idea if it's even going to happen, then every day you have those "am I in or am I out?" doubts.
39:54	Sam Parr	I think there's a list of people... This is a business show, so we talk about business and money a lot, but there are people I learn more from who have nothing to do with any of that. A Steve Martin type is one of those people. When I hear that story, it resonates. I have a few habits that are both strengths and weaknesses. One of them is that I put time limits on goals. I set a milestone for where I want to be every five years. That helps me stay focused, but I also feel immense pressure — like I have to hurry up and get there. So it's cool to hear a story where you change the frame to, "I'm going to do this now for forty years instead of five." If you do something for five years, you can break that down quarterly. If you can break it down quarterly, you can break it down monthly. If you can break it down monthly, you can break it down daily. That is where both structure and anxiety come into play.
40:49	Shaan Puri	Well, I think I used to be like, "Which one is it?" I know deadlines and time constraints help me, but I know they also feel bad. When I go over them or I don't have the results in time, it feels bad, man. What do I do? Then the Naval quote kind of cleared it up for me: "Impatience with action, patience with results." [quote from Naval Ravikant] The 40-year story isn't: "I want this to take 40 years and I'm going to spread my workout over 40 years." The result is inevitable over a 40-year span. Now, the day-to-day actions — I'm going to be quite impatient about. I'm not going to let myself be super patient about taking steps, moving forward, and trying. So you have to be able to hold both those polar ideas in your head at the same time. This is so common. Almost everything you have in life — the best things — come when you have to hold two truths that are polar opposites in your head at the same time. I think this is one of them.
41:43	Sam Parr	I think—I heard you say that on a podcast recently.
41:45	Shaan Puri	I learned that from Joe Lonzo. I forgot what he calls it—like dialectics or something like that. I don't... maybe that's like Scientology, but...
41:51	Sam Parr	...That sounds a little too philosophical—like philosophy-class stuff for me. I think I prefer the Sean way.
41:59	Shaan Puri	Let me read this to you because I learned this when I was researching for Joe's podcast. He says: > "I'm not by any means a philosopher, but I've worked with some talented people who are in that discipline. There's an idea of opposing truths at extremes. It's a powerful concept that I learned to appreciate in my twenties. > > "My personality has sometimes been called a little intense. When I spend a lot of time reading, discussing, or thinking about an area, I'll often appreciate why a strong viewpoint is true and come to very firm conclusions. Then later I'm exposed to an opposite strong view, and I find this countervailing view also very persuasive. I found this confusing: how could both extreme, contradictory viewpoints be true? > > "Then this great thinker, G. W. F. Hegel, said, 'Truth exists at different extremes, and the actual truth is a complex interaction between the two.' > > "Most people are sloppy thinkers and opt for a middle-of-the-road position when they're faced with two opposing extremes. That compromise is less accurate than if you had just picked one of the extreme poles that were quite persuasive. But the wisest stance will incorporate both of the opposites within itself."
43:00	Sam Parr	"Do you have an example of, like, two opposites that you tend to buy into?"
43:05	Shaan Puri	The example we just gave of patience versus impatience. It served me so well to be impatient, and I don't know any successful people who consider themselves super patient. But at the same time, you talk to those people and they're like, "Yeah, I was working on this for nine years before we... had a breakthrough." It's like—damn, these people take pretty long-term time horizons. So how is it true? How can they be impatient and have a very long-term time horizon? It's because both things are true, just in slightly different ways. What's another example?
43:32	Sam Parr	Yeah, I've got a couple of them. One of them is capitalism. I'm super pro-capitalism — I love making money. I think building businesses is great. I think, kind of, that everyone on their own is awesome. Then other times, in my private life, I'm like, "I want to be like a socialist." I just want to share with everyone. I feel bad — I don't want my cleaning lady to ever go without. I want to make sure that she is paid above and beyond, even if it's not what the market demands. I get angry at capitalism. I feel this polarity: one moment I'm so pro-capitalism, and the other I think, "Oh man, I just want everyone to get paid more than they do and to be wealthy." But you can't have both of those. Do you ever experience that?
44:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, totally. You have the sort of head and heart differences in that way. Another example he gives—and that's true for me—is the difference between depth and width. Do you become a generalist and go broad, or do you go for depth? There's no one answer. There are virtues to either path, and you want to do both, but you can't do both at the same time. It wouldn't be true—you'd be sort of defying physics to try to do both simultaneously. You can see the value at either end of the extreme. What you probably don't want is the middle, where you only have a handful of subjects and you're not very deep in any of them.
44:58	Sam Parr	Here's one that I think you probably struggle with as well. I struggle with this all the time, which is creating legacy. So, like, if I go to a museum and I see someone's name on the museum wall, or someone who has a business that's lasted for 200 years, I think, "I want that legacy. I want to do something great that everyone knows my name." And on the other end, nothing matters—you're going to die. You will be... </FormattedResponse>
45:19	Shaan Puri	Totally forgotten.
45:21	Sam Parr	And like, I would say half the time I think this is all irrelevant. All that matters is that I hang out with my children and spend time with them, because I'm going to die very soon and no one will remember me on the other end. "Create something that matters. Do something that's great." You know, like... do you feel that way? I think every entrepreneur, by the way — no matter how successful they are, even the billionaires we've had on — I bet a nice chunk of the time they think, "f this, like I'm out," right?
45:48	Shaan Puri	Also, it's like, if you go down that road and you're like, "All right — either none of it matters or this matters the most," you become the most persuasive person. You know exactly how to convince yourself of either argument in the moment, and it justifies doing whatever it is you want to do. So, you can't trust yourself in that way either.
46:07	Sam Parr	"Yeah. It's like being hungry at the grocery store. It's like, 'Well, I'm feeling down today; therefore, nothing matters; therefore, I've gotta let it burn down.'"
46:14	Shaan Puri	Exactly.
46:15	Sam Parr	But that is the dichotomy I face. Probably I am—more often than not, I feel more uncertainty around those two than I do feel certainty by...
46:28	Shaan Puri	The way — can I also just give you some props? I think your Robert Caro museum visit, the things you know, these clubs, these housing things... you have a crazy bag of knowledge and interest that's just really insane to me. That's really, I don't know, inspiring and interesting. I just can't believe—what is your filter for what you get interested in? But the result of it fascinates me, you know, which is why we've been able to do, whatever, 700 episodes of this podcast.
47:00	Sam Parr	Well, and by the way, the props or advice go both ways. When I hear you tell a story, I'm like, "How did you know this?" But basically what it comes down to is this: I tend to find something that interests me and then I'll create a semester around it. I'm like, this interests me — I'm gonna follow my nose, and I will pretty systematically read about it from, like, nine to ten. I just follow what interests me. Right now I'm oddly interested in beauty and art. For example: I live in New York City now, on the Upper West Side, and I purposely moved into a building from the Gilded Age because that's my favorite era. My neighborhood is… it's very weird there. There's a little bit of the "tism" coming out [speaker's slang], but I am in awe of all these buildings that were built between about 1895 and 1920. I've been using ChatGPT and I've been going from building to building. I'll just walk around at night, learn about the building, and ask the doorman, "Tell me everything about this building. I want to know all about the architecture." I find it so fascinating. The other day I started watching this guy — I'm gonna say this in a crude way, and if he hears it I just want to say, "Guy, I'm sorry," but I'm gonna say it this way: do you know the Indian guy from Mean Girls? His name's Rajeev. Do you remember that?
48:18	Shaan Puri	Yeah, kind of.
48:20	Sam Parr	Yeah. First of all, I want to say I'm a huge fan of his. I'm only saying it in a crude way because this is how most people will...
48:26	Shaan Puri	Oh yeah. The rapper—the rapper guy. Yeah.
