I Failed 12 Times Before Making My First Million (Here's Every Failure)

- November 19, 2025 (4 months ago) • 58:39

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	"I made my first million when I turned 30 years old. I'm going to walk you through every single business I tried before I made something that worked. And, Sam, you can roast me for how bad my ideas were."
00:16	Sam Parr	Alright. So, I did this previously. You totally one-upped me by having a presentation, so that's a little unfair. It's like in Mean Girls, where she shows up to the Halloween party and doesn't know she's supposed to dress "slutty" and instead dresses scary. That's kind of how I feel right now, but that's okay. I'm incredibly excited to see what you have to do.
00:36	Shaan Puri	Business number one: I tried to create the "Chipotle of sushi." This was my first big harebrained idea. It was called Sabi Sushi. Even though I didn't know anything about sushi—I had just tried sushi for the first time a month prior—I thought, "This is it. This is the big idea. I can create the Chipotle of sushi." We partnered with a Food Network chef and launched it. I learned how to make spicy tuna and all kinds of stuff.
01:02	Sam Parr	And that was the guy—what was your buddy's name—who bought the bag company?
01:06	Shaan Puri	Dan — yeah. So if you've seen the episode with Dan, "Dan the Bag Man," where he bought a paper bag company and is now thriving, he was right next to me in the sushi trenches. Okay, so, just a summary of that whole venture: restaurants suck as a business. You know, 10% operating margins. You're working morning, afternoon, and night. You're open on weekends. There's no letup. My hands smelled like tuna all the time. It was just a brutal business to be in. We literally did every dumb thing you could possibly think of. I sort of took a buffet tour of all the possible mistakes you could make in doing a business. And then—oh, my grade for this, by the way: "A for effort," but this business was an "F." I think in the end we made something like $20,000 of profit before we voluntarily shut down the business because it was so brutal. But if you look at that in terms of the one year of full-time effort that it took us, I was making $1.82 an hour. So that was my big, big profit out of that business.
01:58	Sam Parr	"How much did it cost to start?" </FormattedResponse>
02:00	Shaan Puri	We got lucky. It was going to cost half a million dollars ($500,000) to build out the restaurant. That involved signing the lease with a personal guarantee, by the way—which is bad because restaurants fail.
02:09	Sam Parr	And you had nothing to guarantee.
02:12	Shaan Puri	And I had nothing to back it up, so it was like, you'll be on the hook for this for ten years unless you declare personal bankruptcy. Then you have to buy all the equipment, you gotta do the build-out, all this shit. We hired the fancy—oh, we hired the architect who built the Vedara in Vegas. He was the architect of the Vedara, and we—again—made every dumb mistake you could. We thought, "Oh wow, he's the best, so he should design our restaurant." He came up with this plan that was gonna cost us half of $1,000,000 to build out. We were crossing our i's and dotting our t's, but that's not what you're supposed to do—that's not how those letters look. So yeah, we were doing everything wrong, with maximal effort. Luckily, this beautiful, beautiful man with a beautiful set of hair named John Prendergrass met us and was like, "Hey guys, maybe test your concept before you commit ten years and a personal guarantee to this thing." We were like, how do you test a restaurant? He convinced us to basically do a delivery-only restaurant out of a commissary kitchen—what today is called a cloud kitchen. Yeah, it's very fancy today. Back then there was no Uber Eats, no DoorDash, and we just looked like bums who couldn't afford a restaurant. So we tested it that way. That's why it actually cost us almost nothing to start, and we made $20,000 of profit in, like, one or two months. But we were also like, this is a trap—every day that this succeeds is another day we're gonna be in this business and I just want out. I'm only 21 years old; it's not too late. I'm still a minor and I don't need to have a life sentence in this business. Get me out of here.
03:48	Sam Parr	Alright, we have to say this really quick. You gave yourself an F, and you said it was horrible and you wanted to escape. We can give examples for every type of business—and probably everything you're going to mention—of someone who actually did it. For example, the chicken tenders guy, Todd Graves, who's now, like, you know, the thirtieth richest fan in America. It sounds awesome—obviously it sounds awesome because it's successful—but...
04:11	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I'm sure Jimmy John's is not regretting it. You know what I mean? He's cool — he's got it; he likes it.
04:15	Sam Parr	Yeah.
04:15	Shaan Puri	But for us, it was not the right business to be in. So, you know, I'm giving you a little bit of wisdom. So here we go: Sean the Elder — now, that went with my elder wisdom. Sean the Elder says: > "Lesson number one: your first business is your worst business, and that's okay." The most important thing about this entire business was that I started. I kind of got the itch, I kind of got some momentum, and I saw, "Man, if I can make that much progress with something I knew nothing about, then the next thing didn't scare me." So I think that was the only good thing that came out of this business: all success requires a start, and it was a start.
04:46	Sam Parr	Alright, number two.
04:47	Shaan Puri	Number two: I tried selling wristbands online.
04:50	Sam Parr	"Been there, done that, man. Livestrong."
04:52	Shaan Puri	I saw the Livestrong band trend — for those who don't know, Lance Armstrong had these yellow wristbands that were all the rage. So what happened? Everything I did wrong in the first business, I told Jerry, “I'm doing the opposite now.” Basically, here's what we did: we set a 48-hour time constraint. Last time we spent nine months planning and researching and taking no action. This time it's all action. So we gave ourselves 48 hours. I said, “Look, I feel like we've been playing dress-up as entrepreneurs. We're just playing house, like my daughter does. Instead, we need to do the real thing.” The rule was: I didn't care what business we did — we had to launch it and make $1 of revenue from a real customer in 48 hours. That constraint was actually pretty amazing. So what did we do? We were too dumb to do anything fancy online, but we wanted something online with no physical location. I had just discovered Alibaba — this was back in 2011. I thought, “Wow, it's amazing. All the stuff we buy comes from China. There's a website where the factory is online; you just go talk to the factory and they'll ship straight to the customer. You don't even need to buy inventory.” We basically stumbled into what is now obviously dropshipping. So we did this dropshipping business, and in 48 hours — this one was actually a pretty cool idea. As you can see, my website here said thefatband.com — that was our website — and then it said: “one-inch silicone wristbands, free shipping, as seen on TV.” I was just lying. That was a huge lie already.
06:26	Sam Parr	As seen.
06:26	Shaan Puri	I don't even know what TV this would have been on at that time, but we went with "As Seen on TV." This is what was hot at the time. You can see what was hot by the three examples: the London 2012 Olympics were coming up, so we thought maybe people would want to wear that. We didn't have the license, but let's just—again, if we're already lying, why not also steal [it]? The next thing was "GTL." Do you even know what that is?
06:52	Sam Parr	"GTL? No. Is it like 'good, get to it' or, I don't know, 'good fucking luck'?"
06:57	Shaan Puri	"I'll give you a guess. Go ahead, go ahead—just make something up." </FormattedResponse>
07:00	Sam Parr	GTL. I got to love. I... I don't know... like, this is...
07:05	Shaan Puri	GTL. If you remember, the hottest show in the world back in 2011 was The Jersey Shore, and they used to say "GTL" — gym, tan, laundry. But we were like, "Oh yeah, dude, gym, tan, laundry — that's the thing." There's another one on here that says "Bieber Fever," so there's this...
