Old Owners Are Desperate to Hand Off Profitable Businesses

- June 27, 2025 (9 months ago) • 55:57

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	So, the article tells a story about multiple 80-year-old men who own publications. These are fine businesses—maybe they make six figures a year in profit—but they can't find anyone to take them over. So they're literally just shutting them down.
00:20	Shaan Puri	Should we start with this tweet? It's from Media Gazer, which I guess is a media publication/commentary on media companies. It says: > "Small-town newspapers are shutting down due to lack of succession plans, not financial issues, in nearly a dozen U.S. states." This is a growing problem. Okay.
00:35	Sam Parr	And so, the article tells a story of multiple 80-year-old guys who own publications that are making... they are fine businesses. Maybe they make six figures a year in profit, but they can't find anyone to take them over, so they're literally just shutting them down. And here we have a tweet from Matthew Prince — I think his name is Matthew; I think he's worth something like $4 or $5 billion. He's the CEO of Cloudflare. "Do you want to just kind of read what he says?" </FormattedResponse>
01:01	Shaan Puri	> "Yeah, so he says, actually this is a recipe for a really rewarding life. If you're a recent college grad and not sure what to do, find a small town you could love with a local newspaper whose owners are ready to retire. Raise the capital to buy it. Run it with the community's interest at heart. > > You won't get too rich, but you'll do well. More importantly, you'll be a hero to the community and have influence. Or even early in your career, you'll meet the love of your life at some—at some event you otherwise wouldn't get invited to. You'll have kids who will proudly call you their parent and make this corner of the world meaningfully better. > > If anyone wants to seriously follow this recipe and just lacks the capital, happy to talk."
01:36	Sam Parr	So, I think that's an amazing insight. But the true insight... someone chirps at him and they say something like, "Go ahead." "What did they say? I can't read it all."
01:44	Shaan Puri	So, literally, the guy's name who's replying is Some Guy. I'm not even disparaging him. Some Guy tweets at him and says: "This is the sort of unwittingly funny stuff that wealthy people say: that a 130 IQ guy should be content with an imaginary small-town life lived in anonymity near [unintelligible], being 180 degrees from their own choices which deliver untold wealth and influence." I don't even—what is this guy saying? I didn't understand the tweet. He's basically saying this is something wealthy dudes say that's so funny because it's so wrong that a guy would be happy doing this. Yeah—is that what he's saying? </FormattedResponse>
02:20	Sam Parr	And here's why I like Twitter. So, Matt Prince — I don't think he's high profile; the average person has no idea who he is, but he's worth $5 billion, and it's so interesting to get his insight. "This is the tweet that I really care about, and the rest was for context. Read this next one."
02:38	Shaan Puri	He replies to some guy: "I have untold financial wealth and I own a local newspaper, so I have some perspective." Like Warren Buffett likes to say, "Surprisingly little changes when you move from upper middle class to truly rich." Houses are houses, cars are cars, and watches are stupid. That's so good. What's more important is meaning. "I feel lucky to have achieved financial wealth while chasing meaning. That is super rare, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have gotten both." But if you're early in your career and decide, "I'd rather optimize for meaning than financial wealth," I think this is a better path than most would consider. For example, volunteer for the Peace Corps. It will actually let you make a good living, and you'll have incredible influence and meaning within your community. And if you later decide to go for untold financial wealth, always remember Rupert Murdoch's empire began with the Adelaide Advertiser, which he bought when he was 21. </FormattedResponse>
03:27	Sam Parr	How fantastic is that?</FormattedResponse>
03:29	Shaan Puri	This is really great. Although, you know—not to be a "reply guy"—Cloudflare is not the Peace Corps or owning a small-town newspaper in a community. So what is he saying: that Cloudflare was his main thing, or that he did something before? </FormattedResponse>
03:40	Sam Parr	That's that. "Do you—his meaningful thing, but the..." [unclear] </FormattedResponse>
03:45	Shaan Puri	He has another one. So he's like, some guy goes, "How is one supposed to make a good living from a small-town newspaper? Do you have a model — a new model for profitability? I want to hear a breakdown..." And he said, "Matthew Prince says the local paper we bought cash-flowed around $600,000 when we bought it. We wanted to run it as a nonprofit, so we plowed it all back into expanding coverage. But it is not the case that these are bad businesses — they're just not big businesses."
04:07	Sam Parr	So, the takeaway is multiple things. First: the claim that "newspapers are dying" — specifically local newspapers in towns of 5,000, 10,000, or 30,000 people — is not true. They are not dying. If you read the replies you'll see people saying, "I own a local newspaper that does $500,000 in EBITDA." There are replies here, and Matthew (Matt) just posted one of those replies where he explains the numbers. Second: it's fascinating to hear this guy's perspective — he has a lot of experience — and I actually agree with him. I also think there is a big opportunity to buy a bunch of these papers, but you can just start with one. I don't think local newspapers are going away anytime soon. To be honest, they have a very stable subscriber base. As Matt says, "hospitals and other local businesses are eager to advertise in local newspapers." That business, while small, is doing well and is, in many places, essentially a monopoly.
05:12	Shaan Puri	Okay — I love this one. 10 out of 10. Fine, good job. Hey, I got a quick break because I want to tell you something cool. Our sponsor for this episode is HubSpot, but instead of the ad telling you about HubSpot, they wanted to do something useful for you. They did some research and found that a bunch of people in our community have side hustles. They start a business on the side, get it going, and then it becomes their main hustle over time. So instead of just telling you about HubSpot’s features, they wanted to give you something that will be useful for your side hustle. They put together a database of AI prompts — things you can put into ChatGPT or your favorite AI tool that will help you with your side hustle. Check it out; it's going to save you a bunch of time. I think it’s a prompt database you should be using to make your side hustle more successful. You can use this as your personal cheat sheet, your toolset to be a better operator with your side hustle. You can either scan the QR code on the screen or get the link in the description to access the AI prompt database. Alright, back to the show. I gave a talk at Berkeley a few months ago about starter businesses — what I call "white belt businesses."
06:18	Sam Parr	Wait—let's reflect on that. That's pretty cool.
06:20	Shaan Puri	What, giving a talk?
06:22	Sam Parr	At Berkeley? I don't know — that sounds cool to me. I never got to go to fancy colleges.