48:28	Sam Parr	Yes, his name's Rajiv [spelled R‑A‑J‑I‑V]. He has a YouTube channel right now that I love. He's basically like Bob Ross, but he's been talking about pottery and calligraphy and kind of beautiful things—things that don't typically do well on YouTube: things that are really slow or the opposite of fast. It's not fast‑paced; it's very slow. He's been talking about architecture. That's one of his latest things—buildings. I realized in one of the videos that he lives down the street from where I now live. Last week—or on Sunday—I was at a coffee shop and I saw him. I said, "Hey, are you Rajeev? I just want to let you know I love your YouTube channel. It is so good. What are you doing?" He said, "I'm just getting coffee." I said, "Well, I have a seat right here. My daughter and I are going to have a coffee. Would you like to hang out with me?" So I sat with this guy for an hour and he told me all about the neighborhood and all about the beauty of the architecture. That is where I learn and get stories: I'll just go up and talk to someone I admire or find another person who I love. It's been a blast following my nose and finding what interests me.
49:40	Shaan Puri	That's hilarious. That's amazing. Hey, I have...
49:44	Sam Parr	I spent an hour with this guy.
49:45	Shaan Puri	"I have an extra baby seat here. Do you want it?" </FormattedResponse>
49:48	Sam Parr	Know, well, I had—there was, like, I had the best seat in the house, and I—I go, "Do you wanna sit down and just, like, talk and hang out with me?" </FormattedResponse>
49:55	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he's like, "Oh, leaving at work." You're like, "That's not with me."
50:01	Sam Parr	But anyway, I've been that. That's usually what I do to, like, learn. That's... I like.
50:06	Shaan Puri	Usually, what I do is meet a former actor turned cultural expert at a coffee shop. That's not what you usually do, right?
50:13	Sam Parr	No, I immerse myself. I get interested in a topic and I'll immerse myself, then I go out and talk to people about it. I do field trips. This was a lucky field trip, but I would do field trips all the time: I'll hear about a museum doing an event or I'll fly somewhere. That's why I like to learn.
50:29	Shaan Puri	That's cool. Yeah, you should publish more of that. I think that's great.
50:33	Sam Parr	Well, that's cool. I guess I should — I never really thought of it as particularly unique. How do you, when you read a book or a topic, what do you do? </FormattedResponse>
50:41	Shaan Puri	Yeah — kind of a similar thing, just a little less structured. I think my attention span's a little shorter. Once an idea clicks, I get this extreme high — it feels like I just learned something cool or that I know something now. Then I want to go do it; I don't want to keep researching. Also, it often leads me to the next thing, which is totally unrelated. For example, I had a whole phase on the creative process when I was reading about Seinfeld and the "banjo story" — I was super into that. Then it would shift to old-school marketers, and then to the posterior chain: why my hamstrings are so tight, what posture should actually be, and how do I fix that. It becomes random stuff like that where I get a similar season of focus. I think mine are shorter because I'm less diligent about following through.
51:28	Sam Parr	Yeah. My preferred way of doing it is: if I think I'm going to be interested in a topic, I try to research roughly three to six books on the topic, and I commit to going deep on...
51:39	Shaan Puri	Them, right.
51:40	Sam Parr	"Because I don't want to be persuaded when it gets... I don't. I want to make my decision in advance that I'm going to consume and study."
51:47	Shaan Puri	Yeah, because otherwise you have the problem I have, which is: anytime you hit a lull—where you're not getting that amazing feedback loop of learning new things or finding something interesting—it's easy to eject. This was a voluntary thing; it wasn't for a specific outcome or result. I think I would be better served if I did it your way, where I pre-commit the time. It's like, "look, I can't do anything else during that time; I'm going to keep wandering around here." I bet I'm giving up at the first lull, but there's still a lot more gold to find if I just carry on. If I just want to keep wandering for a little bit longer.
52:20	Sam Parr	And oftentimes, what people tend to do is they think that researching what to research next, or researching what to do next, is actually productivity. When it's not—productivity is actually doing. But yeah... hey, Renaissance Sam. What can I say? The renaissance.
52:42	Shaan Puri	Alright, that's it. Go ahead—hit them with your line.
52:45	Sam Parr	That's it. That's a pod.

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Start This Business If Want To Survive The Ai Apocalypse

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