07:19	Sam Parr	Dude, back then, Jim—you were tan. You definitely probably weren't doing laundry.
07:24	Shaan Puri	Oh, for three... but here's the good news: I give this business an A because in the 48 hours we actually got two orders and we made $750. I learned how to make a website, how to take payments online, how to use Alibaba, and we did it way faster than everything we had done before. It was actually a better business in two days than the previous year had been for me. So I give it an A. Although I'm pretty sure one of the orders — I did this with my buddy Trevor — was because he was just hooking up with one of the girls who ordered, and she wanted to get back together with him or something. But hey, a dub's a dub; we'll take what we can get. Beggars can't be choosers. > "Sean the Elder says, 'He who studies success learns little; he who studies failure learns truth.'" I think the real lesson out of this one was basically that creativity loves constraints — the power of setting a time-box constraint. If we had said, "This will be our next big business," we would have spent six months planning it again. It was when we said, "Come hell or high water, we're doing it for real; we're going to get revenue in 48 hours," that all our ideas had to fit in that box. There's this lie in creativity that you have to think outside the box. No, no, no. What the pros do is put yourself in a tight box and then watch how you MacGyver your way out. That's really what this business was.
08:40	Sam Parr	Alright, so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want us to tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. A lot of people who are listening have a full-time job and want to start something on the side—a side hustle. Many people message Sean and me and ask, "I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea?" What they're really saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, my friends, you're in luck. My old company, The Hustle, put together 100 different side-hustle ideas and appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas. Frankly, I went through them—they're awesome. It tells you how to start them, how to grow them, and gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below—you'll see the link. Click it, check it out, and let me know in the comments what you think. Alright—next.
09:33	Shaan Puri	Alright, I tried to start a biotech company with this billionaire in Australia. </FormattedResponse>
09:39	Sam Parr	Wait, how old were you?
09:42	Shaan Puri	I was 21 or 22 years old at the time.
09:46	Sam Parr	Was he, like, a criminal?
09:51	Shaan Puri	No — he was not a criminal. He was a stand-up guy.
09:53	Sam Parr	Not an Elizabeth Holmes–type person.
09:55	Shaan Puri	No, no, no—he was super legit. He wasn't a billionaire; he had just sold his company for $450,000,000, and he had a non-compete, so he had a lot of money. It was his parents' company originally, so he had a chip on his shoulder. He wanted to prove that he could do it. The guy had cash, a chip on his shoulder, and he was non-competed out of the business, so he had to do something new. Biotech sounded really interesting.
10:17	Sam Parr	"I'm making it sound like you're a dummy, but you actually graduated from Duke and you were a biology major. Yeah—okay, okay. So it's not like you're just a dumb e-commerce bro... you—well."
10:29	Shaan Puri	I think there was some stupidity in this, so I thought, "I'm a biology major; I should do something in biology." Honestly, what you studied in college means very little here. It's not like I truly had a passion.
10:39	Sam Parr	Yeah, but you at least took a class.</FormattedResponse>
10:42	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I used the wrong heuristic. What I really should have done, which was smart, was get around smart people. This guy was a really smart guy, and working with him was actually really cool. That mattered more than the biotech link. We tried to create a biotech company where you could take coal that was too deep to mine—unminable coal. I don't know if you know this, but 90% of the world's coal is unminable; it's too deep and too uneconomic to mine. The idea was that little microbes would go down and eat the coal down there and they would basically output natural gas. You could just collect the gas without mining the coal. Kind of a cool idea—unproven if it could actually work. I got this opportunity because he was reading our blog. He met my dad and asked my dad, "What do your kids do?" He went and checked out our blog and thought it was cool; he thought our hustle was cool. It was kind of the first time that content or building in public—like doing a portfolio—mattered more than a resume, and that has now become very true in 2025. Back then I didn't intentionally do that, but it really worked. I failed forward in that way and I used content to create opportunities. The second thing that happened was when I got there I realized, "Oh wow, I don't know anything about the oil and gas industry. I have no experience." At first I tried to catch up, but how are you going to catch up to like twenty years of this guy's experience? It's very hard to do. So I had a different idea: instead of being the worst in the room at the thing they're all good at, how do I become the best in the room at something they don't know how to do? Me and my buddy Trevor started learning to animate videos to take their ideas and turn them into a one-minute video that they could show investors or prospects. They loved it. The owner was like, "Oh—my video guys, yes," because "you're making me look cool, you have a new power, you guys are good with computers and shit." So we found a way to bring something to the table. Rather than focusing on our disadvantage, we tried to figure out our advantage. That was a lesson I took forward. But overall I give this business a C because it didn't really work. The business didn't really work and, you know, I made like $120 a year, essentially doing this as a job.
12:45	Sam Parr	"Where's he?"
12:46	Shaan Puri	He's still in Australia, still doing this thing. I haven't talked to him in a long time, but I hope he's doing well. Lesson: "Earn your spot at the table" is kind of the thing I just said.
12:54	Sam Parr	Alright — making the next billion-dollar app.
12:56	Shaan Puri	So, basically, this was a phase of my life where I tried to make the next billion-dollar app. I tried about 12 different apps. We made a Clubhouse-style app where people would get on, hang out in rooms, and talk all night. It reached 4 million users, and we thought we were doing it — this was "the next big thing." But we couldn't grow from there. It just stayed at 4 million. Four million is a big number, but a social app needs, like, 100 million. So we were playing a very difficult game, and it wasn't really working.
13:22	Sam Parr	So, I used to use Blab. For those listening, this was back when Martin Shkreli was, like, in his first up-and-coming scandal.
13:31	Shaan Puri	No, no — he had just gotten out of jail.
13:34	Sam Parr	Had he... I thought, "Oh no."
13:35	Shaan Puri	No, he was on trial, because I remember.</FormattedResponse>
13:37	Sam Parr	He did a...
13:38	Shaan Puri	Blab from the courthouse back home. In the courthouse he had pled the Fifth, but then he got on Blab and just started talking shit, and we were like, "This is incredible."
13:46	Sam Parr	Yeah. This was pre-prison, and he was basically on the rise in terms of notoriety as "Farmer Bro." That was when the photo of him—sitting back, smoking a cigar—circulated, and you could just hop on and talk to him. It was kind of funny. It was kind of like the beginning of incel culture, a little bit.
14:04	Shaan Puri	My legacy. </FormattedResponse>
14:05	Sam Parr	"I mean, wasn't..."
14:06	Shaan Puri	You're right. I also tried to build a beer app where you would check in new beers. This was a giant mistake because I didn't even care about craft beers—so why am I trying to build something for other people who I don't even really... it's not like it was scratching my own itch. We built a messaging app that got to number three in the worldwide charts. I remember it being above Facebook, which was kind of incredible, but it had no retention. It was incredibly viral but had no retention. I think we got a million users in the first week or something like that, and then a month later we had, like, I don't know, 10,000 users—they were all gone, basically.
14:41	Sam Parr	"What was that one called?" </FormattedResponse>
14:44	Shaan Puri	That was called Bebo Messenger. This business — I would give it a B — and our profit was negative $8,000,000 of investor capital. So we basically were burning something like $1.5 million, maybe $2,000,000, for four or five years.