06:25	Shaan Puri	It's hilarious. I'm like, "I'm gonna give this talk," and I think I've told this story before, but my entire life shifted because I was in a random class at Duke. I planned to be a doctor. I'd taken the MCATs, all of it. Then I took this one class by this amazing woman, Lisa Keister. She had graduated ten years earlier, gotten wealthy, lived an interesting life, and came back to teach. She decided, what class did the kids actually need? The class was called Getting Rich — kinda like the podcast My First Millions, a pretty crude title. Actually, it was two things. First, personal finance: you'd learn about mortgages, savings, how compounding works, that kind of stuff. Second, she would invite speakers so we'd be exposed to other ideas of what a life could be besides "doctor, lawyer, consultant, banker" — which, at a school like Duke, is where maybe 90% of the students are devoting their energy. A guy came in and gave a talk and it literally changed my life. It wasn't even something he said. I just thought, this guy seems like he's having fun. He didn't seem that much smarter than me — maybe smarter now — but he said at the beginning he "didn't know shit about shit," and that's where I was. So why don't I just do what this guy's doing? The last thing he said was: > "Look, if you go try to do something entrepreneurial or interesting and it doesn't work out, this is America, baby. The story is a currency for you." He continued, "I hire kids like you, and guess what — you all have the same top three quarters of the resume: you go to school, you got a 3..."
07:59	Shaan Puri	So, GPA... you have some stupid extracurricular activities, you got an internship at some big corporation where you didn't really make an impact. The only thing that differentiates any of you guys is the other section at the bottom of your resume: have you done anything? Have you gone on any interesting quests? So he's like, "Go on interesting quests." You have nothing to lose right now — you don't have kids, you don't have a mortgage. Just go try some shit. If it works, fantastic. If it fails, don't worry — it creates a great story that guys like me like to hear. That really shifted my life. I get invited to give this talk at Berkeley, and I'm like, "I'm gonna do this, man. I'm gonna change someone's life. I'll go be a life-changer today." I prepped my ass off. I really tried. I thought about it. I spent 2 days — really, really full — just 10 hours a day working on this one talk. Two days doesn't sound like a lot, but I show up to these podcasts pretty cold; I can wing it with the best of them. So for me to really put 20 hours into one talk I'm going to give to 50 kids — that was unusual for me.
08:59	Sam Parr	You sound like the Kenny Powers of giving a talk, man. You're like, "Get ready, kids — I'm gonna make you piss tears." I'm like...
09:08	Shaan Puri	Hold on to your butts — I'm about to rock your world. So I go in, and guess what? Within two minutes of the talk, these kids really just don't give a fuck. Again, I'm trying to fire on all cylinders: it's interactive, I'm cracking jokes, I have a story, I have a big promise at the beginning. I look around, and I remember vividly in that moment. It was like: "Oh—I remember being 19. You're not even out of school yet. The real world is a distant land far away [at this point]. You're just trying to... you're like, 'Okay, I have to be here till five, then I'm gonna go eat, and then I have that paper to write.'"
09:55	Sam Parr	Three years out of your target demo, too. Like, they're Indian, they go to Berkeley, and you're thinking, "Alright, perfect—this is my demo." And then you're like, "Shit, they're still 19. I need to wait until they're 21 until they've heard of me."
10:05	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So, honestly, it was kind of a giant waste of time. I don't think I shifted anyone's life. I think I changed exactly zero lives, but I really tried. One of the principles I taught was: when you get out of Berkeley, instead of getting a job, consider starting a company. But for most of you, you don't have the next Facebook, you don't have the next big idea, and maybe you're not even talented enough to handle that. It's kind of like if Jessica Alba walked through that door and she's like, "You?" It's like, "Dude, you couldn't handle Jessica Alba right now." Anyway, don't worry about it — that's not your problem. You need to go, you know, put your hand under Mindy's shirt in the bag behind the bleachers over there. That's the level you're at right now. So I basically said you need a starter business — a white-belt business — and I was giving them ideas for what simple starter businesses are.
10:51	Sam Parr	"But was this your analogy? Did you just...?"
10:54	Shaan Puri	No — I just did that one, just now. I thought... I thought you'd probably—yeah. Well, see, the funny thing is I have you and I'm like, "Sam's gonna love this." Well, he's gonna love-hate this. And then I'm like, "Ari's just gonna hate this." Sure enough, as I'm saying it, that's what I got. I got Sam laughing but face-palming, and Ari just looking off into the distance, wondering, "How did I end up here? Why do I have this job? Oh my God."
11:16	Sam Parr	No, that's a fantastic analogy because it's very true. Everyone dreams of, like, "Jessica Alba doing that," and you're like, "Wait—what do I do? What do I do with my hands?" You know what I mean? It's perfect.
11:28	Shaan Puri	Exactly — you are not prepared for Jessica Alba yet, and that's okay. You just need some reps.
11:35	Sam Parr	And so, what's the point of this? What are you going to show me?
11:39	Shaan Puri	Oh, I guess the tie to that was—I think owning a local newspaper is a fantastic version of the store business to run. Was that not obvious? So crystal clear to me: the connection.
11:53	Sam Parr	"Show me this story about Steve Ballmer, and then also I want to see the Gary Vee one."
11:58	Shaan Puri	Okay — two great choices. Excellent choices off the menu. Alright, this is from, I believe, Steve Ballmer. He goes on the Acquired podcast.
12:06	Sam Parr	It was really good. It was so good.
12:07	Shaan Puri	I agree. I didn't watch it, but I agree—the clips have been good. So he's telling the story and they ask, "Do you guys know the story of Keyloo at Microsoft? He was one of the most pivotal things at Microsoft." The host goes, "Why? I mean, I knew he's important, but please tell the story." Steve says, "He was pivotal in a way that you won't even know." First of all, he's a brilliant guy, great guy. He's at Yahoo, and he went to grad school with the head of Microsoft Research, Harry. So the setup here is that Satya Nadella, who's now the CEO of Microsoft, was running Bing at the time. Bing was trying to compete with Google, and Harry runs the research program there. Harry comes and he says, "Look, this guy Key is a genius. We have to hire Key. I don't know if Key wants to work for us. We gotta learn from this guy—we gotta hire this guy." So Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and Harry all fly down to California to meet with this guy Key Lou. They talked to Key and they're like, "Dude, you're right—this guy's brilliant and we're learning about him." And then at one...