15:01	Sam Parr	And that was called — was this all under the umbrella of Monkey Inferno?</FormattedResponse>
15:04	Shaan Puri	Yes. So this was, you know, playing the wrong—playing a very hard game. I felt like I was running around with a bottle trying to catch lightning. Since then, I have done the exact opposite. I now look for the most straightforward businesses that are, you know, still fun to do, but I think have a high, high shot of success because I was so scarred from this.
15:22	Sam Parr	It's a pretty magical experience, though. We met so many people. I mean, I met them via you, but you met so many amazing people in Silicon Valley. We've told the story 10,000 times: the Calm app founders were at your office all the time. Yeah—Moyes, and Ryan Hoover, and Sieva. They were amazing people.
15:38	Shaan Puri	I met amazing people and learned a lot. So my lesson here from Sean the Elder is that I asked the right question. I asked, "Where can I go that will give me 20 years of experience in the next four?" I basically took my twenties as a time for adventure and learning, not for earning money. I remember when I got this job they told me how many shares I had. They were like, "Oh yeah, you got the—" I think I was making $120,000 a year when I joined, and then they said it was something like $40,000 a year of stock in the [monkey inferno-like portfolio]. He was about to tell me what percent that was, and I had already seen—kind of seen—in the tech industry if you join a startup you might earn like 1% or less of the... you don't, you don't get more than 1%. You get like 4%, 5%, 6%.
16:23	Shaan Puri	2% of the company, and that just sounds like a minuscule number. But I wanted to go there and treat this like it was my own startup. I remember telling him on the phone—I did the "shh" with a finger to my lips—and I said, "Don't tell me how many shares. I'd rather not know. I want to work like this is my company; I own 100% of this." That's how much I'm going to care. He was like, "Good answer." The benefit that came out of that takeaway was that I never went and asked for... actually, that's a lie: I asked one time, but I didn't really go back and ask for more for a while. If you pick the right people to work with, they will reward you based on the value you're actually creating without your needing to ask. It turns out I had 4% at the time, then he bumped me to 10%, and over time I got to 20%. I owned 20% of the company by the end of that deal. It didn't end up mattering because of the way the structure of how we sold the company, but I did take away that: just go there, try to learn, do the best work you can, and let the chips fall where they may. I think that was the right approach.
17:30	Sam Parr	Alright, what do you got now?
17:31	Shaan Puri	The last business before — yeah, this is the one where I ended up actually making money. At the time, Fortnite had just come out and we thought we should ride a wave of something popular. So we took Fortnite, which was big, and had this idea: you know how there are "youth sports" — little league baseball, youth soccer — more people play Fortnite than play basketball, right? I thought, wow, that's kind of crazy. So why isn't there a league you can join as a teenager to play this with other people, have it livestreamed, and all that stuff? It should be just like youth sports. We created our version of youth esports. It was an app, and we built the largest high school Fortnite league in the country. Then we got acquired by Twitch. That was the big win. I turned 30, crossed the $1 million mark, made a few million dollars, and was like, "Yay — this is amazing." Ten years of struggling was worth it. So that's my story there.
18:29	Sam Parr	You had so many more interesting near misses or near hits. The Stripe one was crazy when I was running [the startup]. I had a startup that wasn't working, and then we ended up getting acqui‑hired. When it wasn't working, I went and applied for jobs. I applied to Uber. I applied to Google—shockingly, I got one interview. I applied to Facebook; obviously they didn't call me back. I applied to ZeroCater and EasyCater. Do you remember those companies?
18:56	Shaan Puri	Yeah, they were hot. Those were really hot at the...
18:58	Sam Parr	At the time, these were all the hot companies. I wanted to be an Uber launcher. It was called—like, you go from city to city.
19:02	Shaan Puri	Dude, you would have been so good at that. That was a miss on their part. </FormattedResponse>
19:06	Sam Parr	"Yeah, screw you guys."
19:06	Shaan Puri	You know the Google/Facebook one? I'm like, I think maybe the recruiter did well to, like, kind of say, "I don't think you were the fit for that." But, dude, if you worked at Uber and you were a city launcher, you would have crushed.
19:17	Sam Parr	I think so. It was... it's fun to look back at all of it. I actually — Jack Smith is one of my best friends. I applied at Vungle; that's how I met Jack. I applied at his company, and they didn't hire me.
19:29	Shaan Puri	The consolation was, he's like, "I'll be your friend."
19:31	Sam Parr	Yeah, we became friends, but you didn't hire me.
19:33	Shaan Puri	"So you're an idiot, but you're good." Hang on—did Jack say why he didn't hire you, by the way?
19:38	Sam Parr	Dude, his cofounder was in charge. His cofounder was this all-knowing, kind of smug guy who's now my friend too, Zane. But he said, "So you think you're good at sales? Go around the office right now. Leave our little room. I want you to go and talk to every single person in that room and convince them why we should hire you." It was so demeaning. I did it, and I did not get it. I did not— I guess I did not convince them.
20:00	Shaan Puri	I did the same thing at Monkey Inferno to get the job. Did I ever tell you this? No. They were like, "Okay, you clearly don't know anything about technology. You're not an engineer, you're not a designer, you've never worked in [tech]. We really like you, but we don't really know what the hell you'll do." We all just kept saying, "Yeah, he's a real hustler." So they asked, "Can you do some hustle? How would you hustle today to add value to what we're doing—hustle now? Can you show us that hustle thing?" I said, "We're just sitting in a conference room," but then I added, "Got you. Hey—you have this app that you're working on. I'm gonna go get you customer feedback, like, now." They said, "Okay, how are you gonna do that?" I had flown into San Francisco for this, and I was killing time before the interview. There was a Burlington Coat Factory [mall store], if you remember, right next to our office, and next to that was the Westfield mall. I said, "There's a mall, right?" They said, "Yeah." I said, "I'm gonna go to a mall." So I go to the mall, and the guy comes with me and he's like, "I'm gonna observe." And I was like, "Oh my..."
20:55	Sam Parr	Was this Michael?
20:57	Shaan Puri	This—Paul? Wait, no—the CTO came with me. The most introverted engineer was like, "Let's see what this guy can do." I had never done this before. I'm like a mechanic; I don't even have a product to sell. I thought, "I'm gonna get feedback, I guess." So I decided to cold-approach people like a pickup artist at the mall—random people—and try to get them to come over to this table and give feedback on our app. I was like, "How the hell am I gonna do this?" Then I realized the easiest hack: I just went up to them and said, "Hey, I'm on a job interview right now, and I get the job if I can get people to come over to this desk and just give five minutes of feedback. Would you do that—just so I can get this job?" They were like, "Yeah, no problem." That was so much better, because the first three people I approached I said, "Hey, have you ever—have you ever had to plan a party and needed to use an online event planner? I have a new one coming out in six months and I would love your feedback." And they were like, "You'd literally get away from me."
21:51	Sam Parr	They give me their Auntie Anne's wrappers and say, "Can you throw this away, please?"