13:05	Shaan Puri	Key walks away, leaves the room, and goes to the restroom or something. Satya then throws out this idea: "We should hire Key and I should work for him." Harry, who's all in because he worked with Key, already works for Satya. Satya says, "We should not only hire this guy — I should work for him. I should report to him," essentially giving up power. They call Key. "Key, listen..." He was thinking about taking a job somewhere else, but he ends up joining. Then the host asks, "So what did Key do at Microsoft?" He replies: > "What I just told you. He told me about Satya. I love Satya, and we were giving him more and more responsibilities. But when I saw that this guy would do the right thing for the company — he would give up power to bring in a more talented person and agree to work for him — he didn't have ego that got in the way. I knew that Satya was the guy." Satya has now become the CEO of Microsoft and has led Microsoft on an incredible run.
14:04	Sam Parr	That's so good. That's a great story.
14:05	Shaan Puri	It's up 1,000%. For a company as big as Microsoft to go up 1,000% and now be a $3 trillion company — all under Satya's kind of regime — I thought that was just a badass story, right?
14:18	Sam Parr	Later on in the podcast, Steve Ballmer talks about philanthropy. He says, "I don't know how rich I am, but I think $100 billion or more." The Acquired guys [the hosts] were like, "Your wealth is growing — I think $20 billion a year," and he replied, "Yeah, I'm trying to give it all away." Then he said, "You're forgetting about something." The host asked, "What?" He answered, "Microsoft pays a dividend, so just my dividends are making me $1 billion a year." He concluded, "I'm trying to give it all away and I can't find enough people who can accept the money."
14:54	Shaan Puri	Well, Steve, we would love to help you with this problem—we're a...
14:59	Sam Parr	Whole bunch. He was talking about how he's like, "I don't — I forget the capital appreciation of this, or the stock appreciation. Lately it's been what, 15% a year? I forget. It's something like magnificent, where he's earning tens of billions of dollars from that." He corrected the guys when they said how wealthy he is. He goes, "You're forgetting about our dividend, which paid me 1 billion [unspecified currency]."
15:21	Shaan Puri	You know, he's just been sitting on that, by the way. He's like, "These motherfuckers out here don't know — they don't know how I'm balling."
15:29	Sam Parr	It was a really great podcast. It was like three hours long. Ballmer gets made fun of a bunch for "that one video" where he just looks goofy. But he's a great salesman, and he's way more technical than people realize. Ballmer's a genius.
15:46	Shaan Puri	That's cool. I mean, you gotta be special. There's luck involved, but it's so easy to write people off. He's a great example of enthusiasm as a skill. I've talked about this in a bunch of other podcasts—enthusiasm is an actual skill. That video people make fun of—"developers, developers, developers, developers"—to me is like watching Vince Carter dunk. It's a guy who probably brought a shit ton of energy, enthusiasm, and belief to the team in an unwavering way and at an unusual level. Yeah, it was obviously funny to laugh at; I get it—I thought it was funny as shit too. But enthusiasm is a skill, and I love it because people don't even think of it as a skill, yet we all know it when we see it. If you've ever worked with somebody who's really enthusiastic, who believes in what you're doing and brings good energy every day, who doesn't get worn down or buckled by adversity, you love that person. That person is clearly valuable to the team; you'd hate if they left. Yet nobody talks about enthusiasm as a skill—something you could practice, develop, or at least celebrate having. It's something that, you know, seems like it's for dumb people.
16:59	Sam Parr	What's this Gary Vee one?
17:02	Shaan Puri	This is very funny. Alright—does it love Gary V? "Gary, I love you." This is also hilarious. So they're playing a game called "Bullish and Bearish," where the host is going to tell him a company name and he has to decide: is he a bull or a bear on it? Watch this.
17:17	MFM	Meta: bullish Reddit: bullish Alphabet: bullish Waymo: bullish </FormattedResponse>
17:24	MFM	I'm not educated enough to give an answer on that, to be honest. Nvidia — I feel like if I spend 10 hours educating myself, I'm like, "Okay, this is not sustainable to be this crazy." Disney — very bullish. I think intellectual property is one of the most underrated businesses of the future of VR and everything. I don't think people understand how big owning IP is gonna be.
17:43	MFM	Tesla: bullish. Microsoft.
17:46	MFM	Very bullish OpenAI.
17:48	MFM	I'm bullish on Amazon.
17:50	Sam Parr	Very bullish [on Zoom].
17:52	MFM	Bullish on Alibaba. Bullish on ByteDance [TikTok's parent company]. Bullish even though it might be banned.
18:00	Shaan Puri	Bullish, not stupid, bitch. I'm bullish. Okay—don't even, before that word gets out of your mouth: I'm bull—bullish. What am I gonna do? I'm bullish.
18:15	MFM	Dude, how?
18:16	Shaan Puri	Funny. Is this?
18:17	Sam Parr	I love Gary. It sucks because she picked, like...
18:22	Shaan Puri	Honestly, I can't hate. I'm also pretty bullish on all the tech companies — they're all the best companies in the world.
18:29	Sam Parr	Amazon and ChatGPT — so funny. Dude, people forget. I—I think VaynerMedia. I track it because I like Gary, and I think it's easy to dismiss him as a guru. But, you know, VaynerMedia is doing something like $300 million a year right now.
18:50	Shaan Puri	"I did not know that. And when you say you track it... where—where are you getting this information from?"
18:55	Sam Parr	So, do you remember how I told you I had this document where I track companies? I track people too. I make a timeline of their life and, at different ages, they do different things. I track this with a variety of companies as well. VaynerMedia — I was curious about their trajectory. He was growing the company at a really good clip: it was doubling for a couple of years, and it was still growing at 50% for a couple of years. I just wanted to check in and add to my document. Over the last three or four years he's grown it to something like $250,000,000 a year in revenue. If you Google "VaynerMedia revenue," he actually is fairly public about it lately — where it's at — but it's in the $203,100 range. [Likely intended: $203,100,000.]
19:36	Shaan Puri	$200 to $300 million a year. Yeah. And what do they do now? Is it just marketing services, or what—what's going on?
19:43	Sam Parr	So, VaynerX, which is now the holding company in 2024, was on track to do $300,000,000 in revenue. This was written in December '24, so you could assume they're in the $300,000,000 range. Yes — they do social media. It's the same thing: they manage people's social media.
20:03	Shaan Puri	I mean, it's gotta be more of that—manage people's social media stuff. It's gotta be more of that.
20:07	Sam Parr	I think that's the bulk of it. They do social media advertising and campaigns. So, if you're Samsung and you want to run ads on Facebook and you want to make really good ads, I believe.
20:17	Shaan Puri	Let's ignore VaynerMedia. Bored. What is the most interesting thing that's come out of your tracking people manually year by year, borderline creepy stalker thing that you're doing?
20:29	Sam Parr	What's interesting to me is a few things. One: the ability to grow — it gets harder and harder. But the people who are like really big animals just figure out how to do it, and that's really fascinating to me. Occasionally, even companies that are growing quickly will have two or three years of no or little growth. The reason I like to do this research is it helps me understand. I think it's the same way when you talk to your rich friends and you talk about money with them: you start to normalize money. That's why I do this stuff where it, like...
21:02	Shaan Puri	It sounds like it's almost an emotional regulation, because entrepreneurship is a longer-than-you-want, more up-and-down thing. Seeing that the people or things you admire today either took a long time or had multiple flat years makes you not feel like shit when you're in one of those periods. Is that it?
21:27	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah—exactly. I think I showed you the revenue chart... or no. So, I've shown you charts before of Business Insider, which is a company I used to do this for. They've grown like crazy, but there were about three years where every single month they actually didn't grow. I was like, "This chart looks great because we've zoomed out to 15," but zoom in on those three years and imagine feeling that way for nearly 1,000 days. That doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good at all.
21:53	Shaan Puri	The whole life of the company right now is three years. Imagine this whole time just flat... you know?
21:58	Sam Parr	Replit — we had Amjad on the podcast, and that was one of our biggest episodes. They just announced the other day that they hit 100,000,000 in revenue (about 100 million), which is huge. What he said — in a small comment, like in a reply — was that I believe last year (or the year before) they were at 10,000,000 in revenue (about 10 million). So they went from 10,000,000 to 100,000,000 in record time — like one year or two years, something like that. But what he told us on the podcast is that he started the company eight years ago, which means from years zero to eight he got to 10,000,000 in revenue. Which is not impressive. That's neat, but it's not impressive. What's insane to me is that he kept at it for eight years, and then—tell me if I'm getting my numbers wrong—he kept at it for that long and then success came in about two years.
22:48	Shaan Puri	Yes and no. I think you're right, but it's not like it was just failing that whole time. If you look at the user growth of developers — and I think I tweeted this out; I'll find it — they were growing exponentially in the number of users who were developers. That was also happening at the same time. So it's not as though, "oh man, suddenly it starts to work." I mean, look at this: this is Paul Graham tweeting about Replit before they even turned on monetization. This is back in 2020.
23:28	Sam Parr	But what year does that go to?
23:31	Shaan Puri	This is 2015 to 2020 — like midway through 2020 (or 2021). They had 5 million developers/programmers using their platform. He — Paul — talks about it. He says: > "This graph is impressive not just for its perfect exponential shape, but the numbers — 5 million users is a lot. When those users are programmers, imagine how many users their users will have of their apps." I think the crazy thing about Replit is that they basically pivoted the entire company when they were at a billion-dollar valuation. I invested in Replit — I think at an ~$800 million-ish valuation [possibly $800–900 million]. I invested in the fund and I invested personally because I was such a big believer in this. They had pretty much no revenue at the time, but it was this kind of growth. I loved the product. I loved Amjad — I was like, "this guy's a savage." They built an incredible product that I think will have a network effect over time. Then they pivoted the entire business. It wasn't just about young programmers — I thought they were getting young programmers to start coding on Replit, and maybe those people would never leave; they'd code their whole career on Replit. When AI happened, they pivoted basically the entire company again: now it's not even just for programmers. It's for people who don't code — non-engineers — to make things...
24:52	Sam Parr	I used to suddenly be able.
24:54	Shaan Puri	To be engineers — to be able to write and create software for software creators. And now that's ramped to $100,000,000 at 10×; they 10×'d the revenue in one year. So now I look like a genius for investing in this thing, but I really didn't even invest in it because they pivoted. They basically shifted the entire user — "who is the user and what is the use case" — you know, afterwards.
25:17	Sam Parr	Yeah, I mean, this is just insane. I use Replip probably three or four times a week—it's really fun.
25:24	Shaan Puri	I just asked ChatGPT to make this. This is Sam stalking all these businesses.
25:29	Sam Parr	Dude, I do this like crazy. I'm gonna have to share this doc. I just... I like tracking, you said. </FormattedResponse>
25:34	Shaan Puri	To me, when we first met you were like, "I took every billionaire and I tried to figure out what they were doing at age 30." I was like, "What?" And you're like, "Jack Dorsey — you know — at age 30 his net worth was only whatever." I was like, "How do you know this and why do you know this? What are you doing?" And you're like, "By the time I'm 30 my goal is to have X." I think we were—well, we probably met when we were 24 or 25 years old. You were like, "When I'm 30 I want to have $20,000,000 in the bank." That was your number. You said, "Look at this, I'll be ahead of Jeff Bezos and Jack Dorsey, these guys." I was like, "Yo, this guy's a sicko, but I like it."
26:09	Sam Parr	It was the—I should call it: if I teach a class, it's going to be called "How to Become an Economic Animal." Unfortunately, there are many levels—there are as many levels to it, and there are many people who are way above me. I didn't understand how exponential growth works, but hey, you know, I think I got into the arena of what I was aiming for. So we gotta...
26:31	Shaan Puri	Talk about the new mayor — not because this is a politics podcast. I don't know him; I didn't even know this guy existed until three days ago, to be honest with you. You're moving to New York and you seem to know about him. I'm following him only from a business and marketing perspective. I have a business and marketing take on this guy. But can you first set the context for people like me who are not following? Who is this New York City mayor — he's the mayor, right? That's what he is?
26:58	MFM	"That's what he."
26:58	Sam Parr	Just became—he's going to be the Democrat who's running for mayor. So it was the Democrats'... I don't even know the right term, but nomination, and he won. So basically it was him and Cuomo.
27:09	Shaan Puri	Because New York is very Democratic, he's most likely to win. Is that why people are freaking out? Normally, if he's just a candidate...</FormattedResponse>
27:15	Sam Parr	You know, more likely than not the issue is here. The issue has a bunch of issues, basically: the politician is corrupt. Cuomo — or Cuomo was running for mayor; he was previously the governor. He got in trouble for, like, asking his coworkers to have sex with him. He was the guy running against this guy, the current mayor, Mayor Adams. Adams has accepted bribes. He is going to be running as an independent versus this guy, and so we're kind of stuck with, like, it's rock‑paper‑scissors. Yeah, it's like, you know, South Park — it's like a "douche or a turd sandwich": who are you going to vote for? That's kind of like what we're working with here. The gist of this guy is that he's incredibly charismatic. He's 32 years old. He believes in a lot of things that, in my opinion, are crazy, but basically a lot of socialist ideas. For example, he wants to freeze rent — meaning you can't raise rent on, I think, something like 2 million different apartments, different rent‑stabilized apartments. He also wants to create government‑owned grocery stores and a handful of things like that that are very controversial to people who don't like socialism. But among young people who are very angry about a lot of things they should be angry about — like housing costing a lot of money versus wage growth — he's super charismatic, and so he won over young people's votes.