21:57	Shaan Puri	Exactly. I should have been like the guy in the bathroom who pulls the paper towel out and hands it to people. That would have gotten me more success than what I was trying. So I should have just switched to saying, "Dude, there's a camera following me right now and I'm screwed if I don't do this." Whenever I watch reality TV, I'm like, "Why don't they just say that? That works way better."
22:14	Sam Parr	Anyway. My point being: for a lot of people in these situations—where the thing's just not working—they're going to ask for a job. A. It's normal. B. It's incredibly mortifying because you're like, "Shit — I'm supposed to be this guy who has this business. I put all my identity into it; now I'm applying." It feels weird. It feels uncomfortable. But we've all done it. And you did it in one company that—well—it just adds to the list of screw-ups.
22:38	Shaan Puri	So in 2011 or 2012, before the "monkey fry" thing, I only applied to one other job. It was at a company called Stripe that I thought might be a good company—maybe a good startup. I think it was valued at $100,000,000 or less at the time.
22:53	Sam Parr	Oh my God.
22:54	Shaan Puri	It's now almost... I don't know what it is now. It's a hundred billion.
22:57	Sam Parr	A 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion).
22:58	Shaan Puri	So, I did the math a few years ago and I was like, wow — my entry-level sales-type job would have made me about $20 million if I held. That was then; it's probably doubled since then. I did what you did: I applied to the job. I didn't know how to do it — it was my first job interview ever. I didn't know how to do it, and I had a layup, dude, because my mentor, that guy John Prendergast I mentioned from the sushi thing, was the mentor of the guy hiring me. I asked him, "Yo, can you put in a word?" He put in the strongest word. He was like, "Yo, this kid's amazing. Hire this kid — he's an entrepreneur; you're lucky he's even applying for a job." He gave me such a strong intro. I don't remember what it was, but I remember thinking, like, layup — this is so easy. Oh my God. And that bit me in the ass — that attitude. Because I got on the call and the guy was like, "Hey, you know, he says great things, but I just wanna, you know, ask you a few questions," and I just started bombing the interview... [sentence trails off]
23:54	Shaan Puri	Where he gave me the sort of "sell me this pen" exercise, and, brother, I did not sell that pen.
24:00	Sam Parr	"You didn't buy?"
24:02	Shaan Puri	That pen—that pen stayed in my pocket. It did not fly off the shelf.
24:06	Sam Parr	What would your answer have been? What if—look, I'm sure you've replayed it in your head 10,000 times. How would you have... no?
24:12	Shaan Puri	I was so traumatized. I'm like—I'm a student of the game of life; I love to learn. Not this one, dude. I just buried that shit and moved on with life. I was like, sometimes you just take the L on your soul and you just move on.
24:26	Sam Parr	Do you... So, I was thinking about this the other day. Do you agree with this? You know, we just summarized 10 years of your life in 38 minutes and we laughed about it, but it's not funny when you're going through it. </FormattedResponse>
24:39	Shaan Puri	It's incredibly unfunny.
24:41	Sam Parr	Do well — it feels like the worst part is you're comparing yourself to your friends, right? You're like, "Why is this so much easier for them? Why are they getting this and that?" It eats you. You turn green with envy. The second thing is: you do it for ten years, and then all of a sudden in the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth year you look back and think, "Oh — it's kinda working." It feels like slow progress: slow progress, a little better progress, and then suddenly you snap your fingers and it's like, "Holy moly, I have just grown so much." It's like — I'm not sure if you've ever been there — where you feel nothing. "I feel nothing. I feel nothing. I feel nothing." Then eight weeks pass and finally you're like, "Oh man, I think I... I feel my stomach. It definitely feels different today." That's the new baseline. So I guess what I'm getting at is it's months or years of hard work, and then overnight you feel progress.
25:26	Shaan Puri	Yeah — slowly, and then all at once. I just gave you ten years. In truth, I fast-forwarded through some of the apps we tried. We tried many apps during that app phase, so I think I did 12 different failed companies in those ten years. Over twelve in ten years — brutal. I'm 37 now. In the seven years since, I think I've gone five for five — everything has worked right away. The portfolio of companies where I own either a majority or just a huge chunk is probably close to $100,000,000 in revenue now. I think it's $75,000,000 in revenue. The feeling is so different, not just because it's successful, but because it's like a route you know how to drive. You just know what potholes to avoid much better. You still hit some — it's not like you're foolproof — but the hit rate, going from 0 for 12 to 5 for 5 in the last few years, is so different. It's unbelievable.
26:35	Sam Parr	What allowed you to go from 5 to 75,000,000 in revenue [in dollars]?
26:40	Shaan Puri	So, project selection is the first one, right? I try to think about what I tried: a restaurant; this innovative biotechnology—that's like a science project. I tried creating the next hit app, the next billion-dollar app: the next Twitter, the next YouTube, the next Facebook. We launched a messenger. We launched a social network. Those are just one-in-a-million success ideas, so the odds were against me even if I was good at executing—and I wasn't. I was bad at executing and then trying these moonshot things that I really didn't understand what the hell I was getting myself into. Whereas since then, I chose projects that were way less risky. I kind of understood how to do them. High hit rate. I just needed to execute. So I did an e-commerce company. I did a services business. I did, you know, wehave somewhere.com [an overseas staffing business]. Every company needs to hire people, and in my own businesses I was hiring a ton of people overseas. It was a no-brainer. It was already a business that was already working. I bought into it and helped grow it. That's just a much more foolproof way to do things. So project selection was number one: stop chasing these moonshots that, if they work, you make $1 trillion and you get to have a movie about you—but most likely are not going to work. So I stopped doing that. I stopped playing the "Silicon Valley" dream. The second thing was more action, less planning—understanding what amount of research and planning is helpful and at what...
28:11	Shaan Puri	You need action because action produces information. I told you, at the start we spent nine months basically in the planning phase, and that was a huge mistake. We didn't confront the reality of the business. I remember when you started Hampton. Before you ever announced it, you showed me your calendar and we called it the "zebra calendar" because it was just twenty-minute stripes on your calendar — your day was just calls with founders. You were personally selling. You could have offloaded that. You could have launched the business. You could have done any number of things. But you were in hand-to-hand combat selling to try to figure out: > "Does this — is this something people want? What message, what version of this, what message of this actually gets me that kind of quick 'yes' reaction versus people just being polite to me?" So, going for action rather than planning, and knowing when to use which gear, was the second thing. The third was: pay attention to what works. Get around really smart people and pay attention to what works, because success leaves clues.
29:10	Sam Parr	Do you think... Okay, so you're 37 now. First of all, would you have predicted—when did you sell Blab/Bebo?
29:16	Shaan Puri	2019 — something like that.
29:18	Sam Parr	So, that was six.
29:19	Shaan Puri	Years—like twenty, maybe.
29:20	Sam Parr	Six years ago—so thirty-one-ish. Let's just say that was six years ago. Let's round up to '47. Well, first of all, at 30 or 31, did you think you were going to be here where you are at 37? No way. Where did you think you were going to be?