28:31	Shaan Puri	And so — okay, great, great summary. Now, again, I don't care about the politics of this, and I don't live in New York, but I'm fascinated by this guy. I literally had never heard of him, and then I watched this video and saw this tweet.
28:44	Sam Parr	"He killed it."
28:45	Shaan Puri	So this tweet right here has 3.7 million views. That's just the Twitter part — forget Instagram, TikTok, or anywhere else he's probably posting this type of content. First of all: the branding. That was the first thing that stood out to me — literally the branding of this guy: the font, etcetera. So what is this video? It starts like he's a TikTok content creator. </FormattedResponse>
29:08	Sam Parr	And he.
29:08	Shaan Puri	So, it says New York is suffering from a crisis called "halalflation." He talks about how halal food—from food trucks, like chicken and rice—now costs $10 but used to cost $8. He basically goes and interviews them, asking, "How much do you sell for?" They reply, "Ten dollars. Ten. Ten." He says, "Whatever. We'll play the video."
29:30	MFM	Mark is suffering from a crisis, and it's called Halal inflation. Today we're going to get to the bottom of this. How much does a plate of halal cost right now from this truck?
29:43	MFM	$10
29:44	Shaan Puri	Chicken over rice; lamb over rice — $10.
29:47	MFM	$10. Yeah, when you're a street vendor, you have to pay for the food and the plates.
29:54	Shaan Puri	How much do you have to...
29:55	MFM	Pay for your permit.
29:56	MFM	Before, it was 22,000.
29:57	Shaan Puri	$2,017,000
30:00	MFM	And how much does the license cost if you get it from the city?
30:02	MFM	I think 400.
30:04	MFM	And who are you paying?
30:05	MFM	The permit owner.
30:06	MFM	"You're not paying the city."
30:07	Shaan Puri	No, no, no.
30:08	MFM	"You pay the permit owner $22,000 just so you can sell this food? Yes. And who is this?"
30:14	MFM	Random guy.
30:15	MFM	Have you ever applied for a permit?
30:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I applied, and no—I didn't get anything.
30:20	MFM	It's a long wait. I'm number 3,800‑something.
30:25	MFM	After two years, you're number 3,800.
30:27	Shaan Puri	Yes.
30:29	MFM	These are the four bills that are sitting in the City Council right now, which would give these vendors their own permits and make your halal more affordable. But Eric Adams hasn't said a single word about them. "If you own the permit, then how much would you charge for the plate?" "$7."
30:43	MFM	$8 $8
30:44	MFM	Would you rather pay $10 for a plate of halal or $8? </FormattedResponse>
30:48	Shaan Puri	$8
30:48	MFM	$8
30:49	Shaan Puri	I think $8 is the way. </FormattedResponse>
30:50	MFM	To go. If I was the mayor, I'd be working with City Council from day one to make halal eight bucks again. </FormattedResponse>
30:56	MFM	No. How would you pay?
30:57	MFM	Tastes like $10, but it should be $8.
31:01	Shaan Puri	So I was blown away because I have never really seen a politician doing this type of... I want to call it kind of natural influencer content. I don't know—what do you even call this? This is not what politicians typically do.
31:17	Sam Parr	He's making, like, a Vice documentary but in two minutes. It's very good. He—he's...
31:22	Shaan Puri	Doing UGC content — okay, I think that's how I would put it. The same thing happened in business, especially e-commerce. Back in the earlier days of e-commerce — let's say 2012 to 2014 — you mostly used static images. There wasn't really a lot of video on Facebook or Google at the time. You paid a professional designer to make slick images, and that's what people clicked. When video came out, people tried to do the same thing. They filmed professional-looking videos: you'd hire a videographer, have someone holding the camera, use a good background and lighting, and deliver your line. But it turns out that commercials didn't work as well on the internet as someone simply picking up their phone and making something raw. Think of a girl doing her makeup while talking about a product. It feels like a "get ready with me" video. Or a mom in a rush saying, "Y'all, I gotta tell you—this is a lifesaver. My husband can't believe how happy I am since I got this thing," then rummaging in her bag and pulling it out. Those are ads that don't look like ads. They call this UGC (user-generated content), and that's the style that has worked best in ads for the last five years. It has dominated most of e-commerce advertising. This is the first time I've seen a politician do this. Compare it to Kamala [Harris] and how perfectly manicured everything was: her image, her pantsuit, the professional photography, even that staged "phone call" where the phone wasn't even on and she was just chuckling to nobody. It was super fake and polished. This other guy, however, is doing man-on-the-street interviews, holding a microphone. You can literally hear it rub against his jacket sometimes. It's wabi-sabi — the perfection in the imperfection. To go full circle, this blew me away. I don't know if I'm overly nerding out about this, but from the topic — "halal chicken rice is $10, it should only be $8" — to the style of the video, I immediately thought, "I get why this guy won."
33:44	Sam Parr	And on Saturday the election was taking place. Yesterday he spent the whole day walking around New York and doing these very raw-looking videos, talking to people. I think this is just proof—which we already have had—that charisma matters more than ideas and reality. This isn't a brand-new takeaway; it's obvious, but this is another example. His charisma is off the charts and he has just been killing it, while his ideas, in my opinion, are absolutely insane. But because of the style of marketing, it's done wonderfully. Young people react to this stuff. And, by the way, this is what we need. Mayor or Governor Cuomo—the guy who was running for him—is an old guy; he's in his sixties, maybe seventies, and he would never in a million years grab his cell phone and just start talking to it. But that's what you need. I think my friend—or our friend—Austin Reif tweeted something: "The next politicians and the next presidents are going to be podcasters and Substackers." That sounds like a ridiculous statement—people who write newsletters and people who have podcasts—yet it's not ridiculous, and I totally buy into it.
34:56	Shaan Puri	I—yeah, definitely—there's going to be a podcaster president. Why? Because they'll have built a following before they run. So they're going to build the audience before they go run. Too, they're going to be trained with 10,000 hours of storytelling and communication—of, you know, how to make a... So that's going to be one archetype. The other one is going to be short-form video creators. I think Roberto, our friend, said this: "Whether this guy's agenda is good or bad for New York is irrelevant—he told the best story." This is why Steve Jobs said that the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world. "A lie told as a good story can never beat the truth trapped in a bad story"—or, I think it's the opposite: "a lie told well can always beat the truth trapped in a bad story." [The speaker is noting the ambiguity in the phrasing.] And then I had—because I tweeted this thing—so when I saw this... I saw the second video. I don't know if you've seen this one, but can you hear this?
35:47	Sam Parr	Dude, you know what's funny? I don't have to hear what he's saying, and I could sense the charisma.
35:53	Shaan Puri	Well, he's speaking Hindi in this video, and I think he does actually speak Hindi. It made me realize: Eleven Labs is going to make, like, $1 billion next election cycle because every politician is going to translate everything they're saying into all languages using AI instantaneously. I mean, why would you not? You're just going to pick up free views — like, "we started doing this."
36:15	MFM	With our...
36:16	Shaan Puri	On MFM episodes, Ben was like, "Hey, I think I can get more views if we dub our episodes into another language." So now, if you're on YouTube and you click the settings wheel and then the audio track, you can select Spanish or Hindi on some of the episodes. It's going to be on all the episodes soon because we went to ElevenLabs and were like, "Hey, dude, will you guys help us translate this?" Immediately we started getting tens of thousands of views a month that we weren't getting before in Spanish and Hindi. There are probably people in Mexico right now who think we just speak Spanish—that we're their favorite Spanish podcast. If they meet us, they'll be sorely disappointed.
36:54	Sam Parr	That's a really good insight. I didn't—I have not seen this video of him. Is this video dubbed? Is this a fake video?</FormattedResponse>
37:00	Shaan Puri	Or does he? I think it's real. He kinda looks like he might speak in the... or maybe it's stuff I can't tell exactly, but I guess that's the— I wouldn't know. AI tools have gotten so good that I would never know. I actually tweeted this out and said I could, a thousand percent, create an AI politician that could win, you know, a city election. Now, of course, you can't actually run if you're not a human being, but whatever. And I said, "Here's how I would do it." I would make a likable, sort of guy-next-door character—like this guy. I would create 100x more video content than my opponent, because Andrew Cuomo is not gonna be able to keep up with my AI engine. I don't know if you've seen people who do this. They basically create an AI workflow that's an agent that scrapes. There's one agent that's just brainstorming topics—it's looking at Reddit, it's looking at TikTok trends, etc.—and it's brainstorming topics. Then they have a scripter agent that writes a one-minute TikTok script. Then they have a video-generation agent that creates a video that does that, that has your AI avatar speaking it, like, "Hey, Jen..."
38:00	Sam Parr	Eleven, who's doing this?
38:02	Shaan Puri	There are people doing this. They run what they call "faceless channels." They run channels on Instagram and TikTok that get millions of views.
38:09	Sam Parr	"Like with B-roll and narration."
38:11	Shaan Puri	But it doesn't have to be B-roll anymore because now they use an AI avatar. They just put a person there and they're like, "Cool. I don't want to be an influencer. I don't want to wake up and get ready and have a nice house and all this, but I'll just—I'll just make an AI character that does this." You could create an AI character that does exactly that. The cool thing is they automated the entire workflow: coming up with the idea, scripting it, recording it, and then scheduling it, posting it, analyzing the data, and feeding that back into the engine.
38:36	Sam Parr	Who? What's an example?
38:37	Shaan Puri	Of talent, dude. If you guys applied your talents to something useful, you'd be incredible. But it's amazing that you could even do this. </FormattedResponse>
38:43	Sam Parr	I'm reading a book called A Promised Land. It's Obama's autobiography — he wrote it, but it's old; it's ten years old. I was at the airport and it looked cool. I'm at the part in the book where he says: > "I was getting my ass beat in the election because I was too long‑winded." His campaign manager criticized one of my debates, and he's like, "Dude, you're answering the question." And he's like, "Yeah, they asked me a question; I'm giving them an answer." It's kind of nuanced and it's long... and like it's a...
39:11	Shaan Puri	Thorough answer.
39:12	Sam Parr	Yeah. I was giving, like, a good answer, and he goes, "Yeah, that's bullshit. That's not how you win a debate and that's not how you win votes. You don't give an answer; you're not answering the question. The question is irrelevant. All people want to know is: can they trust you with their vote? Are you a brand they want to get behind? Stop answering the question and tell a story that lets them know they can get behind you." He was like, "That rubs me the wrong way, but that's the game and I will play that game." There's a distinct difference. You know him now — Obama is regarded as a fairly charismatic, good storyteller. He was like, "That was the change." </FormattedResponse>
39:45	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. Do you know Lulu? No — she's really cool. She's a very interesting person to follow on Twitter and whatnot. I think she was the head of comms at Palantir or something like that — I don't — or Andrew, I think it was. But she does a good job. What she posts regularly is basically comms advice: communication advice, PR, and how executives should communicate. I think Andrew Roll was always an interesting one because, instead of trying to conform as this boring government contractor, they let their freak flag fly. She tweeted this out. She goes: > "It sounds so basic but he is too likable to lose. Friendly demeanor, smiles with his eyes, seems earnest. Being liked outweighs policies, experience, and nonsensical plans." Quote: "I just have a good feeling about that person can override almost anything." And then Harley, the CEO of Shopify, said "vibes." It's like, oh man — we're sort of vibe-voting now. Actually, we're kind of always.
40:40	Sam Parr	Vibes — been doing that, man. We've always been doing that. You know, JFK had about a 70% approval rating when he was murdered, and he was very well loved. He was our Princess Diana, or whatever, for that generation. He was loved because he was incredibly likable. His policies were fine, but it was largely because he looked great. He had a beautiful wife who was poised, and a lovely family with really white teeth. That is why he won — because he was very likable and good-looking.
41:11	Shaan Puri	So, "likable" might not even be the right word. You might look at Trump and be like, "Wow—would you say he's likable?" Well, he's funny, he's funny, he's charismatic.