29:35	Shaan Puri	I thought, “Alright — I'm gonna earn out this deal.” You know, I get paid every year [earn-out payments]. I was like, “I'm gonna do two years of that deal,” which is what I did. I did two years of the deal, and then I was going to go start another company. This time, if this one sold for tens of millions, the next one I was going to build would be hundreds of millions or a billion-dollar company. I still didn't really understand what to do. But the beauty of the situation was that, because I was earning out my deal, I couldn't go start another tech company. People would be like, “What the hell are you doing?” So I was forced to do things that didn't look competitive. I was forced out of my comfort zone. All I knew was: start a tech company, raise venture capital, go for the big shot. While I was earning out the deal at Twitch, I couldn't do that. So I started this podcast. I was like, “I'll do this for fun.” That podcast has turned into a phenomenal business and opened up all these doors. Doing the podcast taught me about other types of businesses that I then realized were great ways to build something that doesn't require getting super fucking lucky or being the most competitive, hardcore person. You can just do the obvious, and it works. One example is that I did an e-commerce business because I knew it would not be seen as competitive by people at Twitch. I thought, “Here's a business — cute physical products, selling, creating a brand.” I don't talk too much about what that brand is on here yet, but I think I'll do the reveal maybe this year. </FormattedResponse>
31:03	Sam Parr	"You sell prosthetic legs — is that what it is?"
31:09	Shaan Puri	Yes—something like that. Yeah. So basically I started doing other types of businesses, not by choice but out of force, because I was earning out the deal and I couldn't do another tech startup at the time.
31:20	Sam Parr	Okay, next question: at 47, what do you think? What do you think—have you made predictions on where you'll be?
31:27	Shaan Puri	"I think I'm just going to be doing creative projects. I think I'm going to be writing books, making movies, and creating content. I'm going to be all in as a creative person, and business will be secondary to me."
31:42	Sam Parr	"When will that shift happen?"
31:43	Shaan Puri	Now it's already happening — it's already happened. That's what I've been doing the last year. I would say there are still some vestiges of it because I still invest in businesses, but I don't run them. I don't start them and run them myself, so that shift has already occurred.
31:58	Sam Parr	Happened over last years starting businesses.
32:00	Shaan Puri	I think so. I mean, I've basically only said: "Only if something really just slaps me in the face"—something that I can't ignore. I'm not looking for a business to start, which has been the mode I was in for fifteen years.
32:11	Sam Parr	"And is that because you feel financially secure, or because you feel emotionally secure?"
32:17	Shaan Puri	I don't know. Don't.
32:18	Sam Parr	Like, is it because...?
32:19	Shaan Puri	"Lay down on the couch for this part... I don't know."
32:20	Sam Parr	"No. What I mean is: did you discover this makes me happy and this doesn't make me happy?"
32:26	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. This makes me happy. I think I'm better at this. I think I'm a B+ entrepreneur, but I think I'm an A+ at content, so why not do your A+ thing? I think doing content is now an incredible way to make money. We make great money here. If you look at other content creators, they make a ton of money. You don't have to build a company and then do content on the side—you could just do content as your main thing and make all the money you want, don't worry. The last thing is it's kind of a test of "what would 20-year-old me think is dope?" I remember thinking a cool version of a career is these five-year or seven-year arc chapters where you go do really creative endeavors. Like, "I'm going to try stand-up for a few years," or "I'm going to try to make a TV show that I think is cool." If I look back at my resume, it's like either I just kept starting businesses—tech companies and other businesses—and I already have more money than I need, or I started going and trying to make dope stuff and had the creative challenge of that. Yeah, I actually made that show, I made this musical, and I made this book. That, to me, seems like a more interesting life, and I'm just more attracted to it.
33:39	Sam Parr	I think — not every, but many entrepreneurs go through this. I mean, I'm in the thick of it too, where you try to get paid, you try to feel secure, you try to feel accepted. You get a little bit of that, or maybe a lot of that, and then you go through the phase I call the second mountain, which is like, "what else is there?" That's when you see a lot of people get obsessed with beautiful things or art — in your case, content, which is basically art — or with interesting ideas. Before, you're like, "ideas are worthless," and then you're like, "I don't know, man... just talk about ideas — that is actually exciting." Being around pretty things becomes exciting too.
34:17	Shaan Puri	Can I give you an example of someone who I think is—has done both? Joe Gebbia, friend of the pod [friend of the podcast], is one of our guys that we were big fans of. He started Airbnb—obviously a colossal, grand-slam type of success.
34:33	Sam Parr	Like, he's the 96th richest man in America.
34:36	Shaan Puri	Yeah — "household name, blah, blah, blah; great, did that, still pretty young," right? So he's like, "Alright, I see. I'm not, like, dead. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do now?" And so he was like, "What's the second mountain?" I remember going out to dinner with him once and he was telling me about what he was doing next. Do you even know what he did next after Airbnb? Do you know the next thing he did?
34:57	Sam Parr	"Was that the museum—the architecture thing?"
35:00	Shaan Puri	No, no, no, no. He has a company—he has another startup.
35:04	Sam Parr	You know what? Startup is the ADU thing.
35:07	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So he created this company. I'm not sure how you pronounce it—Samara or Samsara. I think Samara.
35:12	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's basically: they raised $40 million. I believe it means you can spend $50,000 to $100,000, and they will give you an ADU (meaning a guest house), basically in your backyard.
35:26	Shaan Puri	He built a backyard guest house — an in-law unit, an ADU [accessory dwelling unit], whatever you call it — and it was beautifully designed because he’s a designer. A lot of times these ADUs look very cookie-cutter, with cheap materials and poor workmanship. He made a really nice one — one that adds value to your house aside from whatever rental income you might get. When we went to dinner I said, “Dude, the product looks awesome. I want one of these in my backyard.” But at the same time I asked, “Why are you doing this? You have all the money you’ll ever need — you made it. Why do the grind again?” He was having to think about SEO again and how to grow the business. I was like, “Oh, dude — all the pain of doing a company. Why are you doing that?” He gave a good answer at the time, but one thing he said was: “I want to prove that it wasn’t luck. I want to prove that I could do it.” In my head I didn’t have the guts to say it, but I thought, man, what a dumb answer. There’s nobody out there who’s like, “You just got lucky.” And even if there were people who said that, who cares? Everybody only thinks Airbnb is incredible — what you guys did is absolutely incredible. But he had this kind of feeling that maybe he needed to prove it again. Because what else do you do? Motivation, right?
36:40	Sam Parr	I did. I've totally had it. I think most people have that feeling. I had that feeling. </FormattedResponse>
36:43	Shaan Puri	So I remember hearing that and thinking, "Oh man, I wish I could go into his brain and find that line of code and be like, 'Oh, you have a bug here—let me just patch it. Boom, you're better now.'" But I did... yeah, whatever. So what is he doing now? He basically did that, and somewhere in the middle he got pretty inspired by Doge. He's friends with Elon—like all that stuff. He goes and joins the administration. He starts with a very simple project, which was the retirement process for government workers. It was a six- to eighteen-month process. You couldn't just retire, get your papers, and move on to life. It was like, "Hold on—someone needs to go into this cave and find your paperwork and it'll be a year before we get back to you." He said, "I'm gonna solve this problem, and I'm gonna solve it well. I'm gonna design a product. I'm gonna make the government product stuff work well." Somehow that turned into him being the Chief Design Officer of the United States of America. I'm like, "Wow—what an inspired second mountain: a creative endeavor that has impact on a grand scale. So cool." You created a role that didn't even exist, but it's so perfect for him. He's proud and he wants to serve. He's proud, and he's an extremely talented designer. I think his ADU company is cool. We'll be successful—I want one of them in my backyard. But I just felt more personally inspired by the new thing he's doing, more so than when I heard, "Oh, I'm just gonna do another business and try to create another billion-dollar company," you know?