41:20	Sam Parr	So, yeah.</FormattedResponse>
41:20	Shaan Puri	Did I ever tell you about the time... So I had this friend who's, like, a billionaire, successful tech guy. He sends me a Google Doc one day called "The President," and I'm like, "Okay, what's this?" I open it up and I have no idea what to expect. I thought he might be running for president; I didn't know what it was. It was basically a pitch for a television show. He laid out a case and basically said: > "If you look at the last— I forgot what it was, but I'm just gonna make up some numbers— if you look at the last 10 elections, you would look for a pattern. You'd say: is it always Democrats? Is it always Republicans? Does it always switch between Democrat and Republican? Is it based on the economy? Is it based on the person's height?" > "You try to look for a correlation—where would you find it? The highest correlation you could find is that the more charismatic candidate wins." > "Ever since the advent of radio and television, when our primary way of getting messages out scaled up like crazy, the more charismatic candidate wins." He added, "Whether this was Clinton or Reagan—wasn't Reagan like an actor or something like that?" Yeah.
42:21	Sam Parr	He was good-looking. He was dressed great.
42:22	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he's going through history and basically 2020 was kind of the only exception where Biden won. I would say Biden was the less charismatic candidate than Trump — it seems to be the outlier. In his case, he didn't want Trump to win. The problem is Trump is incredibly charismatic. He's able to capture people's attention; he says things that are very memorable, things that excite certain people and inflame others. But it's all attention — "free, earned media." He had this idea to create a television show. It sounded a little bit silly, but he thought, for the Democratic Party (the party he was part of), they needed to start nominating more charismatic candidates. If you look at the last few, they have not been the most charismatic. He said the party is "captured" and has lacked putting forward charismatic candidates since Obama. Obama was, well, one of the most charismatic candidates. He said, "Here's what I think we should do." Just like, you know, American Idol or The Voice — even The Apprentice — there have been proven shows where you can have, let's say, an eight- to twelve-week [competition].
43:26	Shaan Puri	He started with the idea of a show like Survivor: you begin with ten people and then they get eliminated until, in the end, you have a winner. He asked, "What if we did this for presidential candidates?" You would take twelve candidates—not random people off the street, but people who genuinely were thinking they wanted to run. So you'd get Pete Buttigieg and others in this batch. Week by week, they might go to a small town in Pittsburgh and actually meet with the car manufacturers there, whatever—some presidential-type tasks. They would have to present a plan, and the judges for that week would be the car manufacturer people, who would pick which candidate they felt best understood them and could address their needs. Week by week you sort of eliminate candidates. He said, "By the end of this twelve-week thing we'll have captured so much attention and hopefully found a candidate that's won the hearts of people." The people will know their backstory; they'll know what they're all about. They'll have seen them in a more human light, and we will have filtered out the less charismatic candidates in favor of the more charismatic ones. He added, "I'm not saying charisma is the end-all, be-all. Ideally, at the beginning you try to screen people that you think are worthy candidates to lead, but among that worthy pool give a boost to the most charismatic candidate." I thought this was fascinating and really wanted him to do it. He was friends with Mark Burnett—the guy who created Survivor and, I forgot, maybe The Bachelor or other major reality shows. He said, "I'm gonna talk to Mark and I think we're gonna do this." I hit him up recently and asked, "Whatever happened to that idea?" He said he decided he didn't want the avalanche of problems it would create in his life, and he decided it wasn't worth it. "I have a great life, and it really wasn't worth the—you know—what it was gonna do." He also noted that Biden won in 2020, so maybe there wasn't as much need for this. But isn't that interesting, dude?
45:16	Sam Parr	Yeah, that's pretty fascinating. I... I wish you would have done that.
45:19	Shaan Puri	I feel like that would work, too. It sounds like—it's an idea that's easy to make fun of, but it's also an idea I think would be effective for the stated mission.
45:28	Sam Parr	It's easy to make fun of because we don't want it to be true, but it is true. You know who's a really good example? Arnold Schwarzenegger.
45:36	Shaan Puri	Yep.
45:36	Sam Parr	He was just—he was such a charismatic, interesting person. He was good to look at; he wanted to look... like he looked... Even the people who become our leaders who aren't really good-looking are still sort of interesting to look at. Donald Trump is intriguing to look at; he looks remarkable in a weird way, you know what I'm saying? Arnold Schwarzenegger is a perfect example of this. "Can I show you one last thing?" </FormattedResponse>
46:00	Shaan Puri	Which one?
46:00	Sam Parr	That, I think, is funny. So I found this, and I don't— I think I've talked to this guy, Brian, and he was cool. I don't want to shit on him, but I'm more so shitting on people who...
46:10	Shaan Puri	This line of thinking, maybe.
46:12	Sam Parr	This line of thinking...
46:14	Shaan Puri	Alright, so, let's explain what it is. A guy, Brian Baldi, says: > "I asked: 'What company is worth less than 10 billion today that could be worth 500 billion+ in a few decades?' > I have received 710 answers. Here are the top 20 picks that have 50x potential.'" This tweet has 18,000 likes. It probably has many views, but I'm not sure.
46:34	Sam Parr	"What year was this?"
46:35	Shaan Puri	Over a million. This was in July 2021, when times were good — he was making a ton of money in the stock market.
46:45	Sam Parr	He lists 20 companies, and these are ones that this guy—who, I think, has a whole YouTube channel devoted to picking stocks. I don't know if these were his picks necessarily, or if they were his audience's picks.
47:02	Shaan Puri	But this guy has 600,000 followers. His bio says: > "I teach investors how to analyze business, stock fundamentals, and valuation. Teacher. DM Buffett for premium courses. Free e-book in my description." Okay — that's this guy.
47:15	Sam Parr	So, this was in 2021, and I was just curious: how was he, right? Like, "what's his deal?" I'm almost positive that not only did none of them 50x, I am pretty sure that most of them are down—even down from this tweet.
47:38	Shaan Puri	So, of the 20 that he hand-selected, somebody—somebody says, "This has to go down in history as the best case of stupidity of the crowds." Here's where we're at three years later: only one company is up, and it's up 6%. The average company is down 70% on this list, with several of them down 95%, 95%, 98%, 90%, 97%, 86%, and 99%. And of course Ozan, which was an e-commerce platform in Russia, is delisted. </FormattedResponse>
48:12	Sam Parr	And I think Opendoor is now... So this tweet that you're looking at — that was even six months ago. I'm almost positive that Opendoor is delisted, and Virgin is down even more. I think Lemonade is delisted or out of business. ContextLogic [the parent company of Wish], I think, is out of business. </FormattedResponse>
48:31	Shaan Puri	Alright, we should post an update here. Now, five years later, here's how the "stupidity of the crowd" has done.