38:14	Sam Parr	Well, the other thing that he did was: there are these famous designers, Charles and Ray Eames. Or "Eames" — is it Eames? You know, they make the famous chair: the Eames chair.
38:22	Shaan Puri	Yeah.
38:23	Sam Parr	It was a husband-and-wife couple, and they were prolific designers. I think they lived in Arizona, and they had a home that was famous — it was full of their prototyped furniture and things like that. I think he also bought all of it and restored it, just as a preservation thing. He's done a bunch of work preserving the history of these two designers. I don't — you guys will have to Google this to get everything right, but something like that. He's done a bunch of this Second Mountain stuff that I really admire. I'm — he's a...
38:56	Shaan Puri	He is a very thoughtful guy. I really admire a lot of the way he approaches work and life. I think he's a very principled and thoughtful person, and I like that because I find that I'm less principled and thoughtful than I wish I were. So when you see somebody who's very on that end of the spectrum, it stands out. </FormattedResponse>
39:14	Sam Parr	But let's bring this back to you, because I actually think this is a revelation and, secondly, quite inspiring. I am personally quite inspired by what you're saying. I will be extra inspired if you actually follow through on this for a couple of years, because it sounds amazing now. If you follow through on this, you will be my hero. The idea, in other words, is that you're retiring a little bit from business and focusing purely on the creative. That's not entirely true, of course, because the creative things you do will make money — but you're not seeking money for money's sake, which is what most people do when they go into business. I think that's really, really cool and inspiring. When you say these things, you sound (a) more confident and (b) happier than you have in the past. Does that sound right?
39:57	Shaan Puri	"Ah, 100%. I— I have this framework called Your Last Dollar. Have I told you this?"
40:03	Sam Parr	Is that the one where you have that really cool line: "You've already earned the last dollar that you're going to spend"?
40:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah. You've already earned the last dollar you're ever going to spend. So there comes a... [pause]. People think about these ideas like, "I want to be rich." How rich? What's rich? What's rich to you? "I want to be wealthy." What's wealthy? "I want to be financially free." Free to do what? What are you not free to do today? Maybe you could actually do a lot of those things today. So I think money is a very big motivator. You're ashamed to talk about it, and then you actually don't put a lot of thought into it. Man, that's a—what a shame—because it's driving a lot of your decisions.
40:38	Sam Parr	"I'm gonna ask you a question. Don't say a number—only say what you're covered with. [Unclear: 'covered with' may mean 'comfortable with' or 'covered by'] But, like, for example, for me I define 'rich' in two ways. One: your ability to spend 3% of your liquid net worth. So if you have $10,000,000, you could spend $300,000 a year. Another way I define 'rich' is if your passive income—just from your investments—pays for your life. So, do you have a definition for yourself of what 'rich' is?"
40:59	Shaan Puri	Yeah, similar. Basically, I said: if I want to spend $500,000 a year as my burn rate—which I wasn't when I came up with this number; I was spending maybe five times less than that—what does that look like? I talked to them all and asked, "What do you spend? What do you spend? What's it like if I went crazy?" I don't care about boats and planes, so don't worry about that side of things. But give me a sense: I do care about this type of stuff and I don't want to have to worry about it. If I go to Disneyland, I want to do what's that thing where you don't have to wait in line. I want to be able to do all that. I don't care about some of these other things for now—let's just assume that to be true. I wanted to live in California, so I rounded all the way up and said I'm spending half a million dollars a year as my personal-life burn rate. What do I need to be making in passive income—or the passive gains from my investments—so that's not an issue at all? As long as my passive earnings are higher than my active burn, I'm free. </FormattedResponse>
41:53	Sam Parr	Yeah, I...
41:53	Shaan Puri	Don't have to — I don't have to prioritize money. Then you apply even some factor on top of that, like a safety net, cushion, big swings, whatever. I came up with a number that was like, cool — that's the last dollar I ever need to make. Actually, this came because I met, you know, other people. I did an episode of this podcast with my brother-in-law — you can go see it — Sanjeev Chopra. He's a real estate guy and he's done incredibly well. I was sitting in his Vegas, mega-mansion-type place. He had just come home from driving to go see a property he owns in Idaho or something. He drove back and got back at eleven, and then he was up at 6 a.m. the next day to take his kids to school. I was like, "Dude, you're really grinding." He had this goal of like, "I want to make all this money, and I want to be able to buy the Raiders, I want to do all these, you know, cool dreams," right? But I was like, the truth is... and at one.
42:44	Shaan Puri	He was talking about, like, "Oh, I want to leave." You know, my dad didn't—he kind of left me. He didn't support me when I wanted to go do business. "I want to leave each of my kids..." I think he said some crazy number like $20,000,000, and was like, "Dude, your kids don't need $20,000,000 when they're 21 years old to go start a business. You'll actually poison their entrepreneurial career if you do that." But I get the ethos—you want to support your kids. I like that. Okay. I... I totally get what you're saying. And he wasn't, like, fixed on those—these were just things that were bubbling up in his thoughts. I just remember telling him: > "Dude, you've already earned the last dollar you're ever gonna spend and your kids are ever gonna spend, so you're now throwing good hours after bad dollars." That stuck with me. I was like, "Because I'm trading good hours, trading good energy right now... fire—I'm..."
43:24	Sam Parr	Yeah.
43:24	Shaan Puri	"That is energy, right? I'm trading good hours for bad dollars. So I don't need that dollar — it has zero utility in my life at this point. And so that thought's there. Now, am I perfect? Am I a monk? Do I just not invest in things? Do I not have the itch sometimes — 'oh, we could make this'? No, I have that itch. I have that thought. I do make investments. But so far, so good. As far as, like, I'm gonna do projects now where the main criterion cannot be 'because I think it will be successful' or 'it'll make money.' It's like: I'm only gonna do it because I think it's fun, interesting, and a challenge to do — if I'm actively the one building it, working on it."
43:59	Sam Parr	I think that's a massive turn you've made. I've known you this whole time, and there was this... like you wanting to be the man, which we all wanted to be — the man, you know, in Silicon Valley. That was like us being there; it was like going to Hollywood and seeing, "Who's gonna get a role?" </FormattedResponse>
44:16	Shaan Puri	"Right, right, right."
44:16	Sam Parr	And then there was the... of like, okay—I have a hit, but I still don't necessarily feel it. Why am I not prominent? Like, why? I've gotten some wealth, but why am I not king? You also see that there are so many more levels, and you get on this treadmill. I think I compare myself to others way more than you, and so I'm far more guilty of this: more, more, more. Someone says— I think it was in the movie Wall Street—"How much is enough?" and the guy's like, "Oh, I know how much is enough: it's more." That's how much—it's enough. But then you come to this other side where you're like, "Nope. I know what enough is. I have enough, and now I need to pursue truth and happiness and all this wonderful stuff." I think that's a beautiful message. It's an amazing message, and frankly, I think I need to hear it. If I need to hear it, I think so many other people do, because I'm far more of a normie when it comes to self-comparison, comparison to others, jealousy, and all that stuff. So it's very refreshing to hear you say that. And you sort of— I think your Uncle Sean shtick is kinda lame, but in this case, you are my Uncle Sean.
45:28	Shaan Puri	This is.
45:28	Sam Parr	This is straight to the heart. You're... you're 36, you're 37 years old, but you've got to be at least 45 to be an uncle, okay?
45:36	Shaan Puri	I'm trying to grow this gray beard, no.
45:39	Sam Parr	"You're—you're 37. You're still like... you're still like a child."
45:42	Shaan Puri	"I'm too old to be a hot guy. I'm too young to be a cool old uncle."
45:45	Sam Parr	"You're not an uncle."
45:46	Shaan Puri	What am I supposed to be doing right now?
45:47	Sam Parr	Yeah, you're in the awkward middle. But in this case, I do feel like you are—frankly—teaching me. I feel this is a bit of a mentor‑mentee situation, and for that I'm very thankful, because I do think this is quite magical. If you're listening to this and you're 24 years old, you might think, "Sean, you're an idiot. What do you know? I need to get rich. I need to do this. You're so fortunate that you get to—what the hell?" To that I say: go and find it out for yourself. That said, I've seen—both of us have seen—a lot of wealthy people, a lot of successful people. What you are saying is 100% the best path: get what you can and then reflect on, "Do I actually need more?" Pursue what truly makes you happy versus more, more, more, more, more. I'm telling you, for a fact, virtually 100% of the people that go down that route are unhappy.
46:36	Shaan Puri	Things that I'm sure of and things that I'm not sure of. Here's my list. Things I'm sure of: In your twenties, if you're smart and ambitious, prioritize getting around the smartest and most ambitious people you can—people you also enjoy hanging out with. You're going to like them too. Prioritize things that sound more interesting rather than things that sound more likely to succeed or be cool. If something gives you a lot of learning and not a lot of earning, choose the learning—don't worry, you've got time. That's one thing I know about my twenties. I think it's pretty universal advice; it wasn't just for me. Another piece of universal advice for the early entrepreneur phases: it's okay if it takes ten years, because you only have to get rich once. At the time, sure—do I wish it happened earlier? Yes. I did not enjoy [unclear: "going over 12"] and I did not enjoy that it took ten years, but that's fine. Getting rich at 30 was actually no problem. It's very hard to predict if your first business idea will work or if you'll get rich when you're 24. But if you commit, iterate, and become good at learning, you will probably get there. You flip your odds from like a 10% chance of success to a 90% chance of success, which is as good as you're going to get.
47:45	Sam Parr	Yeah, as long as the timeline is long enough—at least 10 years—it will work.
47:48	Shaan Puri	Exactly. I'm pretty sure of those two things. I'm also pretty sure that you should be more thoughtful and more honest with yourself about money and what you're actually going to prioritize, and where. If there is ever a stopping—or not a stopping—where you don't stop trying to make money, but you stop prioritizing it as the decision-making factor for what you're going to do next with your time and energy, I think people should definitely think more about that. I find very few people who are actually thoughtful about this and who have asked themselves enough questions to be clear. Now, will everybody land at the same answer as me? No. I think there are tons of people who actually want more: they're going to affect change, they do want to own the Raiders, they do want to be a titan, and that is the thing that's going to make them happiest. It's just not what would make me happiest. I had to ask myself—I'd been ordering this burger and thinking, "Do I even like pickles? Why do I keep ordering this burger with pickles if I actually don't like pickles?" Then get that stuff off. So I had kind of borrowed off-the-shelf goals, and I started getting clearer about what would actually be a dope life for me. For me, it's this: every five to seven years I do a bunch of creative endeavors. I make shit; I'm going to try to succeed in these different areas. Variety is the spice of life—that's me. But that wouldn't be it for someone else. That part is not universal, and making art is not universal, so I wouldn't really put that on anybody else.
49:13	Sam Parr	I kinda feel bad that I gave you a hard time with Uncle Shante. I didn't mean it that way — I was only teasing. But I said, "Okay, I... I wanna..." because... "Because, don't worry, no offense — the reason I wanna take that..."
49:23	Shaan Puri	"Mickey Mouse shirt, bro."
49:24	Sam Parr	"Like, no — let me be serious. The reason I want to take that back is basically: if you want to get rich, go listen to Sean's previous episode titled "How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky." That's virtually perfect for everyone who has less than a million dollars. But if you have more than, let's say, $500,000 — or if you make more than $200,000 a year — and you want to be happy, the second half of this episode is the number one thing you have to listen to. I'm going through exactly what you were discussing now, and this made me feel better and inspired me. So the second half of this episode is probably one of the best things that I think you've said all year.
49:58	Shaan Puri	And I... I don't know if you made up this "second mountain" thing, or if that's a book or something like that.
50:02	Sam Parr	I think I've been feeling that way, and I heard that phrase in a book. I think the book is called Second Mountain, which everyone has said is great.
50:10	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so I think what you and I are talking about is second mountain stuff. This wouldn't have been the right message for us when we were on our first mountain, like you're saying.
50:19	Sam Parr	When I was 23, it was: "How do I make $2,000 per month? That's all I need. Just tell me what to do, you know."
50:25	Shaan Puri	I saw you come to my office and you did a copywriting one‑day workshop with Neville, and you guys made $10,000. I thought, "I just watched Ocean's 13." I thought I saw a man rob a bank. I could not believe what had just happened in front of me. I felt like such a loser that Sunday. I was like, "Dude, that guy just came in here and talked to about 30 people about copywriting. It was cool, they were happy, and he made $10,000 that Saturday." I just looked at myself and thought, "You're a little piece of shit. What are you doing? You don't even have an idea of how to—"
50:59	Sam Parr	Do and taught a copywriting course and made.
51:01	Shaan Puri	A decade later, money.
51:03	Sam Parr	You know.
51:03	Shaan Puri	It took me ten years, but yeah. Later, I was like, "Oh, yeah."
51:06	Sam Parr	That's good — a substantial amount more in a weekend, so it kinda... came full circle.
51:12	Shaan Puri	But you're right—the first-mountain mindset is so different. And it should be; it's supposed to be, I think. Can I ask you one thing? Have you ever met a young person who tries to do all the "wise, like Yoda" shit—like, "I'm already past success and money and status, and I'm on this"? It honestly kinda disgusts me.
51:32	Sam Parr	"I'm like, 'Can you go get drunk and try to pick up a girl?'"
51:34	Shaan Puri	Exactly — like paying dues. You don't just get to skip all that stuff and be enlightened; that comes later. I have this... there's a kid I know. I like the kid — he's awesome — and I don't know why. It's probably a good thing that he's already kind of wizened up, but there's something about it that pisses me off inside. I can't help it. I'm just like, "Dude, you can't skip that. Go be stupid." You can't be smart before you're stupid; you have to be stupid before you're smart. There's an order of the universe here, and I feel like he's kind of spitting on that order, that way of doing things.