48:37	Sam Parr	And my point in bringing this up: isn't the actual result—the results are not good. That's the summary: the results are actually really bad. But it's just crazy how hard it is to pick winners. It's very challenging. This guy has 600,000 followers. I assume he does this all the time for his job, and you still "can't nail it." It's just so challenging.
49:05	Shaan Puri	Is it, though? Okay—I'm going to tell you what I did back in 2020. I graduated in 2010, and I started my stock portfolio, I think, right around senior year of college. I bought, I believe, six stocks. My dad was telling me, "Just buy the index," but I'm like, "Dad, I got this." I had the Dunning–Kruger effect — I thought I knew a lot more than I did. I think I bought five or six stocks.
49:40	Sam Parr	How much money?
49:41	Shaan Puri	I mean, I didn't have any, but I had $25,000. I had probably $60,000 total.
49:47	Sam Parr	"That's a lot of money."
49:48	Shaan Puri	Well, I guess what I'm saying is: even though the results were great, it didn't... you know, on a very small base, that doesn't do a whole lot for you. I bought Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Tesla.
50:00	Sam Parr	"What years?"
50:02	Shaan Puri	These were—basically 2010–2011 when I bought those stocks. So I did the thing you're not supposed to do: I picked—I didn't pick with any sort of brilliance. I was like, these are obviously just the good companies of the world to me at the time. I did make a mistake because I sold Tesla earlier—I sold it probably around 2014. That would have been a much bigger return. I still am in the case study of, like, it's really freaking hard to do: even if you buy right, you'll sell wrong and shit like that. I bought Bitcoin early and sold some early, then bought it back again, sold it again, bought it back again. I'm not saying I'm smart—I do dumb things. But sometimes it's actually kinda obvious. I think one of the reasons what this guy did was so hard was he was looking for a 50x. He was like, what company is small today that's gonna be massive tomorrow? Which, of course, if you knew, that'd be fantastic. But there is a simple way of looking at things. Right now, for example, I put my money into my own little AI index. I didn't spend much time on this and I'm gonna go back and do a little more research, but basically it's very obvious to me at this moment in time that AI is going to be a very big deal. The biggest winners over the next five to ten years are gonna be ones that are benefiting from AI in some way—whether they're Nvidia, selling chips, or whether they're companies like Google or Facebook that are able to use AI to make all their services better and eliminate tens of thousands of employees they don't need. I think it's pretty obvious AI is a big deal. If you put in the time to think about it, instead of buying the generic S&P 500, ask: what's the equivalent of the AI 50 or the AI 20? Pick 20 companies that I believe are well positioned. It's hard for them to lose given the AI tailwind. Again, it's a little naive because you might say, well, Nvidia today has 90% gross margins and that's gonna get competed away, and blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying I think an index of AI-focused companies—not just every chip maker, but companies that will disproportionately benefit from AI and adopt it—feels like an obvious thing today.
52:17	MFM	Yeah.
52:17	Sam Parr	That's the version of me.
52:18	Shaan Puri	In 2010, I was like, "I don't know — me and all my friends use the Internet like crazy. I think I should just own the big Internet companies. That seems like a good idea."
52:26	Sam Parr	The issue is not "can you pick winners," because I think that when we saw Facebook—when it hit a low, I think a year and... [sentence trails off]</FormattedResponse>
52:35	Shaan Puri	A half.
52:35	Sam Parr	Everyone who has ever bought any Facebook ads was like, "Yeah, this is undervalued. This is a great company." The issue is the number of times that you have lost using that same logic. So, if you were to take a lump sum of money and buy and sell occasionally—or rather, quite often—versus just letting it sit and ignoring it... if you average... [transcript cuts off]
52:58	Shaan Puri	I'm actually going to go back and back-test this—for me, me specifically—and I'll publish my results. I'll bring it up on the next episode because I am curious. I would say there's a higher chance that buying and selling and picking have underperformed. I would assume that to be true, though there's a chance it hasn't been the case for me. I really want to get the exact answer. I'll include crypto as well, because I think that was kind of like buying and selling/picking. I want to see the returns if I had just invested the same amount of money at the same times in the index versus my picking. I just want to see for myself what I've done and be able to honestly look reality in the face and ask, "How is this working for me?"
53:41	Sam Parr	So let me tell you this — let me tell you this crazy stat that Ankur told me. Jerry Buss, the guy who owned the Lakers, recently sold the Lakers for $10,000,000,000. He bought the Lakers for $67,000,000 in 1979 and he sold it for 150 times his money at $10,000,000,000 in 2025. And yet, had he taken that $60,000,000 and instead just invested it in the S&P 500, he would have had $13,000,000,000. So he would have had more money.
54:14	Shaan Puri	"That's stupid. That's stupid."
54:15	Sam Parr	"It's not stupid, but listen."
54:17	Shaan Puri	The top.
54:17	Sam Parr	"Comment was, 'Think of all.' It's not incorrect. I mean, it's just—it's just math."
54:22	Shaan Puri	"He's acting like he didn't take money every year in gains from the business."
54:26	Sam Parr	Could have lost money—every cash flow, every year. Do they? Most winning teams do not make a profit. Most winning teams, they show they...
54:34	Shaan Puri	They could show paper losses. I know team owners — I talked to them about this. I asked, "Is this true? Do you guys actually lose money on this thing?" They're like, "No. Most years we're making money. Occasionally, if we're way over the luxury tax, we get a huge penalty. Then, yes, we can lose money in that one year. But no, we're not idiots. We're not burning hundreds of—" People say, "Oh, they lost $200,000,000 this year." He's like, "I'm not losing $200,000,000 every year."
54:57	Sam Parr	Some—the top comment was like, "Yeah, but are you adding into the P&L all the women that he was able to get because of... because of him owning the Lakers?"
55:05	Shaan Puri	Forgetting the joy of owning the Lakers, which is already—congratulations: you own the S&P 500 versus you own the Lakers. He's forgetting that the Lakers are a business that has been generating cash, so all he's taking into account is just the exit price and none of the thirty years of cash flow.
55:24	Sam Parr	Well, I don't really look at the facts whenever I'm making...
55:28	MFM	A statement, but I think it...
55:30	Shaan Puri	It did make for a good headline, and it's kind of stunning what, I don't know, 11% compounding over 40 years actually does. Pretty crazy.
55:38	Sam Parr	I like doing this. Alright, that's it. That's a pop.

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Old Owners Are Desperate to Hand Off Profitable Businesses

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