52:10	Sam Parr	Yeah, man. I do meet people like that.
52:13	Shaan Puri	Can we—before we leave—can I create a new segment, real quick, called "Life Happens"? </FormattedResponse>
52:17	Sam Parr	"Yeah, what is it?"
52:19	Shaan Puri	So I wanted to know: what did you do for Halloween? I just wanted to ask a quick life question. I was thinking—did you do Halloween, and did you dress up this year? I also wanted to know because I have this hunch that you're great at Halloween and that you've had some epic Halloweens—either traditions or costumes—in the past. I just needed to answer that question, so: "What did you do for this Halloween?"
52:42	Sam Parr	This Halloween, I have a two-year-old and a three-week-old. We went to my mother-in-law's apartment building in New York City. They probably have about 400 units in the building. I wore suspenders.
52:53	Shaan Puri	Indoor trick-or-treating.
52:55	Sam Parr	Dude, it was the best. You go from floor to floor — literally. We could hit 400 houses. You know what I mean?
53:02	Shaan Puri	"Just like Halloween is meant to be."
53:04	Sam Parr	And it's a very fancy—it's a very fancy building. I didn't have to buy... well, yeah, it was lovely. I didn't have to buy a costume. I just wore my overalls with no shirt and one of my cowboy [unclear].
53:16	Shaan Puri	"Bought that."
53:16	Sam Parr	For Halloween, you're like, "I already owned it. I wore my overalls with no shirt, with a cowboy [unclear]."
53:22	Shaan Puri	"You get it to look so used, so pre-free worn [unclear phrase]."
53:25	Sam Parr	"And my little girl was a mermaid, and we went from door to door. It just looked fantastic."</FormattedResponse>
53:30	Shaan Puri	Do you have a philosophy or a framework of Halloween? For example, I have one: "Halloween is about looking cute, not looking realistic." I remember one time, when we were 21, we went on a booze cruise for Halloween. Someone dressed up as a bushel of grapes. It was a great costume and looked super realistic—they had balloons all over their body. But they had such a bad time. I remember learning that lesson: never, ever try to be realistic.
53:55	Sam Parr	We're gonna... Our future costumes — it was hard this year because my wife had just given birth, so she wasn't up for doing a bunch of crazy stuff. But our future costumes are going to be group costumes. My wife has big hair, so next year she's going to be... and I'll be Axl Rose, and my kids will look like little rock stars. We're going to do themes because I think they're just darling. We trick-or-treat in New York City — that's how New York kids do it, building to building, which is absolutely insane. Do you remember growing up watching movies of 12-year-olds like Richie Rich in the inner city and thinking, "Oh my God, that's crazy — I was around those kids"? It was awesome, and my kid is going to be one of those kids, which is crazy. What did you do?
54:32	Shaan Puri	We dressed up — we were astronauts, which was the first good year in a while because my wife does the matching thing and she always stiffs me with, like, "You're—yeah, my daughter wants to be Elsa so you're Kristoff." I'm like, "Who the hell is Kristoff?" Or, "You're Olaf," and I'm just a giant snowman. I don't want to do all that. So I've been getting screwed lately. This year was better, but I dodged a bullet — I gotta, I'm not gonna lie, I dodged a bullet. I was gonna come up with a costume and I was like, you know what, maybe I'll do fireman. My kid loves fire trucks — he wanted to be a truck — so I was like, "Oh, you could be the truck and I'll be the, you know, semi-sexy fireman." I'm so glad I didn't do it. You know why? When we were out, we bumped into my kids' friends from soccer, and their two dads are — one dad is a fireman and the other kid's dad is a police officer, actually.
55:28	Sam Parr	And they wore their suits.
55:30	Shaan Puri	“No, but he wasn't even dressed up because he was like, 'I'm a man; I don't do this.' I was like, if I had dressed up as a little goofy fireman and I met this real fireman who's a friend, I would have thought, 'That's the biggest L I could've taken.' Just man-to-man, that's the biggest L you could take. 'I'm gonna dress up as the loser version of you, the wacky version of you.'”
55:52	Sam Parr	I saw.
55:53	Shaan Puri	It's like—if he dressed up as a podcaster and jumped and bumped into me, I'd be like, "Oh, that's cool."
55:59	Sam Parr	It's... I saw.
56:00	Shaan Puri	He listens to the podcast, by the way. Hope he hears this.
56:03	Sam Parr	Dude—also, that guy: you may be a cop, thanks for your service. You may be a fireman—thank you for your service. But if you don't dress up, come on, bro. That's lame. I saw the video—no, I saw a photo—of what your wife gave to your children: a gift basket. They woke up one morning and they had presents. </FormattedResponse>
56:19	Shaan Puri	She's a good mom. Great mom.</FormattedResponse>
56:21	Sam Parr	"She goes over the top, man—she's on top of it. That was wild." "Yeah. Does she... she does that for every holiday, doesn't she?"
56:28	Shaan Puri	Yeah, she does, which is...
56:29	Sam Parr	That looked like it took 8 hours.
56:32	Shaan Puri	Yeah. She just sacrifices full nights of sleep—pulls an all-nighter and gives them something. You know, she loves arts and crafts. Anyway, it's not like it's terrible for her, but she just wants them to have these kinda magical moments and the spirit of the holidays, which, growing up, I didn't have. That kind of explains why I also don't feel the same way she does about holidays... and your
56:51	Sam Parr	The eldest is just now old enough where she's probably—no, your middle is old enough now. He's probably... understanding traditions.
56:57	Shaan Puri	Oh yeah, yeah. They get it. They like it; they anticipate it. They're excited for it. So, it works.
57:02	Sam Parr	"Dude, that's awesome. Alright—well, great, wholesome episode."
57:06	Shaan Puri	Oh, by the way, we're about to enter Elf on the Shelf season, which — it's like, what's the thing called for Navy SEALs? BUD/S. This is like my wife's version of BUD/S training, or whatever: BUD/S Hell Week, dude, for her. [Note: BUD/S = Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training] </FormattedResponse>
57:20	Sam Parr	I will never do Elf on the Shelf. It's so weird... you are.
57:24	Shaan Puri	A wise and smart individual.
57:25	Sam Parr	"You're telling me—and, of course, it's easy for me to say now; let's see if I actually stick with it—but you're telling me that this elf is supposed to be watching the children at all times. Big Brother, you know. Let's just call it Palantir; that's what it's gonna be. I'm just gonna..."
57:37	Shaan Puri	Carp on the shelf.
57:38	Sam Parr	"Yeah. Carp on the shelf. Peter Thiel's in the house—he knows exactly what you did."
57:45	Shaan Puri	Better be contrarian this year, yeah.
57:49	Sam Parr	"Fuck off, the elf on the show."
57:51	Shaan Puri	"Contrary to consensus is the new naughty or" </FormattedResponse>
57:53	Sam Parr	Nice. I just want a little—like a little doll of Peter Thiel, and you click a button and it says, "Well, well."
58:08	Shaan Puri	Oh, it comes with the authentic stutter. That's incredible. Well...
58:13	Sam Parr	Well... you... yeah. Alright, that's it — that's the pod.

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I Failed 12 Times Before Making My First Million (Here's Every Failure)

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